Pecos Bill

Long ago, a big family was moving west across Texas in a bumpy covered wagon. The wagon hit a rock near the Pecos River, and the littlest baby bounced right out onto the sand. Nobody noticed, and the wagon rolled on without him.

The baby sat in the sand and looked around. Soon a mother coyote trotted up and sniffed him. She licked his nose, and the baby giggled, so she took him home to her den. That is how Pecos Bill grew up with the coyotes. He learned to run on all fours, to sniff the wind, and to howl at the moon. He was sure that he was a coyote too.

Many years later, a cowboy rode by and saw Bill sitting on a rock with the coyotes. “Hey there, why are you living out here with the coyotes?” asked the cowboy. “Because I am a coyote,” said Bill. “A coyote has a bushy tail,” said the cowboy, “so where is yours?” Bill looked behind him, and he looked again. There was no tail at all! “Well, I never,” said Bill, scratching his head. So he said goodbye to his coyote family, and he promised to visit them often.

Bill went off to be a cowboy, and he was the best one the West had ever seen. He made a rope so long that he could swing it around a whole herd of cattle at once. Some people say he was the very first cowboy to use a lasso. He could ride any horse, any bull, and even a grumpy mountain lion.

One summer, a giant cyclone came spinning across the land. It roared and whirled, and it sucked up fences and barns and haystacks. Everyone ran to hide, but Bill just laughed and swung his rope. He lassoed the cyclone, jumped on its back, and rode it like a bucking bronco. The cyclone twisted over Texas, then over New Mexico, then all the way to Arizona. But it could not shake Bill off, and at last it was so tired that it rained itself out. Bill slid down to the ground on a long, wet raindrop.

Some people say he landed so hard that he made a great big valley in the desert. And on quiet nights, if you hear a coyote howl, you might hear Pecos Bill howling right back.