Part 2

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.