his monument;
The northers, moaning o’er the low divide,
Go gently past his long deserted camps.
No more his rangers guard the wild frontier,
No more he leads them in the border fight.
No more the mavericks, winding stream of horns
To Kansas bound; the dust, the cowboy songs
And cries, the pistol’s sharp report—the free,
Wild days in Texas by the Rio Grande.
And some men say when dusky night shuts down,
Dark, cloudy nights without a kindly star,
One sees dim horsemen skimming o’er the plain
Hard by Mackenzie’s trail; and keener ears
Have heard from deep within the bordering hills
The tramp of ghostly hoofs, faint cattle lows,
The rumble of a moving wagon train,
Sometimes far echoes of a frontier song;
Then sounds grow fainter, shadows troop away—
On westward, westward, as they in olden time
Went rangeing o’er the old Mackenzie Trail.
The Sheep-Herder3
All day across the sagebrush flat,
Beneath the sun of June,
My sheep they loaf and feed and bleat
Their never changin’ tune.
And then, at night time, when they lay
As quiet as a stone,
I hear the gray wolf far away,
“Alo‑one!” he says, “Alo‑one!”
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
The tune the woollies sing;
It’s rasped my ears, it seems, for years,
Though really just since Spring;
And nothin’, far as I can see
Around the circle’s sweep,
But sky and plain, my dreams and me
And them infernal sheep.
I’ve got one book—it’s poetry—
A bunch of pretty wrongs
An Eastern lunger gave to me;
He said ’twas “shepherd songs.”
But, though that poet sure is deep
And has sweet things to say,
He never seen a herd of sheep
Or smelt them, anyway.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
My woollies greasy gray,
An awful change has hit the range
Since that old poet’s day.
For you’re just silly, on’ry brutes
And I look like distress,
And my pipe ain’t the kind that toots
And there’s no “shepherdess.”
Yet ’way down home in Kansas State,
Bliss Township, Section Five,
There’s one that’s promised me to wait,
The sweetest girl alive;
That’s why I salt my wages down
And mend my clothes with strings,
While others blow their pay in town
For booze and other things.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
My Minnie, don’t be sad;
Next year we’ll lease that splendid piece
That corners on your dad.
We’ll drive to “literary,” dear,
The way we used to do
And turn my lonely workin’ here
To happiness for you.
Suppose, down near that rattlers’ den,
While I sit here and dream,
I’d spy a bunch of ugly men
And hear a woman scream.
Suppose I’d let my rifle shout
And drop the men in rows,
And then the woman should turn out—
My Minnie!—just suppose.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
The tune would then be gay;
There is, I mind, a parson kind
Just forty miles away.
Why, Eden would come back again,
With sage and sheep corrals,
And I could swing a singin’ pen
To write her “pastorals.”
I pack a rifle on my arm
And jump at flies that buzz;
There’s nothin’ here to do me harm;
I sometimes wish there was.
If through that brush above the pool
A red should creep—and creep—
Wah! cut down on ’im!—Stop, you fool!
That’s nothin’ but a sheep.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a!—Hell!
Oh, sky and plain and bluff!
Unless my mail comes up the trail
I’m locoed, sure enough.
What’s that?—a dust-whiff near the butte
Right where my last trail ran,
A movin’ speck, a—wagon! Hoot!
Thank God! here comes a man.
A Cowboy at the Carnival
Yes, o’ cose it’s interestin’ to a feller from the range,
Mighty queerish, too, I tell you—sich a racket fer a change;
From a life among the cattle, from a wool shirt and the chaps
To the biled shirt o’ the city and the other tony traps.
Never seed sich herds o’ people throwed together, every brand
O’ humanity, I reckon, in this big mountain land
Rounded up right here in Denver, runnin’ on new sort o’ feed.
Actin’ restless an’ oneasy, like they threatened to stampede.
Mighty curious to a rider comin’ from the range, he feels
What you’d call a lost sensation from sombrero clar to heels;
Like a critter stray that drifted in a windstorm from its range
To another run o’ grazin’ where the brands it sees are strange.
Then I see a city herder, a policeman, don’t you know,
Sort o’ think he’s got men spotted an’ is ’bout to make a throw
Fer to catch me an’ corral me fer a stray till he can talk
On the wire an’ tell the owner fer to come an’ get his stock.
Yes, it’s mighty strange an’ funny fer a cowboy, as you say,
Fer to hit a camp like this one, so unanimously gay;
But I want to tell you, pardner, that a rider sich as me
Isn’t built fer feedin’ on sich crazy jamboree.
Every bone I got’s a-achin’, an’ my feet as sore as if
I had hit a bed o’ cactus, an’ my hinges is as stiff
From a-hittin’ these hot pavements as a feller’s jints kin git—
’Taint like holdin’ down a broncho on the range, a little bit.
I’m hankerin’, I tell you, fer to hit the trail an’ run
Like a crazy, locoed yearlin’ from this big cloud-burst o’ fun
Back toward the cattle ranches, where a feller’s breath comes free
An’ he wears the clothes that fits him, ’stead o’ this slick toggery.
Where his home is in the saddle, an’ the heavens is his roof,
An’ his ever’day companions wears the hide an’ cloven hoof,
Where the beller of the cattle is the only sound he hears,
An’ he never thinks o’ nothin’ but his grub an’ hoss an’ steers.
The Old Cowman
I rode across a valley range
I hadn’t seen for years.
The trail was all so spoilt and strange
It nearly fetched the tears.
I had to let ten fences down—
(The fussy lanes ran wrong)
And each new line would make me frown
And hum a mournin’ song.
Oh, it’s squeak! squeak! squeak!
Hear ’em stretchin’ of the wire!
The nester brand is on the land;
I reckon I’ll retire.
While progress toots her brassy horn
And makes her motor buzz,
I thank the Lord I wasn’t born
No later than I wuz!
’Twas good to live when all the sod,
Without no fence
