“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 the Monahans 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.