There lives a preacher man
Up Wood Mountain way
He would like to get us all to church
So we could listen to him pray.

He preaches quite a sermon
He spins out quite a yard
But for old cowboys it doesn’t do us any good
But it does us very little harm.

The collection plate was getting small
It did not fulfil his family’s need
For all his card-playing hampers
His family they did not feed.

He sat down and done some thinking
And he came up with a plan
He would go out and buy a saddle string
And become a horse-dealing man.

He bought a bunch of papered mares
He was as proud as he could be
But when he tried to sell them
It had to be an honest fee.

To come up with an honest sale pitch
He would run his fingers through his hair
He did this so much
That his head got mighty bare.

He tried to sell those horses
But his sale pitch was not clear
For him being a preacher man
It was hard to keep within a certain sphere.

His horse dealing days are over
He gave the job to a better hand
For it almost made a liar
Out of a good old preacher man.

The Horse Dealing Preacher was excerpted from Tales from the Y Up & Y Down Ranch by Hartley Urquhart