Pike County Ballads | Page 4

took Seth Bludso 'twixt the eyes,
Which caused him
great surprise.
Then coats went off, and all went in;
Shots and bad language swelled
the din;
The short, sharp bark of Derringers,
Like bull-pups,
cheered the furse.
They piled the stiffs outside the door;
They made, I reckon, a cord or
more.
Girls went that winter, as a rule,
Alone to spellin'-school.
I've searched in vain, from Dan to BeerSheba,
to make this mystery
clear;
But I end with HIT as I did begin, -
"WHO GOT THE
WHISKY-SKIN?"
GOLYER.
Ef the way a man lights out of this world
Helps fix his heft for the
other sp'ere,
I reckon my old friend Golyer's Ben
Will lay over lots
of likelier men
For one thing he done down here.
You didn't know Ben? He driv a stage
On the line they called the Old
Sou'-west;
He wa'n't the best man that ever you seen,
And he wa'n't
so ungodly pizen mean, -
No better nor worse than the rest.

He was hard on women and rough on his friends;
And he didn't have
many, I'll let you know;
He hated a dog and disgusted a cat,
But
he'd run off his legs for a motherless brat,
And I guess there's many
jess so.
I've seed my sheer of the run of things,
I've hoofed it a many and
many a miled,
But I never seed nothing that could or can
Jest git all
the good from the heart of a man
Like the hands of a little child.
Well! this young one I started to tell you about, -
His folks was all
dead, I was fetchin' him through, -
He was just at the age that's
loudest for boys,
And he blowed such a horn with his sarchin' small
voice,
We called him "the Little Boy Blue."
He ketched a sight of Ben on the box,
And you bet he bawled and
kicked and howled,
For to git 'long of Ben, and ride thar too;
I tried
to tell him it wouldn't do,
When suddingly Golyer growled,
"What's the use of making the young one cry?
Say, what's the use of
being a fool?
Sling the little one up here whar he can see,
He won't
git the snuffles a-ridin' with me,
The night ain't any too cool."
The child hushed cryin' the minute he spoke;
"Come up here, Major!
don't let him slip."
And jest as nice as a woman could do,
He
wropped his blanket around them two,
And was off in the crack of a
whip.
We rattled along an hour or so,
Till we heerd a yell on the still night
air.
Did you ever hear an Apache yell?
Well, ye needn't want to,
THIS side of hell;
There's nothing more devilish there.
Caught in the shower of lead and flint,
We felt the old stage stagger
and plunge;
Then we heerd the voice and the whip of Ben,
As he
gethered his critters up again,
And tore away with a lunge.

The passengers laughed. "Old Ben's all right,
He's druv five year and
never was struck."
"Now if _I_'d been thar, as sure as you live,

They'd 'a' plugged me with holes as thick as a sieve;
It's the reg'lar
Golyer luck."
Over hill and holler and ford and creek,
Jest like the hosses had wings,
we tore;
We got to Looney's, and Ben come in
And laid down the
baby and axed for his gin,
And dropped in a heap on the floor.
Said he, "When they fired, I kivered the kid, -
Although I ain't pretty,
I'm middlin' broad;
And look! he ain't fazed by arrow nor ball, -

Thank God! my own carcase stopped them all."
Then we seen his eye
glaze, and his lower jaw fall, -
And he carried his thanks to God.
THE PLEDGE AT SPUNKY POINT.
A TALE OF EARNEST EFFORT AND HUMAN PERFIDY.
It's all very well for preachin',
But preachin' and practice don't gee:

I've give the thing a fair trial,
And you can't ring it in on me.
So
toddle along with your pledge, Squire,
Ef that's what you want me to
sign;
Betwixt me and you, I've been thar,
And I'll not take any in
mine.
A year ago last Fo'th July
A lot of the boys was here.
We all got
corned and signed the pledge
For to drink no more that year.
There
was Tilmon Joy and Sheriff McPhail
And me and Abner Fry,
And
Shelby's boy Leviticus,
And the Golyers, Luke and Cy.
And we anteed up a hundred
In the hands of Deacon Kedge
For to
be divided the follerin' Fo'th
'Mongst the boys that kep' the pledge.

And we knowed each other so well, Squire,
You may take my scalp
for a fool,
Ef every man when he signed his name
Didn't feel
cock-sure of the pool.

Fur a while it all went lovely;
We put up a job next day
Fur to make
Joy b'lieve his wife was dead,
And he went home middlin' gay;

Then Abner Fry he killed a man
And afore he was hung McPhail

Jest bilked the widder outen her sheer
By getting him slewed in jail.
But Chris'mas scooped the Sheriff,
The egg-nogs gethered him in;

And Shelby's boy Leviticus
Was, New Year's, tight as sin;
And
along in March