PIZENOUS WINDIESThere 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 ofBury Me Not on the Lone PrairieandThe 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 christenedLanky. “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 breatheshis 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 oldhound 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 fingerswelled 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. Heworked 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 thatmuy prontoif 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 rideas 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 toughhombreever 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 andsplinters. 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-holtof 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 thestraightest 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 Jackwould 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.”snake“I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg.”“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 areto 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.“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 bithis 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.
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 ofBury Me Not on the Lone PrairieandThe 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 christenedLanky. “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 breatheshis 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 oldhound 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 fingerswelled 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. Heworked 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 thatmuy prontoif 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 rideas 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 toughhombreever 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 andsplinters. 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-holtof 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 thestraightest 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 Jackwould 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.”
snake“I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg.”
“I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg.”
“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 areto 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.
“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 bithis 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.