They would ride across the prairie,
On a horse they hadn’t named,
And they seldom thought of shooting it,
If that animal went lame,

 Instead they’d walk it to a farmstead,
Where they’d nurse it back to health,
Most cowboys loved their ponies,
More than they loved them self,

 And though most of them wore pistols,
Few were tied down low,
And fancy names weren’t commonplace,
They were just Bill or Bob or Joe,

 Not two gun Dick from Tennessee,
Or One Eyed Texas Tom,
Few cowboys introduced themselves,
By the state that they came from,

 Of course some were given nicknames,
Like Tex, or Red, or Biff,
But mostly cowboys used the name,
That they’d been baptised with,

 And those gun-fights of the movies?
Well they were few and far between,
Except in certain cow-towns,
Like Dodge, or Abilene.

 Or Hays City, at it’s wildest,
But it wasn’t everywhere,
In most western towns, a killing,
Was considered pretty rare,

 And those that did have gun-fights,
Most cowboys thought were fools,
To him a gun didn’t make a man,
It was just another tool,

 For knocking in a fencepost,
Or shooting mountain lions,
Or defence against the Indians,
That went renegade at times,

 Fights were done with hands or feet,
And now and then a knife
And few, if any celebrated,
The taking of a life,

 These men were the real cowboys,
Not the ones on your tv,
The wild west and the frontier,
Were tamed by men like these,

 Just ordinary people,
Living extraordinary lives,
Braving nature’s hardships,
On their months long cattle drives.

 Just to make enough to settle down,
And buy land of their own,
Most of the greatest heroes,
Went by names we’ll never know,

 And the heroes we have heard of,
Like Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill,
Are stories about violent men,
And the violent men they killed.

 They pale into insignificance,
Compared to the pioneer,
Without whom the west and all America,
Would not even be here.

 By

S.E.Ralph

10-1-2021