FURTHER DIVERSIONS—TARANTULA DUELS—RATTLESNAKES KILLED BY KING-SNAKES—ANTELOPE, ETC.—REPTILES IN BEDDING—LITTLE DANGER FROM SNAKES—SECTIONAL CUSTOMS—HARMLESSNESS OF WILD ANIMALS—DUELS BETWEEN VARIOUS BEASTS—WOLVES AND BEARS—HORSE-RACES—INDIAN ENTRANTS—FOOT-RACES—OTHER RECREATIONS—COURSING—HAZING TENDERFOOTS—CARD-PLAYING—DRINKING AND EXTENT OF DRUNKENNESS—DANCING—PAUCITY OF RECREATIONS.
MUSIC was not the only recreation.
Not infrequent diversions in such sections of the country as offered the raw materials were mortal combats fought by two or more tarantulas, or waged between a king-snake and a rattler.
The first was the more sporting proposition, as any contestant might win. Each of the huge, repulsive spiders which hopped about the bottom of a cracked soup-tureen, carefully preserved for arena purposes, had financial backers amid the owners of the overhanging human faces. Occasionally a hairy gladiator ceased its cheery occupation of amputating its opponent’s legs, jumped from the pit in which it belonged, and bit a spectator.
Each enterer of one of the horrid bugs endeavored that it should be a female, and not from the same colony as that of any of the other belligerents. Males would not bite females or relatives; but the females, while sometimes sparing loved relations, had no pity for the males as such.
The conduct and result of the other duel was foreordained, a terrified rattlesnake making successive efforts to crawl to safety and each time headed off by a moving streak upon the floor, a coil, a rattle, spiral progress which made around the coil was seemingly lazy but was assuredly provocative of hate, another rattle, an angry, aimless strike, a flash through the air, a blur, teeth sunk in just below the rattler’s open jaw, a vine-like embrace, a badly squeezed rattlesnake dead from a broken neck, and an immediate gliding away by a slender, graceful whip-lash, by three feet of lithest sinuosity particolored with black and brilliant yellow or orange, radiantly glistening as with a fresh coat of varnish.
King-snakes, which were entirely harmless to man, commonly were intentionally imprisoned by him in houses located in rattler-infested localities, and were permitted to go whither they wished withindoors. Otherwise there always would be the chance of a cucumber-like odor and of a sharp, whirring sound beside the fireplace or in some dark corner. The king-snake would not eat his victim, but would kill it at sight.
To procure with certainty such a snake fight within one’s cabin, all one had to do was to go out of doors, capture the nearest rattler by aid of a forked stick or an open gunnysack, and throw him through the cabin door and onto the floor. The king-snake would do the rest.
Occasionally one saw such a combat self-arranged and on the open prairie.
In Texas a black snake would be substituted for our friend the king-snake, but the result of the duel would be the same.
On the range one might see a rattlesnake being done to death in either of two other and equally dramatic ways. A snake would sound its rattle, and anywhere the antelope or deer, or in the Far Southwest the chaparral-cock sometimes would heed the call.
A female antelope and her tiny fawn were quietly nosing their way through the scattered bunch-grass. The mother’s head shot up and twisted to one side. She was both listening and scenting to the limit of her tense ability. Suddenly she started, ran, say, a hundred yards, jumped six feet into the air, and, with four hoofs held close together, landed upon the rattler. Up and down she bucked with rapidity suggesting an electric vibrator, with all the effect of the sharpest knife. Her little feet had cruel edges. A moment later she trotted quietly back to her baby, and left behind her reptilian hash.
Or the chaparral-cock might stop its hunt for bugs, seize in its bill a group of cactus thorns, spread its wings wide and low, and, running more speedily than could any racehorse, dodging as elusively as does heat-lightning, drive those thorns squarely into the snake’s open mouth, peck out both the beady eyes, and then resume the hunt for bugs.
At the extreme southerly portion of the Range the rattler had another enemy, the peccary. Nevertheless, watching a pig step on a snake, bite into it, pull it apart, and then eat it did not stir one’s imagination.
The rattlesnakes, though considered, except for certain ones in Texas, to be much overadvertised as to dangerousness and to be trading on the well-deserved reputation of their Floridan brothers, nevertheless were regarded as being distinctly unpleasant. Yet nobody ordinarily paid much attention to them or had their subject in mind unless they were in one’s path or in or near one’s house, or unless a man were about to sit on the ground or to sleep upon it.
The average inhabitant of the Cattle Country acquired a habit of circumspection before taking a seat. This desire for a quick, snappy view became almost an instinct. Colonel Pickett said: “You tell a good horse by his configuration, manners, and action. You tell a Westerner by the way he sits down.”
When a man was about to sleep on the ground, hard pounding was done upon the earth to scare up from their holes any lurking reptiles. Similar exploratory precaution was taken against scorpions, centipedes, and tarantulas within their domain.
Not infrequently, despite such a preliminary search and despite the cocoon-like way in which every sleeping Westerner tightly rolled his blankets about him, a man on waking in the morning would find that his bed had gathered in various nocturnal wanderers, assorted according to the latitude, a rattlesnake or two or perhaps only a single tarantula, scorpion, centipede, horned toad, small lizard, or disgusting Gila monster.
There was little actual hazard in conducting such a lodging-house; because its human proprietor always quit it before the sun had warmed the guests into activity, and quit it in a manner which, keeping the blankets still atop the lodgers, deterred them from moving to attack.
Safety required that this exit be not made in any violent manner, but rather be circumspectly accomplished by gently uncovering the shoulders, by strategically anchoring the hands into the ground behind the head, and by their rapidly pulling out the body, which was kept as still as though it were paralyzed from the waist down. Once freed from the bed, its real owner always curiously investigated, to see what prizes, if any, he had drawn.
There was very little risk of being bitten by any of these unpleasant creatures at any time. Seemingly they had no desire to attack a man who was sleeping or otherwise quiescent, and, save in infrequent instances, they fled from any one who moved.
The only type of rattlesnake upon the major portion of the Range either stayed on the ground or climbed no higher than the bottom branches of low bushes, almost invariably coiled and rattled before it struck was, when striking, rarely disposed to lunge a distance exceeding one-third of the reptile’s length, very rarely was able to lunge further than one-half of its length, and never more than two-thirds of it. As this rattlesnake’s length but seldom exceeded three feet and almost never four feet, the striking radius was comparatively short.
Moreover, the snake was easily killed. While a pistol-shot or a “mashing with a rock” were thoroughly effective, there were other no less definitive methods. A slight blow from a quirt or switch insured a fatal break in the spine, a result obtained for the neck by many a cowboy through his seizing the tail of a gliding serpent and snapping the brute like a whip. A coiled rattler patently could not at the moment be accorded this latter debonair treatment, so either he was kicked out of his coil and then seized and snapped, or, having been allowed to strike the sole of a boot, his head, before it could be retracted, was prosaically stepped on.
Although the Western rattlesnake was known to be death-dealing in only rare instances, its bite ordinarily provoked heroic remedy. The historic antidote of whiskey was rarely available, and also was recognized as being a dangerous ally of the serpent’s poison. Snake venom from the outset and whiskey from the commencement of its reactive effect were each heart constringents. The wound, enlarged by a knifeslash, and imprisoned by a tourniquetted thong, might be plugged with either a searing coal or else a pinch of gunpowder and a lighted match. One chap, bitten on the tip of his finger, drew his gun, and blew off that finger at its second joint.
The alleged deadliness of the scorpion, tarantula, centipede, and repulsive-looking Gila monster belonged so far as appeared, in the category with the traditional venomousness of the mythical hoop-snake.
If the ranchman ran but little peril from the snakes and bugs, he ran no danger at all from any of the wild animals except possibly one, the “hydrophobia skunk,” with its traditionally venomous bite. All the rest of the wild beasts, bears included, avoided man unless he overtly asked for war. And, if he did, the grizzly bear alone was dangerous, least of all that terror in the novels, that spitting, snarling, harmless, cowardly, overgrown tabby-cat, the mountain-lion.
Occasionally the open prairie or the forest’s edge offered entertainment of absorbing interest and of Homeric grandeur. Either two huge bulls or two great wapiti, crashing head on, charge after charge, struggled for the acknowledged leadership of an onlooking and admiring harem. Or else in springtime, the grizzly bear, hungry from its wintering, sallied forth for food and fancied veal. Though the great brute knew its discount through its still soft and tender footpads, it failed to make allowance for the spirit that was latent in every ox or cow upon the Range. On the bear’s approach, a bunch of cattle nervously threw up their heads, snorted, and galloped off. Soon a stubby-legged calf was overtaken and struck down. Upon its squeal, the herd wheeled, and out of it shot, head down, the bereaved cow or more probably a berserk steer, at times to hilt its horn in Bruin’s chest and simultaneously to receive a neck-dislocating smash from a long-nailed paw.
In early years one might have seen a buffalo make the same assault upon a bear.
In the springtime, also, there might suddenly appear above the sage-brush the blood-stained visage of a great, gray wolf, interrupted at its meal upon the body of its kill, a little calf which its mother had “cached.” With the cattle as with the antelope, when a mother had occasion to travel far for water, she did not take her baby with her, but instead hid it in the brush. The youngster, as though hypnotized, would lie for hours, glued to the ground, absolutely motionless, and would make no effort to escape from any intruder. He might elude the eye of man, but rarely the notice of any passing horse, and never the scent of whatever coyote or timber-wolf might wander near.
In winter there were the footprints of wild life upon the tracking snow, and, from time to time, one might also watch the bear as he, having interrupted his hibernation, intermittently came forth at noontime on pleasant days, and either stretched and yawned on his seat in the sunshine, or else, with rheumatic motion and crabbed temper, stubbed through an exercising walk.
To whatever observant man loved the out-of-doors, nature was lavish in her joyous gifts.
Another means of relaxation was the horse-race, not the formal Sunday one run upon the track at the distant town, not a competition between ponies of the local ranch, for the latter contest made no opportunity for bitter human partisanship, but a race between a pony of the ranch, and some other steed which had come in either under the saddle of a visiting puncher or under the lead of a smooth-tongued individual unrecognized as being a professional horse-racer. This oily man, ostensibly interested only in cattle, presently and with apparent reluctance rode to the starting line. Twenty-seven seconds after his reaching there, the race was over and the hosts were in pecuniary distress. An experience of this sort taught nothing to the cowboy, and thus a considerable portion of his loose change periodically passed to fleet-footed vagrants and their hatchet-faced gentlemen escorts.
Perhaps mounted Indians appeared, and then, the competing ponies having been selected, the punchers bet all their surplus possessions against the generous hazards of the Red Skins. Ethnic pride goaded both the white man and the Indian, and the passing of the stakes often left either the punchers insolvent or the Indians afoot.
Such part of the cowboys’ winnings as were in the form of blankets or fur robes were necessarily and forthwith deposited by their new owners upon ant-hills, to rest there several days in order that the industrious, ever hungry, black ants might delouse completely the wool or fur.
Indians’ visits were not welcomed by the cook, as the latter not only had to produce food, but also was held by the ranchers somewhat responsible for the condition of the interior of the house. The visiting Indians had three salient qualities, one of which, great sense of dignity, did not appease the cook’s irritation from the other two, possession of an insatiate appetite which was of appalling capacity and possession also of a superabundance of readily emigrating insect companions.
The horse-race over, a foot-race naturally followed. Of all occurrences upon the Range, the most frequent was undoubtedly movement by live stock, but in close succession came human argument and foot-races. It was almost as easy to launch a foot-race as it was to start a debate.
Such a race was a contest more in strategy than in mere speed. It occurred anywhere that there could be found two men not hopelessly bow-legged, and also reasonably flat ground which was sufficiently extensive to permit the contestants without leaving the starting point to determine with their eyes a goal “exactly one hundred yards away to an inch.” Coats, if any, and vests came off, but boots and spurs stayed on. The contestants agreed as to which of them should give the startingsignal, and then began edging up the course. When the man intrusted with the word “go” either considered himself in an advantageous position, or by his sense of shame was prevented from “scrouging” farther, he shouted the unleashing word. Although this cost him a little breath, the disadvantage might immediately be more than offset by his opponent’s finding himself stepping on a discarded can, confronted by a set of rabbit-holes, rushing up a blind alley in waist-high, sturdy sage-brush, or dragging on his spurs long strands of rusty baling wire.
Because of one’s opportunity to chart the location of all bunkers, pits, ditches, cans, and animal’s skeletons about one’s home, prudence should have withheld all visitors from competing near any ranch-house. But she was disregarded. The home talent always won, for they knew when to tack.
The timing of the race was done by the contestants’ guessing, and in perfectly good faith the time was fixed either at ten seconds or at a very slightly higher figure.
The cowboy did not realize the actuating motive for his picking out this time. Fundamentally it was resentment against the East. The Atlantic coast then contained practically all of the good running tracks, and so held all of the records. The cowboys, learning that the official American record for one hundred yards was ten seconds and had been made in the East, not discovering that but two men had been recorded as being so speedy, and reasoning that effete Easterners should run no better than they rode, calmly and with no conscious attempt at deceit or braggadocio labelled themselves as peers of Mercury.
“Pitching horseshoes,” a game identical with that of quoits except that horseshoes were used instead of disks, had here and there spasmodic popularity.
Boxing and wrestling nowhere appeared upon the Range. They were incompatible with the cowboy’s temperament, and were ill-suited to his distorted legs and enfeebled ankles. Nevertheless, he would now and then in play fling his arms around the neck of some corralled, wabbly-legged, week-old calf or colt and attempt to “wrastle it down,” thereupon to be jerked off his feet and thrown into a heap.
Incidentally the puncher almost never engaged in a fist fight. He used his gun instead of his knuckles.
Baseball was never played.
A pleasing sport was riding madly after jack-rabbits. Sometimes it was done in a prearranged way and with the accompaniment of coursing dogs. English ranchmen much affected this. But usually the affair meant no more than an impromptu, harum-scarum dash by a solitary horseman who had been bedevilled into speed by a tantalizing bunny with a sense of humor.
History records comparatively few cases in which the shrewd, fleet-footed, quickly dodging rabbit was overtaken by either dog or horse.
Coursing the prong-horned antelope with hounds, and either with or without the strategy of “flagging,” was attempted occasionally, this by Englishmen more often than by Americans. Ordinarily it gave to each rider and his horse considerable exercise, and to but few of the antelope any valid cause for worry.
Horses, men, and dogs would creep forward under cover to within two hundred yards of the quarry, and, firmly confident of success, would burst into the open. The antelope would give one startled look, wheel, hoist their triangular, white-lined tails, their little, full-speed-ahead signals, and, save in rare instances, promptly would change that two hundred yards of intervening space into a mile or two.
“Now, Jack, it was all your fault. If you had used sense, and not gone at it bald-headed, hadn’t chasséd out there ahead of the rest of us, we’d have gotten them this time sure, and the worst of it is that that old buck had the all-firedest finest ivory tips I ever seen on any horns. Now, remember next time.” The next time doubtless would be like this and almost every other time, save that Joe or Mike or Bill might be the scolded one in place of Jack.
Occasionally, and particularly when the pursuit could be made by successive relays of huntsmen and hounds, the quarry was overtaken.
With these same dogs, sometimes the great, gray timber-wolf was followed to the rock or clump of brush against which he, snarling, was “stood up” and “given his medicine” of lead.
From time to time, a puncher, coming unexpectedly upon some wild beast, impulsively would rope it before it could start its flight. Even the grizzly bear, and in early days the buffalo, occasionally received the noose. In these latter instances a repentant cowboy well might have lost his breath if not his rope. The West would lariat anything that suddenly bobbed up in front and looked saucy. If certain records be accurate, more than one white man and many an Indian quickly passed to the Happy Hunting-Ground, jerked thither by a reata caught about the smokestack of a moving locomotive.
A still further amusement was the hazing of tenderfoot guests. This hazing was never more violent than the visitor merited, and for manly, well-liked innocents was usually restricted to solemn warnings against the vicious bucking alleged to be latent within the visitor’s very peaceful nag, to nocturnal expeditions for the tyro’s snaring of imaginary birds, to long-winded tales that ingeniously held the listener’s interest, but eventually disclosed that they had no point, making this disclosure sometimes by reverting to the starting-place and reiterating word for word, to exaggerated stories of wild animals, and to enticing the gullible man, by a weird howl raised just without the house, to rush out of doors at night, and fire at a can punched with two holes and containing a lighted candle.
The conventional wild-animal stories were all of the sort intended to carry fear to the innocent and to make him a bit ridiculous to his sophisticated fellow auditors. Ferocious attacks by wolverines and huggings by grizzly bears were favorite subjects, the latent points being that, though the wolverine had great fierceness, he was probably the most elusive animal in all North America, and that neither the grizzly nor any other bear, so far as appeared, had ever hugged anybody. The bear’s terrible right paw and his teeth were his means of attack. A mythical animal known to cowboy raconteurs as the “wouser” sometimes was descanted upon. The wouser was accorded any physical appearance and predatory habits which the course of the earlier conversation had seemed to warrant. He usually, however, was permitted to have hydrophobia, and was made a subspecies of either the bear or the mountain-lion.
Probably also advantage was taken of the combination of the newcomer’s credulity and of the wonderful clearness of Western air, on the joint basis of which he would be sent afoot to reach a hill which seemed to him a league away, but which in reality was three times that distance. His credulity might be victimized in another way, for in good faith he might ride miles to a ranch in a rocky, roadless country, and there ask to borrow what that ranch patently did not possess, a horsedrawn buggy.
A somewhat brutal trick was procuring a pilgrim to pinch the tail of a freshly decapitated rattlesnake. If the expected result occurred, the snake’s body through reflex action of the muscles would snap into a circle, the bleeding neck’s stump would strike the pilgrim’s hand or wrist, and the pilgrim would give a single scream, the audience a series of guffaws.
Another form of amusement which might from time to time be conducted for a few minutes at table or about a camp-fire was a competitive reciting of the inscriptions upon the labels of the cans of condensed milk and other foodstuffs habitually used at the ranch. Partly for recreative nonsense and partly out of loneliness when solitary in camp, every ranchman sooner or later committed to memory the entire texts upon these labels and could repeat them verbatim. With a penalty of five cents for each mistake in punctuation, of ten cents for each error in a word, the competitive recitals offered a sporting possibility.
They were most apt to occur when a tenderfoot was present, not so much because of the opportunity of winning his money (no tenderfoot “knew his cans”) as because the incongruity of the matter was apt to disconcert him, and a conventional pleasure upon the Range was to “keep a pilgrim guessing.” A tenderfoot making his initial Western trip would, his first night at a ranch, be sitting at the supper table listening with spellbound attention to the conversation of men who had seen things and done things. This tenderfoot would be trying to lose no detail from the talk across the table about the best way in which to ride certain bucking horses, from the talk at the table’s end as to just how one of the men in the room had succeeded in escaping from the Nez Percé Indians during the fight on the Gibbon River, when suddenly some one would notice the tenderfoot’s rapt expression, would pound on the table, and would begin “——Brand.” Instantly mention of bucking and of Indians would cease, and twelve or fourteen men, being all the persons present save only the astonished tenderfoot, would gaze at the ceiling and swing into a full-throated chorus beginning with “Condensed milk is prepared from,” and continuing for some minutes. Or else, the precentor having launched the opening words of a different canticle, the crowd would take over its continuation, and stentoriously would intone, “Of peaches. This can contains,” etc.
With the last word of the vociferous recitative, whatever its subject, the whole insane revel would stop short; and with no explanations or apologies, the former conversations would be resumed at the points where they had been interrupted. But the tenderfoot would be “guessing.” That was what the Range desired.
The cowboys might play a game of cards, seven-up or poker; but, if so, the stake was as apt to be relief from an unpleasant chore like cutting wood or going for water as to be monetary. However, when “stacked up” against punchers from rival ranches or against the public gaming-table, cowboys were prone to gamble recklessly; because, once saddle, bridle, rope, quirt, chaps, hat, and gun were paid for, there was little to purchase except tobacco and liquor. Risking six months’ wages upon the turn of a single card was no uncommon bet, though its making would arouse temporary interest among the men about the table.
There was little or no alcoholic drinking at the ranch, for it harbored very little alcohol to drink, usually none at all beyond a small lot jealously preserved for prospective medicinal use. The one source of supply was the town, and very few cowboys on visiting a settlement were after the first hours of their stay financially able to endow a wine cellar. The only opportunities for inebriety were the visits to town, made as a matter of course immediately after the fall round-up and occurring at rare intervals at other times, the semiannual visits to other ranges to assist in their round-ups and be requited by wholesale, honest thanks, good food, and possibly a little whiskey, and also the very occasional holiday celebrations at the ranch where one was employed or at another ranch within reasonable distance.
Punchers were probably no more given to drunkenness than were the contemporary American men of any other non-religious calling in any part of the United States. The punchers assuredly were apt to drink to excess when they first “struck town” after six months of enforced and continuous abstention from all liquids except water, tea, and coffee; but such of the cowboys as for business reasons had occasion to remain in town for any considerable length of time subsided after the initial exuberance had spent itself, and thereafter imbibed no more than did the town’s permanent inhabitants. The cowboy had to earn his living, and he knew that in the long run wages and alcohol were inconsistent.
When the cowboy got drunk he did not do it in any highly specialized way, or signify his inebriety by any technical methods. He merely got drunk. On this point the dramatist has attempted to make a false differentiation, and, after filling his puncher with liquor, invariably has caused him to shoot.
The drunken cowboy was like the drunken Easterner, except in the subjects which he chose for maudlin discussion. One told of the magnificence of the saddle he owned or was about to acquire; the other told of the millions of dollars he had amassed or was about to amass, or else described the Mayflower’s voyage from start to finish and filled the ship with his ancestors. Surliness brought up the Easterner’s fists and out the Westerner’s gun. But that gun rarely went off, for a friendly bystander usually seized it.
Drunken cowboys often made picturesque statements. Charlie (no last name, please, for he has grandchildren now) would offer to go into a biting contest with any grizzly bear, and to “give that thar bar a handicap. He can have first bite.”
When the puncher drank, he generally demanded liquor of good quality. Bourbon whiskey was his mainstay, though in the Southwest he at times toyed with mescal. Whiskey was taken “straight.” Mixed drinks were so entirely unknown that there was opportunity for some one to invent the story of the Easterner who, in a frontier barroom, said: “I guess I’ll take a cocktail,” and was told: “You don’t guess, you drink, and you gets it straight and in a tin cup.”
Courtesy required that the puncher, when he drank, fill his glass to the brim, and, in carrying it to his lips, use his right, his gun hand. He so filled his glass not because he wished to drink that much, not that he might impose upon the purveyor, but solely because a filled glass both showed to the giver that the recipient highly valued the quality of the gift, and also established that the donor was not dispensing goods unpalatable to himself.
The Western barmen eventually offset the draining effect of thorough urbanity by investing in glasses with inordinately thick bottoms.
The cowboy avoided so far as possible sharing as giver or recipient any drinks with soldiers. This antipathy to the military was not founded on any lack of patriotism, but it did have two clearly defined bases. The puncher, whether mistakenly or not, confidently blamed the private soldier for the physical contamination of a certain class of women in the frontier towns. Then, too, the army had been the only policer of the West, and thus the cowboy had acquired toward the army as a whole the same quasi-resentment that has ever marked the attitude of the college undergraduate toward the faculty above him.
As a further source of recreation there was an occasional dance usually on the eve of a public feast-day, the roundup’s close, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s. Although at these functions female partners were at a premium, the men attended with alacrity.
Two hundred miles was not too far to go. The dearth of femininity was partly made good by such men as, unselfishly volunteering to “dance lady fashion,” were “heifer-branded” by a handkerchief tied on the arm, and all swept the floor with considerable enthusiasm. The dancing, while not graceful, was assuredly vigorous.
The truth was that, with ranches at least fifteen, thirty, fifty miles apart, and hard work to be done, there were neither means nor leisure for much recreation. Argument and repeated surveys of the mail-order catalogue were the principal sources of relaxation. These surveys released imagination’s bonds, and let reason weigh the comparative merits of various pictured grand pianos, wedding-dresses, rowboats, seashore parasols, “nobby clothing for city use,” and “best grade gilt frames” containing “genuine oil-paintings.”