When my leg swings 'cross on an outlaw hawse And my spurs clinch into his hide, He kin r'ar and pitch over hill and ditch, But wherever he goes I'll ride. Let 'im spin and flop like a crazy top, Or flit like a wind-whipped smoke, But he'll know the feel of my rowelled heel Till he's happy to own he's broke. _For a man is a man and a hawse is a brute, And the hawse may be prince of his clan, But he'll bow to the bit and the steel-shod boot And own that his boss is the man._ When the devil at rest underneath my vest Gets up and begins to paw, And my hot tongue strains at its bridle-reins, Then I tackle the real outlaw; When I get plumb riled and my sense goes wild, And my temper has fractious growed, If he'll hump his neck just a triflin' speck, Then it's dollars to dimes I'm throwed. _For a man is a man, but he's partly a beast-- He kin brag till he makes you deaf, But the one, lone brute, from the West to the East, That he kaint quite break, is himse'f._ _Charles B. Clark, Jr._ THE DESERT 'TWAS the lean coyote told me, baring his slavish soul, As I counted the ribs of my dead cayuse and cursed at the desert sky, The tale of the Upland Rider's fate while I dug in the water hole For a drop, a taste of the bitter seep; but the water hole was dry! "He came," said the lean coyote, "and he cursed as his pony fell; And he counted his pony's ribs aloud; yea, even as you have done. He raved as he ripped at the clay-red sand like an imp from the pit of hell, Shriveled with thirst for a thousand years and craving a drop--just one." "His name?" I asked, and he told me, yawning to hide a grin: "His name is writ on the prison roll and many a place beside; Last, he scribbled it on the sand with a finger seared and thin, And I watched his face as he spelled it out--laughed as I laughed, and died. "And thus," said the lean coyote, "his need is the hungry's feast, And mine." I fumbled and pulled my gun--emptied it wild and fast, But one of the crazy shots went home and silenced the waiting beast; There lay the shape of the Liar, dead! 'Twas I that should laugh the last. Laugh? Nay, now I would write my name as the Upland Rider wrote; Write? What need, for before my eyes in a wide and wavering line I saw the trace of a written word and letter by letter float Into a mist as the world grew dark; and I knew that the name was mine. Dreams and visions within the dream; turmoil and fire and pain; Hands that proffered a brimming cup--empty, ere I could take; Then the burst of a thunder-head--rain! It was rude, fierce rain! Blindly down to the hole I crept, shivering, drenched, awake!