he swells to beat the nation
When you’re cinchin’ up the slack,
An’ he keeps an elevation
In your saddle at the back.
He stands still with feet a-sprawlin’,
An’ his eye shows lots of white,
An’ he kinks his spinal column,
An’ his hide is puckered tight,
He starts risin’ an’ a-jumpin’,
An’ he strikes when you get near,
An’ you cuss him an’ you thump him
Till you get him by the ear—
Then your right hand grabs the saddle
An’ you ketch your stirrup, too,
An’ you try to light a-straddle
Like a woolly buckaroo;
But he drops his head an’ switches,
Then he makes a backward jump,
Out of reach your stirrup twitches
But your right spur grabs his hump.
An’ “Stay with him!” shouts some feller;
Though you know it’s hope forlorn,
Yet you’ll show that you ain’t yeller
An’ you choke the saddle horn.
Then you feel one rein a-droppin’
An’ you know he’s got his head;
An’ your shirt tail’s out an’ floppin’;
An’ the saddle pulls like lead.
Then the boys all yell together
Fit to make a feller sick:
“Hey, you short horn, drop the leather!
Fan his fat an’ ride him slick!”
Seems you’re up-side-down an’ flyin’;
Then your spurs begin to slip.
There’s no further use in tryin’,
For the horn flies from your grip,
An’ you feel a vague sensation
As upon the ground you roll,
Like a violent separation
’Twixt your body an’ your soul.
Then you roll agin a hummock
Where you lay an’ gasp for breath,
An’ there’s somethin’ grips your stomach
Like the finger-grips o’ death.
They all offers you prescriptions
For the grip an’ for the croup,
An’ they give you plain descriptions
How you looped the spiral loop;
They all swear you beat a circus
Or a hoochy-koochy dance,
Moppin’ up the canon’s surface
With the bosom of your pants.
Then you’ll get up on your trotters,
But you have a job to stand;
For the landscape round you totters
An’ your collar’s full o’ sand.
Lots of fellers give prescriptions
How a broncho should be rode,
But there’s few that gives descriptions
Of the times when they got throwed.
Pardners
You bad-eyed, tough-mouthed son-of-a-gun,
Ye’re a hard little beast to break,
But ye’re good for the fiercest kind of a run
An’ ye’re quick as a rattlesnake.
Ye jolted me good when we first met
In the dust of that bare corral,
An’ neither one of us will forget
The fight we fit, old pal.
But now—well, say, old hoss, if John
D. Rockefeller shud come
With all the riches his paws are on
And want to buy you, you bum,
I’d laugh in his face an’ pat your neck
An’ say to him loud an’ strong:
“I wouldn’t sell you this derned old wreck
For all your wealth—so long!”
For we have slept on the barren plains
An’ cuddled against the cold;
We’ve been through tempests of drivin’ rains
When the heaviest thunder rolled;
We’ve raced from fire on the lone prairee
An’ run from the mad stampede;
An’ there ain’t no money could buy from me
A pard of your style an’ breed.
So I reckon we’ll stick together, pard,
Till one of us cashes in;
Ye’re wirey an’ tough an’ mighty hard,
An’ homlier, too, than sin.
But yer head’s all there an’ yer heart’s all right,
An’ you’ve been a good pardner, too,
An’ if ye’ve a soul it’s clean an’ white,
You ugly ol’ scoundrel, you!
The Bronc That Wouldn’t Bust
I’ve busted bronchos off and on
Since first I struck their trail,
And you bet I savvy bronchos
From nostrils down to tail;
But I struck one on Powder River,
And say, hands, he was the first
And only living broncho
That your servant couldn’t burst.
He was a no-count buckskin,
Wasn’t worth two-bits to keep,
Had a black stripe down his backbone,
And was woolly like a sheep.
That hoss wasn’t built to tread the earth;
He took natural to the air;
And every time he went aloft
He tried to leave me there.
He went so high above the earth
Lights from Jerusalem shone.
Right thar we parted company
And he came down alone.
I hit terra firma,
The buckskin’s heels struck free,
And brought a bunch of stars along
To dance in front of me.
I’m not a-riding airships
Nor an electric flying beast;
Ain’t got no rich relation
A-waitin’ me back East;
So I’ll sell my chaps and saddle,
My spurs can lay and rust;
For there’s now and then a digger
That a buster cannot bust.
The Ol’ Cow Hawse
When it comes to saddle hawses, there’s a difference in steeds:
There is fancy-gaited critters that will suit some feller’s needs;
There is nags high-bred an’ tony, with a smooth an’ shiny skin,
That will capture all the races that you want to run ’em in.
But fer one that never tires; one that’s faithful, tried and true;
One that allus is a “stayer” when you want to slam him through,
There is but one breed o’ critters that I ever came across
That will allus stand the racket: ’tis the
Ol’
Cow
Hawse
No, he ain’t so much fer beauty, fer he’s scrubby an’ he’s rough,
An’ his temper’s sort o’ sassy, but you bet he’s good enough!
Fer he’ll take the trail o’ mornin’s, be it up or be it down,
On the range a-huntin’ cattle or a-lopin’ into town,
An’ he’ll leave the miles behind him, an’ he’ll never sweat a hair,
’Cuz he’s a willin’ critter when he’s goin’ anywhere.
Oh, your thoroughbred at runnin’ in a race may be the boss,
But fer all day ridin’ lemme have the
Ol’
Cow
Hawse
When my soul seeks peace and quiet on the home ranch of the blest,
Where no storms or stampedes bother, an’ the trails are trails o’ rest,
When my brand has been inspected an’ pronounced to be OK,
An’ the boss has looked me over an’ has told me I kin stay,
Oh, I’m hopin’ when I’m lopin’ off across that blessed range
That I won’t be in a saddle on a critter new an’ strange,
But I’m prayin’ every minnit that up there I’ll ride across
That big heaven range o’ glory on an
Ol’
Cow
Hawse
The Bunk-House Orchestra
Wrangle up your mouth-harps, drag your banjo out,
Tune your old guitarra till she twangs right stout,
For the snow is on the mountains and the wind is on the plain,
But we’ll cut the chimney’s moanin’ with a livelier refrain.
Shinin’ dobe fire-place, shadows on the wall
(See old Shorty’s friv’lous toes a-twitchin’ at the call:)
It’s the best grand high that there is within the law
When
