The Belled Coyote Poem by Robert Fletcher

Aint no one loves a coyote
That I ever heard about.
He aint nuthin' but a pestilence
Requirin' stampin' out.
A sneakin', thievin' rustler,—
A gray, ga'nt vagabone
Whose locoed vocal tendencies
Are lackin' depth and tone.

Seems like he's always hungry
And Lord, man, when he wails
It's the concentrated sinfulness
From lost and vanished trails.
Well, there's one of them Carusos
Hangs about the Lazy B
And makes hisself obnoxious
Most plum' consistently.

So, one day, a cayuse dyin'
We surrounds the corpse with traps,
Where we'd cached it in a coulee
A thinkin' that perhaps
In a moment inadvertent
That coyote will come around
And meet up with some damn tough luck,
And we will have him downed.

Sure enough, he made an error
For he let his appetite
Prevail agin his judgment
And we cinched him that same night.
He got one foot caught in a trap
And jumpin' 'round about
Another gloms him by a laig
And sort of stretched him out.

Naw, pard, we didn't shoot him,—
Jest aimed to give him hell,
We took and strapped around his neck
A jinglin' little bell
And turned him loose to ramble,—
Yes,- I reckin' it was cruel,—
Aint a cotton-tail or sage-hen
That is jest a plain damn fool

Enought to not take warnin'
When they heard that little bell,—
So he don't get too much food nor
Company, I'm here to tell.
He's an outlaw with his own kind
And his pickin's pretty slim,
'Cause ev'rywhere he goes that bell
Gives warnin' that it's him.

And sometimes when it's gettin' dusk
And ev'rything plum' still,
I can hear that bell a tollin'
As he slips around a hill.
It kind of gets upon my nerves,—
That, and his mournful cry,
For I know the skunk is fond of livin'
Same as you or I.

One day I'm in the saddle
A twistin' up a smoke,
When he sneaks our of a coulee,
And pard, it aint no joke,
When I see him starved and lonesome,
A lookin' 'most all in,—
Well, perhaps I'm chicken hearted,
But it seemed a dirty sin,

And besides, that bell, it haunts me,
Till there doesn't seem to be
A way t' square things but to put
Him out of misery.
So I takes my 30-30,
As he sits and gives a yell,—
I drawed a bead, and cracked away,—
And busted that damn bell!