The version attributed to Woody Guthrie is almost the same as the version in the Digital Tradition, but there are some differences.
BUFFALO SKINNERS (Words and Music by Woody Guthrie) Contact Publisher - The Bicycle Music Company/Concord Music
Come all you old time cowboys and listen to my song But please do not grow weary I'll not detain you long It's concerning some wild cowboys who did agree to go To spend one summer pleasantly of the trail of the buffalo.
I found myself in Griffin in the spring of eighty three When a well known famous drover come walking up to me Says "How do you do young fellow? And how would you like to go And spend one summer pleasantly on the trail of the buffalo?"
I being out of work right then to the drover I did say "Going out on the buffalo road depends upon your pay If you pay good wages and transportation to and fro, I thinks to myself I'll go with you to the hunt of the buffalo."
"Of course I'll pay good wages and transportation too If you agree to work for me until the season's through But if you do get homesick and try to run away You'll starve to death out on the trail and also lose your pay."
With all his flattering talking he signed up quite a train Some ten or twelve in number strong able bodied men OutOur trip it was a pleasant one as we hit the westward road Until we crossed old Boggy Creek in old New Mexico.
And there our pleasures ended and our troubles all begun A lightning storm it hit us and it made the buffalo run We got all full of stickers from the cactus that did grow And the outlaws watched to pick us off in the hills of Mexico.
Our working season ended and the drover would not pay "You et and drunk too much and so you're all in debt to me!" But the cowboys never had heard of such a thing as bankrupt law So we left that drover's bones to bleach on the plains of buffalo.