Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  Finally, Sue bounced back so high she landed on the moon, plumb in the middle. She kept rocking back and forth up there, yelling for all she was worth: “Please, Billy, please, get me down from here. Please, Billy, and I’ll never disobey you again!”

  So Bill took his lariat and threw a loop over one of the moon’s horns and pulled the whole shebang down to earth—moon, Sue, and all. He threw the moon, which was like a huge crescent, back into space and it acted like a boomerang, going clear around Mars and coming back again. So Bill had to throw it back a few times more until it stayed put where it belonged. Then he said to Sue, “My purty li’l coyote, will you keep your promise and do what I tell you?”

  “Maybe I will,” said Slue-Foot Sue.

  Coyote Makes a Texas Cowboy

  Coyote, the Creator, the Earth-Maker, the Trickster, had already made the world and all the animals living in it. He was very self-satisfied: “I have done a good job,” he said.

  “Friend Coyote,” the buffalo reminded him, “you were supposed to make a creature called ‘Man.’ You didn’t do it.”

  “Now you tell me” complained Coyote. “I’m supposed to have everything finished before sundown. I have a deadline. Well, amigos, gather around me and help me to figure out how this creature should look.”

  So all the animals gathered around Coyote according to rank—first the buffalo, then the whale, the eagle, the bear, the mountain lion, and so on.

  “It’s easy,” said the buffalo. “Give him horns and a big hump. Then he’ll be beautiful—like me.”

  “Nonsense,” said the whale. “Humps are ugly. No horns! Let him have skin. Hair only gets in the way of swimming. And flippers, of course. Then he’ll be at home in the water.”

  “Water, swimming—bah, humbug,” exclaimed the eagle. “Give him wings to soar up to the sky, the sun, the stars. Cover him with feathers.”

  “You are mad, brother eagle,” roared the mountain lion. “What this new human creature needs are claws and big teeth to catch his prey.”

  “Claws, fangs, my word,” said the elk, “how gross! Antlers, my friends, majestic anglers and fast legs.”

  Then all the animals started shouting together: “Give him horns, no, wings, a big tail, please, shoveling paws are a must, hooves, no, claws, give him scales and flippers, no, no, no, give him a thick pelt!” And so on and on. Coyote lost patience: “Be quiet, all of you. We haven’t got much time. I’ll start with the basics, just four legs, a body, and a head. Then we can try out different things, see what looks best—lots of hair or no hair, horns or antlers, flippers or wings.”

  So Coyote formed up a body with a little mud and attached a head and four legs, holding the whole thing upright, contemplating his work. “I think I’ll cover him with reddish fur,” said Coyote. “That will look nice.” Just at that moment the sun went down.

  “You messed up, friend,” the buffalo chided Coyote. “Everything had to be finished by nightfall. Now you have to leave him like he is. Now you can’t add anything more.”

  “You’ve put too much brain in his head,” complained the bear. “He’ll be too smart. He’ll rule over us. Make the brain smaller.”

  “Too late, friend,” said Coyote. “The sun is down. We must leave things as they are.”

  “Look what you’ve done, Coyote,” said the mountain lion. “You’ve got the critter propped up standing upright when the sun went down. So now he has to walk on his hindlegs only. He’ll be very slow.”

  “Can’t be helped, can’t be helped now,” answered Coyote.

  “He looks just awful standing there,” remarked the moose, “all naked and without any hair except on top where you started to cover him up. He’s so ugly.”

  “Can’t be helped, can’t be helped.”

  “He looks like a big white worm with four legs,” said the badger. “I can’t stand the sight of him, and he’s shivering, all naked like that.”

  And indeed, the creature seemed to be cold, as if he were about to freeze to death.

  “I can’t take away or add anything in the way of living matter,” said Coyote, “but I can fashion some artificial things, not made of flesh, to cover him up.” Having said this, Coyote made a Stetson hat to put upon the human being’s head. “We must start at the top,” explained Coyote. Then he made a shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, a Levi jacket, and a silk handkerchief and put that on the strange creature. After that he clothed him below the waist in red long-johns and blue Levi pants and, as a last touch, put high-heeled boots on his feet.

  “The creature is thirsty,” remarked the fox. “It wants to drink.” As the animals watched, the upright walking creature waddled over to the stream, cupped his hands, filling them with water, but as soon as he began to drink, he spat out what he had swallowed.

  “He doesn’t like water, imagine,” said the wolf.

  “I’ll make a special liquid for him to drink,” said Coyote.

  “What will you call it?” inquired the mule deer.

  “Wooble,” answered Coyote.

  “That doesn’t sound right,” commented the pronghorn.

  “All right, all right,” said Coyote, “we’ll call it whiskey.”

  “He was sagging at the moment of sundown,” said the prairie dog, “and that left him bowlegged.”

  “That’s all right,” said Coyote. “I’ll put it into his mind never to walk on foot but always to ride on the horse’s back. For that kind of life bowlegs are ideal.”

  “What shall we call this special kind of being?” asked the buzzard.

  “Bomble-Womble,” suggested the weasel.

  “Shmeedle-wheedle,” proposed the squirrel.

  “Wagagaga,” said the owl.

  “Be quiet, all of you,” shouted Coyote. “I made him and it is up to me to give him a name. Let me think.” Coyote was silent for a while, thinking hard. Finally his face lit up. “I’ve got it,” he said. “I’ll name him the Texas cowboy!” And that was that.

  The Heart-Shaped Mark

  Rance Wilson was a rancher—not an ordinary, run-of-the-mill rancher—but the richest cowman in the county, with the biggest spread, the biggest herd, and the biggest house. He was a proud man, proud as Lucifer. Few men were allowed to call him by his first name. His wife had died during childbirth, much too young. He had never been able to get over it, though he gave no outward sign of this, as he wanted no pity. He had never remarried. His wife had left him with a daughter whom he named Regina—the Queen—because in his mind a daughter of his was a queen. He doted on her, spoiled her, indulged her in every whim, but also watched over her like a hawk. The girl was eighteen, hot-blooded, headstrong, and very beautiful, with a deer’s alluring eyes, contrasting with a moist, inviting, and generous mouth, and a cat’s sinuous way of moving. Her father thought that there was not a single man within a hundred miles worthy of her. Therefore, he watched over her, or tried to, because it is easier to watch a bagful of fleas than a high-hearted girl.

  One early dawn Wilson’s cowhands brought in a young fellow whom they had caught red-handed with a heifer, burning his own brand over Wilson’s Lazy-W. The rustler was shifty-eyed, unkempt, and very scared. He was not at all bad-looking and had a way of endearing himself that was lost on Rance Wilson. On his right cheek was a small, cherry-colored, heart-shaped birthmark. Confronted by the grim-faced rancher, he managed a sickly grin, trying to joke his way out of his predicament, kidding about “slow elk,” pleading that folks should go easy on a young fellow down on his luck, and really not meaning to carry through the theft. “I was only foolin’ around with the iron,” he repeated a few times, giving Rance a pitiful, trembling smile.

  But at that time and place cattle rustling was not a joking matter, nor something to fool with, nor did one go easy on the thief.

  “You know what to do, boys,” said Wilson.

  One of his men made a loop in his lariat—he had done this before—and threw the looped end over the sturdy branch of a right handy tree. Others tie
d the rustler’s hands behind his back and lifted him onto his horse. They led the horse to the tree and placed the noose around the young man’s neck.

  “I wanna say a prayer,” he requested.

  “Say it,” replied Wilson.

  The condemned man got halfway through “Our Father” and faltered. “I have plumb forgotten the rest,” he mumbled stupidly.

  “The part you remembered will do,” said Wilson, nodding to his cowpunchers. Somebody slapped the horse’s rump and it ambled off from under its rider, leaving him hanging in midair. He dangled for a short while, his legs kicking in a mad dance, and then kicked no more. They let the body down, self-consciously, grinning with embarrassment, waiting for Wilson to tell them what to do next. The rancher was a hard but God-fearing man. “We’ll bury him proper,” he told his men, “somebody get a shovel.” Somebody did. They dug the grave.

  “What do we do for a coffin?” asked a young buckaroo, new to the game. There was raucous laughter.

  “There’s an old blanket hanging on the fence,” said Rance Wilson. “Use that.”

  They wrapped the body, leaving the face exposed, and lowered it into the waiting hole. Rance Wilson motioned to an elderly bystander: “Tom, you once studied to be a preacher. Say a few words.”

  Tom took off his misshapen and stained hat, holding it before him like an oversized fig leaf, and cleared his throat: “Lord, you know this feller here was a no-good rustler an’ hoss thief but, mebbe, he was a Christian deserving of Your mercy. So go easy on him, Lord. Amen.”

  They were about to shovel the sod over the body, but at that moment Wilson’s daughter came riding up in a hurry, carrying a crude wooden cross, its two pieces hastily tied together with a bit of string: “Cook told me you boys hanged a rustler. I thought there should be a cross.” She dismounted and walked to the open grave, glanced at the body, saw the heart-shaped birthmark, let out a small cry, and fainted away.

  “Must be something she ate,” remarked Rance Wilson, lifting her up on his horse, slowly trotting off with her toward his big house.

  His men buried the rustler under a mound of earth, not forgetting to stick the cross into it.

  Sad to relate, it was not something Regina ate. As the weeks went by, Rance Wilson turned into a hermit. He had often invited fellow ranchers to lavish dinners in his house, to barbecues and a little fiddling. Now he invited no one. Those who arrived uninvited were not encouraged to enter his home. He seldom was seen outside his house, and Regina was not seen at all. He dismissed all members of his household, save Doña Concepción, who had been his daughter’s wet nurse and now did the cooking.

  Regina was big with child and every day grew a little bigger. Rance Wilson thought that he could not bear it and was willing to die of shame. He was unable to figure out how this misfortune could have happened. He had watched over her, knowing how impulsive she was, and how defiant she could be, but after all, an eighteen-year-old girl cannot be chaperoned twenty-four hours a day, not Regina, anyhow. So it had happened.

  He wanted to know the name of the son of a bitch who had done this to him. She would not tell. Halfheartedly, he tried to beat it out of her, with no success. Both of them were having a hard time. At last, some eight months after the rustler’s hanging, Regina gave birth to a squalling boy, with no one to help but the aged Mexican cook. Rance Wilson went into his daughter’s room, had one look at his newborn grandson, and walked out again without uttering a word.

  In the morning two of his cowhands found Rance Wilson, the richest and most important man in the county, in the barn, hanging from a crossbeam, as dead as dead can be. While one of them cut Wilson down, the other hurried to the house, knocked on the door, and told the cook. Shortly afterward a dissheveled Regina came running out the door, loudly wailing, in her fancy, frilled nightshirt, cradling at her breast the baby boy. Visible on his right cheek was a tiny, cherry red, heart-shaped birthmark.

  The Skeleton Bride

  In the year of our Lord 1861 there lived down Texas way a loose-jointed swashbuckling young fellow by the name of Travis Smith. Not far from his family’s place, close by the river in a little ’dobe house, lived a languid, sloe-eyed girl by the name of Estrellita. Travis was sweet on Estrellita or, rather, she was sweet on him, permitting him to take liberties with her in the shade of a large cottonwood tree, liberties that put her in the family way.

  “Marry me, mi corazón,” pleaded Estrellita.

  “I sure will, sweetheart,” said Travis, “but jest now I got to jine Gin’ral Braxton Bragg’s army to lick them Yankee bastards. I’ll reckon we’ll have ’em beat inside a month. Then I’ll come back to marry my li’l Estrellita. That’s a solemn promise.”

  He took his old muzzle-loader from the wall, filled his canteen with home-brewed white lightning, saddled his pinto, and trotted off to war whistling a merry tune.

  The Rebs didn’t lick the Yankees inside a month and Travis did not come back to his lonesome Estrellita. He did not write to her because he didn’t know how and because it would have been a waste of time, as she couldn’t read. Besides, he was much too busy to think of her. The war went on and on and years went by. At the Battle of Glorieta, Travis got hit in the thigh by a Minié ball, which did considerable damage and laid him up for months. He was taken to Las Cruces, where a comely widow who liked his looks and free and easy ways took him in and cared for his wound. One thing led to another. He took certain liberties with her, this time in the shade of a mighty oak, which somewhat changed her body’s profile. The War Between the States ended. Still, Travis tarried at the generous widow’s place. He had taken a liking to her cooking.

  One day a shaggy-bearded, one-armed man in faded butternut came up limping to the widow’s house. She gave a little cry and fell around his neck. Then she laid her head on his chest and sobbed. It turned out that she was not a widow after all. Presumably killed at Shiloh, her husband had merely lost a limb.

  “Here’s your little boy you haven’t seen yet,” said the almost widow, pointing to the little toddler playing in the yard. Her husband was truly amazed at having become a father during his two-year absence. Travis did not stay to witness the widow explaining things to her rumored-to-be-dead mate, but jumped upon his horse, not the same he had started out with, and took off in a great hurry.

  The Reconstruction years were a sorry time for the Secesh veteran. Travis drove longhorns along the Goodnight Trail. The work was hard and the pay poor. Inside a Dodge City saloon he had his jaw and cheekbone broken during an argument over cards. It ruined his good looks. He drifted from ranch to ranch, punching cows and getting nowhere. Whenever the weather changed, his leg hurt where the Minié ball had hit it. Another couple of years went by. Travis yearned for the comforts he had known, yearned to be mollycoddled by a loving woman.

  Drifting from one place to another, he found himself one day in the neighborhood of his folks’ old homestead. He went there to have a look. The soddy was gone, and so were his parents. He had no idea where they had gone to, or whether they were still alive. It did not bother him much. He and his kin had never been close. Suddenly, he bethought himself of Estrellita. He got on his horse and rode down to the river. The little ’dobe house was still there, looking mighty inviting, sunflowers growing by the porch. He went in without knocking. By the hearth, inside the neatly kept and swept room, sat Estrellita, as pretty as ever, just as he had left her.

  “Howdy,” he said, “remember me?”

  She flew into his arms, covering his face with kisses. He started making a long excuse for not having come back to marry her. She stopped him, putting her hand over his lips, saying; “Don’t talk. Come, my one and only love.”

  She took him by the hand, leading him to the table heaped with good things—carne adobada, still hot, chicken mole, posole, and a pitcher of red wine to wash it all down. While eating hungrily, Travis kept staring at Estrellita. He had never noticed before how truly beautiful she was, dressed in all her finery, her scarlet waist, th
e blue, flower-patterned skirt, the lace shawl over her head.

  “What a fool I’ve been,” he thought. “I should have come back sooner.”

  After he had finished eating, she led him to her bed and made love to him, tenderly and passionately. At last, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  Travis awoke with a start, drops of water falling on his face. He looked up and saw, in the dawn’s early light, that the hut had no roof. It was raining and he was sopping wet. He could make out in the dusk, that the ’dobe house, which had been so alluring, was, in reality, a crumbling ruin with a collapsed fireplace. Instead of Estrellita’s warm body he felt something hard and sharp digging into his side. He dared to look and his teeth began to chatter. Nestled in his arms was a skeleton, its bones covered with shrunken yellow skin, strands of hair still adhering to the skull covered by bits of frayed lace. Shreds of blue and red cloth lay mingled with the human remains. In the horrid thing beside him Travis still managed to recognize Estrellita.

  In one corner of the ruin he could make out what seemed to be a crib containing a tiny skeleton in remnants of a baby’s chemise. With a terrible cry he jumped up, scattering bones left and right, rushing blindly from this place of death and desolation, screaming. Even after his voice gave out, dwindling into a hoarse whisper, he kept on running and running through thorns and chaparral for mile after mile until finally he fell down dead himself, dead not from exhaustion but from sheer terror.

  Western Jack and the Cornstalk

  The cowpunchers around Clovis are dead set against planting, especially against planting corn. They tell you the reason why. The corn around there is better, and grows faster, than any other corn in the world. Also, it does very well in the poorest soil, even in desert sand.