Long Branch, Wrong Night

Long Branch, Wrong Night

Dodge City, Kansas one night in June
Joe was as low as a fella could swoon
A dead man staring at the boots and spittoons.
Face down on the floor of the Long Branch Saloon.

Joe was a clerk at the Telegraph Wire
He had a wife and a family and a voice in the choir
Outrageous misfortune cost him his life
Long Branch - wrong night.

His uncle broke an ankle from a night on the town
He was out of cigarillos and he couldn’t get around.
So Joe, the Samaritan, volunteered to go.
If only he had waited a minute or so.

At the very moment he bought those cigars
Two men commenced to argue over the turn of a card
Mike the dealer, never known to cheat,
And John Wesley Hardin on a losing streak.

A bullet from the barrel of John Wesley’s Colt
Cut Mike’s hat, left a little bitty hole.
It whistled thru the bar, cut the room in half,
Hit Joe the Samaritan in the middle of the back.

He clutched the cigars and made a morbid joke.
“These things’ll kill ya boys, better lay off the smokes”.
But nobody laughed at what he said
Joe the Samaritan fell down dead.

For him and that bullet to meet the same night
Was the worst case of timing in anybody’s life.
Hit by a single snowflake falling down
Bit by the only mosquito in town.

Dodge City, Kansas one night in June
Joe was as low as a fella could swoon
A dead man staring at the boots and spittoons.
Face down on the floor of the Long Branch Saloon.

Joe was a clerk at the Telegraph Wire
He had a wife and a family and a voice in the choir
Outrageous misfortune cost him his life
Long Branch - wrong night.
Long Branch - wrong night.
Long Branch - wrong night.
Long Branch – wrong night.