Pecos Bill by James Cloyd Bowman

Author:James Cloyd Bowman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2017-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

EYEGLASS DUDE ENGLISHMEN

When Pecos Bill left Hell’s Gate Gulch to make a visit to Pinnacle Mountain Ranch—which was what he had in mind next—he found that plenty had been going on in his old crowd.

Gun Smith, Rusty Peters, Moon Hennessey, Mushmouth, Bean Hole, and all the others were squatting on their toes, whittling, shooting at targets with tobacco juice, and laying bets to see who could tell the biggest yarn.

“It’s funny,” Pecos Bill said to himself as he came up and saw how things were. “Here’s the same old crimp in the rope. Things going along just too soft. So they have to tell tall tales about how good they are.”

“Well, how are things going since I’ve been away?” he said aloud as he came up quietly behind the men.

“Goin’,” laughed Gun Smith, “they’re gone!”

“What do you mean?” asked Pecos Bill, looking puzzled.

“Well, we’ve just sold out everything, and a lot more. When you hear how we cleaned up on a couple of these eyeglass dude Englishmen you’ll agree the Devil hasn’t anybody slicker’n we are,” answered Gun Smith as he lifted his chest high.

“Do tell! Say, you talk just like the Devil’s Cavalrymen I’ve been visiting down at Hell’s Gate Gulch. It seems as if idleness locoes everybody alike.”

“Well, if you’ll agree not to stop me with any more of your burnin’ remarks,” growled Gun Smith, “I’ll tell you what happened.”

“Agreed,” answered Pecos Bill as he too squatted on his toes and made one of the silent circle.

“Well, when you first left us, Pecos, we was to blame, I suppose. There was so little work to do that we didn’t even attend to what there was.

“Things went along like a tune of the heavenly choir for a long while—for six or eight months, I should say. The corral fence was new and as solid as the rock of Gibraltar, and the cattle was too afraid to go up the side of Pinnacle Mountain, or off of it.

“Once in a while, when we was all fed up with settin’ around without any more eggs to hatch, we’d maybe ride out daily to see that nothin’ had gone wrong.

“But everything was always so perfectly fine that after a while it was just a waste of time, to our way of thinkin’, to ride around the twelve miles of fence once a month.”

“But don’t forget,” broke in Chuck, “that all this happened while the fence was so tight a prairie dog wouldn’t have been able to find his way through it.”

“As I was sayin’,” continued Gun Smith, “after a while the old steers got all the grass cropped around the foot of the mountain next the corral. So they just naturally had to crawl higher and higher up Old Pinnacle. We was, by this time, pattin’ ourselves so hard on the back that it began to be much worse’n sunburn. With nothin’ but just bare stubble between the steers and the fence, we all argued that there wasn’t a thing could possibly go wrong.

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