Zebra Dun - Don Edwards

We were camped on the plains at the head of the Cimmaron

When along came a stranger and stopped to arger some.

He looked so very very foolish that we began to look around,

We thought he was a greenhorn that had just 'scaped from town.

We asked him if he had he been to breakfast;

he hadn’t had a sniff;

So we opened up the chuck-box and told him help himself.

He took a little beefsteak and some biscuits and some beans,

And then began to talk and tell about foreign kings and queens,

He talked about the Spanish War and fighting on on the seas

With guns as big as beef steers and ramrods big as trees,--

And about old Paul Jones, a fighting son of a gun,

And he said he was the grittiest cuss that ever pulled a gun.

Such an educated feller, his thoughts just come in herds,

He astonished all them cowboys with them jaw-breaking words.

He just kept right on talking till he made the boys all sick

And they began to look around just how to play a trick.

He said he had lost his job out upon the Santa Fe

And was going across the plains to strike the 7-D.

But he didn’t say how come it, just some trouble with his boss,

But said he’d like to borrow a nice fat saddle hoss.

This tickled all the boys to death;

we laughed down in their sleeves

Said that he could have a horse as fresh as he would please.

So shorty grabbed a lasso and he roped the Zebra Dun

And led him to the stranger as we waited for the fun.

Now Old Dunny was an outlaw he had grown so awful wild

He could paw the white out of the moon every jump for a mile.

And he always stood right still--just like he didn’t know--

Until he was saddled and ready for to go.

Now the stranger hit the saddle, and old Dunny quit the earth,

He went straight up in the air for all that he was worth.

A-bawlin and a-squalin, and having a wall-eyed fit,

With his hind feet perpendicular, and his front ones in the bit.

Now we could see the tops of trees beneath him every jump,

But the stranger he was growed there just like the camel’s hump;

And he sat up there upon him and curled his black moustache,

Just like a summer boarder a waiting for his hash.

Now he thumped him in the shoulders and spurred him when he whirled,

He showed us flunky punchers he is the wolf of this old world.

and when he had dismounted once more upon the ground,

Why we knew he was a thoroughbred and not a gent from town;

Now the boss he was standing and a watching all the show,

He walks right up to him and he asks him not to go--

«If you can use the lasso like you rode the Zebra Dun,

Then your the man I’ve been looking for ever since the year of one.»

Well he could use a lasso and he didn’t didn’t do it slow;

The cattle they stampeded he was always on the go

A one thing and a sure thing I’ve learned since I’ve been born,

Every educated feller he ain’t a plumb greenhorn.