Classic Poem

Now, I've got no use for the women,
A true one may seldom be found.
They use a man for his money;
When it's gone they turn him down.
They're all alike at the bottom;
Selfish and grasping for all,
They'll stay with a man while he's winning,
And laugh in his face at his fall.

My pal was an honest puncher,
Honest and upright and true,
But he turned to a hard-shooting gunman,
On account of a girl named Lou.
He fell in with evil companions,
The kind that are better off dead;
When a gambler insulted her picture,
He filled him full of lead.

All through the long night they trailed him,
Through mesquite and thick chaparral,
And I couldn't help think of that woman,
As I saw him pitch and fall.
If she'd been the pal that she should have,
He might have been raising a son,
Instead of out there on the prairie,
To die by a ranger's gun.

Death's sharp sting did not trouble,
His chances for life were too slim;
But where they are putting his body
Was all that worried him.
He lifted his head on his elbow;
The blood from his wounds flowed red;
He gazed at his pals grouped about him,
As he whispered to them and said:

" Oh, bury me out on the prairie,
Where the coyotes may howl o'er my grave.
Bury me out on the prairie,
But from them my bones please save.
Wrap me up in my blankets
And bury me deep in the ground,
Cover me over with boulders,
Of granite gray and round. "
So we buried him out on the prairie,
Where the coyotes can howl o'er his grave,
And his soul is now a-resting,
From the unkind cut she gave;
And many another young puncher,
As he rides past that pile of stone,
Recalls some similar woman,
And thinks of his mouldering bones.