The men were at first startled to see a stranger so suddenly in their midst. They wondered how much he might have heard of Puke’s story. Major Duval, however, held his natural pose of a prince and said kindly, “Whoever you are, you’re welcome. Sit down and eat till you bust.”
Pecos Bill’s plate was heaped with food, and he swallowed his food as if he had not tasted meat for a month of Sundays. As he ate, he made himself right at home. He began by asking a question, “Whose ranch may this be? Where am I, anyway?”
“I’m Major Duval!” came the quick reply that carried its threat of mortal danger for the stranger. “I’m sometimes called, I understand, the Man of the Mountain. This is the home of Miracle Ranch, if you are anxious to know!”
Pecos Bill gazed at Major Duval with pop-eyed innocence, in spite of the circle of piercing glances, and added, “I’m positive I ain’t never heard the name Duval before, and I don’t understand what mountain you’re talking about at all. I didn’t even know there was such a place around here.”
The men around the circle laughed heartily. Here was a greenhorn indeed! How could it possibly happen he had never heard of their outfit?
“Whoever you are, stranger,” Major Duval said quietly, “never forget this one thing—Miracle Ranch isn’t a place! It’s the finest herd of cattle in the world!”
“Well, if you want to know,” Pecos answered, holding his disguise perfectly, “I’m a homesteader. I’ve lately come on from Missouri. The trouble is I brought a half a dozen hogs along with me, but they just naturally vamoosed on me, and I’m out now trying to round them up. You see, I trailed them a long ways and then I lost the trail and myself in the bargain. I’ve wandered around over most of the Southwest Territory the past few days, I guess, and that’s why I’m here. I just naturally lost my way right into your ranch.”
“You are in a bad fix, indeed,” Major Duval replied with a flitting smile. “Well, make yourself at home. We were just in the middle of a good story when you interrupted us. You’ve heard of Pecos Bill, I suppose?” Major Duval added with a quick rising inflection as he eyed the stranger like a hawk, but there was not the least outward change.
“Pecos Bill, did you say?” Pecos asked with a puzzled look as he scratched his head. “Oh, yes, come to think of it, I did hear a wild yarn or two about him back in Missouri. But I didn’t take them seriously at all. I kind of thought they was nothing but big lies. Do you mean to tell me there is a real fellow by the same name?”
“You certainly are a stranger in this part of the country. But you haven’t missed anything in not knowing that scoundrel!”
“Is Pecos Bill as bad as all that?” Pecos added.
“Is Pecos Bill bad!” added the Major in a nasty tone of voice. “Pecos Bill is, without the shadow of a doubt, the worst critter in the entire Southwest! He’s got all the bad blood of the Bull Rattlesnake and all the bad manners of the Skunk and all the bad morals of the cunning Coyote! If you start out and find him, you won’t be far from your lost hogs!”
“You don’t say!” answered Pecos, pretending to be greatly impressed. “But which way shall I go to find him?”
“The quickest way,” smiled the Major, dryly, “is to get out of here as fast as your legs will carry you along—the same trail you followed coming in—and then follow your nose straight till you come to Pecos Bill’s I. X. L. Ranch.”
“Now, you’re only trying to make a fool of me,” Pecos replied innocently. “Nobody could possibly follow his nose anywhere in this wilderness, let alone a person who is lost to begin with.”
“I’ll show you the way,” Puke shouted boisterously, and as he spoke he picked up his lariat deftly and without warning flung its noose at Pecos Bill’s neck.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Pecos shouted as he jumped aside so quickly that the noose fell to the ground. “I’m not Peewee.”
As Pecos Bill leapt aside, he drew his guns and shot off Puke’s trigger fingers. Immediately the air was hopping full of flying lead, and Pecos Bill was forced to dodge so fast that human eyes couldn’t follow him. He leapt about so quickly that the men shot on all sides of him, without ever quite hitting him.
And all the while he was dodging, Pecos kept up a barrage of flying bullets from his own guns. He shot off trigger finger after trigger finger from Major Duval and his men. And as the fingers fell the guns fell with them. Whenever Pecos Bill saw a gun pointed directly at him, he promptly spiked it by shooting one of his own bullets down its muzzle. This was one of the little tricks Gun Smith had taught Pecos.
It wasn’t long before Major Duval’s men were too busy stopping the blood from their missing fingers to pay any too much attention to Pecos Bill. When anyone tried to run, Pecos stopped him in his tracks with the blood call of the Wouser.
As soon as Pecos Bill was out of the middle of his bad fix, he commanded every man to stick ’em up. Then he forced them to march past him while he stripped them of their bowie knives and guns. Soon he had every weapon in a heap beside him.
He next ordered all the men to stand close together. Then he picked up Puke’s lariat, enlarged the noose, and sent it singing around the middle of the entire posse. This he drew up so tight that the men felt like the broken straws in a bundle of wheat. They were so jammed together they howled in pain. Pecos lashed the end of the lariat securely to a tree.
As soon as he had his job finished he gave a bloodcurdling “Ee-yow!” and in a few minutes Gun Smith and Chuck and a dozen outriders came loping up on their broncos.
Pecos told them to tie all the guns and bowie knives into bundles. These they lashed to the tail of the saddles. Pecos next told the men to cut out ten thousand steers from the herd.
While this was being done, Pecos Bill gave Major Duval and his men a word of advice: “All you’ve lost of your own is a few trigger fingers. You deserve a lot worse punishment than that. And if ever you set foot on my ranch again, I’ll see to it personally you get what is rightly coming to you.”
As they were driving their cattle out of the mouth of the canyon, Gun Smith and Chuck met the judge and the attorneys, who were riding in for supper. The judge was accusing the cowboys of being thieves when Pecos Bill arrived.
In two seconds he had his lariat about them, one at a time, and had dragged them to the ground. When they tried to use their guns, Pecos promptly shot off their trigger fingers and took their weapons away from them.
As soon as Pecos Bill had them under control, he sent Gun Smith and Chuck on with the herd, while he took the judge and the attorneys back to Major Duval’s ranch house. When they saw the Major and his posse roped to a tree like so many outlaw broncos, they swore vengeance—the vengeance of the law!
Pecos laughed loudly at their mention of the law. He set the judge on a bench, forced Duval and Puke to plead guilty to a hundred different counts. Then Pecos forced the judge to hand in a decision of guilty against the entire outfit at Miracle Ranch, himself included. It began, “Know all men by these presents, whereas…”
When the judge had finished sentencing each man to banishment from the cattle country for the remainder of his natural life, Pecos added his own conditions.
“If ever Major Duval or Puke or any other of his outfit is caught on Pecos Bill’s ranch, or if ever Pecos Bill hears of any of these men robbing any of his neighbors or anybody else, he’ll see that they are given such punishment as they will never forget.”
After the judge had finished adding this sentence to what he had already written, Pecos Bill took up the document, lassoed the judge and the attorneys around the middle, too, and tied them to another tree. When he had given them a lecture on common decency and honorable Coyote morals, he left them all to get out of their own bad fix the best way they could; then he loped off to join Gun Smith and Chuck.
When he caught up with the herd, Gun Smith and Chuck asked him how he had come out. He answered simply, “I don’t think Major Duval, the Man of the Mountain, and his outfit will bother us again…at least, no
t so as you will notice it.”
“Why didn’t you shoot ’em down like the bad-blooded bull rattlesnakes they are?” Gun Smith asked.
“I’ve never yet found it necessary to kill a human,” answered Pecos Bill dreamily. “That sort of thing may be all right, I suppose, for you fellows who have to kill to save your own life. But so far I’ve never been reduced to that. I prefer to spike their guns and shoot off their trigger fingers. Among the Coyotes, you know, to have one’s toes bitten off by an enemy is the most shocking of any disgrace.”
CHAPTER 18
THE GOING OF PECOS AND WIDOW MAKER
Soon Pecos Bill and his men began to talk seriously of the situation Pecos had seen coming on for a long time. The nesters and homesteaders were taking up the land on all sides. Civilization was closing in faster and faster. The settlers were stretching barbed wire and announcing, “Private land! No trespassing!” Pecos began to feel crowded and restless, just as his mother had years before when she made her family come along to the Rio Grande. The whole trouble was there wasn’t any more open country for Pecos to occupy.
After a long discussion, it was finally decided to cut out from their various herds all the steers that were fit to market and to start them along the trail for Kansas.
After they’d done this, the herd that they got together was so large they didn’t even try to make a count of the steers. The best guess they could make was in the neighborhood of thirty-nine million.
“If ever we get these critters to market,” Gun Smith declared, “there won’t be enough money in the US Treasury to pay for half of them.”
“Get them to market!” laughed Pecos Bill. “Why, that’s easier than falling off a bronco. Even if we have to cut every barbed wire fence this side of Kingdom Come, we’ll see this thing through to the last steer.”
The men who were driving arranged themselves around the herd in the shape of a great horseshoe. The cattle thought they were finding their own way, for the end of the horseshoe at the front of the march was, of course, open. Actually the cattle were guarded every step of the way. At the front on either side rode the point or lead men, as they were called. These were followed at regular intervals by the swing or flank riders. These, in turn, were followed by the tail riders, who completed the circle in the rear and kept the straggling drags in the line of march.
Next behind this horseshoe of drivers came Old Satan, the horse wrangler, with his reserve hackamores. And finally, behind these, came Bean Hole with his canvas-covered chuck wagon, drawn by three teams of powerful mules. Pecos Bill knew just how to manage.
As far as the eye could see lumbered the bawling steers. The scene was like an enormous herd of buffalo of the early days, without beginning or end. The cloud of dust that rose to the heavens shut out the sun. The men felt its stifling oppression as they felt the sweltering heat, but they stuck to their several tasks without a word.
First they were parched by the rays of the sun, then they were frozen fording rivers in the gray morning dawn. It was all in the day’s work, and they were there to see the drive through to Kansas or bust, even though it proved the last piece of work they ever did.
When evening came, the chuck wagon was drawn up beside some natural spring of clear running water. Bean Hole would tumble off his high perch and pull down the cover of the great box at the rear of the wagon. This was his pantry.
While the other men rustled wood and lighted the fire, Bean Hole rattled his kettles. In less time than it takes to tell it, his famous frying-pan bread was piping hot. Bean Hole would yell loud enough to waken the dead, “Come and take it, or I’ll throw it into the fire!”
The men came on the gallop, threw the reins over their ponies’ heads, and sat teetering on their haunches in a circle.
After they had eaten, the men removed the fifty-pound cow saddles from their ponies, hobbled them or picketed them out as they preferred. Then they took their fat gray rolls of blankets from the front of Bean Hole’s chuck wagon and made their beds under the open sky.
During the evening Rusty Peters would lift many a hoof between his knees and replace a lost shoe. Mushmouth would start his lip piano with “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep” or “The Little Roan Bull Came Bawling Down the Mountain,” and Bullfrog Doyle would dance like a drunken hornpiper. Fat Adams would practice new ways to amuse the men with his shadow boxing. Pretty Pete Rogers would brush the dust and horsehair from his Stetson and swear he was going to turn a tailor’s model. Old Satan would recount the good old days when he and his hellions shot up Dallas.
After the stars were laughing overhead, the men would roll themselves in their blankets, lay their heads on their saddles, and sleep the sleep of the just. As the softened shadows of the moon fell upon their camp it saw an irregular series of small gray mounds.
Pecos Bill had decided to make the men believe that they themselves were conducting this drive. So he did not do too much, but he was here, there, and everywhere. When a stampede threatened, he kept Widow Maker flying around and around the herd, singing soothing songs as he went. The cattle knew what he said and were patient even in a menacing thunderstorm.
When a swollen stream was to be crossed, Pecos was there with Widow Maker and his quirt and his rope. He was able to talk to the steers in their own language. The stubborn ones he conquered, and the lead cattle he directed to a natural landing place.
When the herd did explode unexpectedly in a wild stampede, Widow Maker and Pecos circled the flying leaders like strokes of greased lightning and soon had the cattle milling round and round in a compact mass.
It was Pecos who in the end saved every impossible situation from becoming a disaster. Without him, Gun Smith and the others would have been powerless to drive such a mighty herd across the open country.
During the first week, Gun Smith and his men pushed the herd to the limit. They were attempting to wear the steers down until they became docile and too tired to attempt a stampede.
Each night, after they had allowed the cattle to graze and drink their fill, the men bedded them down. But this was only the beginning of the night. The men took their turns at watching, riding slowly round and round the herd and singing songs to assure the cattle that there was no danger.
Pecos Bill roped the Major and his posse to a tree.
Every morning at sunup the caravan started again. Hour after hour it crawled along at a snail’s pace. Late in the afternoon the cattle were driven to rich pastures and allowed to fill up for the early part of the night. The men considered themselves fortunate if they found they had made ten or a dozen miles in as many hours.
The monotony was broken by the changing country and by the weather. Nearly every day there was at least one river to ford, and at frequent intervals there were thunderstorms of varying intensity.
The men could never quite predict just what the steers would do in a new situation. Sometimes they chose to be stubborn and sometimes they decided, in spite of everything, to go in the wrong direction. And occasionally the herd actually exploded like a piece of shrapnel. It was then that the nerve of every man was a-tingle. At times, in desperation, the crazed, frothing leaders of the stampede had to be shot. Always the task was a real cowman’s job.
It was the business of the men to sense and anticipate every move of the cattle and to catch every electric spark of feeling that passed through the herd before it had done any damage. Otherwise, it was impossible to cope with the sudden changes in the temper of the steers. The cowboy had little time for sleep during the drive. He always had to be on the alert and had ever to prove himself the master of whatever situation might arise.
As the drive progressed it became necessary to send at least three or four outriders ahead to prepare the way. There were nester shacks to be avoided and wire fences to be cut.
Scarcely a day passed that some nester’s cattle did not come bawling into the herd. Closely following the cattle usually came the nester himself, demanding that his cattle be immediately cut out fro
m among the steers.
“But we’re runnin’ shorthanded,” Gun Smith would explain.
“You’re trespassing, and I’ll have the law on you,” the nester would threaten hotly.
“Besides, the steers are tired and are gettin’ thin from the daily drive. We can’t afford to begin ginnin’ them around merely to cut out your few cattle,” Gun Smith would explain quietly.
The nester would become more and more angry and unreasonable until Pecos Bill would come forward and pay the nester two or three times what his cattle were worth. Sometimes the nester would keep on being so nasty and threatening that Pecos Bill would be forced to drive him away with harsh words. He never, however, failed to leave money to pay for whatever damage he had done.
The great herd naturally acted as a mighty magnet. The cattle of the nesters and hoe-men were but particles of iron filings in its presence. The cattle would come running and bawling and in a few minutes become so scattered among the steers that they never again could be found.
As the days went on the herd thus gradually became larger instead of smaller. With Pecos always on hand to round up the strays and to put fresh energy into the drags, there was little chance of losing as many cattle as the number that was added.
One evening after the herd was safely bedded down, the men gathered for two or three hours around the fire beside the chuck wagon and gave their time over to tall talk. Many were the wild adventures they retold. After a time, as the moon arose and cast its weird shadows, Pecos Bill told his men what he had on his mind.
“My merry men, my Texas cowpunching is through. When we’ve got the herd through to Kansas City, we’ll all split the profits. If you boys’ll use your heads and go back and buy up the homesteaded lands, you’ll be able to combine them into sizeable ranches. You can fence yourselves in with barbed wire and be free from the swarming nesters and hoe-men. There’s plenty of cattle playing around back at our old ranch to furnish you all the foundation stock you’ll ever need.”
Pecos Bill Page 18
