Chapter II: Part 2

“Bill was a very smart and ingenious lad,” said Joe. “He was the first man to capture a whiffle-poofle; he was the first man to train prairie-dogs to dig post-holes; and he was the first man to do a lot of things. Among other things he invented a way to slay rattlesnakes wholesale. When Bill wanted to capture or exterminate any sort of reptile or bird or beast, he would study the critter’s habits and find out what his weakness was; then he would go off and study and study, and purty soon he would come back with a way all figgered out. Bill always used his head. He put in two of the best years of his life studyin’ rattlesnakes. Not that Bill was afraid of ’em. But one of the critters bit his horse one time, and then he got mad. But he never let on. He jest went out and made friends with ’em and lived with ’em, and noticed their habits and their diet and where they liked to live at different times of the year, and all that.

“Bill discovered that rattlesnakes had rather have moth-balls to eat than anything under the sun. A rattlesnake will leave a young and tender rabbit any day for a moth-ball. Bill found out likewise that a rattlesnake jest can’t stand chili powder. Those two clues give him an idear. First he took some chili powder and soaked it in nitroglycerin. He rolled this into little pills and coated them with moth-ball.

“Then he took these balls and scattered ’em around where the reptiles stayed. Well, the critters would come out and find the moth-balls and swaller ’em right down, not thinkin’ there might be a ketch somewheres. Purty soon the outside coating would melt off, and the chili powder would burn the critters on the inside. This would make ’em mad, and they’d beat their tails against the ground and rocks, which exploded the nitroglycerin and blowed ’em into smithereens. We used to kill ’em that way here on the ranch, but the boss made us quit after one of the critters crawled under a steer and blowed him into atoms.”

“I’d think that would be a rather dangerous method,” said Lanky. “But what is that whiffle-poofle you mentioned a few minutes ago?”

“Oh, you’ll learn when you git a little older,” replied Joe. “You’d better hit the hay now, Lanky. You stand next guard.”

Lanky bent down to untie his bed-roll. Then he jumped straight into the air. “My God, I’m bitten!” he yelled.

“Bring the butcher knife and the coal-oil,” said Hank, “and heat a brandin’ iron.”

“Spect we ought to cut his hand off right now before the pizen spreads,” said Red. “Where’s the axe?”

“Now, lad, don’t let ’em buffalo you,” said Joe. “You ain’t bit a-tall.”

“But there’s blood on my hand,” said Lanky; “see.”

“That’s a shore sign you ain’t bit,” said Joe. “That’s the snake’s blood; see. That’s the very snake Red kilt.”

“But he struck me,” said Lanky.

“Shore he did. Them devilish critters will strike after they have their heads cut off. Reflex. That’s what they call it. Dirty trick they played on you.”

“Well, well,” said Red. “The critter’s head is gone. Still I think we better cut his hand off to make shore. Them things is so pizenous the bite might kill him anyway. I seen a man bit jist like that one time....”

“And he never was right in his head again,” said Hank.

“Which one of you was it?” asked Lanky.

SPEED

On Lanky’s second night in the cow camp, there were many allusions to his snake-bite.

“Now, Lanky, watch out for rattlesnakes and don’t git bit again,” said Hank.

“I hope you’ll recover without an operation,” said Red, “but still I think we ought to of cut your hand off. No tellin’ what might happen. Ought to be on the safe side.”

“Don’t let ’em buffalo you, Lanky; don’t let ’em buffalo you,” said Joe. “You ain’t such a greenhorn as lots of chaps I’ve seen. Why, when Red here first come to this outfit, he was so ign’rant he didn’t know split beans from coffee. He thought you had to have a gun to shoot craps; he thought a dogie was somethin’ you built houses out of. He thought a lasso was a girl, and _remuda_ a kind of grass. When the boss got ringy, Red said he was a wrangler. Why, he even thought a cowboy was a bull.”

“He was nearly as bad as old _Borrego_ Mason’s sheep-herder,” said Hank. “I reckon Joe’s told you about him, ain’t he, Lanky?--No?

“Well, a guy comes down from the East and tries to git a job runnin’ cattle. He ’lowed he’s jest graduated from college--Harvard or Yale, or some of them big schools up there. Said he’d been a big athlete and played in all sorts of games and run in big foot races, and the like. ’Lowed he come to Texas to be a big rancher. He said, though, he’d be willin’ to begin at the bottom and work his way up, and for the time bein’ he’d take a job as a common cowhand.

“Well, he went to all the outfits in the whole country, and he couldn’t git anybody to take him on.”

“Why not?” asked Lanky.

“Well, it was mostly on account of his lingo. He wouldn’t talk United States, like other people. He wouldn’t ask for a job. He was wantin’ a ‘position’ or ‘employment,’ with a ‘future’ to it. And he wouldn’t say ‘wages’, but always asked about ‘remuneration’ and ‘emolument’ and the like. Some of the bosses didn’t know what the hell he was talkin’ about; some of ’em said he must be a rustler; and others said they wouldn’t hire a damn foreigner until he learned to talk United States, or at least Mex’can.

“And so the pore feller had to hire himself to a damn sheep man. It nearly broke his heart. It makes me sorry for the pore fool every time I think of it.

“And when Old Man Mason took him down to the sheep pens and turned out the _borregos_, and the pore greenhorn seen he was goin’ to have to walk, he jest naturally broke down and cried. He told Old Man Mason that his sweetheart back East had jest died and that he’d come out West to git over it.

“Old Man Mason told him the first thing to do was to take them sheep out to graze. He told him to be shore to git ’em back by night, and to be damn shore to look after the lambs and git every one of ’em back in the pen. If he didn’t there’d be some tall hell-raisin’ in the camp.

“Old Man Mason went back to his shack and set in the shade all day. Finally it was might nigh dark, and the herder hadn’t come in with the woollies. The Old Man waited a while longer, and still the herder didn’t show up. About nine o’clock he started out to the pens about three hundred yards from the house, to see if he could see anything of the critters. On the way out he met his new sheep-herder.

“‘Did you have any trouble with the sheep?’ says he.

“‘Not with the sheep,’ says the herder. ‘But,’ he says, ‘the lambs occasioned me considerable annoyance and perturbation.’

“Well, Old Man Mason didn’t know what the hell he meant, and he didn’t want to ask, for fear he’d appear ign’rant; so went on to the pens to see what was the matter with the lambs.

“The moon was up, and he could see over the rock fence. The sheep was all huddled up in the middle of the pen, and the Old Man counted a hundred and seventy-five jack-rabbits runnin’ around and buttin’ the fence, doin’ their damndest to git out.”

“I got up considerable speed once myself,” said Joe, “once when I was a good deal younger than I am now; but it wasn’t no rabbit that I was chasin’; it was a prairie-fire.”

“You mean it was the prairie-fire chasing you, don’t you?” said Lanky.

“Naw,” said Joe. “It was jest as I was sayin’. I was chasin’ the prairie-fire. It wasn’t the prairie-fire chasin’ me.

“It was back in the early days one time when I was out huntin’ cattle on the plains. One day in August, I recken it was, I follered off some cow tracks and got lost from the outfit. I was out two days without nothin’ to eat. Finally I come on a little herd of buffalo. I shoots a good fat cow and cuts off a piece of tenderloin.

“Well, when I begins to look around for somethin’ to cook it with, not a thing can I find. There ain’t a stick of timber, not a twig, nor a dry buffalo chip nowhere around there. I was hungry enough to have et that meat raw and bloody, and I needed it too, for I was so hungry that I was weak in the knees. But somehow I never was much of a raw meat eater. It ain’t civilized.

“Well, as I was sayin’, I couldn’t find no regular fuel; so I calkilated I’d try the prairie grass, which was long and curly and dry. I gathers up a big pile, puts the hunk of meat on my ramrod and holds it over the grass and lights a match. Jest one flash and the fire’s all gone, except the wind comes up all at once and sets the dang prairie on fire.

“Well, sir, I takes out after that prairie-fire, holdin’ my meat over the blaze. It would burn along purty regular for a while; then all of a sudden it would give a big jump and tear out across the plains like hell after a wild woman, and I’d have to do my dangest to keep up with it. Well, I chased that prairie-fire about three hours, I recken, but I finally got my meat cooked. I et it--and it shore did taste good, too--and started back across the burnt country to where I had shot the buffalo. Damn me, if I hadn’t run so far in three hours that it took me two days to git back. There my hoss was waitin’ fer me, and I found the outfit the next day.”

“Yeah, that was purty good runnin’,” said Red. “But you nor the feller Hank was a-tellin’ about either wasn’t as swift as one of them college chaps we had on an outfit where I worked once. Not near so swift. Been a good thing for him if he hadn’t been so fast. Too swift for his own good.”

“How was that?” asked Lanky.

“Here’s the way it was,” said Red. “He was a greenhorn, but he was a-learnin’ fast. Would of made a good cowhand, pore feller. He got to be a purty good shot with a Winchester and six-shooter both, and he was always practicin’ on rabbits and coyotes and prairie-dogs, and things. Then he decided he’d have a lot of critters mounted and send ’em back to his folks.

“Well, he gits everything he wants but a prairie-dog, but he jist can’t git a-holt of one of them critters.”

“Are they hard to hit?” asked Lanky.

“Oh, he could hit ’em all right. He got so he could plug ’em right in the eye, but they always jumped in their holes and got away. They’ll do it every time, Lanky; they’ll do it every time. Why, one day he took his forty-five Winchester and shot one of the critters clean in two, but the front-end grabbed the hind-end and run down the hole with it before he could git there.

“Well, he asked the boss if there was any way he could git one, and the boss told him to take good aim, and jist as soon as he pulled the trigger to run jist as fast as he could and maybe he’d git there in time to grab the critter before he got away.

“Well, he goes out and finds a prairie dog a-settin’ on his hole a-barkin’ in the sun. He pulls out his six-shooter and takes a good aim at the critter’s eye, and jist as soon as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell, jist like the boss told him to. He got there in time, all right, and bent down to grab the prairie-dog; but jist as he touched it, the bullet hit him in the back jist below the left shoulder-blade. When we found him that evenin’, he was crippled so bad we had to shoot him. Too bad, too, for he had the makin’s of a first-class cowhand.”

“Yeah,” said Joe, “them guys you all been tellin’ about was mighty swift, but you don’t have to go back East to find speed. Why, I’ve seen an old cowhand that growed up right here in Texas that could of beat any of them Eastern fellers.

“Tell you what I saw once. One day after the spring work was over, a bunch of us decided to have a baseball game. Well, we chose up, but we liked one man havin’ enough men for two teams.

“‘What we gonna do?’ says I. ‘I guess we’ll have to git along with two fielders on our side,’

“Pete Dawson spoke up and says, ‘All you men git in the field, and I’ll pitch and ketch both.’

“And damn me, if that’s not what he done. He got on the pitcher’s box, which was a prairie-dog hole, and he’d throw a ball so it whistled like a bullet; then he run in a half circle and git behind the batter and ketch it.

“Not a batter ever teched the ball. It was jest three up and three down with them, and there wasn’t nothin’ for the rest of us to do.

“When it was Pete’s bat, he’d jest knock a slow grounder out toward first, and he’d make a home run before the first-baseman could git a-holt of the ball. We beat ’em ninty-six to nothin’.

“One time Pete was with us when we was movin’ a bunch of wild Mexico steers. One night the fool brutes stampeded. We all jumped on our hosses to try to turn ’em and git ’em to millin’.

“We all had good hosses, especially Pete, who had a fine hoss he’s won lots of money with; but we couldn’t git ahead of them steers. They was jest too swift for us.

“Directly Pete jumps off and takes his slicker and six-shooter with him. He circles around, and in no time, after tromping about a half a dozen jackrabbits to death, he’s in front of that herd.

“We all expects to see him git kilt, but he jest trots along in front of the critters wavin’ his slicker and firin’ his six-shooter. After he’d run that way about ten miles, the herd got to millin’ and purty soon they quieted down, and we never had no more trouble with ’em.

“That jest naturally took all the pertness and spirit out of them brutes. They was so ashamed of themselves that from then on out they was as gentle as a bunch of milk cows.

“The only thing that hurt Pete was that when it was over, his nose was bleedin’ like six-bits.”

“Got too hot, I suppose,” said Lanky.

“Naw,” said Joe, “that wasn’t it. The bleedin’ was from the outside. He jest run so fast that the wind jest naturally peeled all the hide off his nose, and he had to keep it tied up for about ten days till he growed some more skin.”

“I bet a hoss and saddle,” said Red, “that he couldn’t of turned old man Coffey’s bull like that. That brute had speed. One time old man Coffey shipped out a train-load of cattle from where he was ranchin’ on the Lapan Flat; and this here bull decides he wants to go with ’em. They cut him back, and the train pulls out in the night.

“Well, sir, the next mornin’ them cowpunchers looks out the caboose winder, and there’s that bull trottin’ along by the train, bellerin’ and pawin’ up the dust, and hookin’ at the telegraph poles as he passes ’em by. He follered that train all the way to Kansas City and had to be shipped back.

“The fellers started to sell him to the packers jist for spite, but they knowed old man Coffey never would git over it if they did.”

“Yeah, I heard of that critter,” said Joe. “Fact is I rode a hundred miles jest to see him once, but I didn’t git to.

“We gits to old man Coffey’s place about dinner time, and we goes in and asks if he’s home.

“‘Naw, he ain’t at home right now,’ says his wife. ‘Git down and look at your saddles, and come in and eat.’

“‘Where is he this mornin’?’ I asks.

“‘He left ’bout nine o’clock,’ she says. ‘He’s goin’ over to Phoenix. Said he might go by Roswell.’

“‘I reckon we won’t git to see him,’ I says.

“‘Jest unsaddle your hosses,’ she says. ‘I look for him back about an hour by sun, that is, if he don’t have no hard luck.’

“‘Wonder if you could tell us where his fast bull is?’ I says. ‘We come over to see him.’

“‘Oh,’ she says, ‘he’s ridin’ the bull. That’s how I know he’ll git back tonight.’”

“I reckon that bull could of outrun a milamo bird,” said Hank.

“No doubt he could,” said Joe. “No doubt he could.”

“What is a milamo bird like?” asked Lanky.

But Joe forestalled Hank by saying, “Lanky, you didn’t git enough sleep last night, what with all that rattlesnake skeer. I seen you noddin’ while Hank was a-tellin’ about that sheepherder of Old Man Mason’s, though I couldn’t blame you much for that. Go to bed, son, and maybe we’ll see a milamo bird tomorrow.”

BIRDS AND BEASTS

It was Lanky’s third night in cow camp. The herd had been bedded, and the first night shift had gone on. Lanky, sore of muscle, but extremely contented, sat by the fire with Red Wallace, Hank Williams, and Joe Martin, the men who on the first night had imparted to him the esoteric lore of the rattlesnake, and who on the second night had entertained him with yarns of marvelous speed.

Lanky had proved a good listener. He had done his best to appear credulous. He had interrupted seldom, and when he had, he had always followed his cue, and had propounded only the questions that the narrators wanted him to ask. It is not surprising, therefore, that on this night the older men were loaded for him.

It was Red Wallace that discharged the first missile.

“We ’as speakin’ of milamo birds last night,” he observed. “I seen sign today, lots of sign.”

“That’s funny; I done that very same thing,” said Hank. “I seen, I reckon, a hundred holes where they’d been feedin’.”

“Do you suppose we’re likely to see any of them?” asked Lanky.

“Not likely,” said Joe, “not likely. They’re mighty scerce these days, mighty scerce, and mighty shy, mighty shy. I ain’t seen one in years. You might keep your eye peeled though; we might happen on one any time. We might. You never can tell.”

“Yeah, we might,” broke in Hank. “Still we’re more likely to hear one than to see one. They’ve got a way of knowin’ when somebody’s about, though he’s a mile off. Yeah, they’re mighty hard to see, ’specially these days; mighty hard to see.”

“What sort of a bird is the milamo?” asked Lanky. “What is he like?”

“Oh,” replied Hank, “he’s like a milamo. They ain’t nothin’ else jest like him.”

“Is he large or small?” asked Lanky.

“He’s rather large,” said Hank, “though not as big as an ostrich I reckon, though somewhat bigger than a crane, which he somewhat resembles in general makeup and conformation.

“In the fall when the rains comes and fills up the lakes, like they are now, the critters comes in, or used to, and feeds around the edges of the water. They’ve got long legs like stilts for wadin’ in the water, a long neck, and a long beak that they uses to bore into the soft ground for the earthworms, which is their principal food and diet.

“I ain’t talkin’ about the little puny earthworms like school boys use to fish with. Naw, sir, a milamo bird would be ashamed of his self if he et one of them kind. He digs down into the ground and ketches the big fellers, shore-nuff he-man worms that looks like inner-tubes. I’ve seen holes you could hide a hoss’s leg in where them critters ’ad been escavatin’ for grub. More than one good cow hoss has had to be shot from steppin’ in holes that these birds has made, not to say nothin’ of the good cow-hands that has had their necks broke.

“But as I was sayin’ about the milamo bird, he jest has a way of knowin’ where the big worms lives, and when he comes to a place where he knows one of them big fellers is all curled up takin’ a nap down under the ground, he sticks his bill into the soil and begins to bore and bore, walkin’ around and around. Purty soon his bill goes out of sight, then his head, then his neck, clean up to his shoulders. That’s the way you can slip up on one of ’em. If you can ketch him in jest that stage, maybe you can git sight of him.

“Well, he bores around a while in the hole he has dug; then all at once he sets back like a hoss when there’s a big steer on the other end of the rope; and you know then he’s got a-holt of one of them big worms. The more he pulls, the more the worm stretches. If he lets up the least bit, the worm jerks his head and neck back into the hole. I seen one once a-bobbin’ up and down like that for two hours and fifteen minutes before he finally got his worm.

“Well, he pulls and tussles and yanks and jerks, and finally the worm jest can’t stand it no longer and has to let go. He shoots out jest like a nigger-shooter when you turn it loose, and like as not he hits the milamo in the eye. But he’s a good-natured bird and don’t git ringy about it. Jest why he does it, I don’t know; maybe he’s so glad to git the worm out, or maybe he sees the joke’s on him, after all; anyhow, when the worm comes out and hits him in the eye, he jest naturally gits tickled and rears back on his hind legs and laughs through his beak so you can hear him a mile or more.”

“I see,” said Lanky. “A strange bird.”

“But mighty shy,” replied Hank, “mighty shy.”

“Yeah, they’re shy critters all right,” agreed Joe, “but they ain’t near as shy as the whiffle-pooffle. Why, them things is so bashful they don’t feel comfortable unless they’re hid in the bottom of a bottomless lake.”

“Are they a fish?” asked Lanky.

“Not exactly a fish,” explained Joe, “a sort of cross, I reckon, between an eel and a gila monster.”

“Are there any around here?” asked Lanky.

“Well, maybe,” replied Joe; “maybe a few. Still I doubt it. You see right around here the lakes go dry sometimes in the dry season, and the whiffle-pooffle wants water, and plenty of it, _mucha agua_. Still there may be a few. Out in the Roswell country, they used to be numerous. Also in Toyah Creek and Leon waterholes. I expect, though, they’re gittin’ scerce out in them parts now. All game is gittin’ scerce. Still, them critters is mighty hard to ketch, and it’s jest a few that knows how to do it. Mighty few in fact.”

“Do people fish for them, then?” asked Lanky.

“Some does,” replied Joe, “but it ain’t no use to fish for ’em with a regular fishin’ outfit. I’ve seen them rich dudes from the East come out with their fine tackle, rods and reels and all that fool finery, and fish and fish for ’em all day long and never git a nibble. Still they can be caught.”

“How does one catch them?” asked Lanky.

“So far as I know it was Pecos Bill that discovered the method. Durin’ Pecos Bill’s time there was a lot of people that didn’t believe there was any sech animal as the whiffle-pooffle livin’ in the bottom of the lakes. Bill said he knowed there was, and he’d show ’em. So he studied and studied, and finally he found a way to capture the critters. First he gits together a rowboat, a long post-hole auger, and a can of oil. Then he hunts up the funniest story-teller he can find and takes him along and sets out.

“He rows out on the lake to where the water’s deep; then he takes the post-hole auger and bores a hole clean down to the bottom so as the whiffle-pooffle can come up to the top. Then he has the story-teller tell the funniest stories he can think of--all about Pat and Mike and an Englishman and a Scotchman, and all that.

“Purty soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and pricks up his ears. Then Bill tells the story-teller to git funnier. Then purty soon the whiffle-pooffle is so amused that he comes up through the hole and sticks out his head. Bill tells the man to keep on gittin’ funnier and funnier till the whiffle-pooffle comes clean out on top of the water. Then Bill begins to ply the oars, very gentle-like at first. The whiffle-pooffle is so interested and amused that he jest naturally can’t help but foller the story-teller, who all the time is gittin’ funnier and funnier. Bill rows faster and faster, all the time makin’ straight for the bank.

“Jest before he gits there, when he is rowin’ as fast as he can, he pours the oil out on the water and cuts sharply to the left. By that time the whiffle-pooffle has got up so much speed on the slick water that he can’t stop, and he jest naturally slides right out on the bank. Then Pecos Bill lands on him. If you ever git one of the critters on the land, he’s jest as helpless as a year-old baby. But they’re mighty bashful, mighty bashful.”

“In that particular, thay ain’t a-tall like the club-tailed glyptodont,” said Red, “which is a very ferocious and vicious beast. I’ll tell you, Lanky, when you’re ridin’ around in the canyons and meet one of them fellers, you’d better not git into any disputes with him about your highway rights. Jist give him the whole road and don’t argue with him. And be careful you don’t hang around under the rim-rock when them critters is around.”

“I take it they are animals,” said Lanky.

“Yeah, I guess they belong to the kingdom of beasts,” replied Red. “Some people call ’em whang-doodles, but they ain’t real whang-doodles, bein’ much bigger and more ferocious. They’re purty scerce now, but when we work the canyon tomorrow, I can show you places where they have been. Yes, sir, I can show you the very spot where one of them fellers took off one of the very best friends I ever had in this world.”

“A sort of mountain lion, I suppose,” said Lanky.

“Son, one of them babies would make a mountain lion look like a kitten. Besides, they don’t belong to the feline species nohow, bein’ more like a kangaroo in build, and about sixteen hands high when on all-fours, though most of the time they hop along on their hind legs and tail and keep their forepaws ready to biff anything that gits in their way. And if one of them critters hits you--well, you’re lucky if they find anything to bury.

“However, that ain’t their main method of combat; that ain’t the way one of ’em took off my dear friend--Jack Snodgrass was his name. The glyptodont has got a big flat tail made out of stuff like cow’s horn, except there ain’t no bone in it. This tail bein’ springy is a great aid and help in more ways than one. He can jump along with it and clear the brush, and he can land on it when he wants to jump off of a cliff, and he don’t feel no bad effects from the jar.

“Well, I started to tell you how one of them beasts took off my dear friend Jack Snodgrass. Jack used to work on this outfit, and one fall he was workin’ the canyon, jist like we’ll be tomorrow, and Jack gits a glimpse of the glyptodont. Jack was always a curious lad; so he tarried around to see what the critter was about. Jack was on the other side of a canyon, anyway, and he ’lowed he’d have plenty of time to make his stampede if the critter showed any signs of combat. So Jack jist looks across to see what’s goin’ on.

“Directly the glyptodont gits wind of him and looks at him right straight for a minute or two. But Jack still ain’t worried none, havin’ the canyon between him and the ferocious beast. He jist stands there and watches him to see what he is about. Purty soon he notices that the glyptodont is spadin’ around on the ground with his tail. Presently he scoops up a big boulder, jist like you’d lift it with a shovel. He carries this on his tail, bein’ careful not to let it fall off, and backs up and eases it off on the top of a bigger boulder. Jack begins to try to figure out a way to capture the brute; he ’lows if he ever could git him broke, he’d be a mighty handy animal to have around the place about tankin’ time.

“Well, the glyptodont walks over to the other side of the rock he’s set up and squats on his hind legs; then he draws up his front legs and begins to whirl around and around on his hind legs, jist like a spool of barbed wire on a crowbar when you’re stringin’ fence. After he spins around a while, he lets down his tail, which hits the rock he’s set up, which comes through the air like a cannon-ball. That was the last thing pore Jack ever knowed. We buried him, pore feller, next day--that is, all of him we could find. When we’re over there tomorrow, I’ll show you the place where he got kilt, as well as a lot of other places where them critters has catapulted rocks up and down the canyons jist to keep in practice and for the fun of seein’ ’em roll. Yeah, them club-tailed glyptodonts is ferocious animals.”

“They’re vicious brutes,” agreed Joe, “but they ain’t got much on the gwinter.”

“I never heard of a gwinter,” said Lanky.

“Well,” replied Joe, “did you ever hear of a godaphro?”

“No.”

“Did you ever hear of a side-swiper?”

“No.”

“Did you ever hear of a mountain-stem-winder?”

“No, I never heard of them, either.”

“Well, they’re really all one and the same thing, but the real true and correct name is gwinter.”

“And what sort of a beast is he?” asked Lanky.

“Well, he’s a grass-eatin’ quadruped,” said Joe, “something like a cross between a buffalo and a mountain-goat, only he’s a lot more ferocious. The peculiar thing about the gwinter is his legs. Instead of havin’ four legs of equal length like a critter ought to have, or two short legs in front and two long ones behind, like the glyptodont, these brutes have two long legs on the downhill side and two short legs on the uphill side. This is mighty convenient for ’em, since they don’t live on level ground nohow. Some of ’em has their right legs long, and some of ’em has their right legs short, dependin’ on which way they graze around the mountains. The Chisos and the Davis and the Guadalupe mountains used to be full of ’em. Up there, them critters was thicker than the buffalo or the antelope on the plains, but they’re gittin’ mighty scerce now. Still, they took off many a cow-hand in the early days, and sometimes yet a tenderfoot gits in the way of one of ’em and don’t come back home to the chuck wagon at night.

“If one of them critters ever starts toward you, Lanky, don’t for anything let him know you’re scered. If you try to run, he’ll git you shore. Jest stand there and look him right in the eye like you was glad to see him. He’ll be comin’ right toward you with his head down like a bat shot out of a cannon. Still, don’t move, and if you’re in the saddle, hold your hoss. Jest let that gwinter alone till he gits in two steps of you, then take a couple of steps down the hill. He can’t run the other way, and you’ll be safe. Ten to one he’ll be so mad about it he’ll try to foller you, anyway, and when he gits his short legs down hill, he’s a goner. Jest stand by and watch him roll down the mountain and break his fool neck. That’s one reason why they’re so scerce, the cowboys learned that trick. Another reason is that they fought among themselves too much. You see, them that has their long legs on the right used to meet them that has their long legs on the left as they grazed around the mountains. And when two of ’em met like that, they always tangled up. Finally they fought till the weaker side all got kilt, so now there’s only one kind on each mountain. On some mountains it’s the right-leggers, and on some mountains it’s the left-leggers.”

“If somebody would capture one alive,” said Lanky, “he could sell him to a circus for five thousand dollars.”

“That’s been tried, son; that’s been tried,” replied Joe. “However, your figger’s too small. Once when I was punchin’ cattle in the Chisos, Barnum and Bailey sent a feller all the way down from New York City with fifty thousand dollars to pay any man that would cage him a gwinter. For a long time he couldn’t git nobody to try it, till finally he come to our outfit.

“‘I won’t endanger the lives of my men in any sech manner and fashion,’ says the boss. ‘However,’ he says, turnin’ to us, ‘if any of you men want to try it on your own hook, you can. They ain’t much work to do right now, and I’ll let you off for a few days.’

“Well, we gits our best mounts and ropes, and looks after our cinches, and sets out. We scouts around a while, and shore nuff we hears one snort right near the foot of Egg-shell Mountain. We lets out our wildest yells and fires off our six-shooters, and somehow, by luck I guess, we gits the critter buffaloed, and he goes tearin’ around the mountain and us after him. Each time he goes around the mountain he gits a little higher. We sees our hosses is goin’ to give out if we don’t figger out some way to spell ’em. We ’lows that since we got the critter on the run, two of us will be enough to go around the mountain, and the others stays put. Then on the next round, two more goes, and so on and so forth. Each time we gits a bit nearer the top. Finally, we all joins in, in order to be there when he gits to the top and can’t go no further. And purty soon there he is at the top.”

“How did he escape?” asked Lanky.

“Why, the brute jest turned right through his self, jest clean wrong side out like a sock, and run the other way.”

“And that was the last you saw of him?”

“Oh, we used to see him occasionally, as we knowed by his long legs bein’ on the other side; but when winter come, he caught cold and died. And that’s what you’ll do, Lanky, if you set there by the coals and shiver. You’d better git a little shut-eye before you stand guard.”

WIND AND WEATHER

The day had been blustery enough, and Lanky’s eyes were red from the sand’s having cut into his eyeballs. There was still dust in the air, but at twilight the wind had subsided, and Lanky was experiencing that feeling of intense relief that comes when the sandstorm is over.

During the day there had been little talk. Lanky had most of the time ridden within normal hailing distance of Red Wallace; but conversation would have been difficult, and neither he nor Red had been in the mood for it. At noon each man swallowed his beans and bacon as rapidly as he could. Even then, he consumed a considerable quantity of sand.

The old-timers were sitting expectantly around the fire. Their experience with tenderfeet told them that Lanky would open the conversation, and that the topic would be the wind.

“Terrible day we had,” he observed. “How much sandstorm weather are we likely to have?”

“Son,” replied Red, “what you’ve seen today is the gentle zephers of spring. You ain’t seen a real sandstorm.”

“Then,” replied Lanky, “I’d like to know how I’m to know one when I meet it.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Lanky,” said Red. “I’ll tell you exactly how you can know. Do you recollect seein’ a log-chain hangin’ suspended from the big hackberry tree in front of the bunkhouse?”

“That immense chain?” asked Lanky.

“Yeah,” said Red. “That’s a log-chain. And you wondered what it was up there for, no doubt. Well, it’s to tell when there’s a sandstorm. As long as it’s hangin’ straight down, we know there ain’t no wind to speak of. When it hangs out at an angle of forty-five degrees, we speak of a slight breeze. It’s only when she’s stickin’ straight out parallel to the ground that it’s correct and proper to speak of a windstorm.”

“I’d think winds like that would blow all the houses and windmills over,” observed Lanky.

“It ain’t only the houses and windmills,” said Hank. “It’s real-estate. Why, there was a feller come in here one time and filed on a section of land in Colonel Slaughter’s pasture, and a big sandstorm come along, and he never did find that section. He advertised in all the papers for it, offerin’ a reward for its return, and he got lots of answers from people down in the brush country that had stray sections on their hands that they wanted to git rid of, but he looked ’em over and said none of ’em had his brand on ’em. And so he had to go back East.”

“Yeah, the wind does some mighty funny things,” said Joe. “I come dang near losin’ the best saddle hoss I ever had on account of a sandstorm.”

“I guess he got against a drift fence where the tumbleweeds and sand collected and buried the critter alive,” said Hank.

“Naw, that wasn’t it,” replied Joe, “though I’ve dug many a cow-brute out of the sand drifts. It wasn’t that. In them days I was workin’ cattle out in the Monahans country. One evenin’ the boss tells me to swing up a little draw, sayin’ the wagon would be at the head. Well, I got out of the draw jest at dark, and I looked around, but I couldn’t see no campfire anywheres in sight. I rode around a while, but still not seein’ no signs of the wagon, and bein’ tired, I decided to turn in. I was scered to turn my hoss loose, (Brown Jug was his name) for fear he’d strike off to the remuda and leave me there afoot. So I stakes him to a little cottonwood bush on top of a mound. I knowed better than to hobble the critter, for he was wise to walkin’ off with the hobbles on. Well, when I got him staked out, I took off the saddle, which I used for a pillow, and the blanket, which I used for a bed, and went to sleep.

“In the mornin’ when I woke up and looked around, the scenery wasn’t exactly familiar. There was a big cottonwood tree which I couldn’t remember seein’ the night before, and I wondered how I come to miss it. And I looked some more, and there wasn’t any Brown Jug in sight anywheres. I thinks to myself, the critter never played a dirty trick like that on me before, and I ’lows he must be around somewheres. Shorely, I says to myself, I ought to be able to find the bush I tied him to. So I whistles three times, and then I hears a weak nicker ’way up in the top of the tree, and I looks up, and damn me if there wasn’t that pore critter, with his tongue hangin’ out, dang nigh choked to death.

“Then I seen what had happened, I’d tied the hoss on top of a sand-dune. The wind had come up and the sand had blowed away. What I calculated on bein’ a bush was in fact a great big tree--so dang big in fact, that the thirty-foot lariat wouldn’t let pore Brown Jug more than half way to the ground. If I hadn’t woke up jest when I did, the pore brute would of choked to death shore.”

“How did you get him down?” asked Lanky.

“Oh, that was easy,” said Joe. “In them days I always had my old six-gun by me, and I jest whipped her out and put a bullet through the rope and let Brown Jug down. The fall didn’t seem to hurt him none, and after he blowed a little while, he was as pert as ever.

“However, the wind got up again in the middle of the mornin’, and the only way I could keep the hoss on the ground was to tie big rocks to the horn of the saddle.”

“That shows you’ve got more sense than a prairie-dog,” said Hank, “which surprises me. Many a time on the South Plains durin’ a sandstorm, I’ve seen them critters ten feet in the air, diggin’ with all their might, tryin’ to git back in their holes.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen,” said Red, “and it was the funniest sight I ever saw caused by a sandstorm. One day in the spring the boss sent me out to pizen prairie-dogs. He was one man I didn’t work for long; he jist couldn’t stand to see a man not doin’ somethin’. So when the wind would git bad and he didn’t want to go out his self, he would send us out to ride fence and pizen dogs and the like.

“Well, this time I rode over to where I knowed there was a big town, and I rode up, and what do you suppose I saw? The sand was all blowed away, and there was them holes stickin’ forty feet in the air. I never knowed before that time how crooked them critters made their residences.”

“The wind’s purty hard on the rodents sometimes,” said Hank. “I knowed a wind, however, that helped out a pore human down on Sulphur Draw that was about to starve. This feller had come in to farm, and he raised a cribful of corn, but the ranchers wouldn’t buy it because it wasn’t shelled, and wouldn’t go in a morral. So the pore farmer was about to starve, and his old lady and kids to boot.

“This feller was jest fresh from the sticks and didn’t have much confidence in anybody, anyway, and he ’lowed the ranchers was waitin’ for a chance to steal his corn. So he nailed up the crib door good and tight. He noticed a knothole in one of the walls, but he saw it was too little for an ear of corn to go through; so he jest let that go.

“One day a wind come up, and the farmer and his folks hid in the dugout like prairie-dogs, and the next day the wind laid, and they crawled out and looked around; and there was corn cobs scattered all alongside the crib. The old man thought shore somebody had stole his corn, but when he got the crib door open, he saw it there all shelled as purty as if he’d done it his self.

“He was a sort of ignorant and superstitious man, and the next day when I happened by, he says to me that the fairies had come and shelled his corn. Well, I never did take no stock in fairies and the like, and I knowed there must be a reasonable and sane explanation somewheres. So I picked up one of the corn cobs and stuck it in the knothole. It was jest a good tight fit. Then I told the old man what must of happened. The wind got up and would of blowed all his corn out of the crib, but the knothole wasn’t big enough for an ear to go through. Hence each ear got shelled, and all the corn was left in the crib. It was jest as simple as that. Perfectly natural. If them old fellers we read about that believed in fairies and witches, and all that crap, had jest of used their heads, they’d found out that everything’s natural and simple enough. They put me in mind of Mex’cans. But as I was about to say, the old man sold his corn and got on purty well.”

“There was a farmer close to us one time,” said Joe, “that lost his milk cows in a curious manner. He had a little patch of pop-corn, and one hot day the cows broke into the patch and started eatin’ it up. All of a sudden that corn begun poppin’ and flyin’ every which away.”

“Did the shooting grains kill the cows?” asked Lanky.

“Naw,” said Joe. “When the fool critters saw all that pop-corn flyin’ through the air, they thought it was snow, and jest naturally froze to death.”

“Do you ever have tornadoes out here?” asked Lanky.

“You mean cyclones?” asked Joe. “Well, yes, sometimes. A queer thing happened to me one time up here jest below the Caprock. We was goin’ up the trail, and one evenin’ it was hot as blazes and sultry and still. The cattle was gittin’ nervous and we was all expectin’ hell to break loose any time. And shore nuff it did. A cloud come up in the northwest and it thundered and lightened, and then the storm struck us. Them steers jest naturally histed their tails and left the country. I was on a good hoss, but it was all I could do to stay in sight of them cattle. My pony was givin’ me all he had, and he wasn’t gainin’ on them steers none. Neither was the other boys gittin’ close to ’em.

“D’rec’ly I looked back over my shoulder like, and there was them clouds bilin’ and whirlin’ around in the sky; then all at once a funnel drops down and takes out after me. I started quirtin’ my hoss. I feel right mean about it yet when I think about it, for he was doin’ his best to ketch that herd, and he couldn’t do no more.

“Well, the next thing I knowed I was up in the air still in the saddle with my hoss under me, whirlin’ round and round like a top. That cyclone carried me around in the air like that for a half an hour or more, me scered all the time that it was goin’ to drop me. But it didn’t. After a while it sets me down jest as gentle as a mother with her baby.

“I looks up, and there’s the herd comin’ hell-bent for election right toward me. I gits off my slicker and fires off my six-shooter and turns them steers and gits ’em to millin’. Purty soon the other boys rides up, and we gits ’em quieted down, and the whole outfit has to set up and sing to ’em all night.

“The next day we counted ’em out, and we hadn’t lost a head; not a single cow-brute was missin’. If it hadn’t been for that cyclone, we’d been gathering cattle for a week, and then likely we wouldn’t of found ’em all.”

“That’s the way it is,” said Red. “Some winds is good and some winds is bad, but I’d rather have sandstorms and risk a cyclone once in a while than to have mud in the rainy season like they have on the Black Land divide.”

“We found lots of mud when we drove through last fall,” said Lanky.

“You jist thought you found mud,” replied Red. “You ought to have seen them flats before they begun makin’ roads. When I first hit that country, they was jist fencin’ off the lanes, and when I got a job, the boss put me to ridin’ fence. One day I was ridin’ along by the lane, and I looked over and there was a good, brand-new Stetson hat layin’ on the top of a mud-hole. I thinks to myself, ‘That’s a good hat, and I might as well have it as the next feller.’ So I got down and got a-holt of a fence-post to steady myself, and reached out to git it. Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out: ‘Hey, what you doin’ there?’ he says. Then I noticed for the first time that there was a man’s head stickin’ out of the mud. I asked the feller if he needed any help, but he said he was ridin’ a mighty good hoss, and he guessed he’d make it through all right. He afterwards got to be a mighty good friend of mine. Pete Jackson was his name.”

“Well, sir,” said Joe, “speakin’ of mud, that puts me in mind of one experience I had goin’ up the trail in ’83. We was kinda late in gittin’ through, and the rainy weather had already set in before we crossed the Black Land divide. We hadn’t hardly got across when we begun to notice that our hosses was losin’ all their pertness. The boss’s pet cow-hoss got as lazy as a jackass. My own favorite hoss, Brown Jug, jest got sleepier and sleepier, till finally he jest laid down and went to sleep and never did wake up. We lost half of our remuda jest like that.

“The boss was terribly worried because he didn’t like the idea of trainin’ on foot, and besides he didn’t know whether his hands would stay with him or not if he didn’t have nothin’ for ’em to ride. Well, I figured there must be a cause of hoss sickness jest as there is for everything else. So I begins to take note. I notices that all the sick hosses has mud-balls on their tails. Then I guesses what must be the matter. The weight of the mud on the critters’ tails was makin’ sech a pull on the brutes’ hides that they jest couldn’t shet their eyes. And I figured that bein’ unable to shet their eyes, they was jest naturally dyin’ for sleep. I tells the boss, and we cuts off the balls of mud. As soon as we would cut one off, the critter would fall into a deep sleep, jest like Adam in the Bible. Some of the worst ones slept steady for four days and nights, and then woke up fresh and pert as ever.”

“Still,” said Red, “it ain’t the mud and it ain’t the wind that makes Texas weather bad; it’s the sudden and quick changes.”

“That’s right,” said Hank; “that’s right, as our new boss found out once. He ’lowed he was goin’ to keep a record of the weather. So he comes home with a brand-new thermometer and hangs it up on the front porch, and calls us boys to look at it. Well, sir, while we was standin’ there the mercury runs up to about ninety or a hundred to git a good start. Then all of a sudden, down she goes with sech a jar that she jest naturally knocks the bottom right out of the tube and ruins the boss’s new thingamabob. Good instrument it was too; not jest a mercantile advertisement, but a good one that he had bought and paid money for.

“But that didn’t faze that man none. He sent off back East somewheres and had one made to order with a rubber cushion in the bottom of the tube to take up the jar when the mercury fell. He got a patent on the idear and got rich. His thermometers are in use all over the Southwest. They’re the only kind that’ll stand the climate.