uExpress.com: Tell Me A Story by Amy Friedman and Jillian Gilliland -- (07/26/1999) adapted by Amy Friedman and illustrated by Jillian Gilliland

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adapted by Amy Friedman and illustrated by Jillian Gilliland

07/26/1999

PECOS BILL AND LIFE OUT WEST (an American tall tale)

You know about the way Pecos Bill was raised by coyotes in East Texas and about how he grew to be the strongest, bravest, fastest, biggest man in the world.

One day he decided to head out west for new adventures. On his way he met a trapper. "I'm lookin' for the hardest cow outfit in the world," Bill said to the stranger.

"Yer headed in the right direction," the trapper told Bill. "Keep on goin' this way, and you'll find fellas so hard they can kick fire halfway round the world with their bare feet."

So Bill rode on, but after a while his horse tripped on a mountain, so Bill set him free and slung his saddle over his arm and went on foot. No sense making a poor horse with a sore leg carry a man who can walk.

Well, all of a sudden, a 10-foot rattlesnake slithered up to Bill. "I'd like a fight," that rattler said.

So Bill lay down his saddle. Now like I said, Bill was the strongest, bravest, fastest, biggest man in the world, so to give that rattler half a chance, he let him have the first three bites.

That rattler did his best, his tail rattling, his fangs bared, his body writhing. But Bill let loose, and pretty soon that rattler gasped. "Mercy!" he cried. "I admit it, when it comes to fighting, Pecos Bill, you begin where I leave off."

So Bill carried that snake with him across the rest of Texas and on into New Mexico. He curled it into short loops and brushed away the Gila monsters with it.

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Well, halfway across New Mexico, a big old cougar leaped off a cliff and landed on Bill's brawny neck. This was no ordinary cougar. He weighed more than 10 steers.

Bill just chuckled, and once again he lay down his saddle and then his snake. A minute later fur was flying every which way, and by the time the sun had set, that cougar was hollering, "I give up! Can't you take a joke, Pecos Bill?"

Bill let that cougar up off the ground, and he put his saddle on that cougar's back, and they walked on.

That evening Bill spotted a chuck wagon and a big campfire, and when he came closer, he saw a bunch of tough-looking cowboys sitting around. Bill rode right up to them, that rattlesnake around his neck, that cougar under him, and he looked those cowboys in the eyes and asked, "So who's boss around here?"

Well, the biggest fellow stood up. He was 8 feet tall and was wearing seven pistols in his holsters, but when he saw Pecos Bill, he took off his cowboy hat and bowed and said, "Stranger, I used to be boss, but I reckon you are now."

And that's how Bill came to have a lot of adventures with these big, brawny cowboys. They used Arizona to pasture their cattle, and they staked out New Mexico, and they did a lot of other things together. But Bill did a lot of things on his own.

One time Bill rode on the back of a cyclone, just to prove that he could ride anything. That cyclone tried to throw him, but it couldn't do it. So the cyclone decided it would rain out from under him. And when it did, it washed out the place we call the Grand Canyon today. When Bill came down from that cyclone, he was in California, and the place he landed is called Death Valley.

Bill invented roping, too, and some old-timers say Bill's rope was as long as the equator, but others say it was 2 feet shorter on one end. Everyone agrees on one thing, though. Bill could rope a whole herd of cattle with just one throw.

Bill was always doing new things. He liked to put thorns on trees and horns on toads, and he dug out the Rio Grande, and he twisted rivers in knots. He invented the tarantula one day. That was supposed to be a joke on his friends.

Bill tried to save the buffalo when they began to get scarce. He would run them down with his famous squatter-hound whose name was Norther, and when he caught those buffalo, he would skin them carefully and set them free to grow a new hide. He even taught some of them how to jump out of their own hide. Trouble was, the scheme worked in the summertime, but in the wintertime a lot of them caught colds and died, which made Bill sad.

Hard to imagine that a man like Pecos Bill could ever die. Some people say drinking killed him. Some say he put barbed wire in whatever he was drinking, just to make it taste a little tougher, and that that barbed wire rusted on Bill's insides and gave him indigestion. They say he wasted away, and that after awhile he weighed only 2 tons or a little bit less.

But a lot of people say that tale's a myth, and that Bill died this way:

One day he was riding along on the prairies and met a man from Boston. The man was wearing a mail-order cowboy suit, bright and shiny with buttons that shimmered under the summer sun, and all the creases ironed in. That man began asking Bill all kinds of foolish questions about the West, like how a man from Boston could find a group of cowpokes to join, and how a man from Boston could learn to rope the way Bill roped, and how a man from Boston could ride a cyclone. Well, they say Bill started laughing and couldn't stop, and he laughed so hard, he finally laughed himself to death.

Nobody knows for sure, but that story sounds pretty likely for a man like Pecos Bill.

The second book collection of wonderful tales from "Tell Me a Story" is available for $14.95, plus $2 for postage and handling. Send your orders to "The Spectacular Gift," in care of Andrews McMeel Publishing, P.O. Box 419242, Kansas City, Mo. 64141; or call (800) 642-6480. Be sure to indicate your newspaper's name on your order. Allow three to four weeks for delivery.