BY THE BREADTH OF A HAIRLanky had become intensely interested in the narratives of Joe and his apprentices. He was happy that he had been assigned to the same guard. All during the day he had been trying to think of the most pregnant question to put when the day’s work should be over, and he should again sit with the windy trio around the campfire. He thought of one that he felt sure would elicit an interesting yarn.“What,” he asked Joe, “was the narrowest escape you ever had?”Joe pulled out a shuck. He reached leisurely the sack of Bull Durham in his vest pocket. He rolled the cigarette with deliberation. He was not going to play the fool by committing himself in any superlative way until he had heard from his upstart rivals, young men trying to usurp the arts and prerogatives universally recognized as belonging to the old.“Well,” he said, “that would be hard to say, hard to say. When a man knocks around as much as I have, and in the days when the West was wild, too, he’s bound to of had many a close call, what with Mex’cans, rustlers, bad men, stampedes, blizzards, and the like. However, one of the worst sceres I ever had was once when I got caught in a buffalo stampede. I reckon you know somethin’ about the buffalo?”“Yes,” said Lanky, “I’ve read a little bit about them.”“Well,” said Joe, “I can’t say as I’ve read very much about ’em. I seen the plains black with ’em. And I’ve killed a many a one in my day, too.“Well, I started out to tell you what a close shave I had one time at Buffalo Gap. I was a fool young buck then, and one mornin’ in the spring after I first hit that country, I heard a great roarin’ and bellowin’, and I listened a while, wonderin’ what it was. Then I says to myself, ‘I bet that’s a buffalo herd;’ for I had heard the old-timers tell about ’em, and how they come through the pass called Buffalo Gap every spring, goin’ north.“I rides up on one of the hills that overlooks the Gap so as I could look right down on the beasts as they come by. There I stops to see ’em pass. I didn’t git there much too soon, for right away the whole pass was choked with buffalo as thick as they could crowd; jammed in closer than steers in a stock car.“I was ridin’ a fool bronc, and he got to rearin’ and pitchin’, and the first thing I knowed, we was rollin’ down the hill together. Well, the hoss turned three or four cats in the air, and first he was on top and then I was, but the critter lit feet down right on top of the backs of them buffalo; and I was still in the saddle and didn’t have no bones broke. Don’t ask me whether I pulled leather or not, Lanky; don’t ask me that.“Well, them brutes begun to run, and the first thing I knowed they was in a regular stampede. I seen what was happenin’. They was carryin’ me and that hoss north jest as fast as they could run, which was purty fast. Yes, sir, purty fast.“I reins the hoss around and turns him south and digs his sides with the rowels; and he runs toward the south jest as fast as he could—and he was a right pert pony, too.“Well, sir, I rides and I rides, all the time keepin’ my eye peeled for the tail-end of the herd. But I sees nothin’ but buffalo, miles and miles of ’em.“It was about the middle of the mornin’ when my hoss fell off with me like that, and an hour by sun I was still ridin’ all the time looking for the end of the herd and thinkin’ it shorely would come some time. I happened to look to the side, and what do you think I seen, Lanky? What do you think I seen?”“Help coming, I suppose,” said Lanky.“No sech luck,” said Joe; “no sech luck. It was the bushes we broke and the rocks we turned over when me and that hoss rolled down the hill.“Well, I rides another half hour, I guess, and I begins to feel the hoss quiver and shake under me, and I knowed the jig was about up. When a hoss does that way, Lanky, he’s about ready to drop dead, and I knowed that might happen any time.“Purty soon I sees an openin’, and jest as that pony jumped off the rump of the last buffalo, damn me if he didn’t drop in his tracks, dead as a hammer. I knowed that was goin’ to happen when I felt him quiver.“Well, I climbed out on the hill afoot, forgittin’ to git my saddle; and damn lucky it was I forgot, too; for as soon as I got to the top of the hill and set down on a rock to rest, I looked back, and there was themain herd comin’ into sight, roarin’ and bellowin’ like a cyclone.“I had to walk back to my outfit; and several days later, I rode back to the pass, but all I found of that hoss and saddle was a little greasy spot on the ground.”“That was a narrow escape,” said Lanky. “I suspect you have had as many close calls as anybody.”“Well, I couldn’t say about that,” said Joe. “But I know that if that hoss had give out ten minutes sooner, Joe Martin wouldn’t be settin’ here talkin’ to you tonight.”“Yeah,” said Hank. “Joe always was a lucky cuss. If he was to fall in a sewer, he’d come out with a lily in each hand. Now, me, I was born too late. Land all took up, buffalo all gone; no more trail drivin’ up north. Still, what with reptiles and beasts and Mexico steers and buckin’ hosses, and the like, I’ve had my share of close calls.“Funny how some little thing you don’t expect jest as like as not comes along and takes you off.”“Nothin’ ain’t got you yet, Hank,” said Red. “You’re here, ain’t you? What you kickin’ about?”“I was jest thinkin’ how near I come to bein’ kilt once. And if it hadn’t of been for Zac Weber, I would of been.“That lad could handle a six-gun, I can tell you. I’ve seen him knock down six flyin’ quail with his old Colt forty-five, ridin’ at a high run. He could turn six pigeons loose at one time and knock ’em every one down before they could git away. When he went duck huntin’ he never packed anything but his old six-shooter.Some of the boys had shot-guns, but Zac said his conscience never would git over it if he turned one of them murderous implements loose on a pore helpless fowl. And he never shot a duck on the water, either. Not Zac. Mighty glad I was that he could shoot like that, too, for he saved my life.”“Bandit trouble?” asked Lanky.“Naw, worse,” said Hank, “though I could tell you something about Glen Springs, but that’s not the time Zac saved my life.“Have you ever seen a centipede, Lanky?”“No,” said Lanky; “I don’t suppose I have.”“Well, I’ll tell you what they look like so as you’ll know ’em. And don’t ketch ’em for playthings, Lanky, don’t ketch ’em for playthings. Jest as well pet a rattlesnake. They’re flat yeller worms with a hundred legs, like fringe on each side, and on every foot there’s a little hook that the centipede can hook into things that he walks on. And them hooks is so pizenous that if he walks across your skin while he’s mad, your flesh will putrefy, and you’ll go as crazy as a locoed hoss, and like as not take to the bushes like a jackrabbit unless somebody holds you. That’s how pizenous they are.“Well, what I started out to tell you was, one time at dinner me and Zac was settin’ on the ground about fifty feet apart facin’ each other eatin’ our beans and sow-belly. All at once I got a glimpse of somethin’ like a yellow streak runnin’ up my vest on my bandanner, but I jest barely did git a glimpse and couldn’t tell what it was.“‘Is there somethin’ on my neck?’ I says to Zac.“‘Good God, man!’ says Zac. ‘It’s a centipede!’“Well, we’d took off our gloves to eat, and I knowed if I tried to knock the critter off, I’d jestmake him mad, and he’d git me shore. And I knowed if Zac come over to knock him off with a stick or somethin’, he’d be dead certain to chase him off on my neck.“‘Let him alone,’ I says, ‘and maybe he’ll crawl off after while.’“‘Jest be still,’ says Zac. And he whips out his old six-shooter, and I hears the bullet whistle by my ear.“‘I got him,’ says Zac.“And I takes off my bandanner, and there is jest a little speck where the bullet had jest barely teched it. I always did feel grateful to Zac after that, for he shore did save my life that day.”“You think, then, that if the centipede had touched your skin, he would really have killed you?” asked Lanky.“I don’t think nothin’ about it,” said Hank. “I know it. Why, I tell you what happened. You see, Zac didn’t have time to look what was on the other side of me when he shot, but jest as he pulled the trigger, he noticed an old cow-brute standin’ about fifty yards off chewin’ his cud. Well, this old steer jumped, so Zac said he must of hit him. Still we couldn’t see no wound on him. We roped him and looked at the critter close and found a bullet hole in his dew-lap.”“In his what?” asked Lanky.“Why, in his dew-lap,” said Hank. “That’s the grissle thing that hangs down from the neck of a cow-brutejest where it joins on to the breast. They used to vaccinate for the black-leg by makin’ a hole in it. We knowed the steer couldn’t be hurt much there; so we turns him loose, and he gits up, and starts off.“He hadn’t gone more than twenty steps, when his neck was all swole up, big as a saddle-hoss. Then he begin to rave and charge and beller so pitifully that we jest shot him to git him out of his misery.“That’s how pizenous them centipedes are. When I saw that pore brute all swole up and out of his head with torment, I knowed what a close call I’d had.”Lanky’s attention had been divided between Red and the narrator. He had glanced several times at Joe also, who was sitting complacent, but not contemptuous, listening with the respect due a good liar even though a comparatively inexperienced one. But Red, during the first part of Hank’s narrative had been in a deep study. He rolled several cigarettes, only to throw them away after taking a puff or two. He appeared to listen; yet it was obvious that the narrator did not have his full attention. Near the climax to Hank’s tale, however, his countenance brightened up, and from that time he sat quietly as one having an ace in the hole. When Hank finished, he was ready.“I didn’t have no crack shot, nor no friend of no kind to help me out once when I come near passin’ in my checks out in the Glass Mountains.“I never did know what was the matter with that fool hoss I was ridin’. He’d always been a mighty sensible animal—fine cow-pony, quarter hoss, single-footer, and the best night hoss on the outfit. I’d rodehim hard that day, and I thought maybe he was tired of life and took a sudden notion to kill his self like an English feller that come to our outfit and stayed a while once. Then, again, I thought he might of went blind all at once. I never could figger it out. Anyway, he never acted like that before.”“What did he do?” asked Lanky.“What did he do? He done a plenty. Still I don’t blame him, pore brute. There must have been somethin’ the matter.“You see, I was ridin’ back to the headquarters on a dark night. I was about half asleep, for I knowed that old Frijole—that was his name—would find the way. He always could. Well, I was ridin’ along that way, when all of a sudden I finds us both fallin’ down through empty space. Seemed like we never would hit the ground, and before we got bottom, I figgered out what had happened.“Out in the edge of the Glass Mountains there was a big sink-hole right out on the mesa. It was as big across as a house, and six lariats deep right straight down—we afterwards measured it—and Frijole had loped off into that dang hole with me, and there we was makin’ for the bottom.“I thinks to myself, ‘This is where you pass in your checks, Red. Some gits it early and some gits it late, but they all gits it.’ Then we hits bottom.“I guess I was shook up purty bad, for I woke up after while, and there I was settin’ on a dead hoss. You see, Frijole had broke his neck landin’, pore feller. I always will wonder what was a eatin’ on him to makehim lope off into a hole like that. Must of been somethin’.“Well, I seen there wasn’t nothin’ I could do but wait for daylight and then try to figure out some way to git out; so I jist laid down and took a nap till mornin’.“When daylight come, I got up and looked around, but the walls was straight up and down, and there wasn’t nothin’ I could git a-holt of to climb out. Then I took the rope off my saddle and begun to look for somethin’ twenty feet or so up that I could rope, thinkin’ I could pull myself up that far, and then maybe rope somethin’ else a little higher up, and pull myself up again, and so on till I was out.“But there wasn’t a thing, Lanky, not a bush nor a rock, nor nothin’ stickin’ out I could git a loop on. Everything as slick as glass. ‘Well, maybe the boys will come and hunt me,’ I thinks, ‘but how in the hell will they know to look down in here?’“I waited all day, and not a soul come: and I waited all the next day, and still nobody come. The third day I was still there and no better off than I was in the beginnin’.“By that time I was wishin’ I was dead, for I had drunk up all the water in my saddle canteen, and I was gittin’ hungry, too.”“Couldn’t you have eaten some of the horse meat?” asked Lanky.“Yes, I guess I could of,” said Red, “but at first I wouldn’t out of friendship for the brute—for even if he did git me in there, I always figgered there wassomethin’ wrong; he went out of his head or somethin’—and after I got hungry enough to of et him, anyway, his carcass had spoiled and was stinkin’ somethin’ terrible. That’s principally what made it so bad. Every breath I drawed was misery.“Finally I says, ‘Red, you can’t stand this no longer. You’d shoot a pore dumb brute if you saw him in torment like this.’ And so I cocks my six-shooter and holds it to my head, but somehow I can’t pull the trigger. ‘Stand it a little while longer,’ I says to myself, ‘and if help don’t come, shoot.’ I done that three or four times, I guess.“After a while buzzards begun flyin’ over the hole—dozens of ’em sailin’ round and round. They knowed there was somethin’ dead somewheres around, but they was havin’ trouble locatin’ it. They kept comin’ lower and lower, till directly one comes down into the sink-hole. Then some more come, and they would fly right down close to me. ‘I reckon you come after Frijole,’ I says, ‘but jist wait a little while and you can have me too.’“And jist then I had an idear. I picks up my lariat right quiet-like and begins unravelin’ it into little strands. In each little strand I tied a noose. Then I takes my seat by the side of the carcass and jist waits. Directly a big turkey buzzard comes right down close, and I throws a loop over his head and fetches him down. Then I stakes him to my belt, givin’ him about six foot of rope. After a while I gits another one. I keeps on until I gits twenty of the vultures stakedto my belt; then I fires off my six-shooter, scerin’ ’em all at once.Title or description“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right out of that sink-hole.”“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right out of that sink-hole.”“You were lucky,” said Lanky.“Lucky! Lad, that wasn’t luck; that was head work. You ain’t heard about my luck yet. Them buzzards begun flyin’ away with me, but I seen what direction they was goin’, and I jist let ’em alone and watched the lay of the land. And when they had me right over a big hay-stack at the headquarters of my own outfit, I reached down and unbuckled my belt, and damn me, if I didn’t land right on the hay without any hurtin’ a-tall.“I walked up to the house and had a square meal—and I et, too, I’ll tell you—and then I felt as fresh and pert as ever.”“That was a lucky landing,” said Lanky.“It shore was,” said Red. “I got off light. The worst thing about it was that them vultures carried off my belt; and a cracker-jack it was, too, trimmed with rattlesnake hide and gold studs. Twenty-eight dollars and fifty cents it cost me over the counter at K. C., Misourey.”Lanky expected Joe to tell the next story, but the veteran smoked placidly, and graciously surrendered his turn to Hank.“A thing like that nearly happened to me once,” said Hank, “except it was a canyon instead of a sink hole.“I ought to of had more sense than to ride a fool bronc like the critter I was on around a place like that,but I was green in them days. You see I was ridin’ around a rimrock, lookin’ out for steers in the canyon down below, and down below it was, shore-nuff—five hundred feet straight down—jest as straight as a wall.“Well, I’d rode along that way for a while, when suddenly I took a fool notion to smoke. So I rolled me a fattamale, and pulled out a match and struck it on my saddle-horn.“Jest then that fool bronc bogged his head and begun pitchin’ and bawlin’ like six-bits, and the next thing I knowed he’d fell off that rim-rock. And it was five hundred feet to the bottom if it was an inch. When that hoss hit the bottom, he jest naturally spattered all over the scenery.”“And you?” asked Lanky.“Well, you see,” said Hank, “when we went off that rim-rock together, I knowed that that saddle that I had been tryin’ so hard to stay in was no place for me then; so I got off; and I had to be damn quick about it, too. I wasn’t much more than off the brute when he hit the bottom.”Lanky expected Joe to send him off to bed. There were cattle to gather during the day and to hold at night until all the pastures should be worked, and it was Joe who usually reminded the unseasoned boy that sleep was necessary, even if Lanky preferred the romancing of the older hands.But Joe merely chunked up the fire.“That puts me in mind,” said he, “of a hunt I went on once in the Guadalupe Mountains. You see, we was out after big-horn sheep—used to be lots of ’em upthere, but they are ’bout all gone now. Few up in the mountains where the tin-horn hunters never go.“I was follerin’ some of them critters around a ledge, and presently I looked around and seen where I was. The ledge was jest about a foot wide; and I looked down, and there was a bluff right straight down for five hundred feet, and I looked up, and there was a wall five hundred feet straight up. There wasn’t no way to git off that ledge but to go on or to turn back like I come, and in some places the footin’ was mighty ticklish, mighty ticklish.“Well, I walked along till I come to a slick place, and my foot slipped, and I had to let go my gun to keep from fallin’. I shore hated to lose that thirty-thirty, too, for we had been friends for years, and many a deer and antelope and bear and panther I had fetched down with it. But I jest naturally lost my balance and had to let her go to save my neck.“Well, not havin’ any gun, I thought I had jest as well go back to the camp; so I started back like I come. I goes around a little bend, and there comes a mountain lion, a-creepin’ along towards me, jest like a cat tryin’ to slip up on a snow-bird.“Says I, ‘Joe, this ain’t no place for you. I expect you’d better go on the way you first started.’“So I turns around and goes back around the bend. When I gits about a hundred yards, there I sees a big grizzly bear comin’ to meet me! and when he sees me, he sets up and shows his teeth and growls.“Says I, ‘Joe, maybe you’d better go back the other way, after all.’ I thought maybe the cougar would be gone. But as soon as I gits turned around—and I hadto be mighty careful in turnin’, for the ledge was powerfully narrow—when I turns around, I sees the big cat sneakin’ along toward me. And when I look the other way, there comes the bear. And they are both gittin’ closer and closer, and there I am, and it’s five hundred feet straight down, and it’s five hundred feet straight up.”“How did you get off?” asked Lanky.“How did I git off? Why, I couldn’t git off. They got me, but whether it was the bear or the cougar, I never did know.”Joe finished with a flourish but without a smile.He pulled out his watch. “Doggone,” he said, “I never had no idear it was so late. We ought to of been asleep before now. Lanky, you ought not to let these boys keep you up so late. They’d talk you to death if you’d jest set here and listen to ’em.”
Lanky had become intensely interested in the narratives of Joe and his apprentices. He was happy that he had been assigned to the same guard. All during the day he had been trying to think of the most pregnant question to put when the day’s work should be over, and he should again sit with the windy trio around the campfire. He thought of one that he felt sure would elicit an interesting yarn.
“What,” he asked Joe, “was the narrowest escape you ever had?”
Joe pulled out a shuck. He reached leisurely the sack of Bull Durham in his vest pocket. He rolled the cigarette with deliberation. He was not going to play the fool by committing himself in any superlative way until he had heard from his upstart rivals, young men trying to usurp the arts and prerogatives universally recognized as belonging to the old.
“Well,” he said, “that would be hard to say, hard to say. When a man knocks around as much as I have, and in the days when the West was wild, too, he’s bound to of had many a close call, what with Mex’cans, rustlers, bad men, stampedes, blizzards, and the like. However, one of the worst sceres I ever had was once when I got caught in a buffalo stampede. I reckon you know somethin’ about the buffalo?”
“Yes,” said Lanky, “I’ve read a little bit about them.”
“Well,” said Joe, “I can’t say as I’ve read very much about ’em. I seen the plains black with ’em. And I’ve killed a many a one in my day, too.
“Well, I started out to tell you what a close shave I had one time at Buffalo Gap. I was a fool young buck then, and one mornin’ in the spring after I first hit that country, I heard a great roarin’ and bellowin’, and I listened a while, wonderin’ what it was. Then I says to myself, ‘I bet that’s a buffalo herd;’ for I had heard the old-timers tell about ’em, and how they come through the pass called Buffalo Gap every spring, goin’ north.
“I rides up on one of the hills that overlooks the Gap so as I could look right down on the beasts as they come by. There I stops to see ’em pass. I didn’t git there much too soon, for right away the whole pass was choked with buffalo as thick as they could crowd; jammed in closer than steers in a stock car.
“I was ridin’ a fool bronc, and he got to rearin’ and pitchin’, and the first thing I knowed, we was rollin’ down the hill together. Well, the hoss turned three or four cats in the air, and first he was on top and then I was, but the critter lit feet down right on top of the backs of them buffalo; and I was still in the saddle and didn’t have no bones broke. Don’t ask me whether I pulled leather or not, Lanky; don’t ask me that.
“Well, them brutes begun to run, and the first thing I knowed they was in a regular stampede. I seen what was happenin’. They was carryin’ me and that hoss north jest as fast as they could run, which was purty fast. Yes, sir, purty fast.
“I reins the hoss around and turns him south and digs his sides with the rowels; and he runs toward the south jest as fast as he could—and he was a right pert pony, too.
“Well, sir, I rides and I rides, all the time keepin’ my eye peeled for the tail-end of the herd. But I sees nothin’ but buffalo, miles and miles of ’em.
“It was about the middle of the mornin’ when my hoss fell off with me like that, and an hour by sun I was still ridin’ all the time looking for the end of the herd and thinkin’ it shorely would come some time. I happened to look to the side, and what do you think I seen, Lanky? What do you think I seen?”
“Help coming, I suppose,” said Lanky.
“No sech luck,” said Joe; “no sech luck. It was the bushes we broke and the rocks we turned over when me and that hoss rolled down the hill.
“Well, I rides another half hour, I guess, and I begins to feel the hoss quiver and shake under me, and I knowed the jig was about up. When a hoss does that way, Lanky, he’s about ready to drop dead, and I knowed that might happen any time.
“Purty soon I sees an openin’, and jest as that pony jumped off the rump of the last buffalo, damn me if he didn’t drop in his tracks, dead as a hammer. I knowed that was goin’ to happen when I felt him quiver.
“Well, I climbed out on the hill afoot, forgittin’ to git my saddle; and damn lucky it was I forgot, too; for as soon as I got to the top of the hill and set down on a rock to rest, I looked back, and there was themain herd comin’ into sight, roarin’ and bellowin’ like a cyclone.
“I had to walk back to my outfit; and several days later, I rode back to the pass, but all I found of that hoss and saddle was a little greasy spot on the ground.”
“That was a narrow escape,” said Lanky. “I suspect you have had as many close calls as anybody.”
“Well, I couldn’t say about that,” said Joe. “But I know that if that hoss had give out ten minutes sooner, Joe Martin wouldn’t be settin’ here talkin’ to you tonight.”
“Yeah,” said Hank. “Joe always was a lucky cuss. If he was to fall in a sewer, he’d come out with a lily in each hand. Now, me, I was born too late. Land all took up, buffalo all gone; no more trail drivin’ up north. Still, what with reptiles and beasts and Mexico steers and buckin’ hosses, and the like, I’ve had my share of close calls.
“Funny how some little thing you don’t expect jest as like as not comes along and takes you off.”
“Nothin’ ain’t got you yet, Hank,” said Red. “You’re here, ain’t you? What you kickin’ about?”
“I was jest thinkin’ how near I come to bein’ kilt once. And if it hadn’t of been for Zac Weber, I would of been.
“That lad could handle a six-gun, I can tell you. I’ve seen him knock down six flyin’ quail with his old Colt forty-five, ridin’ at a high run. He could turn six pigeons loose at one time and knock ’em every one down before they could git away. When he went duck huntin’ he never packed anything but his old six-shooter.Some of the boys had shot-guns, but Zac said his conscience never would git over it if he turned one of them murderous implements loose on a pore helpless fowl. And he never shot a duck on the water, either. Not Zac. Mighty glad I was that he could shoot like that, too, for he saved my life.”
“Bandit trouble?” asked Lanky.
“Naw, worse,” said Hank, “though I could tell you something about Glen Springs, but that’s not the time Zac saved my life.
“Have you ever seen a centipede, Lanky?”
“No,” said Lanky; “I don’t suppose I have.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what they look like so as you’ll know ’em. And don’t ketch ’em for playthings, Lanky, don’t ketch ’em for playthings. Jest as well pet a rattlesnake. They’re flat yeller worms with a hundred legs, like fringe on each side, and on every foot there’s a little hook that the centipede can hook into things that he walks on. And them hooks is so pizenous that if he walks across your skin while he’s mad, your flesh will putrefy, and you’ll go as crazy as a locoed hoss, and like as not take to the bushes like a jackrabbit unless somebody holds you. That’s how pizenous they are.
“Well, what I started out to tell you was, one time at dinner me and Zac was settin’ on the ground about fifty feet apart facin’ each other eatin’ our beans and sow-belly. All at once I got a glimpse of somethin’ like a yellow streak runnin’ up my vest on my bandanner, but I jest barely did git a glimpse and couldn’t tell what it was.
“‘Is there somethin’ on my neck?’ I says to Zac.
“‘Good God, man!’ says Zac. ‘It’s a centipede!’
“Well, we’d took off our gloves to eat, and I knowed if I tried to knock the critter off, I’d jestmake him mad, and he’d git me shore. And I knowed if Zac come over to knock him off with a stick or somethin’, he’d be dead certain to chase him off on my neck.
“‘Let him alone,’ I says, ‘and maybe he’ll crawl off after while.’
“‘Jest be still,’ says Zac. And he whips out his old six-shooter, and I hears the bullet whistle by my ear.
“‘I got him,’ says Zac.
“And I takes off my bandanner, and there is jest a little speck where the bullet had jest barely teched it. I always did feel grateful to Zac after that, for he shore did save my life that day.”
“You think, then, that if the centipede had touched your skin, he would really have killed you?” asked Lanky.
“I don’t think nothin’ about it,” said Hank. “I know it. Why, I tell you what happened. You see, Zac didn’t have time to look what was on the other side of me when he shot, but jest as he pulled the trigger, he noticed an old cow-brute standin’ about fifty yards off chewin’ his cud. Well, this old steer jumped, so Zac said he must of hit him. Still we couldn’t see no wound on him. We roped him and looked at the critter close and found a bullet hole in his dew-lap.”
“In his what?” asked Lanky.
“Why, in his dew-lap,” said Hank. “That’s the grissle thing that hangs down from the neck of a cow-brutejest where it joins on to the breast. They used to vaccinate for the black-leg by makin’ a hole in it. We knowed the steer couldn’t be hurt much there; so we turns him loose, and he gits up, and starts off.
“He hadn’t gone more than twenty steps, when his neck was all swole up, big as a saddle-hoss. Then he begin to rave and charge and beller so pitifully that we jest shot him to git him out of his misery.
“That’s how pizenous them centipedes are. When I saw that pore brute all swole up and out of his head with torment, I knowed what a close call I’d had.”
Lanky’s attention had been divided between Red and the narrator. He had glanced several times at Joe also, who was sitting complacent, but not contemptuous, listening with the respect due a good liar even though a comparatively inexperienced one. But Red, during the first part of Hank’s narrative had been in a deep study. He rolled several cigarettes, only to throw them away after taking a puff or two. He appeared to listen; yet it was obvious that the narrator did not have his full attention. Near the climax to Hank’s tale, however, his countenance brightened up, and from that time he sat quietly as one having an ace in the hole. When Hank finished, he was ready.
“I didn’t have no crack shot, nor no friend of no kind to help me out once when I come near passin’ in my checks out in the Glass Mountains.
“I never did know what was the matter with that fool hoss I was ridin’. He’d always been a mighty sensible animal—fine cow-pony, quarter hoss, single-footer, and the best night hoss on the outfit. I’d rodehim hard that day, and I thought maybe he was tired of life and took a sudden notion to kill his self like an English feller that come to our outfit and stayed a while once. Then, again, I thought he might of went blind all at once. I never could figger it out. Anyway, he never acted like that before.”
“What did he do?” asked Lanky.
“What did he do? He done a plenty. Still I don’t blame him, pore brute. There must have been somethin’ the matter.
“You see, I was ridin’ back to the headquarters on a dark night. I was about half asleep, for I knowed that old Frijole—that was his name—would find the way. He always could. Well, I was ridin’ along that way, when all of a sudden I finds us both fallin’ down through empty space. Seemed like we never would hit the ground, and before we got bottom, I figgered out what had happened.
“Out in the edge of the Glass Mountains there was a big sink-hole right out on the mesa. It was as big across as a house, and six lariats deep right straight down—we afterwards measured it—and Frijole had loped off into that dang hole with me, and there we was makin’ for the bottom.
“I thinks to myself, ‘This is where you pass in your checks, Red. Some gits it early and some gits it late, but they all gits it.’ Then we hits bottom.
“I guess I was shook up purty bad, for I woke up after while, and there I was settin’ on a dead hoss. You see, Frijole had broke his neck landin’, pore feller. I always will wonder what was a eatin’ on him to makehim lope off into a hole like that. Must of been somethin’.
“Well, I seen there wasn’t nothin’ I could do but wait for daylight and then try to figure out some way to git out; so I jist laid down and took a nap till mornin’.
“When daylight come, I got up and looked around, but the walls was straight up and down, and there wasn’t nothin’ I could git a-holt of to climb out. Then I took the rope off my saddle and begun to look for somethin’ twenty feet or so up that I could rope, thinkin’ I could pull myself up that far, and then maybe rope somethin’ else a little higher up, and pull myself up again, and so on till I was out.
“But there wasn’t a thing, Lanky, not a bush nor a rock, nor nothin’ stickin’ out I could git a loop on. Everything as slick as glass. ‘Well, maybe the boys will come and hunt me,’ I thinks, ‘but how in the hell will they know to look down in here?’
“I waited all day, and not a soul come: and I waited all the next day, and still nobody come. The third day I was still there and no better off than I was in the beginnin’.
“By that time I was wishin’ I was dead, for I had drunk up all the water in my saddle canteen, and I was gittin’ hungry, too.”
“Couldn’t you have eaten some of the horse meat?” asked Lanky.
“Yes, I guess I could of,” said Red, “but at first I wouldn’t out of friendship for the brute—for even if he did git me in there, I always figgered there wassomethin’ wrong; he went out of his head or somethin’—and after I got hungry enough to of et him, anyway, his carcass had spoiled and was stinkin’ somethin’ terrible. That’s principally what made it so bad. Every breath I drawed was misery.
“Finally I says, ‘Red, you can’t stand this no longer. You’d shoot a pore dumb brute if you saw him in torment like this.’ And so I cocks my six-shooter and holds it to my head, but somehow I can’t pull the trigger. ‘Stand it a little while longer,’ I says to myself, ‘and if help don’t come, shoot.’ I done that three or four times, I guess.
“After a while buzzards begun flyin’ over the hole—dozens of ’em sailin’ round and round. They knowed there was somethin’ dead somewheres around, but they was havin’ trouble locatin’ it. They kept comin’ lower and lower, till directly one comes down into the sink-hole. Then some more come, and they would fly right down close to me. ‘I reckon you come after Frijole,’ I says, ‘but jist wait a little while and you can have me too.’
“And jist then I had an idear. I picks up my lariat right quiet-like and begins unravelin’ it into little strands. In each little strand I tied a noose. Then I takes my seat by the side of the carcass and jist waits. Directly a big turkey buzzard comes right down close, and I throws a loop over his head and fetches him down. Then I stakes him to my belt, givin’ him about six foot of rope. After a while I gits another one. I keeps on until I gits twenty of the vultures stakedto my belt; then I fires off my six-shooter, scerin’ ’em all at once.
Title or description“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right out of that sink-hole.”
“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right out of that sink-hole.”
“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right out of that sink-hole.”
“You were lucky,” said Lanky.
“Lucky! Lad, that wasn’t luck; that was head work. You ain’t heard about my luck yet. Them buzzards begun flyin’ away with me, but I seen what direction they was goin’, and I jist let ’em alone and watched the lay of the land. And when they had me right over a big hay-stack at the headquarters of my own outfit, I reached down and unbuckled my belt, and damn me, if I didn’t land right on the hay without any hurtin’ a-tall.
“I walked up to the house and had a square meal—and I et, too, I’ll tell you—and then I felt as fresh and pert as ever.”
“That was a lucky landing,” said Lanky.
“It shore was,” said Red. “I got off light. The worst thing about it was that them vultures carried off my belt; and a cracker-jack it was, too, trimmed with rattlesnake hide and gold studs. Twenty-eight dollars and fifty cents it cost me over the counter at K. C., Misourey.”
Lanky expected Joe to tell the next story, but the veteran smoked placidly, and graciously surrendered his turn to Hank.
“A thing like that nearly happened to me once,” said Hank, “except it was a canyon instead of a sink hole.
“I ought to of had more sense than to ride a fool bronc like the critter I was on around a place like that,but I was green in them days. You see I was ridin’ around a rimrock, lookin’ out for steers in the canyon down below, and down below it was, shore-nuff—five hundred feet straight down—jest as straight as a wall.
“Well, I’d rode along that way for a while, when suddenly I took a fool notion to smoke. So I rolled me a fattamale, and pulled out a match and struck it on my saddle-horn.
“Jest then that fool bronc bogged his head and begun pitchin’ and bawlin’ like six-bits, and the next thing I knowed he’d fell off that rim-rock. And it was five hundred feet to the bottom if it was an inch. When that hoss hit the bottom, he jest naturally spattered all over the scenery.”
“And you?” asked Lanky.
“Well, you see,” said Hank, “when we went off that rim-rock together, I knowed that that saddle that I had been tryin’ so hard to stay in was no place for me then; so I got off; and I had to be damn quick about it, too. I wasn’t much more than off the brute when he hit the bottom.”
Lanky expected Joe to send him off to bed. There were cattle to gather during the day and to hold at night until all the pastures should be worked, and it was Joe who usually reminded the unseasoned boy that sleep was necessary, even if Lanky preferred the romancing of the older hands.
But Joe merely chunked up the fire.
“That puts me in mind,” said he, “of a hunt I went on once in the Guadalupe Mountains. You see, we was out after big-horn sheep—used to be lots of ’em upthere, but they are ’bout all gone now. Few up in the mountains where the tin-horn hunters never go.
“I was follerin’ some of them critters around a ledge, and presently I looked around and seen where I was. The ledge was jest about a foot wide; and I looked down, and there was a bluff right straight down for five hundred feet, and I looked up, and there was a wall five hundred feet straight up. There wasn’t no way to git off that ledge but to go on or to turn back like I come, and in some places the footin’ was mighty ticklish, mighty ticklish.
“Well, I walked along till I come to a slick place, and my foot slipped, and I had to let go my gun to keep from fallin’. I shore hated to lose that thirty-thirty, too, for we had been friends for years, and many a deer and antelope and bear and panther I had fetched down with it. But I jest naturally lost my balance and had to let her go to save my neck.
“Well, not havin’ any gun, I thought I had jest as well go back to the camp; so I started back like I come. I goes around a little bend, and there comes a mountain lion, a-creepin’ along towards me, jest like a cat tryin’ to slip up on a snow-bird.
“Says I, ‘Joe, this ain’t no place for you. I expect you’d better go on the way you first started.’
“So I turns around and goes back around the bend. When I gits about a hundred yards, there I sees a big grizzly bear comin’ to meet me! and when he sees me, he sets up and shows his teeth and growls.
“Says I, ‘Joe, maybe you’d better go back the other way, after all.’ I thought maybe the cougar would be gone. But as soon as I gits turned around—and I hadto be mighty careful in turnin’, for the ledge was powerfully narrow—when I turns around, I sees the big cat sneakin’ along toward me. And when I look the other way, there comes the bear. And they are both gittin’ closer and closer, and there I am, and it’s five hundred feet straight down, and it’s five hundred feet straight up.”
“How did you get off?” asked Lanky.
“How did I git off? Why, I couldn’t git off. They got me, but whether it was the bear or the cougar, I never did know.”
Joe finished with a flourish but without a smile.
He pulled out his watch. “Doggone,” he said, “I never had no idear it was so late. We ought to of been asleep before now. Lanky, you ought not to let these boys keep you up so late. They’d talk you to death if you’d jest set here and listen to ’em.”