Tom Horn

Tom Horn

It was ninety degrees at midnight when Tom Horn arrived
And you could hear that baby screaming from here to the riverside
If you could grow a stinkweed in a field of barleycorn
You could surely have a little **** as mean as Tommy Horn

His mother was alone when she had him, his father had been killed
The neighbors would not help her, they had a town to build
There’d be a new saloon in the morning, first things first, you see
That was the Six-Gun Nation in 1873
Tom Horn, Tom Horn

His mother could not tame him, no stick to tame him with
No church west of St. Louie, no God west of Fort Smith
No kid more skilled at killing had ever been produced
He ran to bandit country and lived in a robber’s roost

You can talk about Butch Cassidy and sing about The Sundance Kid
Kid Curry, Billy The Kid, all those kids and all the deeds they did
But Tom Horn was a back-shooter, the lowest thing that crawls
He murdered for a living and escaped through a hole in the wall
Tom Horn, Tom Horn

Word came down the grapevine
From an unknown source like the morning dew
From a distant cousin, twice removed
Word got out on you

When he killed that one-armed woman it was just regulator work
He killed Davy Crockett’s nephew, stretched him face down in the dirt
Some say he killed the little Nichols boy, some say it was a fake
That Joe LeFors had framed him, what difference does it make?

They boxed him in a canyon and took him back to jail
He went out like he came in, screaming bloody hell
For being the most ruthless gun in all the West
They had a little necktie party with Tom as the honored guest
Tom Horn, Tom Horn

Most folks don’t need no one to teach them wrong from right
They gain it from the common experience of life
But Tom Horn needed something that life just don’t extend
The right to be a jackass in a world of normal men

It was ninety degrees at midnight when Tom Horn arrived
And you could hear that baby screaming from here to the riverside
If you could grow a stinkweed in a field of barleycorn
You could surely have a little **** as mean as Tommy Horn
Tom Horn, Tom Horn