Guy Clark
The Indian Cowboy
If you ever go out to the circus
Where the Wallendas walk on the wire
Well I'll tell you a tale to remember
When the white horses leap rings of fire
It was a cold night in Oklahoma
And the show was about to begin
And the animals, they were all restless
When the star horse, she broke from her pen
Now she was a mare of high spirit
Just like a whore on a Saturday night
She's kicking and bucking past the men who was brushing
The elephants lying on their sides
Now next to the tent sat some lanterns
And they was dangerously close to the hay
And that mare headed straight for those lanterns
That some fool had put there by mistake
Then up stepped some Indian cowboy
His lasso went whirling though the air
And in the full dead middle of danger
He roped that runaway mare
And then the elephants raised up their trumpets
Two of them broke from their chains
Stampeded that Indian cowboy
Who had saved the Big Top from flames
So if you ever go out to the circus
Where the Wallendas walk on the wire
You just remember that Indian cowboy
When the white horses leap rings of fire