One Spring I thought I'd try for fun, to see how cowpunching was done.
After the roundup had begun, I tackled the cattle king.
He said his foreman's gone to town. He lives on the prairie. His name is Brown.
If you see him he'll take you down. That's how it all began.
He gave me a hundred and sxty head. I often wished that I were dead.
Sometimes a steer would make a break. Across the prairie he would take,
As though he was running for a stake. They really did me in.
Sometimes I couldn't head them at all, and other times my horse would fall,
And crack my back like a connon ball. I lost my horse and all.
They roped me out an old gray tack, with two big steadfasts on his back.
I bedded him down with a gunny sack. I used my bed and all.
When I got on him he left the ground, went up in the air and turned around.
He broke my back when he came down. He gave me an awful fall.
They picked me up, carried me in, and rubbed me down with an iron stake pin.
That's the way they all begin. You're doing well says Brown.
Tomorrow morning if you don't die, I'll give you another horse to try.
I'll be danged if you do says I. I think I'll walk to to town.
Well I've traveled up, I've traveled down, I've traveled this wide world round and round.
I've lived in cities, I've lived in towns, I've got this much to say.
"Before you try cowpunching, kiss your wife,
Take out a policy on your life,
And cut your throat with a butcher knife.
It's far the easiest way."
Wm.T. Fecht learned this song when he was homesteading a ranch in Montana
around 1918. He would play his guitar and sing this song years later to his family.
