Tales of the Rugged Trails
Author’s Foreword
by George Albert Leddy
List’ to the tales of the rugged trails
And the rugged, rawboned men;
Gruesome and weird, tainted and smeared,
Blackened with crime and sin;
Lonesome and sad, men that are mad,
Men with an iron will;
Men with a mind, weakened and blind,
Filled with a lust to kill;
Men who have loved, men who have lost,
But ever they want to try.
They have chosen their trail and they follow it on;
They thrive where the weakling die.
Thrive, aye, thrive, ‘though the soul be dead
And the dry bones grind away;
And the flesh be drawn and the eyes be wan,
And the hair and whiskers gray.
Painfully, slowly, stumbling along;
Feeling a joy in their pains;
Filled to the brim like the primitive men
With the blood of an ancient age.
Coarse be their smile, rough be their song,
But never they pause to sigh.
They are the men and they’re out to win;
They thrive where the weakling die.
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