Pecos Bill

by James Cloyd Bowman

  “Sorry! Pooh!” retorted the snake with biting sarcasm. “Go tell your story to a Porcupine! I’ve taken care of myself entirely too long to be frightened by any silly child of the Coyotes!”

  Pecos threw down his saddle and bridle, and there followed a fight the like of which a snake and a man never waged before. The snake would fling its weight forward, then retreat, like lightning. Pecos would dodge its thrusts, instantly follow its recoil, then give it a quick jab with his spur. In no time at all the snake was so furious it began to strike blindly. Pecos, the while, prodded it more and more cruelly with his jagged heels.

  “Had enough yet?” Pecos hissed with a hint of ironic laughter.

  This but enraged the venomous monster all the more. Its great eyes glared in fury, and it continued to strike aimlessly here and there and everywhere in its blind rage.

  Now Pecos knew the moment had come. Leaping forward, he caught the writhing serpent securely by the throat. Then Pecos merely smiled and pressed his powerful fingers more tightly about its throat and shook its head more and more violently, as it lashed furiously at him with its mighty tail.

  “Well, well!” Pecos remarked casually. “Haven’t you had enough yet?”

  With that the Rattlesnake gave up. Its tail hung limp and to the best of its ability—which was none too good—it smiled ingratiatingly. “Have mercy, Pecos Bill,” it fawned, “I too love my life. I am only a poor, proud, foolish creature. I should have known better than to attack you. I’ve heard a hundred times how wonderful you are. Now I believe every word of it. If you will but spare me, I’ll be your willing servant as long as I live.”

  “Now you’re talking sense,” said Pecos Bill. “Lift up your head and look me square in the eye. That’s right. Now do you promise me solemnly that you will do exactly as I tell you?”

  The Rattlesnake promised without any exception to do exactly whatever Pecos asked.

  “Very well,” concluded Pecos Bill. “I will give you my word of honor that if you obey as you have promised, I will be your best friend. No harm shall come near you as long as you obey. But let me see one false move on your part, my friend, and I’ll show you no mercy!”

  “It is agreed,” hissed the snake in humble submission.

  “Very well then, listen to these my words,” answered Pecos Bill. “Wrap yourself twice about my left arm. Carry your head well forward and your tail well behind. You will thus prove an additional eye to me as I go forward.”

  The snake immediately wrapped itself about Pecos Bill’s left arm near his shoulder. Then Pecos picked up his saddle and bridle again and galloped off on his own feet toward Hell’s Gate Gulch.

  After another hour Pecos arrived at the shallow dancing river and started leaping merrily along the narrow shore. As he was passing under an overhanging crag of granite cliff, the Rattlesnake suddenly hissed, “The Wouser! The Wouser leaps!”

  Pecos Bill had just time to dodge as the fierce, growling animal, which looked like a cross between a mountain lion and a grizzly bear and which was almost twice the size of a bronco, landed not ten feet in front of him.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Wouser,” growled Pecos Bill fiercely in this latest enemy’s own language.

  “Good afternoon,” replied the Wouser sheepishly. “I’m sorry if I frightened you, but, you see, I just slipped off the overhanging cliff. I surely hope I haven’t scared you too much!”

  “You haven’t frightened me at all, I assure you,” answered Pecos Bill serenely, in the same breath hissing to the Rattlesnake to free itself from his arm. The snake obeyed instantly and sat down in a coil close beside the saddle and bridle to watch the fun.

  “By the way,” smiled the Wouser as though he had met his very best friend, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Pecos Bill.”

  “Yes, and I’ve heard a lot about you,” smiled Pecos in answer.

  “Who’s been talking about me again?” snapped the Wouser suddenly revealing his bad temper.

  “Oh, your neighbors—the Grizzly Bear and the Porcupine and the Skunk and the Coyotes and the Cowboys have all told me much about your pleasant ways!”

  “Now you’re only making fun of me,” snarled the Wouser with a nasty roar. “Haven’t the old hunters ever warned you that, once you allow yourself to get within my power, you’d better say your prayers?” And the Wouser licked his hungry chops in a superior manner.

  “Yes, so I’ve heard often enough,” replied Pecos Bill as he coolly buttoned his coat close about him. “But you must remember, Mr. Wouser, that I’m not exactly an old hunter, and what’s more, I am not yet within your power!”

  “Is that so?” snarled the Wouser. And without more ado he leapt viciously at Pecos Bill. But Pecos Bill was ready for him. He sprang past, and the fierce Wouser discovered to his amazed disgust that his claws were clutching nothing at all.

  In his rage, the Wouser gave his terrifying shriek of blood. Pecos Bill, not to be outdone, mocked the Wouser in his own hideous language of blood, and the fight was on in earnest!

  Even the Rattlesnake with his piercing eyes was unable to follow their fast and furious movements. Every time the Wouser leapt at Pecos Bill he would find, the next second, that he had missed his catch. And each time that the Wouser flew past him, Pecos would tear out a large handful of his fur and fling it into the Wouser’s eyes.

  No wonder the Wouser completely lost his head and roared and leapt wildly in every direction. Pecos kept a cool head. He snatched away great bunches of his fur and threw them into the infuriated animal’s face. The Wouser, in his fury, raised his muzzle and shrieked, and the fur was blown straight up into the sky. After two or three hours of this, the sky was so filled with the Wouser’s fur that darkness began to fall and the Devil’s Cavalry, who were up on top of Hell’s Gate Gulch, thought there was an eclipse of the sun.

  Finally the Wouser couldn’t keep it up another minute. Brushing the fur out of his bloodshot eyes, he sat back on his quivering haunches. As soon as he had gotten back his breath, he said politely, “What are you so excited about, Pecos? Can’t you take a little joke?”

  “I’m not excited in the least,” replied Pecos Bill blandly. “Really, you know, I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a month of Sundays.” The fact was that Pecos Bill was completely stripped to the waist and his pantaloons were hanging in shreds and his back and sides were gashed with long red marks from the cruel claws. But Pecos Bill didn’t mind.

  “Very well then,” barked the Wouser with affected courtesy, “I’ll just bid you good day and wish you much happiness during the remainder of your journey.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind!” roared Pecos Bill, slapping the Wouser sharply across the muzzle. And to point up his words he stepped back and put his hand on the butt of his pistol.

  “You should have known better than to tackle Pecos Bill, my brother,” hissed the Rattlesnake.

  “You have bragged long and loud, Mr. Wouser,” declared Pecos, “of the day and the hour when you would meet me. Now you are going to listen to what I have to say. I’m on my way to pay a visit to the Devil’s Cavalry up at Hell’s Gate Gulch. Step over here lively while I bridle and saddle you. If you make a single false move, a bullet from this gun will set you right.”

  “Just as you say,” barked the Wouser, quite crestfallen, “not that I care in the least.”

  Within the next minute, Pecos Bill was aboard the great leaping Wouser and was quirting him unmercifully with the granddaddy of all the Rattlesnakes. They were soon splashing at such a lively lope up the rippling ladder of river that they never even saw the corral fence at the mouth of Hell’s Gate Gulch until they were right upon it. But it didn’t worry them in the least. They cleared it by ten feet.

  While all this was happening the fur in the sky was gradually settling down and the light of the sun was beginning to come back. The Devil’s Cavalry were squatting on their heels, lazily whittling with their great bowie knives and bragging about what terrible villains they were. How th
ey did laugh at the creamy-faced loons down at Dallas! “Why, you could tip any man there over with a feather duster any day you happen to be downtown!”

  Old Satan was talking the loudest and the biggest of the whole crowd. He was bragging about eating rawhide without boiling it, and about giving a rattlesnake the handicap of the first bite. He was just saying how he’d been raised on prickly pears and had learned as a boy to whip alligators and grizzly bears. He was just in the middle of this rollicking little ditty:

  “I’m wild and woolly and full of fleas,

  I’m hard to curry below the knees—”

  when Pecos Bill drew in rein, and the gaunt Wouser’s great claws dug streams of fire from the flinty rock as he came to a slithering stop on his haunches directly in front of the assembled members of the Devil’s Cavalry.

  Pecos Bill climbed with cool unconcern from his Wouser, and, gun in hand, hung the great limp Rattlesnake deliberately across his saddlehorn. Then he brought his jingling spurs noisily together and calmly and fearlessly stood before the members of the Devil’s Cavalry.

  This unprecedented performance so amazed the men that they only stood and stared.

  Without a sign of fear or concern, Pecos Bill very firmly said, “I’m here to interview the boss of the Devil’s Cavalry!”

  There was an awed silence for a full minute. The men were all so startled out of their wits that for at least five minutes they looked like frozen statues. Then two or three got so nervous that they tumbled over backward off their heels and lay like logs on the ground. After a long, awkward pause, Old Satan, a giant five feet and nineteen inches tall, bedecked with six pistols and ten bowie knives, got up stiffly on his hind legs. He twisted the ends of his elegant mustache and, with teeth chattering, managed to remark: “The only piece of human flesh alive that’s big enough or got backbone enough to boss the Devil’s Cavalry is you, Pecos Bill! You don’t need to think that I don’t know all about you! You’re the only man in the world I’ve ever admitted was better than I am. Here, take my gun and take my pet bowie knife. They’re yours from now on. You’re the boss, the new boss of Hell’s Gate Gulch!”

  While Old Satan was making his speech the other members of the Cavalry were regaining poise sufficiently to whisper among themselves: “This Pecos Bill must be some rider! Just think of the amount of sagebrush and cactus needles it must o’ took to scratch the sides off him and his Wouser like that!”

  PART 3

  PECOS BILL ROAMS THE SOUTHWEST

  CHAPTER 9

  PECOS BILL BUSTS PEGASUS

  Pecos Bill very soon found that Old Satan, Gabriel, and the rest were at best only tall talkers. Their chief occupations were whittling and seeing who could tell the biggest yarn. They’d just had luck in finding Hell’s Gate Gulch, that’s all. And what with never having to do much serious work and doing tall talking most of the day, they’d come actually to believe their whoppers. Oh, without a doubt they were the most fearsome outfit in existence, so terrible that the Devil himself would put up his hands in horror when they arrived in force at the gate of hell.

  They did, however, have the most wonderful herd of broncos that Pecos Bill had ever laid eyes on. Success in rustling cattle depended so much on good horses that these men simply had to have them or else quit their outlaw business.

  Quite honestly Pecos Bill praised them for their wonderful cow ponies.

  “Oh, we got the best horses in the range country,” Old Satan bragged, as he twisted his long mustache. “Wherever we find a piece of horse flesh we take a fancy to, it’s the same as ours. Whoever has it either gives it to us, or else we takes it, as the case may be, and that ends that.”

  “How interesting,” Pecos remarked politely.

  “There’s just one horse in this world we’ve wanted that we never could lay hands on,” Old Satan continued. “We’ve heard about him for years. All the way from Canada to Mexico he’s known as the Pacing White Stallion. Two years ago, the twenty-first day of last May, we was ridin’ up Powder River basin, thinkin’ of nothin’ in particular, when the event occurred. We suddenly spied the White Stallion, the most glorious palomino under high heaven, with a herd of the grandest mares you can imagine.

  “I tell you, that stallion’s head and tail was right up in heaven, and he snorted sparks of fire out of his nostrils. And it’s the truth that there was a greenish-red light that said as plain as the nose on your face, ‘You fellows think you’re some riders. Well, if you still think so, come on and see!’

  “Now, the Devil’s Cavalry ain’t the men to swallow a dare like that, you can bet. So we sets out to capture Mr. Pacing White Stallion. The stallion’s shrill bugle sets his mare flyin’ at his heels. We quirted our own horses for several miles over the soapweed mesa, but his slowest mare outdistanced us like we was babies. And Old Pegasus, for that’s what we named him then and there, never went beyond a sort of daredevil pace. It was the most provokin’ experience!

  “Well, when our horses was completely winded, we stopped to rest ’em. We swore before we started home that we’d tame that stallion, if it was the last thing any of us ever did do.

  “As we rode back to Hell’s Gate Gulch we tried to figure out how to get our hands on him. And after we’d refreshed ourselves and our cayuses for a week we sets out again. Each of us took a string of six of our best horses—which is the same as sayin’ the best horses in the Southwest range country, as well you know. We studied the lay of the land for a few days till we’d discovered where every trail led.

  “Then each of us took his station at a different place—each at some strategic point, as you might say. What we was goin’ to do was to walk him down. That is to say, each of us was goin’ to ride at his heels for a few hours, then to pass him on to the next fellow who was waitin’. We’d keep it up, day after day, until Mr. Pegasus would just naturally have to give in. Oh, it was a good plan, if I do say so.

  “Well, when the day for startin’ the race came, that stallion snorted out his bugle nearest to where I was waitin’. So I took up the trail first. I rode at top speed for two or three hours, changin’ horses every fifteen minutes. And I went so fast you couldn’t see me pass.

  “After three hours, I passed Mr. Pegasus on to Kingdom Come, here. Kingdom was waitin’ with as fine a string of horses as ever felt neat’s leather. He went as fast as I did, then passed the stallion on to Gabriel.

  “Well, we kept that race goin’ from daylight to dark, day in and day out for a full week. After two or three days our mares had all fallen out by the wayside. But we let ’em lay, givin’ ’em no more attention than as if they’d been crippled jackrabbits.

  “Once or twice every day, one or the other of us would hear that stallion neigh and now and then we’d catch a glimpse of him, as fresh as an April mornin’.

  “Well, at the end of a week we was a sorry outfit and no mistake. The gopher holes and the rocks on those slopes had just about done us up. We had to shoot a dozen of our choicest buckaroos because of broken legs. And most of the others wasn’t worth takin’ home, they was so broken-winded and lame. All told, we looked about like a lead dollar. And what we said on the way back here I’m not tellin’ you.

  “That Pegasus had called our bluff completely. And when we’d gotten back our breath so’s we could argue out every point pro and con, this is what we decided. This stallion wasn’t no ordinary horse, because, well, it didn’t stand to reason that any horse with normal bronco blood in his veins could behave in any such fashion as this fellow had done. Any bronco in this here range country would’ve completely broken inside of three days at most. And no horse livin’ could have kept on as easy as he had when all the other horses was strainin’ every muscle on the run.

  “This fellow, we decided, must have been sired by that flyin’ horse you hear so much talk about in story books. I mean the first Pegasus. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he has wings too. I tell you we’d spurred and quirted like nobody’s business, and our horses galloped like mad,
but that stallion, he never broke down his consarned pace.”

  Pecos Bill listened more and more intently until Old Satan had finished his story. When Old Satan explained how the stallion’s father must have been the real Pegasus, Pecos could scarcely sit still.

  “Just how far is it to this Powder River?” Pecos asked.

  “Well, it’s just about an even hundred miles,” Old Satan replied slowly as he calculated the distance.

  “With your permission, I’ll turn the management of this Hell’s Gate Gulch back into your hands at once. Then I’ll be on my way. I’m looking for a little excitement, don’t you see?” Pecos Bill explained with seeming unconcern. “I’ll just take my saddle and bridle and go out and see if I can’t capture this magic-winged horse.”

  Old Satan strongly urged Pecos Bill to take the favorite cow pony of the Gulch, Bald Eagle. Pecos, however, replied softly, “I have nothing against your bronco, you understand, but when I’m in a hurry I always prefer to go on foot.”

  Old Satan was at first visibly offended. But when Pecos Bill tucked his boots quickly under his arm, threw his saddle and bridle and lariat across his shoulder, and loped off at such incredible speed as the Devil’s Cavalrymen had never seen, Old Satan was somewhat reconciled.

  “What kind of critter is this Pecos Bill, anyway? He made the Wouser eat out of his hand, as you might say. Now he’s runnin’ faster’n a speedy bronc!” they all exclaimed as he vanished from their sight.

  As soon as Pecos Bill arrived at Powder River, he gave the shrill bugle of a stallion, and the next minute there came back on the wind a neigh so defiant that Pecos Bill trembled. But that didn’t keep him from letting out another bugle as defiant as the first.

  When, a few minutes later, the beautiful white stallion came prancing around a clump of sagebrush, he was alone, just too proud to be seen with ordinary horses. Pecos Bill held his breath. This magnificent horse, with feet that seemed scarcely to touch the ground, with head and tail right in heaven just as Old Satan had said, completely fascinated him.