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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  N. Howard Thorp

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Old Hank

N. Howard Thorp

From “Cowboy Songs”

DRIFTIN’ along the rim-rock, old Camp-robber and I,

Out on a scoutin’ trip, circlin’ the flat land dry,

Cuttin’ the sign of the cattle, watchin’ which way they drift,

Pullin’ ’em out of the bog holes, givin’ the weak ones a lift,

Throwin’ ’em back on the home range, each day in a different place,

In slickers en leggins of leather, through sand-storms that blister your face…..

Boss in the ranch house rides easy—his days of worry are gone,

For he made his pile in the old trail days, the days of the old long-horn.

Yep, I’m only a worn-out old puncher—though the boss thinks a heap of me!

For I was with him on the Pecos, in the Raid of Seventy-three!….

Then he married, en got him religion, en tells you how you mustn’t do wrong;

How a brand is the cow-man’s protection—then he’ll deal you a gospel song!

But I’ll tell you Old Hank was the slickest that ever laid line on a steer,

Or burnt over a brand with a runnin’-iron, or worked on an old cow’s ear!

’Course, friends, all this talk’s confidential—I wouldn’t want Old Hank to see

That I haven’t changed my damned religion, since the Trail Herd of Seventy-three!