one night in New Mexico a cowboy sang to me, in typical cowboy music, Larry Chitten den’s entire “Cowboys’ Christmas Ball”; since that time the poem has often come to me in manuscript form as an original cowboy song. The changes—usually, it must be confessed, resulting in bettering the verse—which have occurred in oral transmission, are most interesting. Of one example, Charles Badger Clark’s “High Chin Bob,” I have printed, following Mr. Clark’s poem, a cowboy version, which I submit to Mr. Clark and his admirers for their consideration.
In making selections for this volume from a large mass of material that came into my ballad hopper while hunting cowboy songs as a Traveling Fellow from Harvard University, I have included the best of the verse given me directly by the cowboys; other selections have come in through repeated recommendation of these men; others are vagrant verses from Western newspapers; and still others have been lifted from collections of Western verse written by such men as Charles Badger Clark, Jr., and Herbert H. Knibbs. To these two authors, as well as others who have permitted me to make use of their work, the grateful thanks of the collector are extended. As will be seen, almost one-half of the selections have no assignable authorship. I am equally grateful to these unknown authors.
All those who found Cowboy Songs diverting, it is believed, will make welcome The Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp. Many of these have this claim to be called songs: they have been set to music by the cowboys, who, in their isolation and loneliness, have found solace in narrative or descriptive verse devoted to cattle scenes. Herein, again, through these quondam songs we may come to appreciate something of the spirit of the big West—its largeness, its freedom, its wholehearted hospitality, its genuine friendship. Here again, too, we may see the cowboy at work and at play; hear the jingle of his big bell spurs, the swish of his rope, the creaking of his saddle gear, the thud of thousands of hoofs on the long, long trail winding from Texas to Montana; and know something of the life that attracted from the East some of its best young blood to a work that was necessary in the winning of the West. The trails are becoming dust covered or grass grown or lost underneath the farmers’ furrow; but in the selections of this volume, many of them poems by courtesy, men of today and those who are to follow, may sense, at least in some small measure, the service, the glamour, the romance of that knight-errant of the plains—the American cowboy.
Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp
PartI
Cowboy Yarns
The centipede runs across my head, The vinegaroon crawls in my bed, Tarantulas jump and scorpions play, The broncs are grazing far away, The rattlesnake gives his warning cry, And the coyotes sing their lullaby, While I sleep soundly beneath the sky.
Out Where the West Begins
Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That’s where the West begins; Out where the sun is a little brighter, Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter, Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter, That’s where the West begins.
Out where the skies are a trifle bluer, Out where friendship’s a little truer, That’s where the West begins; Out where a fresher breeze is blowing, Where there’s laughter in every streamlet flowing, Where there’s more of reaping and less of sowing, That’s where the West begins.
Out where the world is in the making, Where fewer hearts in despair are aching, That’s where the West begins; Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing, Where there’s more of giving and less of buying, And a man makes friends without half trying, That’s where the West begins.
The Shallows of the Ford
Did you ever wait for daylight when the stars along the river Floated thick and white as snowflakes in the water deep and strange, Till a whisper through the aspens made the current break and shiver As the frosty edge of morning seemed to melt and spread and change?
Once I waited, almost wishing that the dawn would never find me; Saw the sun roll up the ranges like the glory of the Lord; Was about to wake my pardner who was sleeping close behind me, When I saw the man we wanted spur his pony to the ford.
Saw the ripples of the shallows and the muddy streaks that followed, As the pony stumbled toward me in the narrows of the bend; Saw the face I used to welcome, wild and watchful, lined and hollowed; And God knows I wished to warn him, for I once had called him friend.
But an oath had come between us—I was paid by Law and Order; He was outlaw, rustler, killer—so the border whisper ran; Left his word in Caliente that he’d cross the Rio border— Call me coward? But I hailed him—“Riding close to daylight, Dan!”
Just a hair and he’d have got me, but my voice, and not the warning, Caught his hand and held him steady; then he nodded, spoke my name, Reined his pony round and fanned it in the bright and silent morning, Back across the sunlit Rio up the trail on which he came.
He had passed his word to cross it—I had passed my word to get him— We broke even and we knew it; ’twas a case of give and take For old times. I could have killed him from the brush; instead, I let him Ride his trail—I turned—my pardner flung his arm and stretched awake;
Saw me standing in the open; pulled his gun and came beside me; Asked a question with his shoulder as his left hand pointed toward Muddy streaks that thinned and vanished—not a word, but hard he eyed me As the water cleared and sparkled in the shallows of the ford.
