THE SIERRY PETES (KNOTS IN THE DEVIL'S TAIL)
(Words: Gail Gardner - 1917 / Music: Bill Simon - 1919)


Don Edwards - 2003


Also recorded by:
Johnny Bencomo; Nevada Slim & Cimarron Sue; Rick Pickren.




Away up high in the Sierry Petes
Where the yeller pines grows tall
Ole Sandy Bob an' Buster Jig
Had a rodeer camp last fall


Oh, they taken their hosses and runnin' irons
And mabbe a dawg or two
An' they 'lowed they'd brand all the long-yered calves
That come within their view


And any old doggie that flapped long yeres
An' didn't bush up by day
Got his long yeres whittled an' his old hide scorched
In a most artistic way


Now one fine day ole Sandy Bob
He throwed his seago down
"I'm sick of this cow-pyrography
And I 'lows I'm a-goin' to town"


So they saddles up an' hits 'em a lope
Fer it warnt no sight of a ride
And them was the days when a Buckeroo
Could ile up his inside


Oh, they starts her in at the Kaintucky Bar
At the head of Whisky Row
And they winds up down by the Depot House
Some forty drinks below


They then sets up and turns around
And goes her the other way
An' to tell you the Gawd-forsaken truth
Them boys got stewed that day


As they was a-ridin' back to camp
A-packin' a pretty good load
Who should they meet but the Devil himself
A-prancin' down the road


Sez he, "You ornery cowboy skunks
You'd better hunt yer holes
Fer I've come up from Hell's Rim Rock
To gather in yer souls"


Sez Sandy Bob, "Old Devil be damned
We boys is kinda tight
But you ain't a-goin' to gather no cowboy souls
'Thout you has some kind of a fight"


So Sandy Bob punched a hole in his rope
And he swang her straight and true
He lapped it on to the Devil's horns
An' he taken his dallies too


Now Buster jig was a riata man
With his gut-line coiled up neat
So he shaken her out an' he built him a loop
An' he lassed the Devil's hind feet


Oh, they stretched him out an' they tailed him down
While the irons was a-gettin hot
They cropped and swaller-forked his yeres
Then they branded him up a lot


They pruned him up with a de-hornin' saw
An' they knotted his tail fer a joke
They then rid off and left him there
Necked to a Black-Jack oak


If you're ever up high in the Sierry Petes
An' you hear one Hell of a wail
You'll know it's that Devil a-bellerin' around
About them knots in his tail





(Contributed by  - September 2007)