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[p. xi] 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.

J. A. L.
The University of Texas,
Austin, July 9, 1919.

CONTENTS

PART I. COWBOY YARNSPAGE
Out Where the West Begins[1]
The Shallows of the Ford[2]
The Dance at Silver Valley[5]
The Legend of Boastful Bill[8]
The Texas Cowboy and the Mexican Greaser[11]
Broncho Versus Bicycle[14]
Riders of the Stars[19]
Lasca[23]
The Transformation of a Texas Girl[27]
The Glory Trail[30]
High Chin Bob[33]
To Hear Him Tell It[36]
The Clown's Baby[40]
The Drunken Desperado[44]
Marta of Milrone[46]
Jack Dempsey's Grave[53]
The Cattle Round-Up[54]
PART II. THE COWBOY OFF GUARD
A Cowboy's Worrying Love[59]
The Cowboy and the Maid[62]
A Cowboy's Love Song[65]
A Border Affair[67]
Snagtooth Sal[69]
Love Lyrics of a Cowboy[71]
The Bull Fight[74]
The Cowboy's Valentine[76]
A Cowboy's Hopeless Love[77]
The Chase[80]
Riding Song[81]
Our Little Cowgirl[82]
I Want My Time[84]
Who's That Calling so Sweet?[85]
Song of the Cattle Trail[86]
A Cowboy's Son[88]
A Cowboy Song[89]
A Nevada Cowpuncher to His Beloved[90]
The Cowboy to His Friend in Need[91]
When Bob Got Throwed[92]
Cowboy Versus Broncho[94]
When You're Throwed[97]
Pardners[100]
The Bronc That Wouldn't Bust[102]
The Ol' Cow Hawse[104]
The Bunk-House Orchestra[106]
The Cowboys' Dance Song[109]
The Cowboys' Christmas Ball[112]
A Dance at the Ranch[117]
At a Cowboy Dance[120]
The Cowboys' Ball[122]
PART III. COWBOY TYPES
The Cowboy[127]
Bar-Z on a Sunday Night[129]
A Cowboy Race[131]
The Habit[132]
A Ranger[134]
The Insult[137]
"The Road to Ruin"[138]
The Outlaw[140]
The Desert[142]
Whiskey Bill,— a Fragment[145]
Denver Jim[146]
The Vigilantes[150]
The Bandit's Grave[152]
The Old Mackenzie Trail[154]
The Sheep-Herder[158]
A Cowboy at the Carnival[162]
The Old Cowman[165]
The Gila Monster Route[168]
The Call of the Plains[172]
Where the Grizzly Dwells[174]
A Cowboy Toast[176]
Ridin' Up the Rocky Trail from Town[179]
The Disappointed Tenderfoot[182]
A Cowboy Alone with His Conscience[184]
Just a-Ridin'![187]
The End of the Trail[189]

PART I

COWBOY YARNS