Movies and TV have truly skewered the true image of those western years,
The Lone Ranger, Marshall Dillion, Sugarfoot, Cheynne and The Duke we would cheer.
But the truth is the gunfights were few and the many famous heroes were too,
The Dime Novels and Buffalo Bill Codys Wild West show were just a lot of to do.
Now there were outlaws and lawmen in the West,
and a Texas Ranger did say One riot, one Ranger to that I confess.
Jesse James and his gang were products of the Civil War,
Until Bob Ford shot Jesse in the back and he hit the floor.
The worst killer was a Texan names John Wesley Hardin,
he killed 40 men without blinking or nary a grin.
Hardin died in El Paso rolling some dice,
and Calaminty Jane though a woman was not really nice.
Calaminty shot, dressed and cursed like a man,
and was really distraught when her friend Wild Bill Hickock was killed with the Dead Mans Hand.
Hickock was Deadwoods sheriff when McCall shot him from behind.
Hickock was playing poker and had two eights and aces-three of a kind.
The most famous lawmen was probably Tombstones Wyatt Earp.
At the OK Corral his brothers and Doc Holliday shot up the Clantons - the perps.
Earp would play bothe sides of the law,
he helped Bat Masterson in card games which were not legal at all.
William Bonny, aka Billy the Kid, was born in New York,
he fought in the Lincoln County wars and in his pictures he looks like a dork.
The Kid was gun downed by Pat Garrett in a darken room,
Billy the Kid, dead at 21, he had surely met his doom.
Another lady of the wild west was Belle Starr,
she ran a gang of horse thieves from Texas and was as ugly as a scar.
Buffalo Bill Cody was the hero of the Dime Novel books,
but in reality he never shedded anyones blood and for a hero he was misstook .
But Cody did put together his Wild West Show,
Annie Oakley put on a shooting display that wowed even kings and queens in the front row.
Sitting Bull, an Indian chief, was also a member of the traveling troubadour,
he of course took down George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn.
Other famous Indians of the wild west were Quanah Parker, Crazy Horse and Gerinimo.
Quanah had a white mother and Indian father and a town in Texas named after him a while ago.
Other bad men were Clay Allison, Black Bart and Old Bill Miner who was a saggin.
Clay Allison killed 15 men but broke his neck falling drunk out of a wagon.
Old Bill Miner was the first bandit to say, Get Yer Hands Up.
Black Bart would rob the stagecoach and leave a poem in the money box cup.
The Wild Bunch were a group of outlaws that hid out in the Hole in the Wall.
The famous outlaws of that group were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and in South America they would fall.
The outlaws were not all that bad and the lawmen were not all that good,
And although its fun to watch westerns at the movies the shows should fix all the lies if they could.
