Come all you old time cowboys   And listen to my song   Please do not grow weary   I'll not detain you long      Concerning some wild cowboys   Who did agree to go   Spend the summer pleasant   On the trail of the buffalo      I found myself in griffin   In the spring of '83   When a well known famous drover   Come walking up to me      Said, "How do you do, young fellow   Well, how would you like to go   And spend the summer pleasant   On the trail of the buffalo?"      Well, I being out of work right then   To the drover I did say   "Going out on the buffalo road   Depends on the pay"      If you will pay good wages   And transportation to and fro   I think I might go with you   On the hunt of the buffalo      Of course I'll pay good wages   And transportation too   If you will agree to work for me   Until the season's through      But if you do get homesick   And you try to run away   You will starve to death   Out on the trail and also lose your pay      Well with all his flattering talking   He signed up quite a train   Some 10 or 12 in number   Some able bodied men      Our trip it was a pleasant one   As we hit the Westward road   Until we crossed Old Boggy Creek   In Old New Mexico      There our pleasures ended   And our troubles all began   A lightening storm hit us   And made the cattle run      Got all full of stickers   From the cactus that did not grow   And the outlaws watching   To pick us off in the hills of Mexico      Well, our working season ended   And the drover would not pay   If you had not drunk too much   You are all in debt to me      But the cowboys never had heard   Such a thing as a bankrupt law   So we left that drover's bones to bleach   On the plains of the buffalo