Chapter I: Part 1

TALL TALES
_from_
TEXAS

By MODY C. BOATRIGHT

_Illustrated by_
ELIZABETH E. KEEFER

_Foreword by_
J. FRANK DOBIE

THE SOUTHWEST PRESS

_Publishers in and of the Southwest_
DALLAS, TEXAS

COPYRIGHT 1934
SOUTH-WEST PRESS

.. _To_ ..

MY FATHER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Preface--J. Frank Dobie vii

Introduction xix

Pizenous Windies 1

Speed 18

Birds and Beasts 28

Wind and Weather 40

By the Breadth of a Hair 53

The Genesis of Pecos Bill 68

Adventures of Pecos Bill 80

The Exodus of Pecos Bill 95

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg” 12

“Jist as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell” 23

“Purty soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and
pricks up his ears” 33

“Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out” 47

“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right
out of that sink hole” 63

“A settin’ on that tornado and a-spurrin’ it in the
withers” 85

“That gal come ridin’ down the Río Grande on a
catfish” 93

A PREFACE ON AUTHENTIC LIARS

An authentic liar knows what he is lying about, knows that his listeners--unless they are tenderfeet, greenhorns--know also, and hence makes no pretense of fooling either himself or them. At his best he is as grave as a historian of the Roman Empire; yet what he is after is neither credulity nor the establishment of truth. He does not take himself too seriously, but he does regard himself as an artist and yearns for recognition of his art. He may lie with satiric intent; he may lie merely to make the time pass pleasantly; he may lie in order to take the wind out of some egotistic fellow of his own tribe or to take in some greener; again, without any purpose at all and directed only by his ebullient and companion-loving nature, he may “stretch the blanket” merely because, like the redoubtable Tom Ochiltree, he had “rather lie on credit than tell truth for cash.” His generous nature revolts at the monotony of everyday facts and overflows with desire to make his company joyful.

Certainly the telling of “windies” flourished in the Old World long before America was discovered; nevertheless the tall tale both in subject matter and in manner of telling has been peculiar to the frontiers of America, whether in the backwoods of the Old South, in the mining camps of the Far West, amid the logging camps presided over by Paul Bunyan, or on the range lands stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian line. Very likely the Pilgrim Fathers did not indulge much in the art of yarning, and the stately Cavaliers pretty much left that sort of entertainment to the poor--“poor but honest”--settlers. As to whether the “decay in the art of lying” that Oscar Wilde observed in literary fiction has blighted that to be heard around camp fires and on the galleries of ranch houses, we need not here inquire. The “big uns” that Mody Boatright has gathered together in this book are not altogether out of the past.

They express a way that range folk talked and they express also a way in which these folk cartooned objects familiar to them like rattlesnakes, sand storms, jack rabbits, the expanding and contracting powers of rawhide, the suddenness of Texas northers, “killings” according to a code that clearly distinguished a killing from a murder, and other things. They are, in short, authentic both as to the characters represented and the subjects discoursed upon.

When in the old days two cow outfits met upon the range, and there was “ample time,” as Andy Adams would say, they sometimes arranged what was known as an “auguring match.” Each outfit would pit its prime yarn-spinner against the other and there followed a contest not only of invention but of endurance. John Palliser in _The Solitary Hunter; or, Sporting Adventures of the Prairies_ (London, 1856) relates how after an all-night talking contest between a Missourian and a Kentuckian, the umpire “at a quarter past five” found the Kentucky man fast asleep, his opponent “sitting up close beside him and whispering in his ear.” What the contestants talked about, Palliser does not say, but there is ample testimony to prove that the “auguring matches” on the range had as precedent among the backwoodsmen of the South who were to push out upon the ranges a kind of round table talk in which each talker sought to cap the tall tales of his fellow with one a little taller.

* * * * *

For genuine artists a solitary opponent is sufficient; art is substantive. _In Piney Woods Tavern; or, Sam Slick in Texas_ (Philadelphia, 1858), by Samuel A. Hammett, the narrator in traveling from the Brazos to the Trinity rivers found the San Jacinto “a roarin’ and a hummin’ it.... Free soil movements was a-goin’ on, and trees a-tumblin’ in all along the banks.”

I see thar war no help for it [the narrator goes on]. So I
took my feet outen the stirrups, threw my saddle-bags over
my shoulder, and in me and the mar went.

We war in a awful tight place for a time, but we soon
landed safe. I’d jest got my critter tied out, and a fire
started to dry myself with when I see a chap come ridin’ up
the hill on a smart chunk of a pony....

“Hoopee! stranger”--sings out my beauty--“How d’ye? Kept
your fireworks dry, eh? How in thunder did ye get over?”

“Oh!” says I, “mighty easy. Ye see, stranger, I’m powerful
on a pirogue; so I waited till I see a big log a-driftin’
nigh the shore, when I fastened to it, set my critter
a-straddle on it, got into the saddle, paddled over with my
saddle-bags, and steered with the mare’s tail.”

“Ye didn’t, though, by Ned!” says he, “did ye?”

“Mighty apt to”--says I--“but arter ye’ve sucked all that
in and got yer breath agin, let’s know how _you_ crossed?”

“Oh!” says he, settin’ his pig’s eyes on me, “I’ve been
a-riding all day with a consarned ager, and orful dry, and
afeard to drink at the prairie water holes; so when I got
to the river I jest went in fer a big drink, swallered half
a mile of water, and come over dry shod.”

“Stranger,” says I, “ye’r just one huckleberry above my
persimmon. Light and take some red-eye. I thought ye looked
green, but I were barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

Story-telling in Texas was so popular that at times it interfered with religion. The pioneer Baptist preacher, Z. N. Morrell, relates in his autobiographic _Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness_ (Dallas, 1886) that on one occasion while he was preaching in a log cabin in East Texas his sermon was drowned by the voices of men outside “telling anecdotes.” After an ineffectual reprimand, the preacher finally told his interrupters that if they would give him a chance he would tell an anecdote and that then, if it was not better than any of theirs, he would “take down his sign and listen to them.” They agreed to the challenge. The anecdote he proceeded to relate about Sam Houston and the battle of San Jacinto won him the right to keep on talking without interruption. The triumph was but a repetition of David Crockett’s election to Congress through his b’ar stories.

An anecdote is not by any means necessarily a windy, but people who cultivate the art of oral narration will sooner or later indulge in exaggerative invention. Some candidate for the Ph.D. degree should write a thesis on the interrelationship of the anecdote, the tall tale, and the short story in America. What is probably the most widely known story that the nation has produced, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” is all three--and it is mostly just a yarn in which the frontier character, Jim Smiley, character being the essence of good anecdote, is more important than the frog.

Sixty years or so ago at Covey’s college for ranch boys, located at Concrete, Texas, near Cuero, the “scholars” organized a liar’s club. According to the rules of the club every boy present at a session must tell a story. The teller of what was adjudged the best yarn was habitually awarded as a prize a dozen hot tamales cooked by one of the Mexican women about the premises.

One night a certain lad of few words who had been drawn into the club was called upon to contribute.

“Wall,” he drawled, “I was raised away out in the bresh up whur I never heared nobody talk, and I jes’ ain’t got no story to tell.”

“Oh, go on and tell something,” the other club members urged.

“No,” the diffident youth remonstrated, “it ain’t no use fer me to try to make up anything. I jest can’t do it. I’ve been a-trying to figger up something while you all was telling your stories, and the pump won’t even prime.”

There was more urging and encouraging. But still the boy from up the creek hung back. As a member of the club, however, he simply had to tell something--or “take the leggins.” Finally the leader of the group suggested, “I guess we can let you off from lying if you’re so much like George Washington. Just go ahead and tell us about some interesting happening. It don’t have to be a lie.”

“Wall,” the drawly tongue started off, “I’ll tell you about something that happened to me. One morning I was a-leaving the ranch to look out for wormy calves. I was going to be gone all day, and jest as I throwed my leg over the saddle, a Meskin girl that lived with her people in a jacal close to the corral came a-running out. ‘Here,’ says she, ‘we’ve jest been making tamales out of the cow that got her leg broke yesterday and you all had to kill. The meat is fat and the corn is new, and the tamales are _muy sabroso_. You must take some of them with you.’

“Now I would do nearly anything this little Meskin girl suggested. So I told her all right, to wrop the tamales up in some paper and a flour sack and I’d put ’em in my morral with the hank of dried beef and the bottle of worm medicine. Which she did. Tamales ain’t much good unless they are hot, you know, and I figgered the wropping would keep these warm.

“Well, after I’d gone about six miles, I struck a bull that I decided to rope. Which I did. The bull he kept on going after he hit the end of the rope and my horse he could not stop him. He dragged me about forty miles more or less, I guess, before I hung up in a mesquite tree with my chin between the forks of a limb. I don’t know how long I hung there, but it was some time. People differ as to how long it was. Anyway, it was until the limb rotted down and I dropped to the ground.

“I didn’t want to go back to the ranch afoot, and so I hit out follering the horse’s tracks. I found him a good piece out looking purty gant but still saddled and the rope that had rotted off the bull’s neck still tied to the horn of the saddle. I went right up to the morral, for it was still on the saddle, and untied it. I was a little gant myself. Then I felt of the sacking around the tamales, and I couldn’t feel no heat. Says I to myself, ‘I bet that Meskin girl didn’t wrop ’em right and the danged things have got so cold they won’t be no count to eat.’ But I went on and unwropped the paper, and when I got to the shucks, danged if they didn’t burn my fingers. Them tamales shore tasted good after all that bull running and then hoofing it after the horse. It is remarkable the way tamales hold the heat when they are well wropped.”

Even the schools for ranch boys in Texas included “windjamming” among their activities. But many a frontiersman who had not had the advantage of an education must have been forced by circumstances to “make it strong” in telling about the Wild West to gentle Easterners. Every new land has marvels; hence “traveler’s tales.” When facts are taken for fabrications, then the narrator is tempted to “cut loose” sure enough. One of the most honest-hearted and reliable frontiersmen that ever boiled coffee over mesquite coals was Bigfoot Wallace. He came to Texas from Virginia long before barbed wire “played hell” with the longhorns. After he had himself become a regular Longhorn he went back to his old home for a visit. As John C. Duval in the delightful _Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace_ (1870) has the old frontiersman describe his reception, he was egged on in the following manner to take the bridle off and let out the last kink.

A few weeks after my arrival I went to a fandango that
was given for my special benefit. There was a great
crowd there, and everybody was anxious to see the “Wild
Texan,” as they called me. I was the lion of the evening,
particularly for the young ladies, who never tired of
asking me questions about Mexico, Texas, the Indians,
prairies, etc. I at first answered truthfully all the
questions they asked me; but when I found they evidently
doubted some of the stories I told them which were facts,
then I branched out and gave them some whoppers. These they
swallowed down without gagging. For instance, one young
woman wanted to know how many wild horses I had ever seen
in a drove. I told her perhaps thirty or forty thousand.

“Oh, now! Mr. Wallace,” said she, “don’t try to make game
of me in that way. Forty thousand horses in one drove!
Well, I declare you are a second Munchausen!”[1]

“Well, then,” said I, “maybe you won’t believe me when I
tell you there is a sort of spider in Texas as big as a
peck measure, the bite of which can only be cured by music.”

“Oh, yes,” she answered, “I believe that’s all so, for I
have read about them in a book.”

“Among other whoppers, I told her there was a varmint in
Texas called the Santa Fé, that was still worse than the
tarantula, for the best brass band in the country couldn’t
cure their sting; that the creature had a hundred legs and
a sting on every one of them, besides two large stings in
its forked tail, and fangs as big as a rattlesnake’s. When
they sting you with their legs alone, you might possibly
live an hour; when with all their stings, perhaps fifteen
or twenty minutes; but when they sting and bite you at the
same time, you first turn blue, then yellow, and then a
beautiful bottle-green, when your hair all falls out, and
your finger nails drop off, and in five minutes you are
as dead as a door nail, in spite of all the doctors in
America.”

“Oh! My! Mr. Wallace!” said she. “How have you managed to
live so long in that horrible country?”

“Why, you see,” said I, “with my tarantula boots made of
alligator skin, and my centipede hunting-shirt made of
tanned rattlesnake hides, I have escaped pretty well; but
these don’t protect you against the stinging scorpions,
cow-killers, and scaly-back chinches, that crawl about at
night when you are asleep! The only way to keep them at a
distance is to chaw tobacco and drink whiskey, and that is
the reason the Temperance Society never flourished much in
Texas.”

“Oh!” said she, “what a horrible country that must be,
where the people have to be stung to death, or else chaw
tobacco and drink whiskey! I don’t know which is the worst.”

“Well,” said I, “the people out there don’t seem to mind it
much; they get used to it after a while. In fact, they seem
rather to like it, for they chaw tobacco and drink whiskey
even in the winter time, when the cow-killers and stinging
lizards are all frozen up!”

What gusto, what warmth of natural sympathy, what genial expansion! Here the authentic liar has been translated by circumstances and by his own genius into the pure aura of truth. There is no distortion, no “wrenching the true cause the wrong way,” no base intent to win by arousing false fears or to defraud through false hopes. The artist has but arranged the objects of his scene and then handed the spectator a magnifying glass that is flawlessly translucent. The magnified vision, like that of Tartarin of Tarascon, seems but the effect of a sunlight transilluminating all other sunlights--the sunlight of Tartarin’s Midi country, “the only liar in the Midi.” Only here it is the sunlight of the West, which brings mountain ranges a hundred miles away within apparent touching distance and through its mirages makes antelopes stalk as tall as giraffes, gives to buffalo bulls far out on the prairies the proportions of hay wagons, and reveals spired cities and tree-shadowed lakes reposing in deserts actually so devoid of life that not even a single blade of green grass can there be found.

Occasionally one of these authentic liars of the West falls a prey to his own lying. Frank Root (_The Overland Stage to California_) relates that one time after a Gargantuan story-teller named Ranger Jones had finished narrating a particularly blood-curdling “personal experience,” a stage driver who happened to be among the listeners looked him squarely in the eye and said, “I hope, Ranger Jones, that you don’t expect me to believe this story.”

“Well--er--no--really, I don’t,” the narrator answered. “The fact is, I have lied out here in this Western country so long and have been in the habit of telling so many damned lies, the truth of it is now that I don’t know when I can believe myself.” In _Trails Plowed Under_ Charles M. Russell has a delicious chapter on “Some Liars of the Old West.”

“These men weren’t vicious liars,” he comments. “It was love of romance, lack of reading matter, and the wish to be entertainin’ that makes ’em stretch facts and invent yarns.” Among the most famous of these liars was a man known as Lyin’ Jack, and his favorite tale was on an elk he once killed that had a spread of antlers fifteen feet wide. He always kept these, as he told the story, in the loft of his cabin.

One time after a long absence Lyin’ Jack showed up in Benton. “The boys” were all glad to see him and, after a round or two of drinks, asked him for a yarn.

“No, boys,” said Jack, “I’m through. For years I’ve been tellin’ these lies--told ’em so often I got to believin’ ’em myself. That story of mine about the elk with the fifteen-foot horns is what cured me. I told about that elk so often that I knowed the place I killed it. One night I lit a candle and crawled up in the loft to view the horns--an’ I’m damned if they weren’t there.”

In a book of not enough consequence to warrant the naming of its title, the author, writing through hearsay and attempting to be veracious, describes the Texas norther--which comes “sudden and soon in the dead of night or the blaze of noon”--as being so swift in descent, so terrible in force, and so bitterly cold that “no old Texan would trust himself out on the prairies in July or August with the thermometer at ninety-six degrees, without two blankets strapped at the saddlebow to keep him from freezing to death should a norther blow up.” Of course no man of the range carries his blankets on the horn of a saddle and no Texan ever experienced a genuine norther in July or August. The description is utterly false, utterly lacking in authenticity. On the other hand, when “Mr. Fishback of the Sulphurs” relates how one hot day in December when he was riding home he saw a blue norther coming behind him, put spurs to his horse, and, racing for miles with the nose of the wind at his very backbone, arrived at the stable to find the hind-quarters of his horse frozen stiff whereas the fore-quarters were in a lather of sweat--such a hair’s breadth doth divide the hot prelude to a norther from the iciness of the norther itself--we realize that we are in the company of a liar as authentic as he is accomplished. Surely such do not violate the ninth commandment; indeed they have become as little children.

--J. FRANK DOBIE,
Austin, Texas,
Cinco de Mayo, 1934.

[1] Forty thousand, even thirty thousand, mustangs are a lot of mustangs. In _The Young Explorers_, a book privately printed in Austin, Texas, about 1892, Duval, pp. 111-112, defends this extraordinary assertion. The wild horses were encountered between the Nueces River and the Río Grande. Corroborative of the enormous numbers to be found in that region is the testimony of William A. McClintock, “Journal of a Trip Through Texas and Northern Mexico,” _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 232-233. Bigfoot Wallace was not lying about the wild horses.

INTRODUCTION

The pioneers who came to Texas to found a cattle industry that eventually extended from the Río Grande to the Big Bow brought with them from the older Southwestern frontier a large body of floating literature of the tall tale variety. The influence of this folk material is clearly discernible in the works of Longstreet, and Baldwin, and other Southern humorists who preceded Mark Twain.

The literary use of the tall tale in the South seems to have been checked by the Civil War, but after that struggle it found a congenial home and flourished orally in the cow-camps of the new Southwest. While it is true that the cowboy deserves his reputation for reticence and reserve, it is also true that when conditions were favorable to the exercise of the art of story telling, he often proved an inveterate liar. Among the cattlemen of a generation ago books and periodicals were scarce, and all sorts of shifts were resorted to for amusement. It is a tribute to the cowboy’s adaptability that he was able to utilize as well as he did the resources at his command. So, while the gifted story-teller was often referred to disparagingly as a “windy,” he was welcome around the camp-fires, and any large outfit was likely to have one or more among its numbers.

Old tales that were applicable to the new conditions survived; others were adapted to the new environment; Crèvecoeur and Münchausen seem to have supplied others, though of course there is no proof that the Southwestern analogues were not of independent origin. The adaptations, if they were such, often exhibit admirable ingenuity. Still other tales grew directly out of the soil.

The cowboy liked horseplay, and took keen delight in “loading” the greenhorn. This pastime, which usually occupied the hours after supper in the evening, consisted in telling for the benefit of the uninitiated a species of yarn locally known as the “windy.” If the auditor appeared credulous, the narrators went on vying with each other, heaping exaggeration upon exaggeration, consciously burlesquing the misconceptions which the newcomer had brought with him from the East. Sometimes the listener was informed by a sell at the end of the story that he had been taken in; more often he was made aware of the fact by the sheer heights of exaggeration to which the narrative ascended; occasionally he accepted the story in good faith and went away neither sadder nor wiser. The good story-teller, then, did not demand credence. All he wanted was a sympathetic listener. His reward was the joy of mere narrative.

The result was a literature at once imaginative, robust, and humorous: one in striking contrast to the better known pensive and melancholy ballads, which, taken in themselves, present a one-sided picture of the cowboy’s character.

Since much of the cowboy’s romancing was done to inspire fear in the newcomer, the fauna of the Southwest, really comparatively harmless, was represented as dangerous in the extreme. And among the living things none was better adapted to the cowboy’s purpose than the rattlesnake. As a matter of fact, there were few fatalities from snake-bite among cowmen. The rattlesnake rarely strikes without warning. He presents no danger to mounted men; and when dismounted, the cowboy was afforded good protection by his boots. Yet because of his terrifying aspect, his blood-curdling rattle, and the reputation he had acquired in the East, the rattlesnake was an especial source of terror to the greenhorn; and he was the subject of many a harrowing tale told around the campfire, frequently as a prelude to some practical joke. This means of entertainment was a well established custom in the days of Big Foot Wallace.

If the existing fauna could not be made impressive enough, imaginary animals could be drafted into service. These mythological creatures were numerous, and were not completely standardized either in terminology or in anatomy. Some were harmless, and the point of the story was to “sell” the greenhorn. Others were extremely ferocious, and the tenderfoot was advised to avoid them under all circumstances. He also received minute instruction in the technique of escaping when pursued. Like all mythological animals, they were compounded of the parts of well-known species.

The greenhorn’s misconceptions and his conduct arising therefrom were frequent themes of western windies, as well as of tales of actual fact.

Another favorite subject of cowboy yarns was the weather. The changeableness of atmospheric conditions in the Southwest has long been proverbial, and many a fantastic yarn has been spun to illustrate this fickleness of weather.

A different type of tall tale was that involving narrow and ingenious escapes and hair-raising adventures. This sort of tale demanded a hero, but the cowboy’s love of exaggeration did not lead him into supernaturalism. The hero of his fiction was a mere mortal who possessed to a high degree endurance, agility, and the other qualities which the cowboy of necessity exemplified, and which he consequently admired. The hero of the cowboy’s tall tale could drink his coffee boiling hot and wipe his mouth on a prickly-pear. He could ride a tornado, but he was not a giant, the impact of whose body in being thrown from one would form the Great Basin of the West; and those who have attributed to him such a prodigious stature have written too much under the influence of the Paul Bunyan legend.

Nor did cowboy fiction ever become unified around a single character. When a hero was needed, his name might be invented on the spot; the feats of daring might be ascribed to some local character; or the narrator himself might appropriate the honors. Certain names, however, were in rather general use, California Joe and Texas Jack being among the more common.

The nearest living parallel to Don Quixote (in outward circumstances at least) that I ever saw was an impersonator of one of these legendary heroes.

Several years ago a man came to Sweetwater, Texas, and announced that he was _the original_ Texas Jack. He wore khaki trousers tucked in “hand-me-down” boots somewhat run over at the heels. He had on a red flannel shirt and bandanna. What drew attention for at least a block was an elaborate belt with holster attached. The belt was four inches wide, and had evidently been fashioned from a “back-band” belonging to a set of heavy draft harness. It was heavily studded with brass and glistened in the sun. The holster, when examined by officers, showed no evidence of ever having contained a pistol.

Texas Jack seemed quite harmless. He walked the streets for a few days and entertained whoever would listen to him with long stories about his exploits in arresting bad men, a type which he said was very numerous in the Panhandle of Texas. It seemed that when the Rangers were at a loss what to do, they sent for Texas Jack, who always brought back his man and turned him over to the law. His technique was quite simple. He merely walked in and got the bad man by the ear and led him to jail while the nonplussed officers looked on in astonishment.

I later saw him at Maryneal, a village twenty miles south of Sweetwater. There he had an antiquated singleshot, twenty-two calibre rifle, which he handled so carelessly that he was arrested. I never learned the outcome of his sanity trial.

I never saw anybody claiming to be California Joe or Pecos Bill.

This latter hero is apparently a late development, for few of the old-time cowmen have heard of him. Getting into print in 1923, he seems to be driving his rivals from the field, and is the most likely candidate for epic honors in the Southwest.

Practically all the tales in this collection came directly from the cattle folk of West Texas, among whom I was raised (not reared); and some of them are associated with my earliest memories. Others I have learned more recently either from cattlemen or from their sons and daughters who have been my students in the University of Texas and in the Sul Ross State Teachers College.

I have consulted the available published material on the tall tale of the cattle country. The bibliography is short, and not all of the authors who have written on the subject have had the advantage of a first-hand acquaintance with the yarns of the region. Aside from the publications of the Texas Folklore Society, my chief indebtedness is to Mr. Edward O’Reilly’s “Saga of Pecos Bill,” published in the _Century Magazine_ for October, 1923 (106: 827-833).

Some of this material I have published in the _Southwest Review_, the _Texas Monthly_, _The South Atlantic Quarterly_, and the _Publications_ of the West Texas Historical and Scientific Society.

MODY C. BOATRIGHT.

PIZENOUS WINDIES

There was just enough light left in the sky to reveal the bedded herd. The first night-shift had gone on. One could see the riders silhouetted against the sky as they rode around the cattle quieting them with the crooning melodies of _Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie_ and _The Trail of ’83_.

The men had finished supper. Some had spread their beds and were lying upon them. They had not yet gone through the short ritual of going to bed. Others sat around the campfire. Red Wallace observed that it was time to hit the hay. As he started to the wagon for his bed-roll, he stumbled over a small greasewood bush. A shrill rattle came from underneath. Red jumped back, picking up a stone.

“You dirty rascal!” he exclaimed. “Thought you’d bite me, didn’t you? Of all the nerve. Tryin’ to bite me. You cheeky son-of-a-gun. Wanted to bite me! Take that.” The rock struck the snake squarely on the head.

“A rattlesnake!” exclaimed Lanky, a tenderfoot of the high-school age, whom the boss had taken on the day before, and whom Joe Martin had informally christened _Lanky_. “I’ve been wishing all afternoon to see one.”

“You’ll git to see all them you want to see if you stay with this outfit, though they ain’t as numerous as they used to be,” answered Red.

“Are they really as poisonous as they have the reputation of being?” asked Lanky.

“Pizenous?” asked Red, seating himself on the bed-roll he had just brought from the wagon. “One of them cut-throats took off three of the best friends I ever had in this world.

“You see it was like this. Poker Bill was out ridin’ fence. He gits down to nail up a loose wire, and one of these reptiles nabs him by the heel. Bill grabs him by the tail and jist naturally flails the everlastin’ stuffin’ out of him on the fence post. Then Bill takes off his boot and looks at his heel. The fang ain’t teched the skin; so he puts back on his boot and goes on his way, thinkin’ nothin’ of it. About a week afterwards Bill gits a sore heel. He comes in one day at dinner and tells the boss he can’t work that evenin’ and he lays down on his bunk and we goes off and leaves him. When we comes in at night, there lays pore Bill a corpse.

“He must have knowed he was goin’ to die, ’cause there on a piece of paper was his will all wrote out. It says, ‘My saddle to Red, my bridle to Pete, and my boots to Ed.’

“Well, we buries pore Bill, havin’ a swell funeral with a circuit-rider to do the preachin’. Ed, out of respect to the deceased, wears the boots to the funeral. Purty soon he gits a sore heel. ‘Bill’s boots,’ he says, ‘are a little too big. They made a blister on my heel.’ One mornin’ he takes to his bunk, sayin’ he guessed his sock had pizened his heel. That night he breathes his last. Fine man he was, too. They don’t make better men than Ed Wilson.

“Jist before he dies, he calls us all to his bedside and says, ‘Boys, I’m goin’ to the big round-up. I ain’t been as righteous as I ought to of been, but I’m hopin’ the Big Range Boss will cut me into his herd. Dave, you can have my bridle; Red, you can take my saddle; and Pete, you can have my boots.’ Them was the last words he ever spoke.

“Ed’s family asks us to send the corpse back to Virginia, which we does, me going along with it. And I meets Ed’s family and tells them what a fine man he was, and how he always done his duty, and ever’thing. And fine folks they was, too.

“When I gits back to the ranch, I finds pore Pete all laid out for the undertaker. ‘He died of the sore heel,’ says the boss, ‘jist like Bill and Ed. He says give his boots to you.’

“By this time I was gittin’ suspicious. I takes the boots and examines them close, and there in the spur-piece of the left boot is the fang of that dirty, low-down, cut-throat reptile. I takes the pliers and pulls out the fang, and to make shore it don’t cause any more devilment, I takes a spade and buries it at the back of the bunk-house.

“Then I puts on the boots and wears them right on. This is them I got on now. See that place right there that looks like a pinhole? That’s where I pulled the critter’s fang out.”

“I guess it didn’t do any more harm,” said Lanky.

“None to speak of,” replied Red. “The boss’s old hound dawg comes along and sees where I buried the fang, and he forgits but what he’d buried a bone there, and he begins diggin’ like a fool. Purty soon his paw swells up, and we have to shoot him. But as far as I know that was the end and the extent of that reptile’s devilment.”

“Well, well,” said Hank. “That puts me in mind of a thing that happened to Jess Simpson and me jest before I joined this outfit. We was goin’ to a rodeo at Vega in Jess’s flivver, and jest before we gits to Lubbock, we sees a rattlesnake in the road ahead of us. ‘Watch me git him,’ says Jess, and jest as the critter raises his head to strike, Jess busts him one right in the mouth with the front tire of his Ford. ‘One less venomous reptile in the world,’ says Jess, and we drives on thinkin’ that’s all of that.

“Jest as we gits to Lubbock, Jess notices that a tire is nearly down. He pulls up to a little garage in the edge of town and has it fixed, and then we goes on. When we gits to Plainview, we notices that the tire is nearly flat again; so he has it fixed there. Then we goes on to the rodeo, and Jess wins a hundred dollars bull-doggin’, and me seventy-five goat-ropin’, which we spends and starts home.

“We gits back to Plainview and stops at the same garage where we had our tire fixed comin’ up, and we notices a new man changin’ tires. ‘Where’s the feller that was here last week?’ says Jess. ‘He was so good to us and fixed our tire so good I thought I’d bring him a little snake medicine,’ says Jess, sort of winkin’.

“‘Pore feller. We buried him yesterday,’ says the man. ‘His hand all swole up and he died.’

“‘Now ain’t that too bad,’ says Jess. ‘Fine man he was. I never seen him till we stopped here last week on our way to Vega, but soon as I looked him in the eye, I says to my pal here (meanin’ me), ‘There’s a fine feller. I’m sort of funny that way,’ he says. ‘When I first see a man, I can look him in the eye and tell whether he’s any ’count or not.’

“‘Tell his family that two of his true friends lament his death,’ I says. ‘I reckon we better be gittin’ on.’

“We drives on wonderin’ if that dirty reptile did cause the pore feller’s death. ‘We’ll stop at Lubbock,’ says Jess, ‘and see if the feller there is all right.’ And so we drives up to the little garage, which is a one-man outfit, and there was a woman runnin’ it.

“‘Where is the man that was here last week?’ says I.

“‘Oh, my husband?’ says the woman. ‘We laid him away last Tuesday,’ tears comin’ in her eyes as she spoke.

“‘I’m a pore cowpuncher,’ say I, ‘and I spent all my money at the rodeo, but I’ll write you a draft on the boss for a month’s wages, and it’ll be honored too, you needn’t be worried about that.’

“‘I’ll do the same,’ says Jess.

“‘You gentlemen are very kind,’ she says, ‘but I couldn’t accept it. Besides, our home and business is paid for, and there’s the insurance money.’

“‘How did it happen?’ asks Jess.

“‘I guess it was blood-pizen,’ she says. ‘His finger swelled up, and he got sicker and sicker and died. Are you all friends of his?’

“‘That we are,’ says Jess, ‘and I want to say right here that there never was a better man than--than your husband.’

“‘Naw, there wasn’t,’ says I, ‘and we wish you good luck. We’ll have to be gittin’ away.’

“We drives off overcome with sorrow on account of the death of them two men. Sometimes yet when I’m ridin’ along by myself, I think of them in their graves, and I feel that me and Jess somehow had a hand in it, and I’d jest give my hoss and saddle if it hadn’t happened. Naw, sir, Lanky. If you see one of them critters in the road, don’t run over him. You might be the innocent means of takin’ off several lives.”

The fire had died to a bed of coals. It was no longer possible to see the night herders, but the indistinct songs reached the camp. Lanky was seated on his bed-roll. The sitters had dwindled to four.

“I didn’t know they were that bad,” observed Lanky.

“That bad!” said Joe Martin. Joe was a veteran of the open range and of the overland trail. Far and near he was known by the name of “Windy Joe,” but Lanky had not learned of this last fact.

“That bad!” said Joe again. “Them snakes that Red and Hank told you about must of been baby snakes. They couldn’t of been real, he-men, venomous reptiles like the one that killed Ike Morgan. Ike was one of the best friends I ever had in this world. He worked on the Yellow House when Red and Hank here was wearin’ foldin’ britches.

“Ike was some cowhand, even if he did have a wooden leg. I reckon I might as well tell you how he got his wooden leg, while I’m about it. You see it was like this. Ike was ridin’ the range one winter day, and as he started up a little canyon, his hoss fell and caught Ike’s leg. The critter broke two of his own legs in the fall, and there he was on Ike’s leg and couldn’t git up. And there was pore Ike wonderin’ if he’d starve before anybody found him.

“Purty soon Ike smelled a norther, and the next thing he knowed, the norther was there, and the next thing he knowed after that, he had icicles on his nose. Ike knowed he’d freeze to death, and that _muy pronto_ if he didn’t find some way to git loose. He figgered and figgered. That was one thing about Ike, he always used his head. Well, he figgered and figgered, and purty soon he looked around, and he seen an axe about a hundred yards off. He ’lowed some nester had been haulin’ wood out of the canyon and had lost his axe. And mighty glad Ike was of the nester’s hard luck, too. And jest to show you the nerve of the man, he goes over and gits the axe and chops off his own leg, and he didn’t have any chloroform, either, it not bein’ wormy season, and gits his self loose and walks ten miles into headquarters. That’s what I call nerve.

“But what I started out to tell you was how Ike met his death. The boss sent Ike to town and had the blacksmith make him a peg-leg. A fine limb it was, too. Ike had him a stirrup made to fit it, and he could ride as good as ever. Many a bronc he peeled after that. He could dance like a fool, and hold his own in any shootin’ match that any tough _hombre_ ever started. Shame it was that he had to be kilt by a dirty reptile.

“Ike was fixin’ fence in the canyon one evenin’ jest at dusk. He needs a stay for the fence, and he looks over in the bushes and sees what in the dusk of the evenin’ looks like a pole. He gits down to pick it up, and damn me, if it wasn’t one of them low-down reptiles--a big specimen with twenty-eight rattles and a button. And the son-of-a-gun nabs Ike by the wooden leg. That don’t worry Ike much, and while the critter holds him by the peg, Ike takes out his six-shooter and sends the gentleman on to his happy huntin’ ground, cuttin’ off the twenty-eight rattles and the button for a keepsake--which I now have and will show you some time if you’ll make me think of it.

“Ike gits on his hoss and rides to the bunkhouse where me and Ezra Jenkins are, and when he tries to lift his wooden leg out of the stirrup, it won’t come. Ezra and me gits the axe and the cold-chisel and cuts off the stirrup from around the peg and brings Ike in the house. By that time the leg is as big as a steer, and it is all we can do to carry him in. Ezra gits his fencing hatchet and me the choppn’ axe, and we begins to try to reduce Ike’s leg to its natural and proper size. We trims and we trims, and the leg swells and swells. And the more we trims, the more it swells. However, for the first ten hours we gains on the swellin’, but we begins to tire and there’s nobody to spell us. I takes the axe and keeps Ezra busy packing out the chips and splinters. We works all night choppin’ and trimmin’ and packing out, but we gits weaker and weaker, and the swellin’ keeps gainin’ on us. Finally, after three days, we jest naturally gives tetotally out, and has to set down and see pore Ike die.”

“But,” said Lanky, “a bite on the wooden leg shouldn’t have given him any pain. How did it kill him?”

“Well, you see it was like this,” replied Joe. “His leg jest swelled and swelled till it got so big it jest naturally smothered him to death. Fine feller he was too, one of the best friends I ever had in this world.”

“There was jest one good thing about it,” added Joe. “Ezra and me had enough kindling wood to do us all winter.”

Joe chunked up the fire and put on the coffee pot.

“Have a cigarette?” offered Lanky.

“Roll my own,” said Joe, fishing out a shuck.

It was Hank’s turn. “Too bad about Ike,” he said. “But I don’t doubt a-tall it’s so, like you say, fer I seen a similar case. Very similar case, except it wasn’t a man’s leg.

“Me and Jim Arbury hitched up the hosses one mornin’ and went out to bring in a little stove-wood. He headed out towards a little mesquite thicket, and jest before we got to it, I seen the lead hoss shy.

“‘What’s the matter with old Pete?’ I asks Jim.

“‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jim says. ‘My God, man,’ says he, ‘look at that reptile! big as a fence post!’

“And shore nuff there’s a great big rattler a-holt of the wagon tongue. He’d nabbed it, and he wouldn’t let go.

“Jim knowed exactly what to do. He jumped down and pulled out the couplin’ pin, lettin’ the double-tree go, and drove the team out of the way. ‘Grab the axe,’ he says. Well, I jumped out with the axe and begun work. I shore hated to do it, but I knowed it had to be done. I had to chop off the wagon tongue, and be damn quick about it too, to save the wagon.”

“Them tales of yours and Joe’s jist made me think how lucky Jack Pierson and me was not to be kilt one time,” said Red.

“The boss sends us out in the winter time to fence a section starve-out. We puts up the posts on three sides and then we finds that the boss hasn’t figgered right, ’cause there ain’t none fer the other side. We starts to the canyon, thinkin’ we’d have to cut some and snake ’em out. We gits to the rim-rock, and there we sees what looks like a lot of cedar logs. We remarks on our good luck and wonders how the timber got there, but when we drives up close, we finds a bunch of big hibernatin’ reptiles. There was ten thousand, I guess.

“‘Cuss the luck,’ says Jack; ‘I thought we’d found our posts.’

“‘We have,’ says I; ‘and why ain’t we? Them critters are big enough and stiff enough. We’ll take ’em along.’

“‘You’re the doctor,’ says Jack.

“Well, we gathers up the biggest and the straightest and loads ’em in. We find we don’t have to dig post-holes. I’d stand one of the critters on his tail, and Jack would drive him in the ground with a twelve-pound sledge-hammer. We stapled on the wire, and told the boss to come out and inspect the job.

“‘Boys,’ he says, ‘you do have a brain, leastways one between you. You saved at least a week’s work. I’ll let you go to Kansas City when we ship again.’”

“Was the fence permanent?” asked Lanky.

“It was till spring,” said Red. “You see, when spring come, them reptiles jist naturally thawed out and come to, and crawled off with a whole mile of wire. Good six-wire fence we had made, too--hog-tight, horse-high, and bull-strong.”

“Is it true,” asked Lanky, “that rattlesnakes and king snakes are natural enemies and fight each other?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Joe, “but I’ll tell what I seen once. Strange thing it was too. I come upon a king snake and a rattlesnake one time fightin’ for dear life. Each one would grab the other and then stick his head under his belly for protection. Finally, jest at the same time, they nabbed each other by the tail and begun swallering. There they was, jest like a ring; and they swallered and swallered, and the ring got littler and littler. Jest then I heard a panther yell, and I looked up jest a minute--jest a fraction--and when I looked again, damn me, if them snakes wasn’t gone. I looked for ’em I reckon an hour, and it was right out on the open prairie where there wasn’t any holes or rocks, and I never could find them critters.”

“Now, most rattlers,” said Red, “is jist like bad men. They’re jist naturally mean and will bite you when you ain’t lookin’, no matter how kind you are to them. You’ll find one onct in a while, however, that’s a purty decent sort of chap. I recollect one in particular which was a gentlemanly critter.”

“You’re the first man I ever heard speak a good word for a rattlesnake,” said Lanky.

“I couldn’t make no complaint about the conduct and behavior of this particular rattlesnake,” said Red. “He treated me decent enough.”

“What did he do?” asked Lanky.

“Well,” said Red, “I was fishin’ one time out on the Pecos, and I run out of bait. What I wanted was a frog, and I looked and looked, for nearly an hour and couldn’t find none. Finally I seen a rattlesnake tryin’ to swaller a big bullfrog. I thinks to myself, ‘Well, I’m goin’ to have that frog, even if I git snake-bit.’ You see I had a bottle of snake medicine in my pocket--Old Rock and Rye it was.

“I put my foot on that rattlesnake’s tail and took a holt of that frog’s hind legs, and jist naturally extracted him right out of the reptile’s mouth. Well, instead of gittin’ ringy and showin’ fight, like most rattlers would, this here snake jist looks so sad and down in the mouth that I couldn’t help feelin’ sorry for the critter.

“‘Here, old feller; cheer up,’ says I, givin’ him a swig of Old Rock and Rye out of my bottle. He takes a dram and crawls off jist as pert as a fresh cuttin’ hoss.

“I puts the frog on my hook and sets down to fish. Jist as I was about to git a bite, I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg. I looks down, and damn me, if there ain’t that rattlesnake back with two frogs in his mouth.”

Hank stirred up the coals and put on a mesquite grub. Lanky gave him his cue by asking if rattlesnakes ever got in people’s beds.

“Occasionally,” said Hank. “Occasionally, though they ain’t as thick as they used to be. One time I woke up in the night, thinkin’ it was about time for me to stand guard. I felt something cold on my chest. I knowed what it was. I says to myself, ‘Now, Hank, keep cool. Keep cool.’ All the time I was easin’ my hand back around to the top of my head to git a-holt of my six-gun. I was as careful as I could be, but I reckon the critter got on to what I was doin’, for jest as I was about to touch the gun, he raised up his head and opened his mouth to strike. Then I let him have a bullet right in the mouth. That was the quickest draw I ever made.”

“I got in a fix jest like that one time,” said Joe, “except, fool like, I didn’t have my gun handy.”

“What did you do?” asked Lanky.

“Well,” said Joe, “after thinkin’ it over and seein’ there wasn’t nothin’ I could do, I jest shet my eyes and went back to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning, the critter was gone. Jest crawled off of his own free will and accord.”

“Well,” said Red, “that shows what a tenderfoot you was, and Hank, too. If you’d jist of put hair rope around your bed before you went to sleep, them snakes wouldn’t of come in.”

“I had read that in stories,” said Lanky, “but I didn’t know if it were really true.”

“True as the gospel,” said Red.

“How does it work?” asked Lanky.

“Tickles their bellies,” replied Red. “A rattlesnake jist can’t stand ticklin’. One fall when we was workin’, the cook one night didn’t make camp till dark. Then we found out he had bedded us in a regular den of reptiles. We made our beds right up techin’ each other, and put hair ropes on the ground all around the whole outfit. The next mornin’ we counted a hundred and twenty-nine rattlesnakes around the beds. They had jist naturally tickled their fool selves to death tryin’ to crawl over the rope.”

“The critters, however, ain’t so numerous as they used to be in Pecos Bill’s time,” said Joe. “That man almost put ’em out of business in his day.”

“How did he do that?” asked Lanky.