Torn Saddle - Song Page
© words & music by Annie Wilson
from the album Out on the Tallgrass Prairie
Album Note:
Tack room tale of how an old saddle got torn when a cowboy and horse were pushed off a ledge by a charging bull. The cowboy mends the saddle and uses it many years.
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LYRICS
Like a museum in the old red barn, our tack room tells its tales
In blankets, ropes and saddles ridden down our pasture trails.
But the story of one saddle folks ask us to tell:
What happened to that saddle with the big-tear in its swell?
We say it’s from the thirties and belonged to Tom McKee,
The foreman at that time and quite-a cowboy, all agreed.
The story goes that Tom and the hands were checking cows up east
When a rank bull up and charged his mare and knocked her off her feet.
They were on the edge of quite a ledge
Of rimrock by the creek.
They both went over landing on
The stream and rocks beneath.
But thankfully young Tom jumped free and fell off to her side.
Then shaking, man and horse stood up both glad to be alive.
The hands chased off that mean old bull and soon all gathered ‘round.
They checked out Tom and then his mare, finding both still sound.
Still Tom was sad to see his saddle
Had a big long tear
On the left side of the saddle horn
Where the rocks had caught it there.
He realized his saddle had shielded his young mare.
What might have happened to her gave him quite a scare.
Then he spent all evening punching holes along the torn-up leather.
With heavy rawhide laces he sewed it back together.
It wasn’t much to look at,
But stood up to years of wear.
And every time he’d mount up,
He’d remember to take care.
He kept that mare ‘til she was old and then put her out to graze.
And Tom he died in sixty-five - a cowboy all his days.
Now that saddle tells one story from the many tack room tales
Of blankets, ropes and saddles ridden down our pasture trails.