Folklore Pamphlets, 1921-1945

              6 Cowboy Tales
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"When Bill was about a year old, another family moved into the country and located about fifty miles down the river. His father decided the place was gettin' too crowded and packed his family into a wagon and moved west. One day, after they had crossed the Pecos River, Bill fell out of the wagon. As there were sixteen or seventeen other children in the family, his parents didn't miss him for four or five weeks, and then it was too late to find him.
"That's how Bill came to grow up with the coyotes along the Pecos. He soon learned the coyote lan¬ guage, and used to hunt with them, and sit on the hills and howl at night. Being so young when he got lost, he always thought he was a coyote.
"One day, when he was about ten years old, a cow¬ boy came along just when Bill had matched a fight with two grizzly bears. Bill hugged the bears to death, tore off a hind leg and was just settin' down to breakfast when this cow-boy loped up and asked him what he meant by runnin' around naked that way among the varmints."
Bill told him that he was a varmint—a coyote. He pointed out to the cowman that he had fleas and howled around all night, like a respectable coyote. This, the cow-boy explained to him, was no proof since all Texans had fleas and most of them howled. He finally convinced the boy that he was a human being and not a coyote.
"Bill went to town with the cow-hand, and in due time he got to enjoy in' all the pleasant vices of man¬ kind, and decided that he certainly was a human. He got to runnin' with the wild bunch and sunk lower and lower, until he became a cow-boy."
HIS HORSE WIDOW MAKER Bill had many horses. Most of them could outrun a streak of lightnin', then double back and outrun the next streak. His favorite mount was a horse he called Widow Maker. No one but Pecos Bill was ever known to ride him successfully. The cemeteries down there in the old longhorn country are crowded with the graves of the cowboys who tried. Bill had raised this colt himself on nitroglycerine and dynamite. This probably accounted for his high spirits and tem¬ per. He used to say he had raised him by hand, and showed a hand minus several digits to prove it. When he wanted Widow Maker to give a special perform¬ ance he fed him a skyrocket, a pin-wheel, or a Roman candle or two. Bonebreaker was another of Bill's cow ponies. Ridin' him, as some found to their dis¬ comfort, was like divin' head-foremost into a thresh- in' machine. Hoof-prints of some of Bill's ponies can be seen imprinted in the rock in a number of places in Arizona.
Ride him, you cowboy thar, ride him,! Say, you are shore on some hoss! Keep on a settin' astride him 'Till he has larn't who is boss! —F. W. Lafrentz in "Cowboy Stuff"