FULL heir to the twist-bored yager gun with its half-inch slug, I stand;

His rest was the Forty-niner's arm, as mine is the sportsman's hand.

I am king of my day as he of his, from the swamp to the saw-backed spur,

And there's never a trail but has heard the hail of the ringing Winchester!

I've saved the leaguered wagon-train from the scalping-knife and stake;

I have held the lead through the blind stampede in the bison's dust-dimmed wake;

By the reeking dives of the placer camp I have killed for a careless jest,

And I've raped the loot from the stage-coach boot at the bandit's stern behest.

Away in the dusk of the Arctic night, where the frozen rivers flow

And the fringed aurora floods and fades on the endless fields of snow,

The hardy hunters trust my sights and my spinning bullet's speed

When they seek the lair of the great white bear or the haunt of the gray wolf's breed.

The steaming glades of the Amazon, where the crouching jaguar springs,

Have felt the breath of the whirring death my long-necked cartridge brings,

And the wind-whipped crests where the condor nests on the roof-ribs of the world

Have marked the thin, blue jet of smoke from my flashing muzzle hurled.

Oh, I am the mate of the deep-lunged men, stout son of a martial line,

From Uruguay to the Kootenay, from mangrove-reef to pine;

In the throbbing glare of the desert air, by the rocks where the rapids purr,

There is never a gun for fight or fun like the steel-blue Winchester!