Tom Russell - Claude Dallas lyrics

In a land the Spanish once had called the Northern Mystery Where rivers run and disappear And the Mustang still lives free By the Devil's wash and the coyote hole In the wild Owyhee Range Somewhere in the sage tonight The wind calls out his name Aye Aye Aye Come gather 'round me buckaroos a story I will tell Of the fugitive Claude Dallas Who just broke out of jail You may think this tale is a history From before the West was won But the events that I'll describe took place in 1981 He was born out in Virginia He left home when school was through And in he deserts of Nevada He became a buckaroo And he learned the ways of cattle And he learned to sit a horse He always packed a pistol And he practiced deadly force And then Claude became a trapper And he dream't of the bygone days, And he studied bobcat logic And the wild and silent ways In the bloody runs near paradise And the monitors down south Trapping cats and coyotes And livin' hand to mouth Aye Aye Aye And then Claude took to livin' all alone Out many miles from town A friend Jim Stevens brought supplies And he stayed to hang around That day two wardens Pogue and Elms Drove in to check Claude out They were seeking violations And to see what Claude's about Now Claude had hung some venison He had a bobcat pelt or two Pogue claimed they were out of season He said "Dallas, you're all through" But Dallas would not leave his camp He refused to go to town And the wind howled through the bull camp They stared each other down. It's hard to say what happend next Perhaps we'll never know They were gonna take Claude into jail And he vowed he'd never go Jim Stevens heard the gunshot And when he turned around Bill Pogue was fallin' backwards Conley Elms he fell face down Aye Aye Aye Jim Stevens walked on over There was a gun near Bill Pogue's hand It's hard to say who'd drawn his first But Claude had made his stand Claude said "I am justified... They were gonna gun me down... And a man's got a right to hang some meat... When he's livin' this far from town." It took 18 men, 15 months To finally hunt Claude down In the sage outside of paradise They ran him to the ground Convicted up in Idaho Manslaughter by decree Twenty years at maximum But soon Claude would break free There's two sides to the story There may be no right or wrong The lawman and the renegade Have graced a thousand songs The story is an old one A conclusion's hard to draw But Claude's out in the sage tonight He may be the last outlaw Aye Aye Aye In a land the Spanish once had called the Northern Mystery Where rivers run and disappear And the Mustang still lives free By the Devil's wash and the coyote hole In the wild Owyhee Range Somewhere in the sage tonight The wind calls out his name Aye Aye Aye