Cowboys -- Fiction; Ranch life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Western stories
"My friends and relations has caused a separation,"
chanted the dirge-like voice of the singer,
"Concerning the part of some favorite one.
Besides their vexation and great trubbelation
They will some time be sorry for what they have done."
The voice sounded familiar to Pecos—or was it the music?—well, never
mind, he would hear it to the end.
"My fortune is small, I will truly confess it,
But what I have got it is all of my own,
I might have lived long in this world and enjoyed it
If my cruel friends could have left me alone.
"Farewell to this country, I now must leave it,
And seek my way to some far distant land.
My horse and my saddle is a source of all pleasure
And when I meet friend I'll join heart and hand.
"Farewell to the girl that I no more shall see,
This world is wide and I'll spend it in pleasures,
And I don't care for no girl that don't care for me,
I'll drink and be jolly and not care for no downfall.
"I'll drownd my troubles in a bottle of wine;
I'll drownd them away in a full-flowing bumper
And ride through the wild to pass away time.
And when Death calls for me I'll follow him home.
"No wife, no children will be left to suffer,
Not even a sweetheart will be left to mourn.
I'll be honest and fair in all my transactions,
Whatever I do, I intend to be true.
"Here is health and good wishes to all you fair ladies—
It is hard, boys, to find one that will always be true."
A hush fell upon the jail as the singer wailed forth his sad lament,
and when the song was ended a murmur ran along the hall. Pecos
listened, half in a doze, to the muttered comments; then with a jerk he
sat up and stared. The man in the next cell had said,
"That's old Babe, singin' his jag-song. He'll be in here pretty soon."
Babe! And he would be in there pretty soon! At that magic word a new
life swept through Pecos Dalhart's veins; his drowsiness left him, and
rousing up from his bunk he struggled forth and washed his face at the
tap. Time and again he slapped the cool water upon his neck and hair;
he drank a last draught of its freshness and paced the length of the
corridor, his head bowed as if in thought—but listening above all other
noises for the sound of Angy's voice. Bill Todhunter came and glanced
at him impersonally, as he might gaze at a bronc that was about to be
broke, but Pecos made no appeal. He had started out to wreck Boone
Morgan's jail for him, break up his Kangaroo Court, and establish the
revolution, and with Angy's help he would do it, yet. The jail gang
edged in on him a little closer, dogging his steps as the wolf-pack
follows its kill, but at every turn of his shaggy head they slunk away.
Then at last, just as the clock tolled four, the keys clanked in the
outer door; Hung Wo slipped in with his coffee-pot and can, and after
him came Angevine Thorne, escorted by the deputy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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