A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh! My Minnie, don't be sad; Next year we'll lease that splendid piece That corners on your dad. We'll drive to "literary," dear, The way we used to do And turn my lonely workin' here To happiness for you.
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 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._
[3] Only such cowboys as are in desperate need of employment ever become sheep-herders.
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.
Mighty curious to a rider comin' from the range, he feels What you'd call a lost sensation from sombrero clar to heels; Like a critter stray that drifted in a windstorm from its range To another run o' grazin' where the brands it sees are strange. Then I see a city herder, a policeman, don't you know, Sort o' think he's got men spotted an' is 'bout to make a throw Fer to catch me an' corral me fer a stray till he can talk On the wire an' tell the owner fer to come an' get his stock.