Read the following story about Pecos Bill.

Pecos Bill

    Pecos Bill was a good cowboy who was raised by coyotes. It happened after Bill accidentally fell when the wagon hit a big rock beside Pecos River as his family was moving from Texas with fifteen noisy children.

    As he hungered for adventure, he decided to look for a group of rough men called the Hell's Gate Gang. On the way, he found a snake blocking his way, which made a hissing noise. But after a tense minute, Bill beat the snake until it surrendered and then wrapped it around his arm. After walking a hundred miles, he came across an angry mountain lion. There was a huge battle between him and the lion and finally Bill took control of the lion and put a saddle on it. He rode the mountain lion all the way to the camp of the Hell's Gate Gang.

    Bill finally met the Hell's Gate Gang and asked for the boss. A huge cowboy, nine feet tall, took one look at Bill and, in a shaky voice, answered that he was the boss but immediately said that, from that time, Bill was the boss there.

    With his gang, Pecos Bill was able to create the biggest ranch in the Southwest. Bill and his men had so many cattle that they needed all of New Mexico to hold them. Arizona was the pasture where the cattle ate grass.

    Pecos Bill invented the art of being a cowboy. He invented the skill of throwing a special rope called a lasso, the method of using a hot branding iron to mark cows, and cowboy songs to help calm the cattle. But he is also said to have invented tarantulas and scorpions as jokes. Cowboys have had trouble with those poisonous creatures ever since.

    Bill once rode a tornado across Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, all the time squeezing the rain out of it to save the land from drought. When the storm was over, Bill fell off the tornado. He landed in California. He left a hole so deep that, to this day, it is known as Death Valley.

    At that time, Bill had a horse named Widow Maker, due to its habits of kicking and bucking anyone. Bill hoped he could ride it until he died and make his wife become a widow. In the end, his horse caused him the biggest problem by excessively kicking and bucking his wife, Slue-foot Sue, who tried to ride on it after their marriage ceremony.

Widow Maker sent Sue flying so high that she sailed clear over the new moon and fell back to Earth. Luckily, she wore a beautiful white dress with a huge steel-spring bustle in the back, so that she just bounced back up as high as before.

    Thinking that his wife would not stop bouncing, Bill lassoed Sue to bring her down to Earth. However, she just bounced him back up with her. Somehow the two came to rest on the moon. And that's where they stayed. Some people say they raised a family, up there. Their children were as loud and wild as Bill and Sue were in their younger days. People say the sound of thunder that sometimes carries over the dry land around the Pecos River is nothing more than Pecos Bill's family laughing up a storm.

Comprehension questions. Answer the following questions.

What did Bill invent?