The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

nourishing obscurity » Cowboy songs.
JD over at Nourishing Obscurity has posted links to three classic cowboy songs. He hit a couple of my nostalgia buttons (an emotion I try to avoid, it's not as good as is used to be). In the comments, I suggested he should have featured "Big Bad John" in his playlist (though the hero was a miner, not strictly a cowboy). That sent me looking for the song on YouTube and (groping valiantly for relevance to this blog's theme) I post it here as a vaguely libertarian paean to self-reliance – and self-sacrifice). Big John didn't send for the health & safety officers, after all.

Looking for the video, I discovered that Jimmy Dean wrote an awful sequel to cash in on the song's popularity. I am not going to link to it or even tell you its name so you can google it. Like Big John, I have sacrificed myself so that you can escape. Don't go looking for it. Really. It may spoil the original for you.