Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads

<p class="tit-song">FREIGHTING FROM WILCOX TO GLOBE <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page207" name="page207"></SPAN>(p. 207)</span></p> <p>Come all you jolly freighters<br/> That has freighted on the road,<br/> That has hauled a load of freight<br/> From Wilcox to Globe;<br/> We freighted on this road<br/> For sixteen years or more<br/> A-hauling freight for Livermore,&mdash;<br/> No wonder that I'm poor.</p> <p class="add2em">And it's home, dearest home;<br/> And it's home you ought to be,<br/> Over on the Gila<br/> In the white man's country,<br/> Where the poplar and the ash<br/> And mesquite will ever be<br/> Growing green down on the Gila;<br/> There's a home for you and me.</p> <p>'Twas in the spring of seventy-three<br/> I started with my team,<br/> Led by false illusion<br/> And those foolish, golden dreams;<br/> The first night out from Wilcox<br/> My best wheel horse was stole,<br/> And it makes me curse a little<br/> To come out in the hole.</p> <p>This <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page208" name="page208"></SPAN>(p. 208)</span> then only left me three,&mdash;<br/> Kit, Mollie and old Mike;<br/> Mike being the best one of the three<br/> I put him out on spike;<br/> I then took the mountain road<br/> So the people would not smile,<br/> And it took fourteen days<br/> To travel thirteen mile.</p> <p>But I got there all the same<br/> With my little three-up spike;<br/> It taken all my money, then,<br/> To buy a mate for Mike.<br/> You all know how it is<br/> When once you get behind,<br/> You never get even again<br/> Till you damn steal them blind.</p> <p>I was an honest man<br/> When I first took to the road,<br/> I would not swear an oath,<br/> Nor would I tap a load;<br/> But now you ought to see my mules<br/> When I begin to cuss,<br/> They flop their ears and wiggle their tails<br/> And pull the load or bust.</p> <p>Now I can tap a whiskey barrel<br/> With nothing but a stick,<br/> No one can detect me<br/> I've got it down so slick;<br/> Just <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page209" name="page209"></SPAN>(p. 209)</span> fill it up with water,&mdash;<br/> Sure, there's no harm in that.</p> <p>Now my clothes are not the finest,<br/> Nor are they genteel;<br/> But they will have to do me<br/> Till I can make another steal.<br/> My boots are number elevens,<br/> For I swiped them from a chow,<br/> And my coat cost dos reals<br/> From a little Apache squaw.</p> <p>Now I have freighted in the sand,<br/> I have freighted in the rain,<br/> I have bogged my wagons down<br/> And dug them out again;<br/> I have worked both late and early<br/> Till I was almost dead,<br/> And I have spent some nights sleeping<br/> In an Arizona bed.</p> <p>Now barbed wire and bacon<br/> Is all that they will pay,<br/> But you have to show your copper checks<br/> To get your grain and hay;<br/> If you ask them for five dollars,<br/> Old Meyers will scratch his pate,<br/> And the clerks in their white, stiff collars<br/> Say, "Get down and pull your freight."</p> <p>But <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page210" name="page210"></SPAN>(p. 210)</span> I want to die and go to hell,<br/> Get there before Livermore and Meyers,<br/> And get a job of hauling coke<br/> To keep up the devil's fires;<br/> If I get the job of singeing them,<br/> I'll see they don't get free;<br/> I'll treat them like a yaller dog,<br/> As they have treated me.</p> <p class="add2em">And it's home, dearest home;<br/> And it's home you ought to be,<br/> Over on the Gila,<br/> In the white man's country,<br/> Where the poplar and the ash<br/> And mesquite will ever be<br/> Growing green down on the Gila;<br/> There's a home for you and me.</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />