Range of the Buffalo
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MACAFFIE’S CONFESSION
Now come young men and list to me,
A sad and mournful history;
And may you ne’er forgetful be
Of what I tell this day to thee.
Oh, I was thoughtless, young, and gay
And often broke the Sabbath day,
In wickedness I took delight
And sometimes done what wasn’t right.
I’d scarcely passed my fifteenth year,
My mother and my father dear
Were silent in their deep, dark grave,
Their spirits gone to Him who gave.
’Twas on a pleasant summer day
When from my home I ran away
And took unto myself a wife,
Which step was fatal to my life.
Oh, she was kind and good to me
As ever woman ought to be,
And might this day have been alive no doubt,
Had I not met Miss Hatty Stout.
Ah, well I mind the fatal day
When Hatty stole my heart away;
’Twas love for her controlled my will
And did cause me my wife to kill.
’Twas on a brilliant summer’s night
When all was still; the stars shone bright.
My wife lay still upon the bed
And I approached to her and said:
“Dear wife, here’s medicine I’ve brought,
For you this day, my love, I’ve bought.
I know it will be good for you
For those vile fits,—pray take it, do.”
She cast on me a loving look
And in her mouth the poison took;
Down by her infant on the bed
In her last, long sleep she laid her head.
Oh, who could tell a mother’s thought
When first to her the news was brought;
The sheriff said her son was sought
And into prison must be brought.
Only a mother standing by
To hear them tell the reason why
Her son in prison, he must lie
Till on the scaffold he must die.
My father, sixty years of age,
The best of counsel did engage,
To see if something could be done
To save his disobedient son.
So, farewell, mother, do not weep,
Though soon with demons I will sleep,
My soul now feels its mental hell
And soon with demons I will dwell.
The sheriff cut the slender cord,
His soul went up to meet its Lord;
The doctor said, “The wretch is dead,
His spirit from his body’s fled.”
His weeping mother cried aloud,
“O God, do save this gazing crowd,
That none may ever have to pay
For gambling on the Sabbath day.”
LITTLE JOE, THE WRANGLER
It’s little Joe, the wrangler, he’ll wrangle never more,
His days with the remuda they are o’er;
’Twas a year ago last April when he rode into our camp,—
Just a little Texas stray and all alone,—
On a little Texas pony he called “Chaw.”
With his brogan shoes and overalls, a tougher kid
You never in your life before had saw.
His saddle was a Texas “kak,” built many years ago,
With an O.K. spur on one foot lightly swung;
His “hot roll” in a cotton sack so loosely tied behind,
And his canteen from his saddle-horn was swung.
He said that he had to leave his home, his pa had married twice;
And his new ma whipped him every day or two;
So he saddled up old Chaw one night and lit a shuck this way,
And he’s now trying to paddle his own canoe.
He said if we would give him work, he’d do the best he could,
Though he didn’t know straight up about a cow;
So the boss he cut him out a mount and kindly put him on,
For he sorta liked this little kid somehow.
Learned him to wrangle horses and to try to know them all,
And get them in at daylight if he could;
To follow the chuck-wagon and always hitch the team,
And to help the cocinero rustle wood.
We had driven to the Pecos, the weather being fine;
We had camped on the south side in a bend;
When a norther commenced blowin’, we had doubled up our guard,
For it taken all of us to hold them in.
Little Joe, the wrangler, was called out with the rest;
Though the kid had scarcely reached the herd,
When the cattle they stampeded, like a hailstorm long they fled,
Then we were all a-ridin’ for the lead.
‘Midst the streaks of lightin’ a horse we could see in the lead,
’Twas Little Joe, the wrangler, in the lead;
He was riding Old Blue Rocket with a slicker o’er his head,
A tryin’ to check the cattle in their speed.
At last we got them milling and kinda quieted down,
And the extra guard back to the wagon went;
But there was one a-missin’ and we knew it at a glance,
’Twas our little Texas stray, poor Wrangling Joe.
The next morning just at day break, we found where Rocket fell,
Down in a washout twenty feet below;
And beneath the horse, mashed to a pulp,—his spur had rung the knell,—
Was our little Texas stray, poor Wrangling Joe.