Part 3

“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.

“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.