Buffalo Skinners - Ramblin' Jack Elliott

Come all you old time cowboys and listen to my song

Please do not grow weary, I’ll not detain you long

Concerning some wild cowboys who did agree to go

Spend the summer pleasantly on the trail of the Buffalo

I found myself in Griffin in the spring of '83

When a well-known, famous drover come walking up to me

Said, «How do you do, young fellow, well how’d you like to go

And spend the summer pleasantly on the trail of the Buffalo?»

Well I being out of work right then, to this drover I did say

«Going out on the Buffalo Road, depends on the pay

If you will pay good wages and transportation to and fro

I think I might go with you on the hunt of the Buffalo.»

«Of course I’ll pay good wages and transportation too

If you will agree to work for me until the season’s through.»

But if you do get homesick and try to run away

You will starve to death out on the trail and also lose your pay."

Well with all his flattering talking he signed up quite a train

Some 10 or 12 in number, some able-bodied men

The trip it was a pleasant one as we hit the westward road

Until we crossed old Boggy Creek, in old New Mexico

There our pleasures ended, and our troubles all began

A lightening storm hit us and made the cattle run

Got all full of stickers from the cactus that did not grow

And the outlaws watching to pick us off in the hills of Mexico

Well our working season ended, and the drover would not pay

«You ate and drunk too much, you’re all in debt to me.»

But the cowboys never had heard such a thing as a bankrupt law

So we left that drover’s bones to bleach on the Plains of the Buffalo