“You guessed wrong again,” said Joe. “This is what happened. The Ole Woman was cookin’ corn-pone, and all of a sudden it got dark, and there was the dangest singin’ and hummin’ you ever heard. Then they seen it was a swarm of big black miskeeters; and they was so thick around Bill that you jest couldn’t see him.
“The Ole Man felt his way to the wagon and got out his gun. He thought he’d shoot it off in the air and scere them miskeeters away. He pointed the muzzle of the gun toward the sky and pulled the trigger. What he seen then was a little beam of light come through. It was jest like bein’ in a dark room and lookin’ out through a piece of windmill pipe. That was jest for a minute, for right away the hole shet up, and them miskeeters swarmed around Pecos, and the Ole Man seen they was goin’ to pack him off if he didn’t do somethin’ right away.
“Then he happened to recollect that he’d brought his hog-renderin’ kettle along; so he fought his way back to the wagon and rolled it out and turned it over the kid. He was scered the lad would git lonesome under there by his self, so he jest slipped the choppin’ axe under the edge of the kettle for the chap to play with.
“Well, them danged miskeeters jest buzzed and buzzed around the kettle, tryin’ to find a way to git in. D’rec’ly they all backed off, and the Old Man and the Ole Woman thought they’d give up and was goin’ away. Then all at once one of them miskeeters comes at that kettle like a bat out of hell. He hit the kettle and rammed his bill clean through it; and he stuck there. Then another one come at the kettle jest like the first one had; and he stuck, too. Then they kept comin’, and every one stuck. The Ole Man and the Ole Woman and the older brats stood there watchin’ them miskeeters ram that kettle. After each one of them varmints (they was too big to be called insects) hit the kettle, there would be a little ring—ding! like that. Purty soon the old folks got on to what was happenin. Every time a miskeeter would ram his bill through the kettle, Pecos would brad it with the choppin’ axe. Well, after while them miskeeters jest naturally lifted that kettle right up and flew off with it. The others thought they had Pecos Bill and follered the kettle off. Of course the Ole Man hated to lose his utensil. He said he didn’t know how the Ole Woman was goin’ to render up the lard and bear’s grease now; but it was worth a hundred kettles to know he had such a smart brat. And from that time the Ole Man would always talk about Bill as a chap of Great Possibilities. He ’lowed that if the brat jest had the proper raisin’, he’d make a great man some day. He said he was goin’ to try to do his part by him; so he begun givin’ him a diet of jerked game with whiskey and onions for breakfast. He lapped it up so well that in three days the Ole Woman weaned him.”
“Did the Ole Man settle there on the Sabine?” asked Lanky.
“Naw,” said Joe. “He squatted on a little sandy hill on the Trinity somewheres east of where Dallas is now. It was jest an accident that he stopped where he did.”
“How was that?” asked Lanky.
“Well,” said Joe, “you see, it was like this. They was travelin’ west in their customary and habitual manner, which was with the Ole Man and the six oldest kids walkin’ alongside Spot and Buck, and the Ole Woman and the seven youngest kids in the wagon. Jest as they was comin’ to the foot of a sandy hill, a big rain come up. It rained so hard that the Ole Man couldn’t see the wagon, but he stuck close to them trusty oxen of his, and they went right up the hill. When he got to the top, he seen that it had about quit rainin’; and he looked back and seen the wagon still at the bottom of the hill, and there was the brats that had been walkin’ with him under it.”
“Did the harness break?” asked Lanky.
“Naw, it wasn’t that,” said Joe. “You see, he was usin’ a rawhide lariat for a log-chain, and it had got wet. I reckon you know what rawhide does when it gits wet, don’t you, Lanky? It stretches. There ain’t no rubber that will stretch like wet rawhide. Well, that’s what happened to that lariat. It stretched so that the Ole Man drove his oxen a mile up the hill without movin’ the wagon an inch. Not an inch had he moved her, by gar.