Pecos Bill

by James Cloyd Bowman

  “I had already thought of that,” replied Pecos from the depth of an ocean of despair, “but I’m afraid the rope would cut her in two. Just think of the terrific speed she’s traveling!”

  “But can’t you catch her in your arms or somethin’?” Gun Smith continued hopefully.

  “I might, if it wasn’t for that confounded steel-spring bustle, but with that on, I’m sure it would kill us both!”

  After ten or a dozen of these lightning-like bounces, Sue began to realize her novel situation. Once, as she came whizzing past, she succeeded in timing her shrieks just right, so that her colonel heard, “S-t-o-p m-e!”

  When Pecos was entirely unable to do this, Sue tried to shout other of her wishes, but her words sounded only like a siren as she flew whizzing away into the sky.

  After a prolonged conference with His Eminence, my lord walked over to where the colonel was waiting and said emphatically, “I say, colonel, why don’t you stop her?”

  “Why don’t you stop her yourself?” retorted Pecos.

  “But, don’t you know, I didn’t start her!”

  “And neither did I!” replied Pecos. “The fact is, I did everything possible to prevent the calamity. But you know Sue!”

  “But, how shall I say, it’s surely your fault. You tempted her with your bucking bronco!”

  “I didn’t tempt her, I’m telling you. The very name of the horse should have been a warning,” Pecos replied, out of patience. “I told her it was risky to ride Widow Maker!”

  “Evidently you know very little about women,” my lord declared. “When you said your horse was dangerous, it was the best way to make her want to ride him. That’s women for you.”

  Slue-foot Sue bounces on her bustle.

  Despite their argument, Slue-foot Sue kept right on bouncing up and down. During the second day Pecos began to collect his wits and throw strings of dried beef around Sue’s neck to keep her from starving to death. By timing his arm perfectly with her rebound, he was able to thus lasso food around her neck nearly every time he tried.

  Since there didn’t seem to be any end in sight to Sue’s bouncing, Gun Smith and Chuck and Moon Hennessey thought they might just as well set out for the I. X. L. Ranch. There was nothing they could do, and the entire household was so completely disrupted that they were famished for something to eat. Besides, there might be a stampede on back home or something worse. Pecos gave them his permission to go, and as soon as they were out of reach of Pinnacle Mountain they began to laugh themselves sick. Gun Smith started, remarking with straight face, “Slue-foot Sue is sure one prize bouncin’ bride!”

  Mushmouth burst out with a verse of “The Little Black Bull Came Bawling Down the Mountain.”

  Rusty Peters shouted:

  “I’m a riding son of thunder of the sky,

  I’m a bronco twisting wonder on the fly.

  Hey, you earthlings, shut your winders,

  We’re a-ripping clouds to flinders—

  If the blue-eyed darling kicks at you, you die.”

  As he finished, Chuck took it up:

  “I want to be a cowboy and with the cowboys stand,

  Big spurs upon my bootheels and a lasso in my hand;

  My hat broad brimmed and belted upon my head I’ll place,

  And wear my chaparajos with elegance and grace.”

  “But I won’t ever try to ride that skyscrapin’ Widow Maker, not after what’s happened to the fair Sue,” roared Gun Smith. “I love my life too well!”

  So the cowboys went joyously back to their work. But back on Pinnacle Mountain, Pecos was neither joyous nor happy. After three days of ceaseless watching, he was able to estimate the time it would take Sue to come to rest. During the first, there had been an hour and a half between succeeding rebounds, during the second day an hour and a quarter, and during the third day only an hour. At this rate he could plainly understand that she still had two or three more days to go before stopping.

  Night and day Pecos Bill stood and watched helplessly. Each night he built a fire so that Sue might know he had not deserted her.

  At last, at the end of the sixth day, Pecos succeeded in lassoing Sue and in carrying her in to her prostrate mother.

  “The wretch! The wretch! The wretch!” snapped the mother.

  “Colonel Bill’s to blame,” insisted my lord.

  Slue-foot Sue was too exhausted even to cry. She lay with a wan, helpless, pathetic little smile playing silently around her mouth. After a week or two she began listlessly to talk, but in a strange, quiet, mouselike whisper. The vivacious, romantic Sue that had been was no more.

  “Wouldn’t it be best, Pecos, if our marriage were never to take place after all?” she said appealingly one afternoon a week later, as Pecos sat faithfully beside her bed. “You see, I won’t want ever to ride a bronco again, nor even look at a catfish. I’m entirely cured. I want to go back with Mother to a world where things are at least partly civilized.”

  The mother, who was listening, called my lord and His Eminence. Together they decided to release Colonel Bill from all future obligations as regards Sue.

  It was another new experience for Pecos Bill when he was obliged to take a lasting farewell of Sue. There were ever so many things he wanted to say, but, like the wise man that he was, he kept them all discreetly under the middle of his tongue.

  He kissed Sue’s hand in silence, took up his Stetson and walked with mixed feelings out where Widow Maker was patiently waiting. He leapt astride and rode and rode and rode, without hesitating, across the endless country. He crossed Canada, skirted the valleys of the Platte, of the Missouri, of the Arkansas, and of the Rio Grande. In silence he rode here and there among the mountains, along the rivers, and across the rolling mesa. And everywhere he went he told his troubles to the Coyotes and the other animals, and they all told him theirs. There wasn’t a thing any of them could do about anything.

  “But if I can’t do anything about Sue, there’s plenty else I can turn my hand to,” mused Pecos as he rode sadly along.

  The first day he amused himself by putting horns on all the toads he met. The second day he put the thorns on the mesquite trees and cactuses. The third day he cried so hard his tears started the Butte Falls in Montana. The fourth day he used up all the prickly pear leaves in Idaho wiping his eyes, they smarted so. The fifth day he turned all the cornflowers and bluebottles into bachelor’s buttons.

  When Pecos Bill finally rode into the I. X. L. Ranch he was wistful and sad. Something fine had gone from his life, never to return.

  “Oh no, it isn’t as you think,” Pecos replied when Gun Smith asked him why he looked so down and out. “Fate never intended me to be a husband. I’m awfully glad Slue-foot Sue and the others found it out so soon. I just wasn’t cut out for a husband, you might say. No, boys, that’s not what’s got me downhearted.

  “What’s really troubling me, Gun Smith, is the coming of the nesters and the hoe-men,” Pecos continued. “Everywhere, by the side of the Platte and down the Missouri and across the Arkansas and along the Rio Grande, civilization is on the march. Covered wagons and shacks are multiplying by leaps and bounds, barbed wire is being stretched, and homesteads are becoming permanent! The days of the free grass range are gone forever!”

  “You don’t mean it!” Gun Smith exclaimed, not sure he could believe his ears.

  “The railroads and the barbed wire are turning the trick. I’ve just come from visiting all the rangeland, and I know what I’m talking about. It won’t be long now until we’ll have got our herds together and rushed our cattle to the nearest packing house. Of course, there are a few things we’ll have to do before we start the drive.”

  Pecos Bill concluded by singing a song he had improvised along the way:

  “Oh, it’s squeak! squeak! squeak!

  Hear them stretching of the wire.

  The nester brand is on the land;

  I reckon I’ll retire.

  ’Twas good to live when all the sod
/>
  Without no fence or fuss,

  Belonged in partnership to God,

  The government and us.

  While progress toots her brassy horn

  And makes her hoe-men buzz,

  I thank the Lord I wasn’t born

  No later than I wuz.”

  PART 4

  THE PASSING OF PECOS BILL

  CHAPTER 17

  RUSTLERS DELUXE

  With the passing of time, especially the time Pecos was riding over to Pinnacle Mountain to see Sue, the cattle in his herds increased like guinea pigs. No one had any idea of their number. It got more and more difficult for the outriders to keep the steers from wandering and straying. The government needed more and more beef for its army posts and for the Indian tribes on the reservations. In this situation, politicians began to rustle cattle. And the biggest politician of the lot was Major Duval, the lord of the mountain.

  Major Duval bribed all the officers of the law in his section of the country and kept justice playing at blindman’s buff.

  In fact, the major had such a taking way with him that his cattle got to be known everywhere as the Miracle Herd. He had a hidden valley of bluegrass, inside a great box canyon among the mountains. This was quite similar to Hell’s Gate Gulch, except that it was ten times as large. And the miracle in it was this—no matter how many steers he sold to the government, his herd never got a bit smaller.

  The major and his confidential henchmen had a little saying of their own that they enjoyed repeating: “Eatin’ one’s own meat is worse than eatin’ poison.”

  These men not only stole cattle, they also traveled great distances to gather in hogs for their own use. They did love the taste of bacon between their teeth.

  One day a hoe-man or homesteader—that’s what the cowmen called the families who were beginning to take up the land for permanent farms—tracked his own hogs to the major’s ranch. He was expert at trailing and he was sure he had found the thieves. Imagine his surprise at meeting what seemed a neatly dressed gentleman of leisure. The major greeted the hoe-man cordially and told him to look around the premises until he had satisfied himself that the hogs were not at the Miracle Ranch. After the man admitted he must be mistaken, the major invited him to dinner. The homesteader innocently partook of his own meat and praised his host for the wonderful table he set. After he had gone, Major Duval and his henchmen doubled over with laughter at their clever deception.

  “The only reason we didn’t kill him,” Duval told his scouts who came in later, “was because we want him to live long enough to raise one more litter of pigs for us.”

  As time went on, Major Duval and his rustlers became more and more daring in their raids upon the cattle of neighboring herds. They knew that they had the judge and the attorneys on their side and so they feared neither man nor the devil.

  Now the major had for some time been cutting out the choicest of Pecos Bill’s steers. Pecos Bill’s outriders themselves had known this but hadn’t said a word, for they were afraid Pecos would think they were neglecting their duty. Besides, Pecos Bill’s thoughts had been too much concerned with Sue for him to bother about a few stolen steers, more or less.

  Suddenly things came to an acute crisis. Major Duval’s men accidentally came face-to-face with three of Pecos Bill’s outriders. Shots were exchanged and one of Major Duval’s henchmen was left dead on the range.

  This happening so enraged Major Duval that he planned immediate revenge. He called together a dozen of his most daring outlaws, and the posse rode straight in the direction of Pecos Bill’s ranch. They were prepared neither to give nor to take quarter.

  These men quickly killed the first two of Pecos Bill’s outriders they happened to meet. “Shootin’s purty fair this mornin’,” they laughed as they rode forward.

  “Could be a lot better!” cackled Puke, the leader of the posse.

  And then unexpectedly they came upon Peewee. He had taken off his shirt and, for the minute, had laid aside his gun and was enjoying a morning bath in a quiet little pool of sparkling water.

  “Stick ’em up!” shouted Puke.

  Peewee turned quickly and, seeing his danger, dove underwater, coming up next to where he had left his gun. He wasn’t one to allow himself to be captured alive and tortured by any crowd of bullies. As he rose to lay his hand on his faithful weapon, he was riddled with a dozen bullets.

  “Huntin’s gettin’ better fast,” laughed Puke.

  “Yes,” grunted Polly, “but let’s be roundin’ up some of these steers before we meet the enemy in full force.”

  “It’s sense you’re talkin’ this time,” answered Puke. “Let’s get goin’.”

  Soon the posse had cut out a thousand of Pecos Bill’s choicest steers and was urging them in the direction of their Miracle Herd.

  Puke, the bully, rode in silence for two or three hours. He seemed to be weighing something very deeply in his mind. Finally he turned to the man next him and said, “Say, Polly.”

  “Yes, Puke.”

  “You know what?”

  “No, Puke, I don’t.”

  “Then I’ll tell you. The major’s old rye has it twenty ways over any brand o’ squirrel whiskey in the whole range country. A nip or two would taste mighty good just about now. You know what, when I get these snailin’ critters turned in with the Miracle Herd, I mean to drink down a full quart at a gulp, raw!”

  It was two days later that Chuck found Peewee’s body. Peewee’s calico pony seemed not fully to understand. He was nibbling the grass and affectionately nosing the body and was hungry for human company.

  It was easy for Chuck to unravel the tragedy. He found Peewee’s shirt and gun beside the pool of sparkling water. He studied the footprints of the strange horses. One was larger than the others and toed in slightly with its left hind foot. Yes, these ruffians were from Major Duval’s ranch and were still working to increase the size of the Miracle Herd.

  Chuck hurried to the ranch house, notified Pecos Bill and Gun Smith, and together they rode back, carrying a shovel.

  Chuck dug a rude grave, while Pecos Bill and Gun Smith wrapped Peewee’s body in his blanket and tenderly lowering it into the ground, then filled in the grave with earth.

  When they had finished, they stood a minute awkwardly wiping their foreheads and dangling their hats and wishing that someone was present who could rightly speak for them.

  After a strained minute, Pecos Bill pronounced the simple eulogy: “Peewee, we leave you to God and the free grass prairie. Good-bye, Peewee.”

  As they turned to ride quietly away, Gun Smith said with force, “Peewee, in spite of everything, you was a man!”

  When Gun Smith and Chuck had finished telling Pecos everything concerning Major Duval and his Miracle Ranch, Pecos thought a moment and then said quietly, “I think I’ll just take a run down there tomorrow morning and see what’s going on.”

  “You take your life in your hands if you go,” Gun Smith cautioned. “They’re heartless desperadoes.”

  “Well, I’ve always taken it, haven’t I, and I’ve always brought it back too, haven’t I?” Pecos Bill laughed.

  “But this is different,” Gun Smith insisted. “Do you understand this is the most venomous nest of reptiles in all the Southwest range country?”

  “I do,” Pecos smiled grimly.

  “This Major Duval has used brains in buildin’ up his business. He’s herded together all the worst outlaw adventurers, the most fearless gunmen he can find. He’s bought out the porcupine judges and the civet cat attorneys, you understand. He’s got justice securely inside his noose, I’m tellin’ you.”

  “Give me an extra gun and plenty of bullets and my long rope,” Pecos Bill answered with as quiet an unconcern as if he had been talking about going out to lasso a maverick. “I’ll just lope off by myself and see what can be done. You and Chuck and three or four of the others had better ride over a few hours later and see what’s happening. I may need your help in bringing back
our stolen steers.”

  Pecos Bill’s tone was so matter-of-fact that Gun Smith understood there was no further use in urging caution.

  The next day Pecos Bill disguised himself to look like a Missouri greenhorn. He thrust his extra gun deeply into the bosom of his shirt and started loping off afoot with his boots tucked under his arm.

  Since he had found Widow Maker, Pecos seldom galloped off alone, for he liked the companionship of the horse. This expedition, however, was of a different sort, and he felt that he would succeed better if he went alone and on foot.

  He took the easy, springy lope the Coyotes had taught him and in no time at all reached the entrance to Miracle Ranch.

  Pecos Bill took care to prevent his being seen. He leapt lightly along the precipitous ledges of rock that bounded the wide valley, until he was in plain view of the pasturelands. At the slightest sound he would stop in his tracks, assume the rigid pose of invisibility and wait until he had assured himself there was no danger.

  He could not help gazing at the peaceful herd of beautiful steers eating quietly, and never suspecting they were prisoners. The river ran a curving thread of silver as far as his eye could see, and without his quite knowing it, Pecos fed his soul on the silent serene beauty.

  He continued leaping lightly from rocky shelf to rocky shelf until he was within a stone’s throw of Major Duval’s fine appearing ranch house. He then climbed quietly down, pulled on his boots and sauntered carelessly into the very midst of the desperadoes, who were squatting around an open fire, eating their dinner.

  Major Duval, who wore his clothes like a gentleman of leisure, was seated in the place of honor, and Puke, his foreman, was at his side, relating the facts concerning the good day’s hunt they had just enjoyed down in the heart of Pecos Bill’s country. Puke was omitting none of the details of Peewee’s death. As Pecos broke in upon their quiet he began easily, “Strangers, howdy! I’ve entirely lost my way about. I wonder if you can set me right and give me a bite to eat so that I may be striking out for home again.”