Buffalo Skinners
Traditional - Woody Guthrie*

Come all you old time cowboys and listen to my song
Please do not grow weary, I’ll not detain you long
Concerning some old cowboys who did agree to go
To spend a summer pleasant on the trail of the buffalo

Well, I found myself in Griffin in the spring of '83
When a well-known famous drover come a-walkin’ up to me
Said: How d’ye do, young fellow! How’d you like to go
To spend a summer pleasant on the trail of the buffalo

Well, me out bein’ of work right then to that drover I did say
This Goin’ up on the buffalo road depends upon your pay
If you will pay good wages, transportation to an’ fro’
Think I might go with you on the trail of the buffalo

‘Cause I pay, he said, good wages and transportation too
You’ll agree to work for me until the season through
But if you do get homesick an’ you try to run away
You’ll starve to death out on the trail and also lose your pay

With all his flatt’rin’ talkin’ he signed up quite a train
Some ten or twelve in number, some able-bodied men
Our trip it was a pleasant one as we hit the westward road
‘til we crossed ol’ Boggy Creek in ol’ New Mexico

There our pleasures ended and our troubles all begun
A lightnin’ storm had hit us and made the cattle run
Got all full of stickers from the cactus that did grow
And outlaws watchin’ to pick us off in the hills of Mexico

Now the workin’ season ended, and the drover would not pay
You went an’ drunk to much, you’re all in debt to me, he said
But the cowboys never had heard of such a thing as a bankrupt law
So we left that drover’s bone to bleach on the plains of the buffalo


* This is the version I recorded

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