Pecos Bill
Page 19
“But what are ye goin’ to do?” Gun Smith asked curiously.
“That’s not quite decided,” Pecos answered simply. “You see, it’s like this. Widow Maker and me have got to have room to kick up our heels, and there’s not room for us any longer in Texas!”
“But you’ve got to stick with the outfit!” Gun Smith urged.
“Boys, I’m sure sorry to leave you,” Pecos answered with intense feeling. “You’ve been real friends to me, and there’s no wealth in this world quite equal to one’s friends. When I came among you I was suspicious of all humans. Among the wild animals, humans have a black reputation, as you well know. I have lived long enough with you to know that human nature, at its best, is the very best there is anywhere. And so I’m glad I left the Coyotes and came to live with you.”
“We’re all sure glad that Chuck found you,” Gun Smith declared.
“The Coyotes, among themselves, are a fine race,” Pecos continued, “and so are the Bears among themselves. The same is true of the Mountain Lions and the Bobcats and even of the Wousers. Experience’s taught me that no race at its best is quite so good as the best humans of the ranches. At its worst, no race—I make no exception even of the bad-blooded, poisonous Reptiles—is worse than what in the Coyote language is called the inhumans!”
“How do you hope to better yourself any by leavin’ us?” Gun Smith asked. “And if you don’t better yourself, you’re sure not goin’ to better the rest of us any.”
“As I have said before, there’s not room enough in Texas for Widow Maker and me. We are both freeborn, and we just naturally can’t stay fenced in.”
When the men tired of their talk, they rolled up in their blankets and slept through the night. Next morning they had all forgotten what Pecos had said. He’d never leave them, they were sure of that. All but Gun Smith, that is, and Gun Smith wondered.
After three and a half months of faithful driving, the great unwieldy herd was at last brought to the gates of Kansas City. As usual, Pecos Bill was making geography. The path that the herd had just made through the wild country later came to be known as the Chisholm Trail.
As used as the natives had become to seeing many cattle, they now had to admit they had never before seen a real herd of steers. “Three cheers for Pecos Bill!” every man, woman, and child in Kansas City shouted as the herd came thundering by.
The gates of the slaughterhouse were swung wide, and the pens were soon full to overflowing, and still the herd outside the pens extended for miles in every direction.
The men rolled up in their blankets.
The managers of the packing houses were forced to enlarge their factories three different times and to put on two extra shifts of men. They also started a gang of fifty men building extra pens, but in spite of everything they could do, Pecos Bill and his men were obliged to drive the greater part of the herd out on the plains again. The remaining steers were pastured over almost all the Missouri valley.
By the time they were returned they had eaten practically every blade of grass so close that even a sheep wouldn’t have been tempted by what was left. For years the region was set down in the geography as the Great American Desert, and it is often rumored to this day that this is the reason why the soil in certain parts of this valley is still so thin and poor.
The final result of the slaughter of all these countless steers was that the price of beef throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and even China and the South Sea Islands, broke sharply and fell as much as ten cents on the pound, due to the enormous oversupply. It is the common belief in certain sections of the country, that some of these same cans of tinned beef can still be found on the shelves of merchants in out of the way places. And it was through the sale of this same meat that one of our national packing companies first became an international institution.
When the last steer was finally turned into the pens and the money divided, each man found himself wealthy.
“Do as I’ve told you,” said Pecos, “and you’ll never be sorry. You cowmen keep all your money, and I’ll spend whatever’s necessary to entertain these stiff-collar city dudes.”
The men followed Pecos Bill’s advice, and that is the very reason there are so many dude ranches even now scattered across the western part of Texas, and north as far as Montana.
After they had finished the business transaction, Pecos Bill and his men were in a holiday mood. They decided to give Kansas City the first real Wild West show that had ever been invented, outside the heart of the Southwest.
Gun Smith and Old Satan and their cowmen did all sorts of fancy riding and fancy roping. They bulldogged and hog-tied steers. Pecos mounted Widow Maker and Gun Smith rode beside him, and these two did shooting from horseback such as was never seen anywhere on this planet before or since.
Old Satan and his cavalrymen showed everybody exactly how to shoot up a frontier town with desperado daring. And when Old Satan got off his speech about Hell’s Gate Gulch, the audience was sure he actually was as tough as he sounded.
Mushmouth did the act of his life by playing “The Little Roan Bull” on one lip piano in one corner of his mouth and “O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie” on the other. And at the same time he sang the words of “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep” with the middle of his tongue.
Bullfrog Doyle, not to be outdone, danced one of Mushmouth’s tunes with one leg, and the other two with the other leg. Everybody wondered how his body could stand up under the terrific strain. They thought that one or the other of his legs would surely fly off into space any second.
Rusty Peters carried on a shadow boxing match with Fat Adams. Fat would dodge Rusty’s sledgehammer blows, turn sidewise so that the audience could not see him. Rusty would then brag that he had knocked Fat into the middle of the next new moon. When the audience was beginning to believe this, Fat would step around behind Rusty, turn so that he could again be seen, and laugh to split his sides.
When the show was over, the natives were satisfied that this was the most wonderful outfit of cowmen ever assembled.
Before he left town for good, Pecos Bill decided to give Kansas City the surprise of its young life. He felt hurt to hear the men in dudish city clothes make so many belittling remarks about cowpunchers.
“I’ll teach some of these smarties to respect an honest cowman before the evening’s over,” he told his men. “You just keep quiet and watch what happens.”
Soon after nightfall, Pecos started down the street to see the sights. As he passed a crowd that loitered in front of the first saloon he reached, a smart aleck made a nasty remark about the passing longhorn maverick. Pecos turned on his heel and faced the speaker squarely. “No offense intended, I hope,” he smiled.
“Who do you think you are to be talking to me, you young flea-bitten maverick! Get back to the ranch where you belong, and tell your troubles to the yowling Coyotes!”
Pecos took a threatening step in the speaker’s direction, and the bully flashed his gun. Then before anybody quite came to his senses, Pecos had spiked the offender’s gun, had shot off his trigger finger, had galloped around the corner and was completely out of sight.
By loping at full speed down a back alley, Pecos reached another part of the street far ahead of the news of his recent fracas. The next minute, as he sauntered harmlessly along, looking at nothing in particular, another smart aleck and bully insulted him.
Pecos as usual took his instant revenge, then vanished to still a different part of the town. Within less than an hour Pecos had the entire city agog. As the shooting frays came in rapid succession to the ears of the police they gave instant chase, for they could not allow all their local bullies to go down in such defeat before a mere cowpuncher.
With no knowledge of what was happening, Pecos Bill appeared as if by magic in widely separated places. His movements were so incredibly rapid that the police department was always at least three jumps behind in the race.
Toward
the end of the evening, Pecos came face-to-face with Knockdown Buckner, the most famous two-fisted giant of the entire range country. Knockdown had the bad habit of swatting every bully he met with his sledgehammer blows. When he ran out of material around the saloons he leapt astride his bronco and rode out for adventure. He kept in training by knocking down every roughneck cowboy and Indian warrior who dared stand in his way.
Pecos knew Knockdown Buckner at first glance, for he was the only man in the Southwest who did not carry on his person at least one Colt revolver.
After exchanging gruff greetings, Pecos said coolly, “Well, Buckner, come on. I’ll give you the first three swats!”
“Three, did you say!” Knockdown shouted in anger. “You puny cayuse, why, I can knock you down with a quarter of one punch.”
“I wouldn’t brag about it just yet,” Pecos smiled.
This so completely enraged Knockdown that he gave a terrific lunge and shot his fist out like a thunderbolt. Pecos used the footwork that Grandy had taught him when he was a boy, and leapt completely out of Knockdown’s reach.
The result of the terrific blow into empty space was that Knockdown threw his good right arm out of the socket at the shoulder, lost his balance completely, and fell heavily on his face. He staggered to his feet, and in his rage again went for Pecos. This time he threw his good left arm out of joint at the elbow, and again battered his nose on the sidewalk.
“You’re about the craziest cayuse I ever met,” Pecos taunted. “Why, you couldn’t hit the side of a maverick corral if you was inside and had the gate barred. You aren’t worth a good swat, but here’s a little love pat for remembrance.”
Then Pecos hit the dazed Knockdown square in the middle of his nose. This blackened both his eyes and considerably altered his face. “Now you’ll know how it feels to be knocked down.”
The next minute Pecos had again disappeared.
The police department, in despair, finally called out the city fire department to help them. A general search was started, and the only reason it was not more successful was because there were so very many saloons and bullies.
Before midnight Pecos had visited every street where idle men loitered before saloons, and as a result, all the surgeons in town were kept busy for the next fortnight mending hands that had lost trigger fingers. Never before nor since was there such a sickly lot of bullies in the world at any one time.
In utter despair the chief of police issued the order to arrest every cowpuncher at sight. It was thus that Gun Smith, Old Satan, and all their men were innocently caught in the dragnet and forced to spend the night in jail. What these innocents said about police departments has become classic. Scarcely a day passes but that somewhere, some unlucky harmless person is locked up in the place of the real law breaker, and always these innocent people repeat the same language that Gun Smith and Old Satan this night invented. It is lucky for the officers of the law that this has never been set down in print.
Before they arrested Moon Hennessey, he had consumed all the hard liquor in three different saloons and had actually drunk his weight in squirrel whiskey. While Gun Smith and Old Satan and the rest were fuming and sweating, and speaking all manner of evil about their oppressors, Pecos Bill was finishing with the last remaining bully. He now waved his hat in triumph, and loped off to find Widow Maker. As he ran he laughed.
“I’ve started something they won’t soon forget in these parts. They’ll look the next cowpuncher over twice before they attack him!”
With the entire city out to catch Pecos Bill, and with nearly every private citizen sworn in as an officer, he rode serenely off into the night.
A reward of five thousand dollars was offered for his arrest, and many different detective agencies wasted years in vain pursuit of him, but he was never caught.
CHAPTER 19
THE FABLED DEMIGOD
When no one was able to capture Pecos Bill and claim the reward, there came with time a growing discussion among his cowmen as to what had happened to their remarkable friend.
Gun Smith and Moon Hennessey argued day after day, month after month, year after year, without reaching an agreement.
Moon maintained that when he went back to them, the Approved Packs of Coyotes called Pecos Bill to account for helping to bring about the rapid increase in cowmen and nesters and hoe-men.
“It ain’t accordin’ to reason they’d let Pecos Bill off easy,” Moon Hennessey argued. “He did help bring the railroads and the barbed wire. These all come about through his teachin’ the cowmen improved methods of rearin’ their stock, and runnin’ their business. If it hadn’t been for Pecos and all his inventions, the wild varmints would have had much better huntin’, wouldn’t they? And wouldn’t that make the varmints angry?”
“What do you think the Coyotes did to Pecos then?” Gun Smith asked.
“Well, no doubt, they did a-plenty. Like as not they pounced on him and Widow Maker and made a hearty meal of their carcasses.”
“Don’t you fool yourself into believin’ any such nonsense,” Gun Smith countered. “Pecos wasn’t the kind o’ greenhorn to let any bunch of Coyotes stop his stampedin’ to safety. Mounted on the hurricane deck of Widow Maker, he’d never stand for any pack of brute varmints capturin’ him, no difference how wild and woolly they were.”
“Well, then, what do you think did happen to him?” Moon Hennessey urged.
“I think there was a big argument all right,” Gun Smith explained. “But just about the time the varmints was ready to close in on him, Pecos give the word to Widow Maker and away they loped, thunderin’ like mad for freedom. The Coyotes would, of course, give chase, but after a day or two, by the time they’d completely lost the trail, Pecos would have been five or six thousand miles away, laughing a provokin’ kind of laugh to find how conceited Coyotes and Wolves are anyhow, to think they could ever catch the likes of him and Widow Maker.”
“And what then?” Moon urged him to continue.
“Well, Pecos Bill most likely found some vast hidden, sodded, box canyon among the impassable mountains, with an entrance as crooked as the devil’s walkin’ stick, that no one else will ever discover. By this time he’s got it stocked with the biggest herd of longhorn cattle in the entire world. Yes, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar he wasn’t away a month before he’d gone back to fetch Slue-foot Sue to dwell in his paradise. What with lassooin’ His Eminence to perform the ceremony and ridin’ off with his bride, he was too busy to tell us of his intentions. Sue was some woman, mind you, and long before Pecos Bill went back for her she’d got over the slight scare Widow Maker give her when he bucked her into the sky. Pecos Bill has gentled her the finest calico bronco you can imagine, and together they’re hittin’ it off in a regular cowpuncher’s paradise.”
“If all this was true,” Moon argued, “wouldn’t he come back to fetch us to be a part of his outfit? Pecos Bill wasn’t the kind of fellow to be alone, and you know it!”
“Yes, but you know Slue-foot Sue too. She’d have her say about that. Why, they wouldn’t have any use for our outfit. The box canyon would be surrounded with mountains on all sides and there would be springs of sparklin’ water. What would two people as happy as Pecos and Sue want with a bunch of roughnecks like us around? They’ve got a regular paradise—an improved sort of Garden of Eden. Varmints like us, Moon, would be worse’n bad-blooded snakes. We wouldn’t fit in with that scenery, I’ll say we wouldn’t. Besides, Pecos and Sue are, like as not, raisin’ a regular outfit for themselves. They’ve got ten or a dozen boys of their own by this time, or I’m a busted bronco.”
“You sure have got some imagination,” Moon Hennessey commented. “And I say you’re dead wrong. Pecos Bill’s and Widow Maker’s bones are bleachin’ in the sun somewheres, and we could find ’em if we only knew where to look.”
So the argument ran. The only proof anybody had was his own individual opinion. The longer the men argued the firmer each was in his own mind that he was right.
When the best of the outlaw broncos is skyscraping and sunfishing and cake walking, whoever happens to be on the hurricane deck is sure to shout to himself, “Buck your fill, you lazy varmint! If I was only aboard Widow Maker it would be some sensation to be bucked over the top of Pike’s Peak or into the face of the moon!”
And when the men are doing their best fancy roping, someone is sure to remark, “Well, that isn’t so bad for a greenhorn. But remember this, it isn’t touchin’ a candle to what Pecos Bill used to do left-handed with his eyes shut!”
Whether it be at Cheyenne, or Fort Worth, or Denver, or Winnipeg, or Grangeville, or Kearney, or Salinas, or Ukiah, or Walla Walla, it is always the same. Wherever is celebrated Frontier Days or the Cattleman’s Carnival or the Festival of the Mountain and Plain or the Stampede or the Border Days or the Frontier Roundup or the Rodeo or the Cowboys’ Convention, Pecos Bill is there busting the broncos and bull-dogging the steers and wielding the magic rope. In every man’s imagination this marvelous cowman rides unmolested to glory and to undying fame.
JAMES CLOYD BOWMAN (1880–1961) grew up in rural Leipsic, Ohio, where he enjoyed roaming the woods and listening to the frontier legends his mother told him. As an adult, he completed his graduate studies at Harvard and began a career teaching English at Iowa State College. He eventually became the head of the English Department at Northern State Teacher’s College and wrote and edited several works of criticism. However, his greatest satisfaction was in telling the stories of folk heroes from many walks of American life. Among his numerous award-winning books for children are The Adventures of Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Tales from a Finnish Tupa.