Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads

<p class="tit-song">A MAN NAMED HODS <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page307" name="page307"></SPAN>(p. 307)</span></p> <p>Come, all you old cowpunchers, a story I will tell,<br/> And if you'll all be quiet, I sure will sing it well;<br/> And if you boys don't like it, you sure can go to hell.</p> <p>Back in the day when I was young, I knew a man named Hods;<br/> He wasn't fit fer nothin' 'cep turnin' up the clods.</p> <p>But he came west in fifty-three, behind a pair of mules,<br/> And 'twas hard to tell between the three which was the biggest fools.</p> <p>Up on the plains old Hods he got and there his trouble began.<br/> Oh, he sure did get in trouble,&mdash;and old Hodsie wasn't no man.</p> <p>He met a bunch of Indian bucks led by Geronimo,<br/> And what them Indians did to him, well, shorely I don't know.</p> <p>But they lifted off old Hodsie's skelp and left him out to die,<br/> And if it hadn't been for me, he'd been in the sweet by and by.</p> <p>But <span class="pagenum"><SPAN id="page308" name="page308"></SPAN>(p. 308)</span> I packed him back to Santa Fé and there I found his mules,<br/> For them dad-blamed two critters had got the Indians fooled.</p> <p>I don't know how they done it, but they shore did get away,<br/> And them two mules is livin' up to this very day.</p> <p>Old Hodsie's feet got toughened up, he got to be a sport,<br/> He opened up a gamblin' house and a place of low resort;</p> <p>He got the prettiest dancing girls that ever could be found,&mdash;<br/> Them girls' feet was like rubber balls and they never staid on the ground.</p> <p>And then thar came Billy the Kid, he envied Hodsie's wealth,<br/> He told old Hods to leave the town, 'twould be better for his health;<br/> Old Hodsie took the hint and got, but he carried all his wealth.</p> <p>And he went back to Noo York State with lots of dinero,<br/> And now they say he's senator, but of that I shore don't know.</p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />