The Sheep-Herder
All day across the sagebrush flat,
Beneath the sun of June,
My sheep they loaf and feed and bleat
Their never changin’ tune.
And then, at night time, when they lay
As quiet as a stone,
I hear the gray wolf far away,
“Alo‑one!” he says, “Alo‑one!”
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
The tune the woollies sing;
It’s rasped my ears, it seems, for years,
Though really just since Spring;
And nothin’, far as I can see
Around the circle’s sweep,
But sky and plain, my dreams and me
And them infernal sheep.
I’ve got one book—it’s poetry—
A bunch of pretty wrongs
An Eastern lunger gave to me;
He said ’twas “shepherd songs.”
But, though that poet sure is deep
And has sweet things to say,
He never seen a herd of sheep
Or smelt them, anyway.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
My woollies greasy gray,
An awful change has hit the range
Since that old poet’s day.
For you’re just silly, on’ry brutes
And I look like distress,
And my pipe ain’t the kind that toots
And there’s no “shepherdess.”
Yet ’way down home in Kansas State,
Bliss Township, Section Five,
There’s one that’s promised me to wait,
The sweetest girl alive;
That’s why I salt my wages down
And mend my clothes with strings,
While others blow their pay in town
For booze and other things.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
My Minnie, don’t be sad;
Next year we’ll lease that splendid piece
That corners on your dad.
We’ll drive to “literary,” dear,
The way we used to do
And turn my lonely workin’ here
To happiness for you.
Suppose, down near that rattlers’ den,
While I sit here and dream,
I’d spy a bunch of ugly men
And hear a woman scream.
Suppose I’d let my rifle shout
And drop the men in rows,
And then the woman should turn out—
My Minnie!—just suppose.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a! eh‑eh‑eh!
The tune would then be gay;
There is, I mind, a parson kind
Just forty miles away.
Why, Eden would come back again,
With sage and sheep corrals,
And I could swing a singin’ pen
To write her “pastorals.”
I pack a rifle on my arm
And jump at flies that buzz;
There’s nothin’ here to do me harm;
I sometimes wish there was.
If through that brush above the pool
A red should creep—and creep—
Wah! cut down on ’im!—Stop, you fool!
That’s nothin’ but a sheep.
A‑a! ma‑a! ba‑a!—Hell!
Oh, sky and plain and bluff!
Unless my mail comes up the trail
I’m locoed, sure enough.
What’s that?—a dust-whiff near the butte
Right where my last trail ran,
A movin’ speck, a—wagon! Hoot!
Thank God! here comes a man.