Buffalo Skinners

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 pleasant 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 would you like to go And spend the summer pleasant On the trail of the buffalo?" Well, I being out of work right then To the 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 you 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 Our 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 If you had not drunk too much You are 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 --- Buffalo Skinners - Woody Guthrie