|
"You can always tell an eastern dude,"
I used to hear them say.
"It's not the way he looks or talks.
He thinks a different way.
But give the dude a couple years
of gripping leather reins;
and herding cattle all day long,
across the wind-swept plains;
of getting bucked off from the horse
and battered, bruised and skinned--
with mouth that's full of prairie grit,
whipped up by flogging wind.
|

C. M.Russell "Mad Cow" |
|

C. M. Russell "Broken Rope"
|
"Give the dude a couple years
of forty-plus below;
of struggling to feed cattle
through six-foot drifts of snow;
of praying for an early spring--
just to face some flood,
and gully washers bearing down
on cattle mired in mud.
|