Pecos Bill

by James Cloyd Bowman

  Pecos was entirely happy, for he fully expected to awaken next morning and find his canal full of water, but the ground was so thoroughly dried out that no water seeped through. Pecos was thus reduced to another necessity. After thinking things over for another day or two, he decided to try lassoing an oxbow of the Rio Grande River, which was three miles long. He did this easily, lashed his lariat across his saddle horn, and then set Widow Maker off on the jump. There was a rush and a swish and a sharp tug at his rope, and when he reached the head of his improvised canal, he looked back. To his delight he found the big ditch brimming with water.

  But by the time the cattle had taken their fill and the water had finished seeping into the dry ground, there was no water left. It thus became necessary for Pecos Bill to lasso ten miles of river each morning. Being naturally a modest man, he did this little job while his cowboys were at their breakfast. They would hear a sudden clatter and roar that sounded as if all the water in the Atlantic Ocean was again coming down at a single bound. Without warning, there would follow a quick grinding of hoofs and out of the cloud of dust Pecos and Widow Maker would appear before them, quivering as if they had just ended a race for their lives.

  “It would be worth a whole year’s wages,” said Gun Smith, full of wonder, “if only we could get our eyes set quick enough to see Pecos Bill drag up the Rio Grande into the canal.”

  “It don’t seem accordin’ to reason,” added Chuck loyally, “but I know for a fact that he does lasso the river every single mornin’!”

  This was all well and good. But at the end of two months, despite Pecos Bill’s fine efforts as water boy, the drought had become still more terrifying. The prairie grass was as dry as powder and the sagebrush as brittle as matchwood.

  “We’ll be deuced lucky if we get out of this without a ragin’ prairie fire,” the men observed among themselves day after day.

  “There’ll be some fried gents around here, if ever things get started,” said Gun Smith with a flickering smile.

  One morning, a week later, the men noticed that the horizon seemed blurred with a gray haze. During the day, this haze gradually thickened. Once or twice the men thought they smelled the faint odor of burning grass. The cattle constantly sniffed and bellowed. The men noticed this too. By good fortune, there was but a slight breeze.

  “If an old-fashioned sou’wester should set in today, there’d be some of us hittin’ the long trail for Kingdom Come,” commented Moon Hennessey, gloomily.

  It was early in the forenoon of the following day that the southwester did arrive. The smoke along the horizon rapidly thickened until the sun was entirely blotted out of the sky. Bits of fine gray ash slowly filtered to the ground in grim warning.

  Pecos Bill had ridden out on Widow Maker at a perilous gallop to see if there was danger, and now he came dashing back at top speed. He shouted briefly, “Our one chance to save the herd and ourselves is to start a backfire.”

  Scarcely had he finished speaking when every man rushed to the work. The outriders circled the terrified cattle and held them from a panic and a stampede. Bundles of sticks were fastened at the end of a lariat. The sticks were lighted and Gun Smith dragged them slowly forward. As the fire parted, two of the other men on their ponies straddled the oncoming blaze and dragged a wet cowhide at the tail of their lariats to smother the flame. The other men followed at close range and beat out any remaining sparks with switches made from bundles of twigs.

  The backfire, thus left to take its course, ran forward into the teeth of the wind and offered protection against the oncoming big prairie blaze.

  All day long the men labored at the perilous task, and by the time the prairie fire arrived they had cut themselves and their herd off by several square miles of burned-over ground.

  “Say, do you know,” smiled Gun Smith when they had come back to the ranch shack for food and water, “we look worse’n a bunch of singed tomcats!”

  It was only too true. Here reclined Chuck and Peewee and Moon Hennessey and all the rest, with charred eyebrows and blistered faces and sooty, smarting hands. But they were happy, for they had saved their own lives as well as their herd.

  The men slept like knots in a log that night and next morning got up expecting to pass a quiet day. They should have known that a spurt of hard luck chases right on the heels of another. The prairie fire was over. But something else worse was coming.

  During the morning the sky was still a dull gray from the smoke, but by noon it lowered with a more ominous black. By early afternoon the wind had died down until there was not even the faintest breeze. The air suddenly grew heavy and oppressive, and the heat became unbearable. A tremendous, awesome silence fell over all things. The cattle drowsed and loitered listlessly.

  After a time the herd suddenly changed its mood and became touchy and nervous. The cattle sniffed the heavy air and snorted and bellowed and threatened to break into a stampede. All this while the sky was becoming more and more inky.

  “We’re in for a cyclone!” called Gun Smith with drawn face. “Come on, boys. Throw as many of the cattle as we can into some sort of shelter.”

  “Let’s divide the herd and keep them from stampeding, if possible,” Pecos Bill answered hurriedly.

  As he spoke, Pecos leapt astride of Widow Maker and the next moment was riding among the bewitched cattle, talking to them in their own language and starting them slowly in various directions. The other men followed at his heels, and together they soon had the cattle moving, thus diverting their attention from the coming storm.

  As the men looked, they noted that the blackness was becoming shaded, turning into a deep greenish copper. From out the blackness boomed a sullen crash of thunder.

  The men now showed neither horse nor cattle mercy. They quirted and spurred and threatened every bolting steer with wild yelling.

  In another instant the men heard a long-drawn purring moan, then a series of quick snapping reports of thunder.

  “She loves me…She loves me not…She loves me…She loves me not…She loves me…” Gun Smith crooned, as if tearing petals from a daisy, as each flash of lightning struck nearer and nearer in rapid succession.

  “Be careful there! Raise your sights, God!” shouted Moon Hennessey. “You sure got me dancin’! Say, can’t you find a better mark’n me for your greased lightnin’?”

  “Hell’s broke loose!” shrieked Mushmouth. “And now the Devil’s to pay!”

  Soon there was a threatening roar, then a lightning-fringed black funnel moved menacingly out of the depths of the greenish-copper darkness. As the men noted the direction in which the funnel was moving, they turned their cattle as best they could to the right of where its central swirl would come.

  And now between the crashes of the thunder the men heard a wild “Ee-yow! Ee-yow!” They looked, and what did they see but Pecos Bill riding Widow Maker swiftly out to meet the oncoming hurricane.

  They couldn’t believe their eyes. Even Pecos Bill had never done anything like that before. Not a man of them but felt Pecos had met his match this time. “Stop!” yelled Gun Smith.

  But Pecos Bill went right on. As he neared the menacing funnel he unfurled his agile lariat, whirled its spreading loop about his head and hurled it in defiance at the head of the approaching monster.

  “Pecos Bill’s ropin’ the cyclone!” now shouted Gun Smith breathlessly.

  The next moment the men saw Pecos leap headlong into the air and disappear amid the blackness. Widow Maker, finding himself free, dashed to one side just in time to avoid being carried into the swirling monster’s maw. He lost the tip of his tail in the wind at that, but he was lucky to get off with his life.

  With a whizz and a deafening roar and a bang, the cyclone leapt directly over their heads and was gone. After they had rounded up their crazed cattle, they rode back and forth along the path of the storm to see if they could find any remains of Pecos Bill. They felt sure he had been thrown before he could really get on top of the funnel. And if by a
ny chance he was still alive, they wanted to ease his pain as best they could.

  “Look at the tracks the cyclone left,” said Gun Smith as they went along. “It reared off the earth when Pecos Bill got his noose around its neck. And look at the way it kicked. Talk about skyscrapin’ and high flyin’. This cyclone critter jumped more than three miles the first shot!”

  “Sure did, and it’s plain enough,” added Chuck loyally, “we have Pecos to thank for our not bein’ blown entirely off the planet! If the old buckaroo hadn’t jumped just when he did, we’d have been lifted clean out of Kingdom Come!”

  Pecos Bill hurled his lariat at the head of the approaching monster.

  “I tell you, there never was a rider like Pecos Bill,” added Gun Smith in awe. “Nobody else that lived anywhere could hold a candle to him. Scared mavericks—that’s what anybody else’d been if they’d met up with an honest-to-goodness Texas twister. They’d have run for their lives the same as we done.”

  “Shut your face!” snarled Moon Hennessey. “You’ve seen the last you’re ever goin’ to of your sweet son of a Coyote! Pecos has tried his high jinks once too often! He needn’t think he can sit there in the sky, floppin’ his hat across the ears of the moon!”

  “Far as we know, the old buckaroo ain’t made Pecos eat his dust yet!” answered Gun Smith. “We’ve been up and down the old vinegaroon’s trail a dozen times, and the most we’ve been able to discover is an old camp kettle turned wrong-side out. I’m tellin’ you anybody that can ride Widow Maker can ride anythin’!”

  “You talk like a locoed longhorn steer looks!” cut in Moon Hennessey. “Anythin’ that can turn a cast-iron kettle inside out can’t be handled.”

  “Since you’re so certain,” answered Gun Smith hotly, “I’ll just bet you three months’ wages that Pecos Bill’ll succeed in bustin’ the cyclone, funnel and all.”

  “Now that I’m talkin’ to a businessman, I’ll just make it a bet of six months’ salary!” barked Moon Hennessey. “You fellows have been makin’ a hero out of this triflin’ greenhorn once too often, as you’ll soon find out.”

  “If it wasn’t for losin’ this perfectly good bet,” answered Gun Smith, “I’d up and knock you into the middle of next February for your unkind remarks! You better be mighty careful or there’ll be war!”

  All this time that the cowboys were arguing Pecos Bill was having the ride of his life. “Multiply Widow Maker by a thousand or a million,” he was singing to himself as he whirled about like a dervish of the desert.

  Before he had leapt from the back of Widow Maker, he had clutched his bowie knife between his teeth and a twenty-dollar gold piece in his hand. Anywhere I land, if I’m alive, I can get on if I keep these, he had thought to himself.

  Down across Texas the cyclone tore, cake walking and twisting and sunfishing worse than a whole herd of outlaw bucking broncos.

  When the old twister found that it could not free itself of Pecos Bill by shaking him off its back, it tried to scare him to death. It reached down and pulled up a half dozen mountains by the roots and threw them at Pecos’s head. The trouble with all this was that Pecos dodged so fast that the cyclone couldn’t see where he was half of the time.

  When the cyclone saw that mountains were too large and two clumsy to handle, it was madder than ever and went racing down across New Mexico. In fact, it was so perfectly furious it tore up every tree that crossed its path and cracked them like a thousand rawhide quirts. This was a lot more dangerous than a few loose mountains, and Pecos Bill knew it. His body was being severely bruised, his clothes torn into shreds. So terrible was the cyclone’s rage that it left the whole section of the country it crossed entirely bare. Later on, people had to set stakes to find their way across it. This is the way the Staked Plains, as they are still known, came about.

  All this made Pecos Bill mighty unhappy. But he hung right on and never said a word. And pretty soon the old cyclone began to get the idea.

  Why, Pecos was actually rolling a cigarette and lighting it from a flash of lightning!

  This made the cyclone so furious it didn’t know where it was going. It raced across Arizona. It dug in its toes as it went and tore a gulley through the heart of the mountains. This put Pecos Bill in a worse fix than ever. He not only had to dodge the original mountains the cyclone had picked up and the thousands of trees swirling in every direction, but now the air was becoming so full of dust and pieces of rock that he had to blow with all his might before he could take a full breath.

  His only safety lay in his dodging so fast that the cyclone couldn’t get its eyes on him. If it ever had found out where he really was, for a minute, it would have buried him under a mighty pile of earth and rocks.

  Pecos was just beginning to think he couldn’t last much longer when the cyclone came to the same conclusion. A busted bronco couldn’t have felt worse. And no matter what the cyclone did, it just naturally couldn’t get rid of Pecos Bill.

  Just then, however, it had another bright idea. It would rain out from under him! Now as soon as Pecos saw what was happening he said to himself, “This is the same tactics a bronco uses when he rears over on his back. The only thing left for me to do now is to jump.”

  The water beneath him was falling in torrents and regular waterspouts. So fast was the downfall that the water rushed through the great gully that the cyclone had just cut between the mountains, and quick as a wink made the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

  Pecos Bill began to look hard in every direction to see where he’d better jump. If the sky beyond the edge of the cyclone hadn’t been clear, he wouldn’t have known in the least where he was, for by this time he was a thousand feet above the limit of the very highest clouds.

  Beneath him lay huge piles of jagged rock and he couldn’t help remembering how Old Satan looked after he had been dragged down from the top of Pike’s Peak. So he turned his eyes in other directions. Pecos did not for a minute doubt his own ability to grow a complete new skeleton if he had to. But he didn’t want to waste more time than was necessary getting back to the ranch. And a new skeleton did take time.

  Looking out at the horizon in every direction, he saw in the southwest what looked to be a soft cushion of sand. Quickly setting his foot on a passing crest of mountain, he kicked himself off into space with a gigantic bound.

  For what seemed an incredible time he flew through the empty air. He was so terribly high that, for the first half hour, he was afraid he might be flying right off the earth. So he began looking around to see if the moon was anywhere in his immediate vicinity.

  Then gradually he saw beneath him what looked like a sea of golden haze reaching up its hands to catch him. Slowly the haze cleared and the golden glow became very dazzling. Soon it was wildly leaping, right up toward him, and the next instant there was a terrible crash. Pecos Bill thought his ears had exploded and that his legs were completely telescoped inside his body. Sand had splashed on all sides like a wave of the sea.

  When he finally came to his senses he saw he was in the bottom of what seemed an enormous shallow bowl. Sand, sand, sand—farther than he could see in every direction.

  Pecos Bill slowly got up on his feet. His entire body was as sore as a boil, and he couldn’t muster the courage to touch himself to see if his bones were still inside him or not. When he found that he could still walk, he felt better. “Guess I won’t need a new skeleton this trip,” he grinned.

  The fact was that in falling he had splashed out the greatest depression in the Southwest. And down at the bottom he had left the impression of his hip pockets in bedrock. In short, he had just made Death Valley, which can be seen to this day, bedrock and all.

  “If only Slue-foot Sue could have been along,” Pecos sighed, forlorn lover that he was. “She’d have enjoyed every minute.”

  Then he remembered something else and opened his hand. At first he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. The cyclone had blown his twenty-dollar gold piece into two half-dollars and a plugged nickel
.

  Quickly he took the bowie knife from between his teeth. Here was another jolt. The wind had blown it into a dainty pearl-handled penknife.

  “I seem to be in the middle of nowhere,” sighed Pecos. “What can I do without money and without a real knife?”

  Then a smile overspread his face. “Ready-made presents, I’ll say. The plugged nickel I’ll give to Gun Smith, and the pearl-handled knife—to Slue-foot Sue, with my love.”

  But where was the ranch? Which way should he go to get back to the boys? Pecos couldn’t make out in the least. For a minute he was more unhappy than he had ever been in his life. Then he suddenly remembered. He’d just call on the Coyotes, and in no time at all he’d be hustling along on his way back.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

  While these things were happening to Pecos Bill, the I. X. L. Ranch was getting into a terrible snarl. As the days lengthened into weeks and the weeks added themselves into months, Gun Smith and Chuck began to wonder whether, after all, they would ever see Pecos again. But they never said so, and whenever either of them met Moon Hennessey or any of his followers they whistled vigorously to keep up their courage.

  “What’s the worry?” Gun Smith would say, “Pecos’ll be back any day now. That old cyclone cayuse most likely ran a thousand or two miles before he had the sense to admit he was busted. And it just naturally’ll take Pecos several weeks to find his way home.”

  “Find his way home—nothin’!” came Moon Hennessey’s reply. “You’ve seen the last you’ll ever see of that cayuse!”

  “If it wasn’t for losin’ the money I’ve bet you on his return, I’d make you take that name back or eat dust!” Gun Smith growled.