Copyrighted. By permission of the Author, Green Room Club, New York.

By H. A. D’Arcy.

The west was pretty wild when Bill Durant and I went out,

’Twer in ’59 or ’60, somewhar that about,

Bill took his pretty wife along (they’d been wed about a year),

A buxom kind of girl she war, that never thought o’ fear.

And I don’t know that she needed to, for the miners one and all,

Would have fought for her like devils if she’d ever made the call;

And afore we’d fairly built a hut to keep her from the damp

A little baby gal was born—the first one in the camp.