Buffalo Skinners

Come all you old-time cowboys and listen to my song--

Please do not grow weary, I'll not detain you long--

Concerning some wild cowboys who did agree to go

And the spend the summer pleasant on the range of the buffalo.

Well, I found myself in Griffin in 1883,

When a well-known famous drover come walkin' up to me.

He said, "How do you do, young feller,

And how'd you like to go

And spend the summer pleasant on the trail of the buffalo?"

Well, me bein' out of work right then, to that drover I did say,

"This goin' out on the buffalo road depends upon your pay.

If you'll pay good wages, transportation to and fro,

Well, I think I might go with you on the range of the buffalo."

"Yes, I will pay good wages and transportation, too,

If you'll agree to work for me until the season's through;

But if you do grow homesick and try to run away,

You'll starve to death out on the trail and you'll also lose your pay."

Well, with all this flatterin' talkin', well, he signed up quite a train,

Some ten or twelve in number, all able-bodied men.

Our trip it was a pleasant one as we hit the westward road

Until we struck old Boggy Creek in old New Mexico.

Well, here our pleasures ended, and our troubles all begun,

When a lightin' storm hit us and it made the cattle run.

We got all full of stickers from the cactus that did grow,

And the outlaws waitin' to pick us off in old New Mexico.

Well, our workin' season ended, but that drover would not pay;

He said, "You went and drunk too much, you're all in debt to me."

But the cowboys never had heard of such a thing as a bankrupt law,

So we left that drover's bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo.