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Cowboy Poetry and Western Verse
Wire
George Rhoades
They rolled him out into the sun
By the wall at the nursin home;
His mind wandered and he babbled
About old days bein free to roam
Brush and grasslands down south,
Oer rollin hills and plains
North to the Kansas cowtowns
Through heat, hail and blindin rains.
The nurses listened to his stories
When he rambled about the longhorn,
And the big drives up the Chisholm,
Vanished times to lament and mourn;
He made the long trail for 20 years
Before the towns spread like fire,
Before settlers, plows and farms,
Before the comin of the wire.
He recalled the big roundups,
From San Angelo to Waco,
Longhorns gathered into a flood
From the Brazos to the Frio;
With memories dim and fadin,
He talked of drivin em north,
Three-thousand head, a windin herd,
On the move past old Fort Worth.
They smiled at his fumbled words
When he told of crossin rivers, streams,
Open country for a thousand miles
Was it yesterday or just in his dreams?
From the Rio Grande up to Abilene,
Across the Red to Old Duncan Store,
Stampedes, storms, dust and wind,
Monument Hill and hardships by the score.
He was almost a hundred, they said,
Listenin to his tales of the Washita,
Dover Station, Rush Creek and Silver City,
Cimarron quicksand and ragin Arkansas;
But the worst of the problems
That brought an end to the trail by far,
The greatest tragedy, he sadly cried,
Was no doubt the comin of the wire.
Caldwell, Hays and Dodge City, too,
He tried to make em understand
That hed taken part in a great enterprise,
Important, excitin, majestic and grand;
Millions of cattle pushed up the trail,
Adventure, more than you could desire,
Creatin legends and myths galore,
Before the comin of the wire.
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