Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  “Make me!” said the Cascabela Grande.

  To have a fair fight, Bill let the snake have three first bites. Then he let his wolf loose. First he yanked all the rattler’s fangs out and then he whirled it round and round, the whole half mile of it, forming loops and straight lines, curlin’ it around hills and tall trees, and that gave Bill the idea of calf ropin’. He invented it. Nobody had ever done it afore him. He was always amusin’ himself with his reata. When a mountain got in his way, he jest threw a loop over it and drug it to one side. He roped himself a tornado and spurred it along from Denver all the way to Austin. When the tornado couldn’t buck Bill off, it turned itself into rain and dripped away from under him. Bill shinnied down some thirty thousand feet on a streak of lightnin’ and came down so hard on his ass that it had calluses like sheet iron from then on till to the end of his days. Thus he became the all-time champeen roper of the West.

  One day Bill ran into his pappy. He didn’t recognize him, but his daddy recognized Bill. “Son,” he said, “by yore brand I know you for my young-one. I’m yore pa!” Bill was still a mite frothy over his parents not havin’ gone lookin’ for him arter he fell out of their prairie schooner, but he was happy, all the same, to be reunited with his family after all that time.

  When they arrived at his folks’ ranch, they surprised his mammy sweepin’ a bunch of some forty howlin’, tommyhawk-swingin’ ’Paches out of her backyard with a broom. She was a hardy old lady whom Bill could admire. His pappy owned a spread of about a million acres on which he ran some fifty thousand cattle.

  “You call that a ranch?” commented Bill. He staked out all Texas for a bigger ranch and fenced in New Mexico for a calf pasture. He built for himself, his pappy and mammy, and all his many brothers and sisters a house so big that he needed a relay of horses to get from the front door to the back door. He had to fence in his considerable spread. He did it all alone. He rounded up a million badgers, and a million gophers, and a million prairie dogs to dig the holes for his fence posts, somethin’ those critters like to do anyhow. Once during a long dry spell he dug a deep trench and diverted into it most of the Gulf of Mexico. His ditch became known as the Rio Grande. From then on he never lacked water.

  Bill’s pappy had a large crew of buckaroos ramrodded by a feller called Hellfire Jake. Hellfire was ten feet tall, had hands the size of children’s coffins, and had seven Colts .44 and a dozen large bowie knives stuck in his belt. Bill caught himself the biggest mountain lion he could find, put a saddle on the critter, and rode over to where his pappy’s vaqueros were sittin’ around the chuck wagon. Some feller offered him a king-sized plate of pork and beans but he waved it aside as no fit chow for a grown man. He fixed himself a meal of live horny toads, gila monsters, and scorpions, with a barbed wire salad on the side, washing it all down with a gallon of boilin’ coffee fortified with three pounds of wolf pizen. After he was done, he wiped his mouth with prickly-pear cactus and inquired, “Who’s the boss around here?”

  Hellfire got up and said: “I was, but you be.”

  Like any good cowpuncher, Pecos Bill was afraid of only two things—a decent woman and to be seen afoot. He spent a good deal of dineros, though, on the soiled doves of the prairie and was a frequent, and welcome, guest in a hundred cathouses, from the Pecos to the Powder. But when he finally fell for a “good” woman, he fell hard. Her name was Slue-Foot Sue and she was every bit as red-headed as Bill. She was a first-class horsewoman and Bill was smitten when he saw her bareback astride the Great Fur-bearin’ Rio Grande Catfish, which was twice as big as a whale. Sue was beautiful. She had green eyes and plenty of wood by the woodpile, front and back. You could span her waist with one hand, but couldn’t set her down in a tub. Bill was crazy about her wondrous hourglass figure. He moseyed up to her and planted a big juicy kiss on her ruby red lips, sayin’: “I’m Pecos Bill and you’re the heifer for me. I’ll put my brand on you.”

  They got hitched, but their love had a sad end. The morning after their wedding night Sue asked Bill for a favor: “Let me ride your Widow-Maker. I can handle him.”

  Here’s whar Bill made his big mistake. He couldn’t say no to Sue. Widow-Maker tossed her so high that she bumped into the moon and broke her neck.

  After that, Bill took to drinking. As an infant, he had been reared on bumblebee whiskey—the drink with a sting. That was too tame for him now. He needed stronger stuff. No liquid refreshment was powerful enough to fill his need. One evenin’ he came howlin’ into the Bucket of Blood, in Virginia City. He told the bardog: “I want a man’s drink, not a tenderfoot’s tipple!” The bardog knew jest what Bill wanted. He had served him before. So he mixed Ole Pecos a cocktail of strychnine, wormwood, mashed blackwidow spider, gun-powder, fine-chopped chili peppers, snake venom, shredded loco-weed, and tarantula juice. Bill spit it out, all over the bardog’s counter.

  “You call this swill a drink!” he roared. This is fit only for a Yankee schoolmarm! I want a real drink!”

  A miner sittin’ next to him tried to be helpful. He filled a huge beaker with bang-juice—that is, nitroglycerine—sayin’, “Hyar, Bill, try this for a kick.”

  Bill emptied the beaker with one mighty swallow. His eyes sparkled. He smacked his lips: “Now this is a hoss of a diff’rent color! This here is what I call a real drink! Fill’er up!” The miner did. Bill took another swig. There was a terrific explosion. When the dust settled, there were Bill’s pants still standin’ upright, tucked into his boots, but of Bill himself not a trace could be found. He had plumb vanished, taken the Big Jump in a blaze of glory, gone to the Big Roundup in the Sky. But some folks could never accept this.

  “Bill didn’t blow up into smithereens, into tiny pieces so small you couldn’t see them with a magnifyin’ glass,” they said. “He ran into an eastern dude with gold-painted boots, a ten-foot-high velvet Stetson, and chaps as big as the sails from a boat. The dude tried playin’ cowboy by chawin’ ’baccer and was dribbling the ambeer all over his fancy embroidered vest. Ole Pecos Bill watched it and jest laughed hisself to death.”

  The Taming of Pecos Bill’s Gal Sue

  Pecos Bill was born in the middle of a big storm, amid thunder and lightning. He was different from his brothers and sisters, emerging from the womb with hair on his chest and a big boner. He was weaned on red likker and panther piss. He was raised on bear meat and mountain oysters sprinkled with strychnine. The day after Bill’s birth was clear and the sun was shining. Ole Man and his whole gang were camping out, feasting on bobcat-liver pudding and scorpion salad when all of a sudden the sky darkened, turning day into night. At the same time, the air was filled with a tremendous hum, as from a hundred railroad engines. The din made the earth tremble and the cows stampede.

  “By Ned!” Ole Man shouted. “It’s a swarm of them cussed monsterquitoes. Doggone, Ole Woman, get me the big kettle!”

  Ole Woman went over to the wagon to fetch the outsized kettle they used for rendering lard. She covered little Bill, who was playing in the sand, with this huge iron pot to protect the newborn from the ferocious, bloodsucking giant monsterquitoes. She also put in a chopping ax for Billy to use in case of need. She didn’t notice the big coon-tailed rattler also crawling under the kettle to get away from the ferocious insects. It was so dark she had to light up her lamp to do all this. The rest of them crawled into their prairie schooner, covering themselves as best they could.

  Well, the monsterquitoes smelled that tender flesh and blood of the newborn baby and started diving on the big kettle. So powerful were these pesky critters that their stingers went right through the kettle’s iron walls, but little Bill knew just what to do. As soon as one of the nippers penetrated through the kettle wall, he chopped it off with his ax. The monster insects then lifted off the kettle but found that they still could not get at his rich sweet blood, because their stingers were gone. They set up a big wailing and howling and flew off. Ole Man and Ole Woman found Billy sitting on the ground, playing with the coon-tailed snake.
Billy was giggling. The rattler struck again and again, but the snake venom was too weak to cause even a slight rash on Billy. Ole Man killed and skinned the twelve-foot varmint and Ole Woman fried up a big dish of snake meat. With the skin Ole Man made himself a handsome hatband. Ole Man and Ole Woman claimed a hundred acres, built themselves a sod house, cleared some land, and began farming. One day when Bill was one year old and the whole gang of them was outdoors doing one thing or another, Bill was left alone in the sodhouse where he cut his teeth on a bowie knife. Suddenly, a loud roaring, growling, and screaming came from the cabin.

  “What’s that?” said Ole Woman.

  “Nuthin’,” said Ole Man, “Billy is jest worrying’ a grizzly who got in thar. I can’t help that varmint none. That b’ar has to fend fur hisself.”

  Bill strangled the bear with his bare hands and had nary a scratch. When the folks got to him, he had already cut up the grizzly into steaks with his bowie knife. For a few weeks they dined on bear stew, bear soup, bear pudding, bear lights and liver, and bear sausage. They were glad when it was gone and they could eat something else than just bear.

  When Bill was three years old, he played by the Pecos River, fell in, and was carried away by a flood. He was swept downriver for some ten miles. He was sailing along, close to the shore, when a big coyote leaned over the embankment, grabbed him by the scruff and so saved his life. Her name was Granny, because she was female and a grandmother many times over. She was the boss lady of the pack and took a liking to Bill, adopting him into the tribe. It didn’t take long for Bill to become the pack’s chief. He quickly forgot that he was human. He thought that he was a coyote. He took on coyote ways. He tore around on all fours hunting rabbits, prairie dogs, gophers, and mice. He howled at the moon with the best of them. He had a coyote gal to cuddle with.

  When Bill had been swept away by the flood, Ole Man and Ole Woman had been busy with the other twelve younguns—too busy to miss him. A day later Ole Man was counting noses. “Whar in tarnation is Billy?” he said. “That boy’s always lost.”

  “My darlin’ Billy is gone an’ lost,” said Ole Woman “Oh, what’s become of my Billy Boy?”

  “Don’t git yerself all riled up,” Ole Man told her. “He’s all of three years, old enough to fend fur hisself.”

  “Iffen you say so,” said Ole Woman. When they thought of him, which wasn’t often, Ole Man and Ole Woman called their lost son Pecos Bill, because it was the Pecos River that had carried him off. That’s how Bill got his nickname.

  Bill lived with the coyotes for seven long years. One fine morning he went down to the river to quench his thirst. There was somebody there before him, the strangest living thing he had ever seen. The weird creature was walking on two legs. One of its cheeks was swollen and brown juice kept dripping from its mouth. Something monstrous was attached to the top of its head and around its neck hung a bright red flap of what had to be part of its skin. Its fur was exceedingly strange too—blue over its legs and blue-and-white-checkered all over its upper body, even the forelegs. Its feet were horrible to behold, hairless and leathery, with spurs like a wild turkey’s at the heels, shiny and glittering, making a tinkling sound whenever the creature moved.

  “What in hell are you a-doin’, boy?” the creature said to Bill, “mother-nakkid an’ runnin’ around on all fours?”

  “I’m a coyote,” answered Bill. “Coyotes walk on all fours. I’m naked because I have no fur. It’s a birth defect. I can’t help it. You shouldn’t rub it in.”

  “Stop pulling my leg, boy,” said the creature. “You ain’t a coyote. You are a man like myself.”

  “No!” said Bill. “I ain’t.”

  “Look at your reflection in the water, you darn fool,” said the creature.

  Bill looked and got the shock of his life. He looked like the creature, not like a coyote. In this way Bill found out that he was no coyote but a man.

  “What’s your name, boy?” asked the man.

  “Bill, I think. I remember somebody at some time calling me that. What’s yourn?”

  “Snaggletooth Charlie is my moniker.”

  “Well, Charlie, since I turn out to be a man, I’ll jine up with you to live among humans.” With that, Bill got on his pet grizzly, using his pet rattlesnake like a whip. “That’s a funny pony you’re ridin’,” commented Snaggletooth.

  Bill followed Snaggletooth to his cattle camp to meet Bowlegs Jim and Big Ears Dick and the other cattle herders. He was also introduced to Cowchip Kate, Snaggletooth’s girl.

  His new friends were called herders, not cowboys. Cowboys hadn’t been invented yet. It was Pecos Bill who invented them. It happened this way: Bill asked the fellows, “How do you catch them steers and cows?”

  “Well,” they said, “we take a rope, and make it into a loop, and lay it on the ground, and put a lump of salt in the middle. Cattle are crazy about salt. Then, when they step into the noose to lick up the salt, we pull the rope and catch them in the loop, one at a time.”

  “That seems to be a poor way of doin’ it,” said Bill, “and what then?”

  “Then we drag ’em into the barn, into the stable.”

  “Why do you do things in sech a dumb way? Why don’t yer let ’em run free, feed on all that prairie grass?”

  “They’ll scatter over the whole countryside. They can outrun us. We could never catch ’em again.”

  “There must be a better way than that,” said Bill. “Let me be by myself for a while and think of somethin’.”

  Bill went out into the prairie. He caught himself a mustang for riding. Then he made himself a long rawhide rope and put a loop into it. Then he practiced catching cows with his rawhide rope. When he had got the hang of it, he returned to camp. He showed his new friends how to rope cattle on horseback.

  “Now this here,” he told them, “I call a ‘lasso,’ an’ what we’re a-doin’ is ‘roping.’ ”

  Pecos Bill taught them everything. He taught them how to get the whole herd together into one bunch. “Let’s call this a roundup,” he said. He then invented a gadget with which he could mark the cattle to identify which outfit the animals belonged to. He made a big fire and in it heated up his new gadget. “That’s a brandin’ iron,’ he explained, “an’ now we’re a-goin’ to do some brandin’.” After they had done this, Bill told them, “Let’s see who’s the best bronco rider in this bunch.” So they competed against each other in bronc busting and fancy riding. Naturally, Bill won. “This was a rodeo,” he said, “and now you are no longer herders. From now on, you’re cowboys!” In this way Pecos Bill, on the spur of the moment, invented the American cowboy.

  Bill, as you can imagine, was very popular with the girls. He had used them up at a prodigious rate, but not until he met sweet Slue-foot Sue did he fall for one. Sue was very pretty, and spunky and great fun, but she was very bossy. In any kind of relationship she wanted to wear the chaps. If Bill told her not to do a thing, she was sure to do it. If he told her to do something, she would not do it even for a million. So there was a problem. On the morning after their wedding he told her not to go near the river at a spot where it rushed through a narrow canyon, ending at a waterfall with a hundred-foot drop. Naturally, that’s exactly where she went for a swim. Bill saw her being carried away by the swift current. Quick as a flash, he got out his lasso and jumped on the back of the Great Pecos Catfish, which was twelve feet long and a lot faster than the current. “Yippie-tie-hie-oooh!” yelled Bill, “Come on, Cat! Let’s get her afore she gits to the falls!” After an exciting chase downriver Bill managed to get his rope over Sue just as she was about to go over the edge. He sat her before him on the Great Pecos Catfish, which swam upriver as fast as if it was swimming with the stream. Safely ashore again, Bill told Sue, “Never do this again!” “Maybe I won’t,” answered Sue.

  Now the day after, Sue got it into her mind to go out riding while Bill was busy herding cows. “That’s fine by me, my pretty li’l coyote,” said Bill, “only never go over
thar to them blue mountains younder, ’cause that’s Apache country.” (Bill loved his Sue so much that he called her his pretty little coyote, and whenever there was a full moon, he sat down before her window and howled. It was a throwback to his days as a coyote.)

  Naturally, that’s exactly where Sue went riding—in the Blue Mountains. It was not long before she had plenty of company—fully a hundred Mescaleros painted for war. Again it was a case of Pecos Bill to the rescue. He came riding up like a storm, twirling his lariat, and he roped all those hundred Apaches into one loop, dragging the whole bunch of them, at a dead run, through about ten miles of prickly pear and chaparral until they cried “Uncle.”

  “You all better behave yerselves from now on!” Bill told those Mescaleros, and they swore a solemn oath never to bother Sue or anyone else from Bill’s ranch again.

  Bill had a horse called Widow-Maker. It was sure death for anyone but Bill trying to ride him. Bill told Sue: “Sluefoot, my purty li’l coyote, never, never git on Widder-Maker. He’d break yore neck fer sure!” And what did Sue do on the third day after their wedding? You guessed it. She jumped on Widow-Maker’s back, digging her spurs into his flanks. Widow-Maker didn’t take it kindly. He cat-backed, skydived, blowed the plug, sunfished, warped his backbone, jackknifed and, finally, chinned the moon, bucking Sue right out of the atmosphere into space.

  Now Sue always wore her fanciest outfit when she went out riding, trying to make an impression on the menfolks. So she had put on her very chic dress with an enormous bustle made of whalebone and horsehair. When she came down to earth out of space, she landed hard on her fanny and bounced right back again, and again, and again. She tried to hold on to one of the moon’s horns, but couldn’t do it. She kept coming down and bouncing back, higher and higher and higher, while Bill sat on a fence, chomping on a chaw of ’baccer, grinning from ear to ear. “Help, Help! Billy, save me!” Sue screamed. But Bill just sat there, twirling his thumbs, doing nothing.