in this volume, later included in Mr. John A. Lomax’s collection of Cowboy Songs—“Chopo,” “The Pecos River Queen,” “Little Joe, the Wrangler.” “Whose Old Cow?” and “Speckles,” this last reprinted in Mr. Lomax’s book under the title of “Freckles; A Fragment,” just as it came from the hands of the local printer who had lost half the copy.
The present collection is, therefore, an enlarged edition of this little volume of 1908, with muchi new material, not the least interesting of which are the twenty-five songs by the author.
As a cowboy poet, N. Howard Thorp — better known as “Jack Thorp” to his many friends in the Southwest — is the genuine thing. He is an old-time cattleman and cowpuncher, and his songs are the fruit of experience. His gift is instinctive and naïve, like that of all real cowboy poets, and its charm is precisely in its fresh and “unliterary” quality.
“How long have you been in this country?” I
asked “Jack” Thorp one day soon after I met him.
We were sitting on the well-curb in the plaza of an
Indian pueblo watching a Rain-Dance.
“You see those cedars up there on the hills?” he said, looking above the roof-tops to the foothills. “Well, I planted them.”
It was a typical cowboy answer, evasive and symbolic, and it indicated perfectly well that he might be regarded as part of the soil. The cowboy does n’t “loosen up” until he knows you fairly well. When he does, it is usually worth while. I recall now innumerable reminiscences of “Jack” Thorp’s when
