(Woddy Guthrie)
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Down in the scrub oak country
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to the southeast Texas Gulf
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There used to ride a brakeman,
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a brakeman double tough.
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He worked the town of Kilgore,
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and Longview twelve miles down,
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And the travellers all said
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little East Texas Red
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he was the meanest bull around.
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If you rode by night or the broad daylight
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in the wintery wind or the sun,
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You would always see little East Texas Red
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just a sportin' his smooth-runnin gun.
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And the tale got switched down the stems and mains,
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and everybody said
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That the meanest bull
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on them shiney irons
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was that little East Texas Red.
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It was on a cold and a windy morn'
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it was along towards nine or ten,
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A couple of boys on the hunt of a job
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they stood that blizzardy wind.
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Hungry and cold they knocked on the doors
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of the workin' people around
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For a piece of meat
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and a carrot or spud just a boil of stew around.
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East Texas Red come down the line
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and he swung off that old number two.
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He kicked their bucket over a bush
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and he dumped out all of their stew.
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The travellers said, "Little East Texas Red,
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you better get your business straight
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Cause you're gonna ride
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your little black train just one year from today."
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Well Red he laughed and he climbed the bank
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and he swung on the side of a wheeler,
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The boys caught a tanker to Seminole
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then west to Amarillo.
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They caught them a job of oil-field work
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and followed a pipeline down.
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It took them lots of places
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before that year
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had rolled around.
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Then on a cold and windy day
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they caught them a Gulf-bound train.
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They shivered and shook with the dough in their clothes
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to the scrub oak flats again,
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With their warm suits of clothes and overcoats
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they walked into a store.
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They paid that man
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for some meat and stuff
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just a boil of stew once more.
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The ties they tracked down that cinder dump
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and they come to the same old spot
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Where East Texas Red just a year ago
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had dumped their last stew pot.
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Well, the smoke of their fire went higher and higher
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and Red come down the line.
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With his head tucked low in the wintery wind
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he waved old number nine.
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He walked on down through the jungle yard
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and he came to the same old spot
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And there was the same two men again
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around that same stew pot.
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Red went to his kness and he hollered
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"Please, don't pull your trigger on me.
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I did not get my business straight."
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But he did not get his say.
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A gun wheeled out of an overcoat
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and it played that old one two,
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And Red was dead when the other two men
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sat down to eat their stew.
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East Texas Red
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| Tom Russell |
