Pecos Bill

Synopsis

Pecos Bill is only a baby when his family leaves New England for the wide, open expanses of the American west. As their train of covered wagons crosses the Pecos River in Texas, baby Bill falls out, and an old coyote saves him from drowning. She adopts him as one of her own, and Bill grows up eating, sleeping, and howling just like his new coyote family. Then one day a drifter comes across Bill napping by a stream and convinces him that he isn't a coyote but a Texan — and as a Texan, he ought to be herding longhorn cattle. Bill makes his name into a legend after he wins a battle with a giant rattlesnake, tames a wild horse he calls Lightning, and teaches every cowboy how to lasso a bull. Steven Kellogg's version of this classic American folktale is accompanied by illustrations every bit as wild and hilarious as the story. Pecos Bill may have been born in New England, but he's a Texan right down to his cowboy boots.