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THE DISAPPOINTED TENDERFOOT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: He reached the west in a palace car where the writers
Last Line: "done."
Subject(s): Cowboys; Disappointment; Ranch Life; West (u.s.); Southwest; Pacific States


HE reached the West in a palace car where the writers tell us the cowboys are,
With the redskin bold and the centipede and the rattlesnake and the loco weed.
He looked around for the Buckskin Joes and the things he'd seen in the Wild West

shows —
The cowgirls gay and the bronchos wild and the painted face of the Injun child.
He listened close for the fierce war-whoop, and his pent-up spirits began to
droop,
And he wondered then if the hills and nooks held none of the sights of the story

books.

He'd hoped he would see the marshal pot some bold bad man with a pistol shot,
And entered a low saloon by chance, where the tenderfoot is supposed to dance
While the cowboy shoots at his bootheels there and the smoke of powder begrims
the air,
But all was quiet as if he'd strayed to that silent spot where the dead are
laid.
Not even a faro game was seen, and none flaunted the long, long green.
'Twas a blow for him who had come in quest of a touch of the real wild woolly
West.

He vainly sought for a bad cayuse and the swirl and swish of the flying noose,
And the cowboy's yell as he roped a steer, but nothing of this fell on his ear.
Not even a wide-brimmed hat he spied, but derbies flourished on every side,
And the spurs and the "chaps" and the flannel shirts, the high-heeled boots and

the guns and the quirts,
The cowboy saddles and silver bits and fancy bridles and swell outfits
He'd read about in the novels grim, were not on hand for the likes of him.

He peered about for a stagecoach old, and a minerman with a bag of gold,
And a burro train with its pack-loads which he'd read they tie with the diamond

hitch.
The rattler's whir and the coyote's wail ne'er sounded out as he hit the trail;
And no one knew of a branding bee or a steer roundup that he longed to see.
But the oldest settler named Six-Gun Sim rolled a cigarette and remarked to him:

"The West hez gone to the East, my son, and it's only in tents sich things is
done."





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