He Returns
“Three months passed, and one morn as Bob Turket and Bill Smotherall were counting their skins, they were stricken with amazement to see Strap Buckner ride up before them on his swift gray nag. He dismounted and stood before them, and they were the more amazed. And he looked distant and sad and solemn, as if he were contemplating things afar off. He spake to them not; but they fell on their faces before him, and [[130]]said: ‘Mighty champion of the world, depart hence!’ He said simply: ‘Skin for skin!’ and sadly and slowly rode away. Bob Turket and Bill Smotherall watched him depart, and counted no more skins that day.
“Three months he dwelt in his cabin, and thrice weekly he visited the trading house, where he walked about like one contemplating the dead, with a sad and distant air. He was a changed man. He would drink no whiskey, and would knock no man down. Finally, one night, a great blue flame rose far above the valley, and cast a pale, deathly light over the land. On the top of the blue flame appeared a great gray nag, and astride him sat the dread form of a red monkey, and behind the red monkey sat the form of a gigantic man waving a gigantic iron pestle, whereat the dread form of the red monkey seemed to cower. When morning arose, Strap’s house was in ashes and cinders.
“Evasit, abiit! Since that mysterious and perhaps fatal night, he has never been seen in his proper person as in the olden time. Yet often at night when the tempest howls and the thunders roar, his form, or shadow, or image, or whatever it be, is seen to stride this valley in which we ride, on his swift bob-tail nag. When a Buckner’s Creek baby cries, whether from pure perverseness or from colic, only say to him ‘Strap Buckner’ once, and he will forthwith scrooch up in his cradle, and you will hear no more from that baby for hours. Behold in him the titular divinity to whom all the cowboys lift up their emulation and prayers.”
“I perceive, sir,” said I, “that thou art a true poet, and I thank thee.”
“And I perceive, sir,” said he, “that thou art a true epilogue, and I thank thee. This is the road which bids me depart from thee. Farewell!”
He turned his horse and departed from me, as other friends had done before.
[1] Reprinted from The Coming Empire or Two Thousand Miles in Texas on Horseback, by H. F. McDanield and N. A. Taylor, A. S. Barnes and Company, New York, 1877, pp. 49–73. [↑]