"Rusty Jiggs And Sandy Sam" lyrics - RAMBLIN' JACK ELLIOTT
It was way high up in the Sierry Petes
Where the yellow pines grow tall
Rusty Jiggs And Sandy Sam
Had a round-up camp last fall
They had their pony's and their running irons
And maybe a dog or two
And they 'lowed they'd brand all the loppy calves
That came within their view
Well many a loppier dogie
That didn't hush up by day
Had his long ears whittled and his old hide scorched
In a most artistic way
Then says Rusty Jiggs to Sandy Sam
As he throwed his seago down
"I'm tired of cow biography
And I figures I'll go to town"
They saddles up, and they hits them a lope
For it weren't no side of a ride
And them was the days when an old cow punch
Could oil up his old insides
They starts her out at the Kentucky Bar
At the head of the Whisky Row
And they ends her up at the Depot House
Some forty drinks below
Then they winds her up and turns her around
And goes her the other way
And to tell you the Lord-forsaken truth
Them boys got drunk that day
Well, as they was a headin' back to camp
And packin' a mighty good load
Who should they meet but the Devil himself
Come prancin' down the road?
Now the Devil he said, "You cowboy skunks
You better go hunt your hole
'Cause I've come up from the Hell's rim rocks
To gather in your souls"
Says Rusty Jiggs to the Devil
"Though I know we're tight
No Devil ever took an old cow punch
Without one kind of a fight"
So he builds him a hole in his old throw rope
And he throw'd it straight and true
He caught the devil right around the horns
He takes his dallies too
Now Sandy Sam was a reata man
With his good line coiled up neat
But he shakes her out and he builds him a loop
And he caught the Devil's hind feet
They threw him down on the desert ground
While the irons was-a getting hot
They cropped and swallow-forked his ears
And branded him up a lot
And they pruned him up with a dehorning saw
And knotted his tail for a joke
Rode off and left him bellowing there
Necked up to a lilac-jack oak
Now, if you're ever up in the Sierry Petes
And you hear a hell of a wail
You'll know it ain't nothin but the Devil himself
Raisin' hell about the knots in his tail
