“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 that muy pronto if 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 ride as 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 tough hombre ever 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 and splinters. 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.