Disclaimer: By permission of author Jim Hoy
Anyway in 1876 a young man came to Kansas from Iowa at the age of sixteen or seventeen in 1870. He became a cowboy a year or two later. He was herding cattle wintering cattle on the Indian Territory-Kansas Line, south west of medicine lodge in the winter of 1875/1876.He wrote his memoirs in 1886, and then he noted that "all the boys in the camp" He said, "Were singing the song about the bad girl" He said I had always tried to write poems, "so I decided to make it about the cowboy, and I made the main character a ranger." By "Ranger" He did not mean a lawman, a Texas Ranger, he meant someone who rides the range, a cowboy. He said, "I made the main character a ranger, and I set it at Big Tom Sherman's barroom, out in Dodge City". He said, "The boys around the camp liked my song, and they started singing it that spring, when we took our cattle up to Wichita to ship out." Wichita was still a cowtown at that point.