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
[p. 161] 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.
Charles Badger Clark, Jr.
Only such cowboys as are in desperate need of employment ever become sheep-herders.
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.