A sister fond and true,
Or maybe-so a dear wife
To weep and mourn for you."
So he carried his song along; that almost interminable song that has been sung by countless cowboys from the Rio Grande to the Little Missouri, carrying Texas back with it to the days of his own boyhood when he had stood many a lonesome watch like that.
Away over to the left of him another high-pitched singer could be heard in the long pauses between the nearer cowboy's stanzas. He was too far off to catch his words, but Texas could supply them to the tune, which came across the night over the sighing herd as clear as a bugle call.
And play the fife lowly,
And drink to my health as you bear me along—"
That was the way it began. The ways in which it ended were varied, according to locality, tradition, and the personal taste of the singer. Only in all of them they buried him as he longed to be laid down, and the wolves howled over him, and the snows of winter fell, all in the melancholy cadence that was sadder than any dirge when it came on the
