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American Ballads and Folk Songs
Our hearts were cased with buffalo hocks, our souls were cased with
steel, And the hardships of that summer would nearly make us reel, While skinning the damned old stinkers, our lives they had no show, For the Indians waited to pick us off on the hills of Mexico.
The season being near over, old Crego he did say
The crowd had been extravagant, was in debt to him that day.
We coaxed him and we begged him, and still it was no go—
We left his damned old bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo.
Oh, it's now we've crossed Pease River and homeward we are bound, No more in that hell-fired country shall ever we be found. Go home to our wives and sweethearts, tell others not to go, For God's forsaken the buffalo range and the damned old buffalo.
THE STAMPEDE *
When the hot sun smiles on the endless miles
That lead to the distant mart, And the cattle wail down the well-worn trail,
And moan till it grips the heart, And they gasp for air in the dust clouds there,
As they jostle their way along With uplifted ear so that they may hear
The cow-puncher's evening song.
Far up at the head rode old "Texas Red"—
A man of determined face— And his keen gray eye took in earth and sky
As he rode with a centaur's grace. On the left was Joe on his white pinto j
Jim Smith patrolled on the right.
* First published in Wild West Weekly (Street and Smith, 79 Seventh Ave., New York),
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