Lyrics - Texas Trilogy: Bosque County Romance by Lovett Lyle

Mary
Martin was a schoolgirl,
Just seventeen or so,
When she married
Billy
Archer
About fourteen years ago;
Not even out of high school,
Folks said it wouldn't last;
But when you grow up in the country,
You grow up mighty fast.
They married in a hurry,
In
March before school was out,
Folks said that she was pregnant,"
Just wait and you'll find out."
It came about that winter,
One gray
November morn,
The first of many more to come,
A baby boy was born.
And cattle is their game,
And
Archer is the namethey give to the acres that they own;
If the
Brazos don't run dry,
And the newborn calves don't die,
Another year from
Mary will have flown,
Another year from
Mary will have flown.
Now
Billy kept what cattle
His daddy could afford,
Bouncing across the cactusin a 1950
Ford;
The cows were sick and skinny,
And the weeds was all that grew,
But
Billy kept the place alive,
The only thing he knew.
And
Mary cooked the supper,
And
Mary scrubbed the clothes,
And
Mary busted horses,
And blew the baby's nose,
And
Mary and a shotgun
Kept the rattlesnakes away;
How she kept on smiling,
No one could ever say.
Now the drought of '57
Was a curse upon the land,
No one on
Bosque
County
Could give
Bill a helping hand;
The ground was cracked and broken,
And the truck was out of gas,
And cows can't feed on prickly pearinstead of growing grass.
Well the weather got the water,
And a snake bite took a child,
And a fire in the old barntook the hay that
Bill had piled;
The mortgage got the money,
And the screwworm got the cows,
The years have come for
Mary,
She's waiting for them now.

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