True, he ain't no account as a nag, 
   An' I'm not goin' to boast of his blood; 
If I liked I could pitch you a mag 
   'Bout his sire, once a prince of the stud; 
Give performances coloured and plain, 
   An' a pedigree long es me arm —-
Which is style, but I'm straight in the main, 
So he ain't of the Wangdoodle strain, 
   Nor his dam wasn't Kate nor The Charm. 


Fiddle-headed an' spavined! Well, p'raps. 
   Yes, his legs is all over the shop, 
An' his pacin's described by the chaps 
   Es a sort of a wallaby hop. 
He ain't good over sticks, an' a mile 
   In four-thirty's his best up to date; 
An' he's jest pure Gehenna fer guile, 
But I wouldn't sell out fer a pile, 
   'Cause I'm not goin' to dog on a mate. 


See, I'm here, and he's yonder, of course, 
   But I might 'a' been crow-bait by now —-
Once my life seemed to hang on that horse, 
   An' I didn't get left. That is how! 
They've bin tellin' you —- Billy an' Spence? 
   Ah, they're mighty smart men down the creek, 
An' they won't allow horses has sense, 
But jest guy it es chance or pretence 
   When I tell what was done by The Freak. 


But I'm here, an' he's there —- that's enough! 
   We were out 'mong the Misery Hills. 
'Course you don't know the country. It's rough; 
   An' the man that it corners it kills. 
I can't figure what happened us quite, 
   But we came in a heap, me an' him. 
When I knew who I was it was night, 
An' my head an' my chest wasn't right, 
   An' the bone poked right outer this limb. 


Fer a spell I felt horribly sick 
   While I held there a meetin' of me; 
Proposed — "It is U P with Dick." 
   Put, an' carried unanermously. 
Broken-legged, fifteen mile from the Creek —-
   I weighed chances, an' gave up the case, 
But I didn't deal fair by The Freak, 
Till he limped to me, staggered an' weak, 
   An' he flopped his ole lip in my face. 


Do? I fondled his nose like a fool, 
   An' I called him love names without end; 
Though I ain't a soft man as a rule, 
   There is times when I sorter unbend. 
'Tain't no use now to talk of the pain, 
   I endoored es I struggled to climb 
To his back from a log, or explain 
How I fell back again an' again; 
   But I gave up exhausted in time, 


‘An’ I flung meself down on the ground, 
   An' I cursed an', yes, maybe I cried, 
But The Freak he came nosin' around, 
   An' he rolled over right by my side. 
Don't you try to explain, I'm content 
   That he knew jest es well es could be, 
'Cos I looked in his eyes es he bent, 
By the Lord, an' I saw what he meant, 
   An' that's good enough talkin' fer me. 


Well, I crawled on his back es he lay, 
   An' he heaved himself up again, so, 
An' then struck out fer home, an' till day 
   I hung on to him, but how I don't know. 
Not a thing do I mind after that 
   'Fore I came round all right at the whim, 
Spread out on the bunk of Big Mat, 
With a doc. on the job from The Flat, 
   An' my leg fairly timbered and trim. 


Yes, I've heard all the mag of the men —-
   That he wanted to roll or to die, 
An' it's true that he's kicked me since then, 
   An' he's likewise uncommonly sly; 
But I'm here. If they talk fer a week 
   That one fact isn't goin' to change, 
An' I owe it this day to The Freak 
That a crow isn't clippin' his beak 
   On my rib-bones out back by the range.

"Edward Dyson"
The Bulletin, 2 November 1895, p25

Note:
This poem was published in substantially different form in Dyson's poetry collection Rhymes From the Mines and Other Lines.