Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other StoriesBarnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
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Tales from the X-bar Horse Camp: The Blue-Roan "Outlaw" and Other Stories
Barnes, Will C. (Will Croft)
Horses -- Fiction; Western stories
The three men on first guard were typical Texas boys, almost raised in
the saddle, insensible to hardship and exposure, and the hardest and
most reckless riders in the outfit. One of them, named Tom Flowers, was
a great singer, and usually sang the whole time he was on guard. It's
always a good thing, especially on a dark night, for somehow it seems to
reassure and quiet cattle to hear the human voice at night, and it's
well too that they are not critical, for some of the musical efforts are
extremely crude. Many of the boys confine themselves to hymns, picked up
probably when they were children.
A great favorite with the Texas boys is a song beginning "Sam Bass was
born in Indianer," which consists of about forty verses, devoted to the
deeds of daring of a noted desperado named Sam Bass, who, at the head of
a gang of cut-throats, terrorized the Panhandle and Staked Plains
country, in Western Texas, some years ago.
We used to have a boy in our outfit, a great rough fellow from Montana,
who knew only one song, and that was the hymn "I'm a Pilgrim, and I'm a
Stranger." I have awakened many a night and heard him bawling it at the
top of his voice, as he rode slowly around the herd. He knew three
verses of it and would sing them over and over again. It didn't take the
boys long to name him "The Pilgrim," and by that name he went for
several years. He was killed in a row in town one night, and I'm not
sure then that any one knew his right name, for he was carried on the
books of the cow-outfit he was working for as "The Pilgrim."
I lost no time in rolling out my bed and turning in, only removing my
boots, heavy leather chaps (chaparejos), and hat, and two minutes later
was sound asleep. How long I slept I can't say, but I was awakened by a
row among the night-horses tied to the wagon.
The storm had for the present cleared away just overhead, the full moon
was shining down as it seems to do only in these high altitudes in
Arizona; not a breath of air was stirring, and I could hear the measured
"chug, chug, chug," of the ponies' feet as the men on guard slowly
jogged around the cattle. I was lazily wondering what guard it was, and
how long I had slept, when suddenly the clear, full voice of Tom Flowers
broke the quiet with one of his cowboy songs. It was set to the air of
"My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean," and as I lay there half awake and half
asleep it seemed to me, with all its surroundings, that it was as
charming and musical as the greatest effort of any operatic tenor.
"Last night as I lay on the prairie,
And looked at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy
Would drift to that sweet by and by."
The voice would swell and grow louder as he rode round to the campside
of the cattle, and as he reached the far side the words "sweet by and
by," came to me faintly and softly, as if the very night was listening
to his song.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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