Chapter IV: Part 4

“He gits on Widow-Maker, and that hoss begins to go through his gaits, doin’ the end-to-end, the sunfish, and the back-throw; and about that time the rider goes up in the sky. Bill watches him through a spyglass and sees him land on Pike’s Peak. No doubt he would of starved to death up there, but Bill roped him by the neck and drug him down, thus savin’ his life.”

“Yeah,” said Red, “Widow-Maker was jist the sort of hoss that suited Bill exactly. For one thing, it saved him a lot of shootin’, because he didn’t have no trouble keepin’ other people off his mount; and as for Bill, he could ride anything that had hair and some things that didn’t have. Once, jist for fun, he throwed a surcingle on a streak of lightin’ and rode it over Pike’s Peak.

“Another time he bet a Stetson hat he could ride a cyclone. He went up on the Kansas line and simply eared that tornado down and got on it. Down he come across Oklahoma and the Panhandle a-settin’ on that tornado, a-curlin’ his mustache and a-spurrin’ it in the withers. Seein’ it couldn’t throw him, it jist naturally rained out from under him, and that’s the way Bill got the only spill he ever had.

“Yeah,” continued Red, “I reckon Bill was mighty hard to throw. A smart lad he was, and a playful sort of feller, too. In his spare time he used to amuse his self puttin’ thorns on things--bushes and cactuses and the like, and he even stuck horns on the toads so they’d match up with the rest of the country.”

“I see he’s been at work in this country,” said Lanky. “Did he live all his life in Texas?”

“Naw, he didn’t,” said Joe. “Bill was a good deal like his old man. When he had killed all the Indians and bad men, and the country got all peaceful and quiet, he jest couldn’t stand it any longer, and he saddled up his hoss and started west. Out on the New Mexico line he met an old trapper, and they got to talkin’, and Bill told him why he was leavin’, and said if the old man knowed where there was a tough outfit, he’d be much obliged if he would tell him how to git to it.

“‘Ride up the draw about two hundred miles,’ says the old trapper, ‘and you’ll find a bunch of guys so tough that they bite nails in two jest for the fun of it.’

“So Bill rides on in a hurry, gittin’ somewhat reckless on account of wantin’ to git to that outfit and git a look at the bad _hombres_ that the old man has told him about. The first thing Bill knowed, his hoss stumps his toe on a mountain and breaks his fool neck rollin’ down the side, and so Bill finds his self afoot.

“He takes off his saddle and goes walkin’ on, packin’ it, till all at once he comes to a big rattlesnake. He was twelve feet long and had fangs like the tushes of a _javelina_; and he rears up and sings at Bill and sticks out his tongue like he was lookin’ for a scrap. There wasn’t nothin’ that Bill wouldn’t fight, and he always fought fair; and jest to be shore that rattlesnake had a fair show and couldn’t claim he took advantage of him, Bill let him have three bites before he begun. Then he jest naturally lit into that reptile and mortally flailed the stuffin’ out of him. Bill was always quick to forgive, though, and let by-gones be by-gones, and when the snake give up, Bill took him up and curled him around his neck, and picked up his saddle and outfit and went on his way.

“As he was goin’ along through a canyon, all at once a big mountain lion jumped off of a cliff and spraddled out all over Bill. Bill never got excited. He jest took his time and laid down his saddle and his snake, and then he turned loose on that cougar. Well, sir, the hair flew so it rose up like a cloud and the jack-rabbits and road-runners thought it was sundown. It wasn’t long till that cougar had jest all he could stand, and he begun to lick Bill’s hand and cry like a kitten.

“Well, Bill jest ears him down and slips his bridle on his head, throws on the saddle and cinches her tight, and mounts the beast. Well, that cat jest tears out across the mountains and canyons with Bill on his back a-spurrin’ him in the shoulders and quirtin’ him down the flank with the rattlesnake.

“And that’s the way Bill rode into the camp of the outfit the old trapper had told him about. When he gits there, he reaches out and cheeks down the cougar and sets him on his haunches and gits down and looks at his saddle.

“There was them tough _hombres_ a-settin’ around the fire playin’ _monte_. There was a pot of coffee and a bucket of beans a-boilin’ on the fire, and as Bill hadn’t had nothin’ to eat for several days, he was hungry; so he stuck his hand down in the bucket and grabbed a handful of beans and crammed ’em into his mouth. Then he grabbed the coffee pot and washed ’em down, and wiped his mouth on a prickly-pear. Then he turned to the men and said, ‘Who in the hell is boss around here, anyway?’

“‘I was,’ says a big stout feller about seven feet tall, ‘but you are now, stranger.’

“And that was the beginning of Bill’s outfit.”

“But it was only the beginnin’s,” said Red; “for it wasn’t long after that that he staked out New Mexico and fenced Arizona for a calf-pasture. He built a big ranch-house and had a big yard around it. It was so far from the yard gate to the front door, that he used to keep a string of saddle hosses at stations along the way, for the convenience of visitors. Bill always was a hospitable sort of chap, and when company come, he always tried to persuade them to stay as long as he could git ’em to. Deputy sheriffs and brand inspectors he never would let leave a-tall.

“One time his outfit was so big that he would have his cooks jist dam up a draw to mix the biscuit dough in. They would dump in the flour and the salt and the bakin’-powder and mix it up with teams and fresnoes. You can still see places where the dough was left in the bottom of the draw when they moved on. Alkali lakes they call ’em. That’s the bakin’-powder that stayed in the ground.

“One time when there was a big drought and water got scerce on Bill’s range, he lit in and dug the Río Grande and ditched water from the Gulf of Mexico. Old man Windy Williams was water boy on the job, and he said Bill shore drove his men hard for a few days till they got through, and it kept him busy carryin’ water.”

“I guess it took about all of Bill’s time to manage a ranch like that,” said Lanky.

“Not all, not all,” said Joe. “That was his main vocation and callin’, but he found time for a good many other things. He was always goin’ in for somethin’ else when the cattle business got slack.

“When the S. P. come through, he got a contract furnishin’ ’em wood. Bill went down into Mexico and rounded up a bunch of greasers and put ’em to cuttin’ wood. He made a contract with ’em that they was to git half the wood they cut. When the time was up, they all had big stacks of cordwood, Mex’can cords, you understand, that they don’t know what to do with. So Bill talked it over with ’em and finally agreed to take it off their hands without chargin’ ’em a cent. Bill always was liberal.

“He done some of the gradin’ on the S. P. too. This time he went out and rounded up ten thousand badgers and put ’em to diggin’. He said they was better laborers than Chinks, because he could learn ’em how to work sooner. Bill had some trouble, however, gittin’ ’em to go in a straight line, and that’s why the S. P. is so crooked in places.

“He also got a contract fencin’ the right-of-way. The first thing that he done was to go out on the line of Texas and New Mexico and buy up all the dry holes old Bob Sanford had made out there tryin’ to git water. He pulled ’em up and sawed ’em up into two-foot lengths for post-holes.”

“I’ve heard that Paul Bunyan did that with dry oil-wells,” said Lanky.

“Paul Bunyan might of for all I know,” said Joe. “But if he did, he learned the trick from Pecos Bill, for this was before oil had been invented.

“However, it cost so much to freight the holes down that Bill give up the plan long before he had used up all of Bob Sanford’s wells, and found a cheaper and better way of makin’ post-holes.”

“What was his new method?” asked Lanky.

“Why, he jest went out and rounded up a big bunch of prairie-dogs, and turned ’em loose where he wanted the fence, and of course every critter of ’em begun diggin’ a hole, for it’s jest a prairie-dog’s nature to dig holes. As soon as a prairie-dog would git down about two feet, Bill would yank him out and stick a post in the hole. Then the fool prairie-dog would go start another one, and Bill would git it. Bill said he found the prairie-dog labor very satisfactory. The only trouble was that sometimes durin’ off hours, the badgers that he had gradin’ would make a raid on the prairie-dogs, and Bill would have to git up and drive ’em back to their own camp.”

“Did Bill have any other occupations?” asked Lanky.

“Well,” said Joe, “he used to fight Indians jest for recreation, but he never did make a business of it like some did, huntin’ ’em for a dollar a scalp. In fact Bill was not bloodthirsty and cruel, and he never scalped an Indian in his life. He’d jest skin ’em and tan their hides.”

“That reminds me,” said Hank, “of another business he used to carry on as a sort of side-line, and that was huntin’ buffalo. You see, it was the hides that was valuable, and Bill thought it was too much of a waste to kill a buffalo jest for the hide; so he’d jest hold the critters and skin ’em alive and then turn ’em aloose to grow a new hide. A profitable business he built up, too, but he jest made one mistake.”

“What was that?” asked Lanky.

“One spring he skinned too early, and a norther come up, and all the buffalo took cold and died. Mighty few of ’em left after that.”

“Did Bill ever get married?” asked Lanky.

“Oh, yes,” said Joe. “He married lots of women in his day, but he never had the real tender affection for any of the rest of ’em that he had for his first wife, Slue-Foot Sue.

“Bill savvied courtin’ the ladies all right; yet he never took much stock in petticoats till he met Slue-Foot Sue; but when he saw that gal come ridin’ down the Río Grande on a catfish, it jest got next to him, and he married her right off.

“I say right off--but she made him wait a few days till she could send to San Antonio for a suitable and proper outfit, the principal garment bein’ a big steel wire bustle, like all the women wore when they dressed up in them days.

“Well, everything would have gone off fine, but on the very day of the weddin’ Sue took a fool notion into her head that she jest had to ride Widow-Maker. For a long time Bill wouldn’t hear to it, but finally she begun to cry, and said Bill didn’t love her any more. Bill jest couldn’t stand to see her cry; so he told her to go ahead but to be keerful.

“Well, she got on that hoss, and he give about two jumps, and she left the saddle. He throwed her so high that she had to duck as she went up to keep from bumpin’ her head on the moon. Then she come down, landin’ right on that steel bustle, and that made her bounce up jest as high, nearly, as she had went before. Well, she jest kept on bouncin’ like that for ten days and nights, and finally Bill had to shoot her to keep her from starvin’ to death. It nearly broke his heart. That was the only time Bill had ever been known to shed tears, and he was so tore up that he wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with a woman for two weeks.”

[2] A type of loop. Pronounced _hoolián_.

THE EXODUS OF PECOS BILL

Lanky had been sent for, and this was his last night in camp. His face was tanned; he had gained in weight; he had earned money in his own right. He felt that he was now a man.

He and his cronies sat around the fire in silence. Joe and the boys would miss the kid, and he hated to leave. This silence wouldn’t do.

“What became of Pecos Bill?” asked Lanky.

“That would be hard to say,” said Joe, “hard to say. Everybody knows he’s gone, jest like the open range and the longhorn steer; but jest how and where he passed in his checks, I don’t suppose anybody will ever find out for certain. A lot of the fellers that knowed him are dead, and a lot of ’em has bad memories--a lot of the old-timers has bad memories--and some of ’em are sech damn liars that you can’t go by what they say.”

“You’ve seen Pecos Bill, haven’t you, Joe?” said Lanky.

“Well, yes, that is I seen him when I was a young buck. But I never seen him die, and I never could find out jest how he was took off. I’ve seen some mighty hot arguments on the subject, and I’ve knowed one or two fellers to die with their boots on after gittin’ in a quarrel in jest that way.”

“I heard one account a few years ago,” said Red, “that may be right. There was a feller in Amarillo named Gabriel Asbury Jackson. He’d worked his self out of a job in Kansas and had come to Texas to buck the cigarette evil. One time he cornered a bunch of us that was too drunk to make a git-away and begun talkin’ to us about smokin’.

“‘Young men,’ he says, ‘beware of cigarettes. You think you’re smart to smoke a sack of Bull Durham every day, do you? Well, look at Pecos Bill. A stalwart young man he was, tough as nails, a fine specimen. But he got to foolin’ with cigarettes. What did they do for him?’ he says. ‘Why, nothin’ at first. But did he quit? No!’ he says. ‘He puffed away for ninety years, but they finally got him. And they’ll git you, every mother’s son of you, if you don’t leave ’em alone.’”

“That ain’t so,” said Joe. “That man was jest a liar. Cigarettes never killed Pecos Bill. He was, however, a great smoker, but he never smoked Bull Durham. He made him up a mixture of his own, the principal ingredients bein’ Kentucky home-spun, sulphur, and gun-powder. Why, he would have thought he was a sissy if he’d smoked Bull Durham.

“When the matches was scerce Bill used to ride out into a thunderstorm and light his cigarette with a streak of lightnin’, and that’s no doubt what’s back of a tale you hear every once in a while about him bein’ struck and kilt. But nobody that knows how Bill throwed a surcingle over a streak of lightnin’ and rode it over Pike’s Peak will ever believe that story.”

“I heard it was liquor that killed pore Bill,” said Hank.

“Must of been boot-leg,” said Red.

“Naw,” said Hank. “You see, Bill bein’ brought up as he was from tender youth on whiskey and onions, was still a young man when whiskey lost its kick for him. He got to puttin’ nitroglycerin in his drinks. That worked all right for a while, but soon he had to go to wolf-bait; and when that got so it didn’t work, he went to fish-hooks. Bill used to say, rather sorrowful-like, that that was the only way he could git an idear from his booze. But after about fifty years the fish-hooks rusted out his interior parts and brought pore Bill to an early grave.”

“I don’t know who told you that windy,” said Joe. “It might of been your own daddy. But it ain’t so. It’s jest another damn lie concocted by them damn prohibition men.”

“I heard another tale,” said Red, “which may be right for all I know. I heard that Bill went to Fort Worth one time, and there he seen a Boston man who had jist come to Texas with a mail-order cowboy outfit on; and when Bill seen him, he jist naturally laid down and laughed his self to death.”

“That may be so,” said Joe, “but I doubt it. I heard one tale about the death of Pecos Bill that I believe is the real correct and true account.”

“And what was that?” asked Lanky.

“Well, Bill happened to drift into Cheyenne jest as the first rodeo was bein’ put on. Bein’ a bit curious to know what it was all about, he went out to the grounds to look the thing over. When he seen the ropers and the riders, he begun to weep; the first tears he’d shed since the death of Slue-Foot Sue. Well, finally when a country lawyer jest three years out of Mississippi got up to make a speech and referred to the men on horseback as cowboys, Bill turned white and begun to tremble. And then when the country lawyer went on to talk about ‘keepin’ inviolate the sacred traditions of the Old West,’ Bill jest went out and crawled in a prairie-dog hole and died of solemncholy.”

Lanky looked at Red and Hank. They had not missed the point, but they chose to ignore it.

Joe talked on. “After several years,” he said, “when all Bill’s would-be rivals was sure he was dead, they all begun to try to ruin his reputation and defame his character. They said he was a hot-headed, overbearin’ sort of feller. They was too scered to use the word, even after Bill died, but what they meant was that he was a _killer_.

“Now, Pecos Bill did kill lots of men. He never kept no tally his self, and I don’t suppose nobody will ever know jest how many he took off. Of course I’m not referrin’ to Mex’cans and Indians. Bill didn’t count them. But Bill wasn’t a bad man, and he hardly ever killed a man without just cause.

“For instance, there was Big Ike that he shot for snorin’, that Bill’s enemies talked up so much. But them that was doin’ the talkin’ would forgit to mention that Bill had been standin’ guard over Mexico steers every night for six weeks and was gittin’ a bit sleepy.

“Then there was Ris Risbone. Ris was one of these practical jokers, and he ramrodded an outfit that fell in behind Bill’s on the trail. Ris had a dozen or so jokes, and when he pulled one, he slapped his knees and laughed and laughed whether anybody else was a-laughin’ or not. One day Ris rode up to Bill’s chuck-wagon when there wasn’t nobody there but the cook, and he was asleep in the shade of the wagon with his head between the wheels. Ris slipped up and grabbed the trace chains and begun rattlin’ ’em and yellin’ ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ The pore spick woke up thinkin’ that the team was runnin’ away, and that he was about to git his pass to Saint Peter. He jumped up and bumped his head on the wagon; then he wakes up and looks around, and there stands Ris slappin’ his knees and laughin’. Jest then Bill rides up, but he never said nothin’.

“When the outfits got to Abilene, Bill was in the White Elephant with some of his men, fixin’ to take a drink. Jest as Bill was about to drop his fish-hooks in his glass, Ris poked his head in at the winder and yelled, ‘Fire! Fire!’--and Bill did.

“In one killin’, however, Bill acted a bit hasty, as he admitted his self. One day he called Three-Fingered Ed out of the saloon, sayin’ he’d like to speak with him in private. Bill led Ed out into a back alley, and there they stopped.

“‘Say, Ed,’ he says, lookin’ him right in the eye, ‘didn’t you say that Mike said I was a hot-headed, overbearin’ sort of feller?’

“‘Naw,’ says Ed, ‘You mistook me. He never said that.’

“‘Well, doggone,’ says Bill, ‘ain’t that too bad. I’ve gone and killed an innocent man.’

“Well, Lanky, maybe your pa’ll let you come back next fall.”

THE END

Transcriber’s Note

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated below.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the chapter in which the anchor occurs. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, missing or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Descriptors were added to illustrations without captions.

The following spelling corrections were made:

biggest and the [straighest] straightest
we [liked] lacked one man
we work the canyon [tomorow] tomorrow
I’d jest [made] make him mad
the old [traper] trapper