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Ol’
Badlands hired-on at the I O Ever'body Ranch a couple
years after he wandered onto our place. We’re still a-writin’
up his memoirs an' his recollections are ‘bout as
scattered as his tracks after all them years but I’m
a-getting’ ‘em down an’ we’ll sort ‘em out when
the time comes.
As
Badlands tells it, the Comanche stole ‘im when he was
seven or eight years old. They’d been raidin’ all over
the country back around 1850, whilst he an’ his mama was
a-livin' amongst some German immigrants in a brand-new
settlement called, Fredericksburg. He found out later she
was plumb heart-struck after he wuz kidnapped an’
relocated over in Del Rio to be closer to the Comanche
camps on both sides of the border. Folks say she tried a-findin'
little Bill fer several years but ended up “soilin'
her virtues”, changin’ her name to Lilly White, an’
becomin' a sportin’ woman.
In
the mean-time, Badlands was brought-up by a medicine man
an' his squaw who he calls, “Bear Paw” an’ “Barks-Like-A-Dog”.
At first, she’d slap him on the back of the head or hit
'im with a stick ever time he’d mess-up or didn't do
just exactly what she said. They didn’t seem to like ‘im
much. Course, he'd been the spoilt child of a single,
pale-faced mama up until then. It was pure heck til he
learned the lingo an' got to likin' his new home an'
people. He ended up havin' a lot more freedom as an
"Injun" than he did before. After a while Bill
sorta grew on ‘em, he guessed, an’ they slowly
commenced to treatin' him like one of their own.
Bill
became a warrior when he turned sixteen or so. Says he
liked routin' the white settlers and harrassin' the
soldiers, especially the officers who were, “... Nuttin’
but tin-horns with high an’ mighty opinions of
themselves.” The soldiers were mostly black men called,
"Buffalo Soldiers". He called 'em,
"Mackenzie's Boys" with a reverence reserved fer
great chiefs an' warriors, men o' the cloth, presidents
an' such. Bill allowed that, "They were fightin'
son-o-guns an' the onlyest breed o' hombre I ain't never
kilt."
Came
the time when he took one of the prettiest squaws in the
tribe to be his wife. “Life,” he says, “couldn't
a-got no better; leastwise, til she lost her leg.”
Turned out, she couldn't bear no children neither, after
Bill took a notion to use 'er fer cat bait.
One
afternoon he had 'er stand in front of a cave to lure a
mountain cat out, so’s he could put an arrow in him.
Even though his third arrow hit its mark, the cougar had
already bit off her leg an' was lickin' his paws in
anticipation of the rest of his meal.
"I
reckon she held it against me ‘cause she never wuz the
same after that. Ever now’n-again she'd use 'er nub (it
was et from the knee, down) to let off steam an’ try to
make me as uncomfortable as possible... just below the
belt," Reckon that’s why folks figger what
happened to him over at the Juno Saloon was sorta poetic
justice?
Anyway,
it was real late in the Fall the year when he struck out
on his own an' try livin' as a white man. Didn't know
quite what he was gonna do or where he'as gonna go, but he
figgered the Great Spirit had a plan an' he was a-gonna
see to it.
Click here
to read what happened one evenin' on his way -->
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