Explore "A Ballad of Pikeville" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Down in Southern Arizona where the Gila monster thrives, / And the "Mescalero," gifted with a hundred thousand lives, / Every hour renounces one of them by drinking liquid flame -- / The assassinating wassail that has given him his name; / Where the enterprising dealer in Caucasian hair is seen / To hold his harvest festival upon his village-green, / While the late lamented tenderfoot upon the plain is spread / With a sanguinary circle on the summit of his head; / Where the cactuses (or cacti) lift their lances in the sun, / And incautious jackass-rabbits come to sorrow as they run, / Lived a colony of settlers -- old Missouri was the State / Where they formerly resided at a prehistoric date.
Now, the spot that had been chosen for this colonizing scheme / Was as waterless, believe me, as an Arizona stream.