Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp

Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp

By John A. Lomax.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Dedication
4. Epigraph
5. Introduction
6. Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp
   1. Part I: Cowboy Yarns
      1. Out Where the West Begins
      2. The Shallows of the Ford
      3. The Dance at Silver Valley
      4. The Legend of Boastful Bill
      5. The Texas Cowboy and the Mexican Greaser
      6. Broncho Versus Bicycle
      7. Riders of the Stars
      8. Lasca
      9. The Transformation of a Texas Girl
      10. The Glory Trail
      11. High Chin Bob
      12. To Hear Him Tell It
      13. The Clown’s Baby
      14. The Drunken Desperado
      15. Marta of Milrone
      16. Jack Dempsey’s Grave
      17. The Cattle Round-Up
   2. Part II: The Cowboy Off Guard
      1. A Cowboy’s Worrying Love
      2. The Cowboy and the Maid
      3. A Cowboy’s Love Song
      4. A Border Affair
      5. Snagtooth Sal
      6. Love Lyrics of a Cowboy
      7. The Bull Fight
      8. The Cowboy’s Valentine
      9. A Cowboy’s Hopeless Love
      10. The Chase
      11. Riding Song
      12. Our Little Cowgirl
      13. I Want My Time
      14. Who’s That Calling So Sweet?
      15. Song of the Cattle Trail
      16. A Cowboy’s Son
      17. A Cowboy Song
      18. A Nevada Cowpuncher to His Beloved
      19. The Cowboy to His Friend in Need
      20. When Bob Got Throwed
      21. Cowboy Versus Broncho
      22. When You’re Throwed
      23. Pardners
      24. The Bronc That Wouldn’t Bust
      25. The Ol’ Cow Hawse
      26. The Bunk-House Orchestra
      27. The Cowboy’s Dance Song
      28. The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball
      29. A Dance at the Ranch
      30. At a Cowboy Dance
      31. The Cowboys’ Ball
   3. Part III: Cowboy Types
      1. The Cowboy
      2. Bar-Z on a Sunday Night
      3. A Cowboy Race
      4. The Habit
      5. A Ranger
      6. The Insult
      7. “The Road to Ruin”
      8. The Outlaw
      9. The Desert
      10. Whiskey Bill—A Fragment
      11. Denver Jim
      12. The Vigilantes
      13. The Bandit’s Grave
      14. The Old Mackenzie Trail
      15. The Sheep-Herder
      16. A Cowboy at the Carnival
      17. The Old Cowman
      18. The Gila Monster Route
      19. The Call of the Plains
      20. Where the Grizzly Dwells
      21. A Cowboy Toast
      22. Ridin’ Up the Rocky Trail from Town
      23. The Disappointed Tenderfoot
      24. A Cowboy Alone with His Conscience
      25. Just A-Ridin’!
      26. The End of the Trail
7. Endnotes
8. Colophon
9. Uncopyright

Imprint

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“That these dear friends I leave behind
May keep kind hearts’ remembrance of the love we had.”

Solon

In affectionate gratitude to a group of men, my intimate friends during College days (brought under one roof by a “Fraternity”), whom I still love not less but more,

• Will Prather, Hammett Hardy, Penn Hargrove and Harry Steger, of precious and joyous memory;

• Norman Crozier, not yet quite emerged from Presbyterianism;

• Eugene Barker, cynical, solid, unafraid;

• “Cap’en” Duval, a gentleman of Virginia, sah;

• Ed Miller, redheaded and royal-hearted;

• Bates MacFarland, calm and competent without camouflage;

• Jimmie Haven, who has put ’em over every good day since;

• Charley Johnson, “the Swede”⁠—the fattest, richest and dearest of the bunch;

• Edgar Witt, whose loyal devotion and pertinacious energy built the “Frat” house;

• Roy Bedichek, too big for any job he has yet tackled;

• “Curley” Duncan, who possesses all the virtues of the old time cattleman and none of the vices of the new;

• Rom Rhome, the quiet and canny counter of coin;

• Gavin Hunt, student and lover of all things beautiful;

• Dick Kimball, the soldier; every inch of him a handsome man;

• Alex and Bruce and Dave and George and “Freshman” Mathis and Clarence, the six Freshmen we “took in”; while Ike MacFarland, Alfred Pierce Ward, and Guy and Charlie Witt were still in the process of assimilation⁠—

To this group of God’s good fellows, I dedicate this little book.

No loopholes now are framing
Lean faces, grim and brown,
No more keen eyes are aiming
To bring the redskin down;
But every wind careening
Seems here to breathe a song⁠—
A song of brave careering,
A saga of the strong.

Introduction

“Look down, look down, that weary road,
’Tis the road that the sun goes down.”
⋮
“ ’Twas way out West where the antelope roam,
And the coyote howls ’round the cowboy’s home,
Where the mountains are covered with chaparral frail,
And the valleys are checkered with the cattle trail,
Where the miner digs for the golden veins,
And the cowboy rides o’er the silent plains⁠—”

The Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp does not purport to be an anthology of Western verse. As its title indicates, the contents of the book are limited to attempts, more or less poetic, in translating scenes connected with the life of a cowboy. The volume is in reality a byproduct of my earlier collection, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. In the former book I put together what seemed to me to be the best of the songs created and sung by the cowboys as they went about their work. In making the collection, the cowboys often sang or sent to me songs which I recognized as having already been in print; although the singer usually said that some other cowboy had sung the song to him and that he did not know where it had originated. For example,