PIZENOUS WINDIES
There was just enough light left in the sky to reveal the bedded herd. The first night-shift had gone on. One could see the riders silhouetted against the sky as they rode around the cattle quieting them with the crooning melodies of Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie and The Trail of ’83.
The men had finished supper. Some had spread their beds and were lying upon them. They had not yet gone through the short ritual of going to bed. Others sat around the campfire. Red Wallace observed that it was time to hit the hay. As he started to the wagon for his bed-roll, he stumbled over a small greasewood bush. A shrill rattle came from underneath. Red jumped back, picking up a stone.
“You dirty rascal!” he exclaimed. “Thought you’d bite me, didn’t you? Of all the nerve. Tryin’ to bite me. You cheeky son-of-a-gun. Wanted to bite me! Take that.” The rock struck the snake squarely on the head.
“A rattlesnake!” exclaimed Lanky, a tenderfoot of the high-school age, whom the boss had taken on the day before, and whom Joe Martin had informally christened Lanky. “I’ve been wishing all afternoon to see one.”
“You’ll git to see all them you want to see if you stay with this outfit, though they ain’t as numerous as they used to be,” answered Red.
“Are they really as poisonous as they have the reputation of being?” asked Lanky.
“Pizenous?” asked Red, seating himself on the bed-roll he had just brought from the wagon. “One of them cut-throats took off three of the best friends I ever had in this world.
“You see it was like this. Poker Bill was out ridin’ fence. He gits down to nail up a loose wire, and one of these reptiles nabs him by the heel. Bill grabs him by the tail and jist naturally flails the everlastin’ stuffin’ out of him on the fence post. Then Bill takes off his boot and looks at his heel. The fang ain’t teched the skin; so he puts back on his boot and goes on his way, thinkin’ nothin’ of it. About a week afterwards Bill gits a sore heel. He comes in one day at dinner and tells the boss he can’t work that evenin’ and he lays down on his bunk and we goes off and leaves him. When we comes in at night, there lays pore Bill a corpse.
“He must have knowed he was goin’ to die, ’cause there on a piece of paper was his will all wrote out. It says, ‘My saddle to Red, my bridle to Pete, and my boots to Ed.’