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COWBOY SONGS
Freckles. A Fragment ~ Lyrics
He was little an' peaked an' thin, an' narry a no account horse,--
Least that's the way you'd describe him in case that the beast had
been lost;
But, for single and double cussedness an' for double fired sin,
The horse never came out o' Texas that was half-way knee-high to him!
The first time that ever I saw him was nineteen years ago last spring;
'Twas the year we had grasshoppers, that come an' et up everything,
That a feller rode up here one evenin' an' wanted to pen over night
A small bunch of horses, he said; an' I told him I guessed 'twas all
right.
Well, the feller was busted, the horses was thin, an' the grass round
here kind of good,
An' he said if I'd let him hold here a few days he'd settle with me
when he could.
So I told him all right, turn them loose down the draw, that
the latch string was always untied,
He was welcome to stop a few days if he wished and rest from his weary
ride.
Well, the cuss stayed around for two or three weeks, till at last he
was ready to go;
And that cuss out yonder bein' too poor to move, he gimme,--the cuss
had no dough.
Well, at first the darn brute was as wild as a deer, an' would snort
when he came to the branch,
An' it took two cow punchers, on good horses, too, to handle him here
at the ranch.
Well, the winter came on an' the range it got hard, an' my mustang
commenced to get thin,
So I fed him some an' rode him around, an' found out old Freckles was
game.
For that was what the other cuss called him,--just Freckles, no more
or no less,--
His color,--couldn't describe it,--something like a paint shop in
distress.
Them was Indian times, young feller, that I am telling about;
An' oft's the time I've seen the red man fight an' put the boys to rout.
A good horse in them days, young feller, would save your life,--
One that in any race could hold the pace when the red-skin bands were
rife.
COWBOY SONGS
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