WIND AND WEATHERThe day had been blustery enough, and Lanky’s eyes were red from the sand’s having cut into his eyeballs. There was still dust in the air, but at twilight the wind had subsided, and Lanky was experiencing that feeling of intense relief that comes when the sandstorm is over.During the day there had been little talk. Lanky had most of the time ridden within normal hailing distance of Red Wallace; but conversation would have been difficult, and neither he nor Red had been in the mood for it. At noon each man swallowed his beans and bacon as rapidly as he could. Even then, he consumed a considerable quantity of sand.The old-timers were sitting expectantly around the fire. Their experience with tenderfeet told them that Lanky would open the conversation, and that the topic would be the wind.“Terrible day we had,” he observed. “How much sandstorm weather are we likely to have?”“Son,” replied Red, “what you’ve seen today is the gentle zephers of spring. You ain’t seen a real sandstorm.”“Then,” replied Lanky, “I’d like to know how I’m to know one when I meet it.”“Well, I’ll tell you, Lanky,” said Red. “I’ll tell you exactly how you can know. Do you recollect seein’ a log-chain hangin’ suspended from the big hackberry tree in front of the bunkhouse?”“That immense chain?” asked Lanky.“Yeah,” said Red. “That’s a log-chain. And you wondered what it was up there for, no doubt. Well, it’s to tell when there’s a sandstorm. As long as it’s hangin’ straight down, we know there ain’t no wind to speak of. When it hangs out at an angle of forty-five degrees, we speak of a slight breeze. It’s only when she’s stickin’ straight out parallel to the ground that it’s correct and proper to speak of a windstorm.”“I’d think winds like that would blow all the houses and windmills over,” observed Lanky.“It ain’t only the houses and windmills,” said Hank. “It’s real-estate. Why, there was a feller come in here one time and filed on a section of land in Colonel Slaughter’s pasture, and a big sandstorm come along, and he never did find that section. He advertised in all the papers for it, offerin’ a reward for its return, and he got lots of answers from people down in the brush country that had stray sections on their hands that they wanted to git rid of, but he looked ’em over and said none of ’em had his brand on ’em. And so he had to go back East.”“Yeah, the wind does some mighty funny things,” said Joe. “I come dang near losin’ the best saddle hoss I ever had on account of a sandstorm.”“I guess he got against a drift fence where the tumbleweeds and sand collected and buried the critter alive,” said Hank.“Naw, that wasn’t it,” replied Joe, “though I’ve dug many a cow-brute out of the sand drifts. It wasn’t that. In them days I was workin’ cattle out in theMonahans country. One evenin’ the boss tells me to swing up a little draw, sayin’ the wagon would be at the head. Well, I got out of the draw jest at dark, and I looked around, but I couldn’t see no campfire anywheres in sight. I rode around a while, but still not seein’ no signs of the wagon, and bein’ tired, I decided to turn in. I was scered to turn my hoss loose, (Brown Jug was his name) for fear he’d strike off to the remuda and leave me there afoot. So I stakes him to a little cottonwood bush on top of a mound. I knowed better than to hobble the critter, for he was wise to walkin’ off with the hobbles on. Well, when I got him staked out, I took off the saddle, which I used for a pillow, and the blanket, which I used for a bed, and went to sleep.“In the mornin’ when I woke up and looked around, the scenery wasn’t exactly familiar. There was a big cottonwood tree which I couldn’t remember seein’ the night before, and I wondered how I come to miss it. And I looked some more, and there wasn’t any Brown Jug in sight anywheres. I thinks to myself, the critter never played a dirty trick like that on me before, and I ’lows he must be around somewheres. Shorely, I says to myself, I ought to be able to find the bush I tied him to. So I whistles three times, and then I hears a weak nicker ’way up in the top of the tree, and I looks up, and damn me if there wasn’t that pore critter, with his tongue hangin’ out, dang nigh choked to death.“Then I seen what had happened, I’d tied the hoss on top of a sand-dune. The wind had come up and thesand had blowed away. What I calculated on bein’ a bush was in fact a great big tree—so dang big in fact, that the thirty-foot lariat wouldn’t let pore Brown Jug more than half way to the ground. If I hadn’t woke up jest when I did, the pore brute would of choked to death shore.”“How did you get him down?” asked Lanky.“Oh, that was easy,” said Joe. “In them days I always had my old six-gun by me, and I jest whipped her out and put a bullet through the rope and let Brown Jug down. The fall didn’t seem to hurt him none, and after he blowed a little while, he was as pert as ever.“However, the wind got up again in the middle of the mornin’, and the only way I could keep the hoss on the ground was to tie big rocks to the horn of the saddle.”“That shows you’ve got more sense than a prairie-dog,” said Hank, “which surprises me. Many a time on the South Plains durin’ a sandstorm, I’ve seen them critters ten feet in the air, diggin’ with all their might, tryin’ to git back in their holes.”“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen,” said Red, “and it was the funniest sight I ever saw caused by a sandstorm. One day in the spring the boss sent me out to pizen prairie-dogs. He was one man I didn’t work for long; he jist couldn’t stand to see a man not doin’ somethin’. So when the wind would git bad and he didn’t want to go out his self, he would send us out to ride fence and pizen dogs and the like.“Well, this time I rode over to where I knowed there was a big town, and I rode up, and what do yousuppose I saw? The sand was all blowed away, and there was them holes stickin’ forty feet in the air. I never knowed before that time how crooked them critters made their residences.”“The wind’s purty hard on the rodents sometimes,” said Hank. “I knowed a wind, however, that helped out a pore human down on Sulphur Draw that was about to starve. This feller had come in to farm, and he raised a cribful of corn, but the ranchers wouldn’t buy it because it wasn’t shelled, and wouldn’t go in a morral. So the pore farmer was about to starve, and his old lady and kids to boot.“This feller was jest fresh from the sticks and didn’t have much confidence in anybody, anyway, and he ’lowed the ranchers was waitin’ for a chance to steal his corn. So he nailed up the crib door good and tight. He noticed a knothole in one of the walls, but he saw it was too little for an ear of corn to go through; so he jest let that go.“One day a wind come up, and the farmer and his folks hid in the dugout like prairie-dogs, and the next day the wind laid, and they crawled out and looked around; and there was corn cobs scattered all alongside the crib. The old man thought shore somebody had stole his corn, but when he got the crib door open, he saw it there all shelled as purty as if he’d done it his self.“He was a sort of ignorant and superstitious man, and the next day when I happened by, he says to me that the fairies had come and shelled his corn. Well, I never did take no stock in fairies and the like, andI knowed there must be a reasonable and sane explanation somewheres. So I picked up one of the corn cobs and stuck it in the knothole. It was jest a good tight fit. Then I told the old man what must of happened. The wind got up and would of blowed all his corn out of the crib, but the knothole wasn’t big enough for an ear to go through. Hence each ear got shelled, and all the corn was left in the crib. It was jest as simple as that. Perfectly natural. If them old fellers we read about that believed in fairies and witches, and all that crap, had jest of used their heads, they’d found out that everything’s natural and simple enough. They put me in mind of Mex’cans. But as I was about to say, the old man sold his corn and got on purty well.”“There was a farmer close to us one time,” said Joe, “that lost his milk cows in a curious manner. He had a little patch of pop-corn, and one hot day the cows broke into the patch and started eatin’ it up. All of a sudden that corn begun poppin’ and flyin’ every which away.”“Did the shooting grains kill the cows?” asked Lanky.“Naw,” said Joe. “When the fool critters saw all that pop-corn flyin’ through the air, they thought it was snow, and jest naturally froze to death.”“Do you ever have tornadoes out here?” asked Lanky.“You mean cyclones?” asked Joe. “Well, yes, sometimes. A queer thing happened to me one time up here jest below the Caprock. We was goin’ up the trail, and one evenin’ it was hot as blazes and sultry and still.The cattle was gittin’ nervous and we was all expectin’ hell to break loose any time. And shore nuff it did. A cloud come up in the northwest and it thundered and lightened, and then the storm struck us. Them steers jest naturally histed their tails and left the country. I was on a good hoss, but it was all I could do to stay in sight of them cattle. My pony was givin’ me all he had, and he wasn’t gainin’ on them steers none. Neither was the other boys gittin’ close to ’em.“D’rec’ly I looked back over my shoulder like, and there was them clouds bilin’ and whirlin’ around in the sky; then all at once a funnel drops down and takes out after me. I started quirtin’ my hoss. I feel right mean about it yet when I think about it, for he was doin’ his best to ketch that herd, and he couldn’t do no more.“Well, the next thing I knowed I was up in the air still in the saddle with my hoss under me, whirlin’ round and round like a top. That cyclone carried me around in the air like that for a half an hour or more, me scered all the time that it was goin’ to drop me. But it didn’t. After a while it sets me down jest as gentle as a mother with her baby.“I looks up, and there’s the herd comin’ hell-bent for election right toward me. I gits off my slicker and fires off my six-shooter and turns them steers and gits ’em to millin’. Purty soon the other boys rides up, and we gits ’em quieted down, and the whole outfit has to set up and sing to ’em all night.cyclone“Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out.”“The next day we counted ’em out, and we hadn’t lost a head; not a single cow-brute was missin’. If ithadn’t been for that cyclone, we’d been gathering cattle for a week, and then likely we wouldn’t of found ’em all.”“That’s the way it is,” said Red. “Some winds is good and some winds is bad, but I’d rather have sandstorms and risk a cyclone once in a while than to have mud in the rainy season like they have on the Black Land divide.”“We found lots of mud when we drove through last fall,” said Lanky.“You jist thought you found mud,” replied Red. “You ought to have seen them flats before they begun makin’ roads. When I first hit that country, they was jist fencin’ off the lanes, and when I got a job, the boss put me to ridin’ fence. One day I was ridin’ along by the lane, and I looked over and there was a good, brand-new Stetson hat layin’ on the top of a mud-hole. I thinks to myself, ‘That’s a good hat, and I might as well have it as the next feller.’ So I got down and got a-holt of a fence-post to steady myself, and reached out to git it. Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out: ‘Hey, what you doin’ there?’ he says. Then I noticed for the first time that there was a man’s head stickin’ out of the mud. I asked the feller if he needed any help, but he said he was ridin’ a mighty good hoss, and he guessed he’d make it through all right. He afterwards got to be a mighty good friend of mine. Pete Jackson was his name.”“Well, sir,” said Joe, “speakin’ of mud, that puts me in mind of one experience I had goin’ up the trail in ’83. We was kinda late in gittin’ through, and therainy weather had already set in before we crossed the Black Land divide. We hadn’t hardly got across when we begun to notice that our hosses was losin’ all their pertness. The boss’s pet cow-hoss got as lazy as a jackass. My own favorite hoss, Brown Jug, jest got sleepier and sleepier, till finally he jest laid down and went to sleep and never did wake up. We lost half of our remuda jest like that.“The boss was terribly worried because he didn’t like the idea of trainin’ on foot, and besides he didn’t know whether his hands would stay with him or not if he didn’t have nothin’ for ’em to ride. Well, I figured there must be a cause of hoss sickness jest as there is for everything else. So I begins to take note. I notices that all the sick hosses has mud-balls on their tails. Then I guesses what must be the matter. The weight of the mud on the critters’ tails was makin’ sech a pull on the brutes’ hides that they jest couldn’t shet their eyes. And I figured that bein’ unable to shet their eyes, they was jest naturally dyin’ for sleep. I tells the boss, and we cuts off the balls of mud. As soon as we would cut one off, the critter would fall into a deep sleep, jest like Adam in the Bible. Some of the worst ones slept steady for four days and nights, and then woke up fresh and pert as ever.”“Still,” said Red, “it ain’t the mud and it ain’t the wind that makes Texas weather bad; it’s the sudden and quick changes.”“That’s right,” said Hank; “that’s right, as our new boss found out once. He ’lowed he was goin’ to keep a record of the weather. So he comes home with abrand-new thermometer and hangs it up on the front porch, and calls us boys to look at it. Well, sir, while we was standin’ there the mercury runs up to about ninety or a hundred to git a good start. Then all of a sudden, down she goes with sech a jar that she jest naturally knocks the bottom right out of the tube and ruins the boss’s new thingamabob. Good instrument it was too; not jest a mercantile advertisement, but a good one that he had bought and paid money for.“But that didn’t faze that man none. He sent off back East somewheres and had one made to order with a rubber cushion in the bottom of the tube to take up the jar when the mercury fell. He got a patent on the idear and got rich. His thermometers are in use all over the Southwest. They’re the only kind that’ll stand the climate.“This feller was jest crazy about his new thermometer. He was always lookin’ to see how cold it was or how hot it was. Once a norther come up in the night, and he jest had to git up and go look at his instrument. He struck a match so he could see, and the match jest froze, and he had to build a fire and warm it up before he could blow it out.”“That might sound a bit windy to a feller that didn’t know the country,” said Joe, “but it’s probably so. I seen sunshine freeze right on the streets of Amarillo one time. Durin’ one of the long cold spells they had up there, all the chickens died for want of sleep. You see, they couldn’t tell when it was night, and the sunshine stayed froze so long they jest naturally died.”“Speakin’ of things freezin’,” said Red, “I’ve seenwords freeze. Once we was out in a blizzard cuttin’ drift fences, and tryin’ to point the herds to the canyons. And we’d yell and cuss the critters, but we couldn’t even hear ourselves. Well, sir, we finally got the brutes into the brakes and was on our way back when it started moderatin’. All of a sudden we heard the dangest mess of yellin’ and cussin’ and cow-bawlin’ that you ever heard tell of. Presently we recognized the very words we had spoke on the way down.”“It seems to me,” said Lanky, “that I learned a story something like that from Addison and Steele.”“Doubtless,” said Red, “doubtless you did. This that I was tellin’ about happened right over here on Addison and Steele’s outfit. I was workin’ for ’em at the time.”“Yeah,” said Hank, “them northers come mighty sudden at times. One time Bill Anker and me rides up to a tank, and the day’s so warm and purty we decides to go in swimmin’. We was jest ready to strip off, when all of a sudden we notices the bullfrogs all along the dam jumpin’ out of the willows like bats shot out of a cannon. They hit the water all right and went under, but them critters got fooled that time. They poked out their heads like they always do; and there they was froze tight as a hat-band in the ice. All along the side of the tank for about ten feet from the dam, the ice was jest naturally speckled with frog heads.”“That puts me in mind,” said Joe, “of a tale Bill Bishop used to tell. Bill said one time he started in swimmin’ and dove off of a high bluff into a deep hole of water. But jest as he was leavin’ the bluff, a droughtcome and dried up all the water. Bill thought shore he’d kill his self on the rock bottom of the creek-bed, but down comes a rise from a rain up above and fills up the hole jest in time to save him.”“Lucky,” said Lanky.“Yes,” said Joe, “I guess he was, yet not so powerful lucky, after all. Jest as he was stickin’ up his head, it got froze in the ice like them frogs Hank was tellin’ you about, and he had to stay there all day before the boys come and chopped him out. Leastwise that’s what he used to tell, but he was sech a damn windy that you never knowed when he was tellin’ the truth and when he was tryin’ to load somebody.”
The day had been blustery enough, and Lanky’s eyes were red from the sand’s having cut into his eyeballs. There was still dust in the air, but at twilight the wind had subsided, and Lanky was experiencing that feeling of intense relief that comes when the sandstorm is over.
During the day there had been little talk. Lanky had most of the time ridden within normal hailing distance of Red Wallace; but conversation would have been difficult, and neither he nor Red had been in the mood for it. At noon each man swallowed his beans and bacon as rapidly as he could. Even then, he consumed a considerable quantity of sand.
The old-timers were sitting expectantly around the fire. Their experience with tenderfeet told them that Lanky would open the conversation, and that the topic would be the wind.
“Terrible day we had,” he observed. “How much sandstorm weather are we likely to have?”
“Son,” replied Red, “what you’ve seen today is the gentle zephers of spring. You ain’t seen a real sandstorm.”
“Then,” replied Lanky, “I’d like to know how I’m to know one when I meet it.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Lanky,” said Red. “I’ll tell you exactly how you can know. Do you recollect seein’ a log-chain hangin’ suspended from the big hackberry tree in front of the bunkhouse?”
“That immense chain?” asked Lanky.
“Yeah,” said Red. “That’s a log-chain. And you wondered what it was up there for, no doubt. Well, it’s to tell when there’s a sandstorm. As long as it’s hangin’ straight down, we know there ain’t no wind to speak of. When it hangs out at an angle of forty-five degrees, we speak of a slight breeze. It’s only when she’s stickin’ straight out parallel to the ground that it’s correct and proper to speak of a windstorm.”
“I’d think winds like that would blow all the houses and windmills over,” observed Lanky.
“It ain’t only the houses and windmills,” said Hank. “It’s real-estate. Why, there was a feller come in here one time and filed on a section of land in Colonel Slaughter’s pasture, and a big sandstorm come along, and he never did find that section. He advertised in all the papers for it, offerin’ a reward for its return, and he got lots of answers from people down in the brush country that had stray sections on their hands that they wanted to git rid of, but he looked ’em over and said none of ’em had his brand on ’em. And so he had to go back East.”
“Yeah, the wind does some mighty funny things,” said Joe. “I come dang near losin’ the best saddle hoss I ever had on account of a sandstorm.”
“I guess he got against a drift fence where the tumbleweeds and sand collected and buried the critter alive,” said Hank.
“Naw, that wasn’t it,” replied Joe, “though I’ve dug many a cow-brute out of the sand drifts. It wasn’t that. In them days I was workin’ cattle out in theMonahans country. One evenin’ the boss tells me to swing up a little draw, sayin’ the wagon would be at the head. Well, I got out of the draw jest at dark, and I looked around, but I couldn’t see no campfire anywheres in sight. I rode around a while, but still not seein’ no signs of the wagon, and bein’ tired, I decided to turn in. I was scered to turn my hoss loose, (Brown Jug was his name) for fear he’d strike off to the remuda and leave me there afoot. So I stakes him to a little cottonwood bush on top of a mound. I knowed better than to hobble the critter, for he was wise to walkin’ off with the hobbles on. Well, when I got him staked out, I took off the saddle, which I used for a pillow, and the blanket, which I used for a bed, and went to sleep.
“In the mornin’ when I woke up and looked around, the scenery wasn’t exactly familiar. There was a big cottonwood tree which I couldn’t remember seein’ the night before, and I wondered how I come to miss it. And I looked some more, and there wasn’t any Brown Jug in sight anywheres. I thinks to myself, the critter never played a dirty trick like that on me before, and I ’lows he must be around somewheres. Shorely, I says to myself, I ought to be able to find the bush I tied him to. So I whistles three times, and then I hears a weak nicker ’way up in the top of the tree, and I looks up, and damn me if there wasn’t that pore critter, with his tongue hangin’ out, dang nigh choked to death.
“Then I seen what had happened, I’d tied the hoss on top of a sand-dune. The wind had come up and thesand had blowed away. What I calculated on bein’ a bush was in fact a great big tree—so dang big in fact, that the thirty-foot lariat wouldn’t let pore Brown Jug more than half way to the ground. If I hadn’t woke up jest when I did, the pore brute would of choked to death shore.”
“How did you get him down?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, that was easy,” said Joe. “In them days I always had my old six-gun by me, and I jest whipped her out and put a bullet through the rope and let Brown Jug down. The fall didn’t seem to hurt him none, and after he blowed a little while, he was as pert as ever.
“However, the wind got up again in the middle of the mornin’, and the only way I could keep the hoss on the ground was to tie big rocks to the horn of the saddle.”
“That shows you’ve got more sense than a prairie-dog,” said Hank, “which surprises me. Many a time on the South Plains durin’ a sandstorm, I’ve seen them critters ten feet in the air, diggin’ with all their might, tryin’ to git back in their holes.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen,” said Red, “and it was the funniest sight I ever saw caused by a sandstorm. One day in the spring the boss sent me out to pizen prairie-dogs. He was one man I didn’t work for long; he jist couldn’t stand to see a man not doin’ somethin’. So when the wind would git bad and he didn’t want to go out his self, he would send us out to ride fence and pizen dogs and the like.
“Well, this time I rode over to where I knowed there was a big town, and I rode up, and what do yousuppose I saw? The sand was all blowed away, and there was them holes stickin’ forty feet in the air. I never knowed before that time how crooked them critters made their residences.”
“The wind’s purty hard on the rodents sometimes,” said Hank. “I knowed a wind, however, that helped out a pore human down on Sulphur Draw that was about to starve. This feller had come in to farm, and he raised a cribful of corn, but the ranchers wouldn’t buy it because it wasn’t shelled, and wouldn’t go in a morral. So the pore farmer was about to starve, and his old lady and kids to boot.
“This feller was jest fresh from the sticks and didn’t have much confidence in anybody, anyway, and he ’lowed the ranchers was waitin’ for a chance to steal his corn. So he nailed up the crib door good and tight. He noticed a knothole in one of the walls, but he saw it was too little for an ear of corn to go through; so he jest let that go.
“One day a wind come up, and the farmer and his folks hid in the dugout like prairie-dogs, and the next day the wind laid, and they crawled out and looked around; and there was corn cobs scattered all alongside the crib. The old man thought shore somebody had stole his corn, but when he got the crib door open, he saw it there all shelled as purty as if he’d done it his self.
“He was a sort of ignorant and superstitious man, and the next day when I happened by, he says to me that the fairies had come and shelled his corn. Well, I never did take no stock in fairies and the like, andI knowed there must be a reasonable and sane explanation somewheres. So I picked up one of the corn cobs and stuck it in the knothole. It was jest a good tight fit. Then I told the old man what must of happened. The wind got up and would of blowed all his corn out of the crib, but the knothole wasn’t big enough for an ear to go through. Hence each ear got shelled, and all the corn was left in the crib. It was jest as simple as that. Perfectly natural. If them old fellers we read about that believed in fairies and witches, and all that crap, had jest of used their heads, they’d found out that everything’s natural and simple enough. They put me in mind of Mex’cans. But as I was about to say, the old man sold his corn and got on purty well.”
“There was a farmer close to us one time,” said Joe, “that lost his milk cows in a curious manner. He had a little patch of pop-corn, and one hot day the cows broke into the patch and started eatin’ it up. All of a sudden that corn begun poppin’ and flyin’ every which away.”
“Did the shooting grains kill the cows?” asked Lanky.
“Naw,” said Joe. “When the fool critters saw all that pop-corn flyin’ through the air, they thought it was snow, and jest naturally froze to death.”
“Do you ever have tornadoes out here?” asked Lanky.
“You mean cyclones?” asked Joe. “Well, yes, sometimes. A queer thing happened to me one time up here jest below the Caprock. We was goin’ up the trail, and one evenin’ it was hot as blazes and sultry and still.The cattle was gittin’ nervous and we was all expectin’ hell to break loose any time. And shore nuff it did. A cloud come up in the northwest and it thundered and lightened, and then the storm struck us. Them steers jest naturally histed their tails and left the country. I was on a good hoss, but it was all I could do to stay in sight of them cattle. My pony was givin’ me all he had, and he wasn’t gainin’ on them steers none. Neither was the other boys gittin’ close to ’em.
“D’rec’ly I looked back over my shoulder like, and there was them clouds bilin’ and whirlin’ around in the sky; then all at once a funnel drops down and takes out after me. I started quirtin’ my hoss. I feel right mean about it yet when I think about it, for he was doin’ his best to ketch that herd, and he couldn’t do no more.
“Well, the next thing I knowed I was up in the air still in the saddle with my hoss under me, whirlin’ round and round like a top. That cyclone carried me around in the air like that for a half an hour or more, me scered all the time that it was goin’ to drop me. But it didn’t. After a while it sets me down jest as gentle as a mother with her baby.
“I looks up, and there’s the herd comin’ hell-bent for election right toward me. I gits off my slicker and fires off my six-shooter and turns them steers and gits ’em to millin’. Purty soon the other boys rides up, and we gits ’em quieted down, and the whole outfit has to set up and sing to ’em all night.
cyclone“Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out.”
“Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out.”
“The next day we counted ’em out, and we hadn’t lost a head; not a single cow-brute was missin’. If ithadn’t been for that cyclone, we’d been gathering cattle for a week, and then likely we wouldn’t of found ’em all.”
“That’s the way it is,” said Red. “Some winds is good and some winds is bad, but I’d rather have sandstorms and risk a cyclone once in a while than to have mud in the rainy season like they have on the Black Land divide.”
“We found lots of mud when we drove through last fall,” said Lanky.
“You jist thought you found mud,” replied Red. “You ought to have seen them flats before they begun makin’ roads. When I first hit that country, they was jist fencin’ off the lanes, and when I got a job, the boss put me to ridin’ fence. One day I was ridin’ along by the lane, and I looked over and there was a good, brand-new Stetson hat layin’ on the top of a mud-hole. I thinks to myself, ‘That’s a good hat, and I might as well have it as the next feller.’ So I got down and got a-holt of a fence-post to steady myself, and reached out to git it. Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out: ‘Hey, what you doin’ there?’ he says. Then I noticed for the first time that there was a man’s head stickin’ out of the mud. I asked the feller if he needed any help, but he said he was ridin’ a mighty good hoss, and he guessed he’d make it through all right. He afterwards got to be a mighty good friend of mine. Pete Jackson was his name.”
“Well, sir,” said Joe, “speakin’ of mud, that puts me in mind of one experience I had goin’ up the trail in ’83. We was kinda late in gittin’ through, and therainy weather had already set in before we crossed the Black Land divide. We hadn’t hardly got across when we begun to notice that our hosses was losin’ all their pertness. The boss’s pet cow-hoss got as lazy as a jackass. My own favorite hoss, Brown Jug, jest got sleepier and sleepier, till finally he jest laid down and went to sleep and never did wake up. We lost half of our remuda jest like that.
“The boss was terribly worried because he didn’t like the idea of trainin’ on foot, and besides he didn’t know whether his hands would stay with him or not if he didn’t have nothin’ for ’em to ride. Well, I figured there must be a cause of hoss sickness jest as there is for everything else. So I begins to take note. I notices that all the sick hosses has mud-balls on their tails. Then I guesses what must be the matter. The weight of the mud on the critters’ tails was makin’ sech a pull on the brutes’ hides that they jest couldn’t shet their eyes. And I figured that bein’ unable to shet their eyes, they was jest naturally dyin’ for sleep. I tells the boss, and we cuts off the balls of mud. As soon as we would cut one off, the critter would fall into a deep sleep, jest like Adam in the Bible. Some of the worst ones slept steady for four days and nights, and then woke up fresh and pert as ever.”
“Still,” said Red, “it ain’t the mud and it ain’t the wind that makes Texas weather bad; it’s the sudden and quick changes.”
“That’s right,” said Hank; “that’s right, as our new boss found out once. He ’lowed he was goin’ to keep a record of the weather. So he comes home with abrand-new thermometer and hangs it up on the front porch, and calls us boys to look at it. Well, sir, while we was standin’ there the mercury runs up to about ninety or a hundred to git a good start. Then all of a sudden, down she goes with sech a jar that she jest naturally knocks the bottom right out of the tube and ruins the boss’s new thingamabob. Good instrument it was too; not jest a mercantile advertisement, but a good one that he had bought and paid money for.
“But that didn’t faze that man none. He sent off back East somewheres and had one made to order with a rubber cushion in the bottom of the tube to take up the jar when the mercury fell. He got a patent on the idear and got rich. His thermometers are in use all over the Southwest. They’re the only kind that’ll stand the climate.
“This feller was jest crazy about his new thermometer. He was always lookin’ to see how cold it was or how hot it was. Once a norther come up in the night, and he jest had to git up and go look at his instrument. He struck a match so he could see, and the match jest froze, and he had to build a fire and warm it up before he could blow it out.”
“That might sound a bit windy to a feller that didn’t know the country,” said Joe, “but it’s probably so. I seen sunshine freeze right on the streets of Amarillo one time. Durin’ one of the long cold spells they had up there, all the chickens died for want of sleep. You see, they couldn’t tell when it was night, and the sunshine stayed froze so long they jest naturally died.”
“Speakin’ of things freezin’,” said Red, “I’ve seenwords freeze. Once we was out in a blizzard cuttin’ drift fences, and tryin’ to point the herds to the canyons. And we’d yell and cuss the critters, but we couldn’t even hear ourselves. Well, sir, we finally got the brutes into the brakes and was on our way back when it started moderatin’. All of a sudden we heard the dangest mess of yellin’ and cussin’ and cow-bawlin’ that you ever heard tell of. Presently we recognized the very words we had spoke on the way down.”
“It seems to me,” said Lanky, “that I learned a story something like that from Addison and Steele.”
“Doubtless,” said Red, “doubtless you did. This that I was tellin’ about happened right over here on Addison and Steele’s outfit. I was workin’ for ’em at the time.”
“Yeah,” said Hank, “them northers come mighty sudden at times. One time Bill Anker and me rides up to a tank, and the day’s so warm and purty we decides to go in swimmin’. We was jest ready to strip off, when all of a sudden we notices the bullfrogs all along the dam jumpin’ out of the willows like bats shot out of a cannon. They hit the water all right and went under, but them critters got fooled that time. They poked out their heads like they always do; and there they was froze tight as a hat-band in the ice. All along the side of the tank for about ten feet from the dam, the ice was jest naturally speckled with frog heads.”
“That puts me in mind,” said Joe, “of a tale Bill Bishop used to tell. Bill said one time he started in swimmin’ and dove off of a high bluff into a deep hole of water. But jest as he was leavin’ the bluff, a droughtcome and dried up all the water. Bill thought shore he’d kill his self on the rock bottom of the creek-bed, but down comes a rise from a rain up above and fills up the hole jest in time to save him.”
“Lucky,” said Lanky.
“Yes,” said Joe, “I guess he was, yet not so powerful lucky, after all. Jest as he was stickin’ up his head, it got froze in the ice like them frogs Hank was tellin’ you about, and he had to stay there all day before the boys come and chopped him out. Leastwise that’s what he used to tell, but he was sech a damn windy that you never knowed when he was tellin’ the truth and when he was tryin’ to load somebody.”