“The next mornin’ he got his rifle and begun lookin’ around. About five miles from his place he found some wagon tracks, and he follered the tracks till he come to a new cabin about fifty miles up the creek. Then he come home and told the Ole Woman and the kids to git ready to leave. He calkilated the country was gittin’ too thickly settled for him.”
“How did he get away without a team?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, that was easy,” said Red. “He sent Pecos Bill out to ketch a couple of mustangs, and in about an hour the lad run ’em down. The Ole Man fixed up the harness he’d been usin’ to plough with, and loaded in his stuff and his wife and kids, and pulled out.
“They kept goin’ west till finally they come to the Pecos River, which the Ole Man said he’d ford or bust. He got across all right, but as he was drivin’ up the bank on the west side, the end-gate come out of the wagon, and Pecos Bill fell out. The Ole Man and the Ole Woman never missed him till they got about thirty miles further on; then they said it wasn’t worth while turnin’ back. They said they guessed the chap could take kere of his self, and if he couldn’t he wasn’t worth turnin’ back for nohow. So that’s how Pecos Bill come to be called Pecos Bill.”
“What became of him?” asked Lanky. “What happened to him then?”
“What happened to him then?” said Red. “That would take a long time to tell.”
“We’ll tell you about that some other time, Lanky,” said Joe.
ADVENTURES OF PECOS BILL
“How old was Pecos Bill when he was lost on the Pecos River?” Lanky asked Joe on the next night when supper was finished and the four were sitting around the fire smoking.
“I guess he must of been about four year old,” said Joe. “Some says he was jest a year old, but that can’t be right. The Ole Man made two or three crops down on the Trinity before the country got so thickly settled that he had to leave.”