es I'll ride.
Let 'im spin and flop like a crazy top,
Or flit like a wind-whipped smoke,
But he'll know the feel of my rowelled heel
Till he's happy to own he's broke.

_For a man is a man and a hawse is a brute,
And the hawse may be prince of his clan,
But he'll bow to the bit and the steel-shod boot
And own that his boss is the man._

When the devil at rest underneath my vest
Gets up and begins to paw,
And my hot tongue strains at its bridle-reins,
Then I tackle the real outlaw;
When I get plumb riled and my sense goes wild,
And my temper has fractious growed,
If he'll hump his neck just a triflin' speck,
Then it's dollars to dimes I'm throwed.

_For a man is a man, but he's partly a beast--
He kin brag till he makes you deaf,
But the one, lone brute, from the West to the East,
That he kaint quite break, is himse'f._
_Charles B. Clark, Jr._

THE DESERT

'TWAS the lean coyote told me, baring his slavish soul,
As I counted the ribs of my dead cayuse and cursed at the desert
sky,
The tale of the Upland Rider's fate while I dug in the water hole
For a drop, a taste of the bitter seep; but the water hole was dry!

"He came," said the lean coyote, "and he cursed as his pony fell;
And he counted his pony's ribs aloud; yea, even as you have done.
He raved as he ripped at the clay-red sand like an imp from the pit of
hell,
Shriveled with thirst for a thousand years and craving a drop--just
one."

"His name?" I asked, and he told me, yawning to hide a grin:
"His name is writ on the prison roll and many a place beside;
Last, he scribbled it on the sand with a finger seared and thin,
And I watched his face as he spelled it out--laughed as I laughed,
and died.

"And thus," said the lean coyote, "his need is the hungry's feast,
And mine." I fumbled and pulled my gun--emptied it wild and fast,
But one of the crazy shots went home and silenced the waiting beast;
There lay the shape of the Liar, dead! 'Twas I that should laugh
the last.

Laugh? Nay, now I would write my name as the Upland Rider wrote;
Write? What need, for before my eyes in a wide and wavering line
I saw the trace of a written word and letter by letter float
Into a mist as the world