“He takes off his saddle and goes walkin’ on, packin’ it, till all at once he comes to a big rattlesnake. He was twelve feet long and had fangs like the tushes of a javelina; and he rears up and sings at Bill and sticks out his tongue like he was lookin’ for a scrap. There wasn’t nothin’ that Bill wouldn’t fight, and he always fought fair; and jest to be shore that rattlesnake had a fair show and couldn’t claim he took advantage of him, Bill let him have three bites before he begun. Then he jest naturally lit into that reptile and mortally flailed the stuffin’ out of him. Bill was always quick to forgive, though, and let by-gones be by-gones, and when the snake give up, Bill took him up and curled him around his neck, and picked up his saddle and outfit and went on his way.
“As he was goin’ along through a canyon, all at once a big mountain lion jumped off of a cliff and spraddled out all over Bill. Bill never got excited. He jest took his time and laid down his saddle and his snake, and then he turned loose on that cougar. Well, sir, the hair flew so it rose up like a cloud and the jack-rabbits and road-runners thought it was sundown. It wasn’t long till that cougar had jest all he could stand, and he begun to lick Bill’s hand and cry like a kitten.
“Well, Bill jest ears him down and slips his bridle on his head, throws on the saddle and cinches her tight, and mounts the beast. Well, that cat jest tears out across the mountains and canyons with Bill on his back a-spurrin’ him in the shoulders and quirtin’ him down the flank with the rattlesnake.
“And that’s the way Bill rode into the camp of the outfit the old trapper had told him about. When he gits there, he reaches out and cheeks down the cougar and sets him on his haunches and gits down and looks at his saddle.
“There was them tough hombres a-settin’ around the fire playin’ monte. There was a pot of coffee and a bucket of beans a-boilin’ on the fire, and as Bill hadn’t had nothin’ to eat for several days, he was hungry; so he stuck his hand down in the bucket and grabbed a handful of beans and crammed ’em into his mouth. Then he grabbed the coffee pot and washed ’em down, and wiped his mouth on a prickly-pear. Then he turned to the men and said, ‘Who in the hell is boss around here, anyway?’
“‘I was,’ says a big stout feller about seven feet tall, ‘but you are now, stranger.’
“And that was the beginning of Bill’s outfit.”
“But it was only the beginnin’s,” said Red; “for it wasn’t long after that that he staked out New Mexico and fenced Arizona for a calf-pasture. He built a big ranch-house and had a big yard around it. It was so far from the yard gate to the front door, that he used to keep a string of saddle hosses at stations along the way, for the convenience of visitors. Bill always was a hospitable sort of chap, and when company come, he always tried to persuade them to stay as long as he could git ’em to. Deputy sheriffs and brand inspectors he never would let leave a-tall.
“One time his outfit was so big that he would have his cooks jist dam up a draw to mix the biscuit dough in. They would dump in the flour and the salt and the bakin’-powder and mix it up with teams and fresnoes. You can still see places where the dough was left in the bottom of the draw when they moved on. Alkali lakes they call ’em. That’s the bakin’-powder that stayed in the ground.
“One time when there was a big drought and water got scerce on Bill’s range, he lit in and dug the Río Grande and ditched water from the Gulf of Mexico. Old man Windy Williams was water boy on the job, and he said Bill shore drove his men hard for a few days till they got through, and it kept him busy carryin’ water.”