The Cowboy's Lament (Streets of
Laredo)
As
I walked out in the streets of Laredo,
As I walked out in Laredo one day,
I spied a poor cowboy wrapped up in white linen,
Wrapped up in white linen as cold as the clay.
"Oh, beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me along;
Take me to the green valley, there lay the sod o'er me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong.
"I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy" —
These words he did say as I boldly stepped by.
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story;
I am shot in the breast and I know I must die.
"Let sixteen gamblers come handle my coffin
Let sixteen cowboys come sing me a song.
Take me to the graveyard and lay the sod o'er me,
For I'm a poor cowboy and I know I've done wrong.
"My friends and relations they live in the Nation,
They know not where their boy has gone.
He first came to Texas and hired to a ranchman,
Oh, I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong.
"It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing,
It was once in the saddle I used to go gay;
First to the dram-house and then to the card-house;
Got shot in the breast and I am dying today.
"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin;
Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall.
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
Put roses to deaden the sods as they fall.
"Then swing your rope slowly and rattle your spurs lowly,
And give a wild whoop as you carry me along,
And in the grave throw me and roll the sod o'er me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong.
"Oh, bury beside me my knife and six-shooter,
My spurs on my heel, my rifle by my side,
And over my coffin put a bottle of brandy,
That the cowboys may drink as they carry me along.
"Go bring me a cup, a cup of cold water,
To cool my parched lips," the cowboy then said;
Before I returned his soul had departed,
And gone to the round-up—the cowboy was dead.
We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly,
And bitterly wept as we bore him along;
For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young and handsome,
We all loved our comrade although he'd done wrong.
(See
more about "The Cowboy's Lament" in the biography above, the notes below
and here.)
On The Trail
It was down across the Brazos
That we rounded up to start,
With about five thousand cattle
For the busy Kansas mart;
There were just a dozen cowboys
With a greasy coon for cook,
Flour, coffee, beans, and bacon
Were the chief supplies we took;
And we thrived upon this diet,
For none of us grew pale,
But our hot, red blood ran riot
Upon the Texas trail.
It was in the rainy season,
There were swollen streams to cross,
But we boldly plunged into them,
And we suffered little loss;
There were long days' drives and weary,
As we pushed the herd along;
There were long night guards and dreary,
But we passed them with a song.
When at last, we reached Red River,
There was blowing quite a gale,
But we swam its turbid waters,
Ever onward up the trail.
What cared we for wind or weather,
For our hearts were young and gay,
And we all joined in together
For a good time on the way.
Now we traveled through a country
Where they little recked of law,
Indians and rustlers plenty
Till we crossed the Washita.
Yet the outlaws they were plenty,
Men who should have been in jail,
And we kept a constant vigil,
As we pressed on up the trail.
We had reached the north Canadian,
And everything seemed well,
Till at night the Redskins charged us
With a most infernal yell:
'Twas our cattle they were after,
And away in mad stampede
Went the herd of long-horned beef steers,
While we galloped for the lead,
And our foreman hoarsely shouted:
"Stay with 'em, do not fail."
And we circled 'em and milled 'em,
Upon the Texas trail.
Then the Redskins, disappointed,
Slyly sneaked off in the night,
And we kept our eyes wide open
Until dawn of morning light.
Then our trip was uneventful,
Till one evening just at dark,
Jim and Charley had a quarrel
And their guns began to bark.
Jim was quickest on the trigger
And his nerve it did not quail,
And poor Charley lies a sleeping,
Where we laid him by the trail.
Crossing Cimarron and Bluff Creek,
Soon Dodge City loomed in view,
Dodge, the wicked western city,
Painted oft a crimson hue,
There a horde of hard-faced gamblers
Waited each with sure-thing game,
To ensnare some verdant sucker,
And not anything was tame.
There was big Tom Sherman's dance-hall,
And Bat Masterson's, more swell,
And you need not go much farther,
For to find a little--well,
The least said is the better
About some things in this tale,
For conditions they were awful,
At the ending of the trail.
Now and then some foolish puncher
Would try to play Wild Bill,
And so quickly they would plant him
On a place they called Boot Hill.
But now all this is over,
For those wild days are no more,
Where once roamed the free Vacqueros,
There are homesteads by the score,
And perchance some pretty milkmaid
Goes singing with her pail,
Where we rounded up and bedded,
Upon the Texas trail.
On Boot Hill they've built a schoolhouse
And the W.C.T.U.
Holds an annual convention,
Where once corks and stoppers flew;
There are sermons, there is singing,
Where was pistol crack and flame.
Dodge, the erstwhile wicked city,
Has built up a better name,
And the lamb now skips and gambols
Were was heard the grey wolf's wail,
The survival of the fittest,
Marks the ending of the trail.
Bill Springer's Hand
Bill Springer, ranchman, lived south of Dodge,
He chose his bride from an Indian lodge.
He had a massive, athletic frame,
And a reputation for being game.
He often saddled and hit the trail,
And came up to town to get his mail,
As well as to meet some jolly pards
And enjoy a quiet game of cards.
They looked on the wine when it was red,
And drank quite deeply, so it was said.
Bill was known to have a handsome pile,
That he flung around in reckless style.
This caught the eye of a slick card shark,
Who thought he had found an easy mark;
With two of his ilk he laid a plan
To capture alive and skin their man.
They roped Bill into a game of "draw"
(Against which, in Dodge, there was no law).
The stakes for a time were very low,
In fact, the playing was very slow.
Till at last, all seemed to hold good cards.
And the card shark winked at cunning pards.
A "cold deck" deftly was brought in play,
And a great stake on the table lay.
Ten thousand dollars were there in sight,
Before they laid down their cards that night.
What have you? at last the card shark said,
And Bill Springer's face turned very red.
I hold four kings, he meekly replied;
I have four aces, the gambler cried,
And reached for the stakes on table spread,
But stopped dead short with a look of dread.
For a lurid light shone in Bill's eye,
He grabbed his Winchester standing by,
And, with a voice like an angry bull,
He roared, "But I've got a sixteen full;"
"You fellers can just git up and git,
You haven't robbed old Bill Springer, yit."
They looked on the stern, determined face,
And quietly slunk out from the place.
Then old Bill, gathering up his pile,
Said, "Come up now, boys, and have a smile,"
And the hangers-on came up and drank.
And then he hastened off to the bank.
With his wealth all safely put away,
He cared no longer in town to stay,
But saddled and bridled wild "Comanch"
And galloped away to Springer's ranch.
The Black Cat
I've a black cat here in camp,
As black as black can be,
As bright-eyed, roguish scamp
As ever you did see.
I carried him fifteen miles or more
Upon Grey Eagle's back,
From Red Fork Ranch to our camp,
Tied in a buckskin sack.
Before I brought him into camp,
The mice ran riot o'er my head,
As I lay and dreamed of far-off home,
On my rough frontiersman's bed,
But now my slumbers are undisturbed,
For the cat a vigil keeps,
And woe to the mouse that ventures near
To where his master sleeps.
A Reckless Cowboy
I am a reckless cowboy, the prairie is my home,
At the early age of sixteen I first began to roam,
I drove from sunny Texas, in the year of seventy-one,
When the boys all came to Newton and kicked up lots of fun.
Next summer found me ranging on the raging Arkansaw,
Where we all grew wild and lawless, in the town of Wichita,
From thence I drifted westward, to a country wild and strange,
In the valley of the Salt Fork, I found a winter range.
The winter was so dreary, I thought 'twould never end,
And when at last 'twas springtime, we drove up to Great Bend.
Next winter found me ranging on the Medicine Lodge,
Headquarters for the last year, was the reckless town of Dodge.
There, gamblers, shrewd and tricky, are watchful as a cat,
To trap some luckless snoozer from Texas or the Platte.
Now, I am like an Indian, I never can find rest,
For settlements keep pushing farther toward the west.
So, farewell, friends and kindred and all I once held dear,
I am a reckless cowboy far out on the frontier.
Farewell to the Plains
Farewell, farewell, to the western plain!
I tightened my cinches and gathered my rein,
Then eagerly mounted my good mustang,
While full of joy was the song that I sang;
For my good steed's head was turned toward home,
O'er the desolate waste no more to roam.
Dear ones at home so anxiously wait,
For fear that the cruel decrees of fate
Might drift the wanderer farther away,
And his absence be forever and aye,
So hasten, good steed, swift bear me along,
While I merrily sing my homeward song.
With a lasso coiled to my saddle tied,
With my trusty weapons by my side,
Once o'er the plains I love to go,
Chasing the wild horse and buffalo.
But the romance all has faded away,
So hasten, good steed, no longer delay.
There's a bright-eyed girl I long to see,
I wonder if she is waiting for me,
Or will my one bright dream vanish away,
As the bubble bursts on the storm-tossed spray?
Now hasten, good steed, I will go and see,
Farewell to our home on the prairie free.
Passing of the Old
Frontier
Where are the stockmen bluff and bold,
Who pitched their tents on the far frontier,
Where wealth was not in bond or gold,
But in the long-horned Texas steer?
They gazed with delight on a fertile plain
On grazing ground, immense, so vast
That they felt like lords of a great demesne,
And they fondly dreamed it would always last.
They were harried by rustlers, red and white,
The wolves of the border who roamed the plain,
With many a foray by day and night,
Then up and away with ill-gotten gain.
A million buffalo had fattened and fed
On the range where the cowmen now held sway
But they melted away 'neath a hail of lead
Like balls of snow on a bright summer day.
Far away from the land they called their own
The Redskin is learning the white man's ways.
Unto the Great Spirit he makes his moan,
As the wild soul pines for the bygone days.
Where now are the boys who rode the range
In the far-off days when the west was young,
Who swore great oaths both loud and strange
And gay and wild were the songs they sung?
Where are the chums of sterling worth,
Those comrades ever so true and tried,
Where they measured a man not by size or girth
But by the way he could shoot and ride?
Many have crossed o'er the Great Divide,
Far from the scenes of border strife,
Some linger on with their hands applied
To the sober prosaic tasks of life.
Where are the girls, the painted ones
With the hollow cheek and the sunken eye,
Who would banter one with mocking tones,
And a laugh that was all a lie?
Full many are sleeping beneath the sod?
Let none their mournful fate deride;
They've pleaded their cause at the bar of God,
Those poor lost souls for whom Christ died.
The settlers came in a white-winged fleet,
And soon vast tracts of the range possessed,
And the cowmen's ruin seemed most complete,
As they pressed them farther into the west.
They now feed stock of the full white-face,
So good-by to the long-horned Texas steer;
For they now have little part or place
And gone are the days of the old frontier.
Biography Continued
After a brief visit home for Christmas, Maynard went to work for Peter Moore
in February, 1874, driving cattle from the prairies near Hutchinson to the
Gypsum Hills near Medicine Lodge, where he then remained as a herder. He quit
in mid-summer and spent the remainder of the season helping other owners herd
and ship range cattle near Great Bend.
During the fall of 1874, Maynard began a year-long job with a cattle owner
named Dr. Simmons, herding near Wichita, then moving to winter range in the
Gypsum Hills. Following spring roundup, the cattle were fattened on
summer grass closer to Wichita, then shipped during the late summer.
During this job Maynard had several adventures, including a couple of Indian
scares and a couple of standoffs with cattle and horse thieves.
From the fall of 1875 through the spring of 1876, Maynard worked for W. B.
Grimes in wintering cattle in the Medicine Lodge country. Indians again
caused trouble for the cowboys, and after repeated skirmishes in which the
cattlemen refused to give over any beef, the Indians set fire to the prairie
in an effort to burn the cattlemen out. Those who had been wintering
below the line in the Cherokee Outlet were forced to move their herds out of
Indian Territory and back into Kansas. This was the winter, by the way,
during which Maynard wrote "The Cowboy's Lament."
In April, 1876, Maynard headed toward Texas to find employment as a drover.
In Indian Territory he hired on with a Millett and Mabry herd. As they
approached Ellsworth, a storm scattered the cattle and those of a trailing
herd owned by Jesse Driskill. Maynard was sent to the short-handed
Driskill crew to help recover their cattle, some of which had been confiscated
by German settlers for damage to crops. In a tense standoff, trailboss
Till Driskill and Maynard faced down the homesteaders and ran the cattle back
to their herd. The next day Driskill sent Maynard to Ellsworth with a
letter, both of them knowing that the young cowboy would be chased by the
irate settlers, whom he managed to outrun. Maynard then returned to the
Millett and Mabry herd and helped move the cattle onto summer pasture near
Kanopolis, then took a job with Driskill herding cattle near Ellsworth.
After encountering more hostility from homesteaders, Maynard decided to move
toward less settled country. During the fall of that year he helped to
drive a herd of cattle from Wichita to Sun City, then visited the Grimes
headquarters, where he witnessed a shooting between two Mexican cowboys,
before finally moving on west to the Cimarron country south of Dodge City,
where he helped to winter cattle for Budd Driskill.
In 1877 Maynard joined a crew taking cattle to the Sioux at the Red Cloud
Agency, but became sick just north of Ogallala, Nebraska, and had to return to
Dodge City where he saw city marshal Ed Masterson get wounded in a gunfight.
After hunting stray cattle west of Dodge City for a short while in November of
1877, Maynard decided to return home to visit old friends. While there he met
and fell in love with Flora Longstreth. Flora, however, heeding warnings
about wild young cowboys from what Maynard called "meddlesome old
ladies," did not at once requite his feelings; in fact, it took him
nearly three years to win her affections. So in April, 1878, Maynard
joined the Driskill crew for spring roundup south of Dodge City.
He quit after only a month,
however, to go back to see Flora. Again receiving small encouragement,
he headed to Fort Reno, Indian Territory, in July, 1878, and got work with a
hay contractor. It was during the fall of that year that the northern
Cheyenne broke out of the reservation and attempted to fight their way back to
their previous home in Montana. One of Maynard's cowboy friends, Tom
Murray, was killed by the Cheyenne while herding cattle near Meade, Kansas.
After partaking of some of the cultural life among the Cheyenne and Arapaho,
Maynard returned to Towanda, where he eventually overcame Flora Longstreth's
reluctance. They were married on 24 April 1881, and by 1887 had moved to
Colorado Springs, where they spent the remainder of their lives.
Mechanically inclined and capable with tools, he took up carpentry, a trade he
followed for the remainder of his life. Despite his cowboy years of
carefree living, Maynard adapted well to settled life in a growing city. His
carpentry business prospered, and although he did not grow rich he certainly
did well in his new home and profession. He died in 1926.
It was during the Colorado
Springs rodeo of 1924 that he was interviewed by a journalist and the story of
how he came to write "The Cowboy's Lament" first came to light.
During the winter of 1876, while herding cattle near the Indian Territory line
southwest of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, Maynard said that all the hands were
singing a song about a girl gone wrong. He rewrote the words,
substituting a ranger (i.e., a cowboy) for the girl and placing him outside
the door of one of Dodge City's toughest saloons (Tom Sherman's barroom). The
boys liked Maynard's version, and the next spring while holding their cattle outside Wichita for shipping and visiting other
chuckwagons, Maynard's song got picked up by other cowboys. Before long,
Maynard told the reporter, he was hearing his song being sung everywhere up
and down the trail. Some cowboys from Texas transferred the locale from
Dodge City to the streets of Laredo on the Mexican border, and the rest, as
they say, is history.
© Jim Hoy,
All Rights Reserved
Notes and Links
Our Honored Guest Jim Hoy, folklorist, native
plainsman, and Professor of English at Emporia University provided the
biographical information and poems on this page. He is at
work on a book about F. H. Maynard: The Winning of
the Wild: the Adventures, in Prose and Poetry, of F. H. Maynard, An Old-time
Cowboy, based on the memoirs of Maynard's ten years on the open range
during the 1870s.
For contact
information and to learn more about Jim Hoy, his writings, and his performances, visit his web
site.
Others have been credited with writing "The Cowboy's
Lament." In Katie Lee's Ten
Thousand Goddam Cattle, she doesn't mention Maynard and she writes
"I believe Jack Thorp is the only person who gave credit to someone
for writing the original 'Cowboy's Lament.'" In his Songs
of the Cowboys he credits Troy Hale, Battle Creek Nebraska, and
writes,
'I first heard it sung in a bar-room at Wisner, Nebraska, about
1886.'" Katie Lee includes a popular parody, "The Dying
Outfit," in her book.
In their comprehensive Songs of the Cowboys (1966), which includes
Thorp's original text, Austin E. and Alta S. Fife devote an entire chapter to the origins of "The Cowboy's Lament." They
remark on the various possible authors, including Maynard, and include
history, analysis, variants, an extensive bibliography and other
references. They write, "There are hundreds of texts, with variants
so numerous that scholar will ever assemble and analyze them
all." They note that John Lomax "made a collation of
several text for his 1910 edition, and in doing so suppressed or softened
distasteful stanzas." They quote a source, who "exaggerating
somewhat, says that there were originally seventy stanzas, sixty-nine of
which had to be whistled." The book is out of print, but may be
available from libraries or used book sources.
See
more about "The Cowboy's Lament" here.
