Don’t ask me my name, an old bachelor I am And I bet all the same I’ve an elegant plan You’ll find me out west on the Duck Creek plain Starving to death on a government claim I’m back on the trail of that iconic and ironic folksong of the Great Plains, “Starving to Death on a Government Claim,” a.k.a. “The Lane County Bachelor,” a.k.a. “A Homesteader’s Lament,” and now, from the standpoint of southwest North Dakota in 1910, “The Government Claim.”