Cowboy Poetry from a Short-horn Tenderfoot

Have you ever smelt a dally’s smoke or felt the jerk of a tie? Have you ever put your saddle in soak after losing your roll to dice? Have you worked cattle who can’t be handled by greenhorns or milk maids, Or gambled all night around a candle at the poker games we played? Did you ever have to use a rope for more than a clothes line, And burnt your fingers on a lope roping strays with that twine? Did you grow enough hide over rope burns to cover a saddle or two? Do you dally-welter your saddle-horn turns, or tie on tried and true? Have you slept where the prairie was your floor and your only roof was sky? Did that roof leak, and through open doors, did the north wind often fly? Have you pushed hooves for weeks without licker, and each time it started to rain, Did you find you left your doggone slicker back in the wagon again? Have you cooked on burning cow chips on a prairie without wood? Tasted alkali on parched lips and smelled sagebrush where ya stood? Did you ever rope a slick-ear, throw her down and tie her there, And iron your brand upon her as you smelt that burning hair? Did you saddle a snaky outlaw and ride for all you’re worth? Did you get back on, just like your Pa, each time you fell to earth? Did you fall asleep on the ground at night to a coyote’s lullabies, And wake near a rattler first morning light, a lariat’s length in size?