The horse weren't much to look at, not the kind you'd prob'ly buy
But you wouldn't know he's bad news till you looked him in the eye.
It was small and mean and glittered, as deep as Jacob's well,
Like lookin' down the smoke stack of the furnace room in Hell.

Freddie grabbed a set of nippers and bent to grab a hoof.
When he woke up...his shoein' chaps were danglin' from the roof.
His shirt tail hung in tatters and his watch had come unwound.
The nipper's orbit finally peaked and clattered to the ground.

"You get the twitch," said Freddie, "I'm about to clean his clock."
He tied a rope around his neck and fished it past the hock.
Then pulled back on the sideline to instill a little fear
When Pigeye bit a good sized chunk from Wilford's offside ear.

Wilford tangled in the sideline and tried to navigate
While draggin' 'round the horse corral like alligator bait.
Freddie tried to stop this trollin' with a loop around the head,
And it mighta worked if Freddie'd only roped the horse instead.

But, of course, he caught poor Wilford, who left a funny track...
Sorta like an oil slick, when Freddie jerked the slack.
By now the boys were grouchy from this troublesome travail
They figgered they'd be done by noon, but they'd not drove a nail.

Go get the Power Wagon! We'll winch him to a post."
They got the cayuse necked up tight, and set to work...almost
'Cause the halter broke and Pigeye walked the length of Freddie's back.
They rolled beneath the axle like two lovers in the sack.

Freddie heard the sound of gunfire like a thousand amplifiers,
"I've got the sucker pinned down, Fred, I shot out all the tires!"
It was dark when Wilford stood up and laid his hammer down
A gross of crooked horsehoe nails lay scattered all around.

Long lengths of rope stretched from the horse still pinioned underneath.
They ran to old appliances and harrows missing teeth,
To concrete bridge abutments, to a broke down drillin' rig
And a set of post hole diggers somebody'd left mid-dig.

The place looked like a cross between a drunken spider's web
And a yard sale at Chernobyl, once the glow'd begun to ebb.
Wilford couldn't move his elbow but he grinned and proudly said,
"Ol pard, we done a good day's work," to what was left of Fred.

Just look at that there shoein' job. Them clinches in a row.
It's such a good example we should make a video."
Freddie crawled out from the wreckage and rubbed his aching knee,
"What say, we wait till mornin' to put on the other three..."
-Baxter Black

They had some new shirts and some new overalls,
That fastened with zippers, no buttons aytall.
I reckoned that clothes with a riggin' like that
Would be fine fer the boys on the Alkali Flat.

Because where there's alkali water to drink,
Things may happen sooner than what you might think.
So I got me some clothes that was rigged up like that,
And went back to my camp on the Alkali Flat.
Next mornin' I'd traveled fer mebby a mile,
When the time come to give them new zippers a trial.
I grabbed at the handle and give 'em a jerk
But holey old golden, them zippers don't work.

I swear and I sweat, I am shore out of luck.
I've started it crooked, the zipper is stuck.
I fuss and I pull till I git the thing straight,
Then the zipper it works, but a little too late.

The next thing I do is to throw them new garments
Up onto a cactus fer ants and fer varmints.
And I reckon that buttons is safer at that,
Fer the fellers that lives on the Alkali Flat.
-Bruce Kiskaddon