“Tell us how it happened any way John,” Bud Perkins said.  “Give us the story of it.”

“Go on John.  Sing about the cowboy,” Peter Slater coaxed.

“It iss a teffle of a good song, that,” chuckled Tonald.

“Well,” John began, clearing his throat, “here it’s for you.  I’ve ruined me voice drivin’ oxen though, but here’s the song.”

It was a song of the plains, weird and wistful, with an uncouth plaintiveness that fascinated these lonely hill-dwellers.

   As I was a-walkin’ one beautiful morning,
      As I was a-walkin’ one morning in May,
   I saw a poor cowboy rolled up in his blanket,
      Rolled up in his blanket as cold as the clay!

The listener would naturally suppose that the cowboy was dead in his blanket that lovely May morning; but that idea had to be abandoned as the song went on, because the cowboy was very much alive in the succeeding verses, when—­

   Round the bar bummin’ where bullets were hummin’
      He snuffed out the candle to show why he come!

Then his way of giving directions for his funeral was somewhat out of the usual procedure but no one seemed to notice these little discrepancies—­

   Beat the drum slowly boys, beat the drum lowly boys,
      Beat the dead march as we hurry along. 
   To show that ye love me, boys, write up above me, boys,
      “Here lies a poor cowboy who knows he done wrong.”

In accordance with a popular custom, John spoke the last two words in a very slow and distinct voice.  This was considered a very fine thing to do—­it served the purpose of the “Finis” at the end of the book, or the “Let us pray,” at the end of the sermon.

The applause was very loud and very genuine.

Bud Perkins, who was the wit of the Perkins family, and called by his mother a “regular cut-up,” was at last induced to sing.  Bud’s “Come-all-ye” contained twenty-three verses, and in it was set forth the wanderings of one, young Willie, who left his home and native land at a very tender age, and “left a good home when he left.”  His mother tied a kerchief of blue around his neck.  “God bless you, son,” she said.  “Remember I will watch for you, till life itself is fled!” The song went on to tell how long the mother watched in vain.  Young Willie roamed afar, but after he had been scalped by savage bands and left for dead upon the sands, and otherwise maltreated by the world at large, he began to think of home, and after shipwrecks, and dangers and hair-breadth escapes, he reached his mother’s cottage door, from which he had gone long years before.

Then of course he tried to deceive his mother, after the manner of all boys returning after a protracted absence—­

   Oh, can you tell me, ma’m, he said,
   How far to Edinboro’ town.

But he could not fool his mother, no, no!  She knew him by the kerchief blue, still tied around his neck.