Thus the song.
"Oh, bury me out on th' lonesome prairie!
Put a stone under my haid!
Cover me up with a rope an' a saddle!
'Cause why? My true-love is daid * * * * * *"
It is impossible in cold print to indicate the mournful and long-drawn-out accent on the word "dead," to rhyme with head.
"Here comes Slim!" exclaimed one of the youthful cow punchers to his companions.
"As if we didn't know that, Dick!" laughed the slighter of two lads who, from their close resemblance, could be nothing less than brothers.
"His voice doesn't improve with age; does it, Nort?" asked Bud Merkel, smiling at his cousins, Norton and Richard Shannon.
"But he means well," declared Nort with a chuckle. "Oh, you Slim!" he shouted, as a tall lanky individual, mounted on a pony of like proportions, ambled into view, topping a slight rise of the trail. "Oh, you Slim!"
The older cowboy—a man, to be exact—who had been about to break forth into the second, or forty-second verse of his song (there being in all seventy-two stanzas, so it doesn't much matter which one is designated)—the older cowboy, I say, paused with his mouth open, and a blank look on his face. Then he grinned—that is the only word for it—and cried:
"Well, I'm a second cousin to a ham sandwich! Where'd you fellows come from?"
"We haven't come—we're just going!" laughed Bud. "We're going over to see Dad and the folks. How are they all?"