The Sheriff

And the sun comes up Along the eastern desert Where the wild men ride Bring trouble in their wake And there ain't much sense When love and death come riding Or the code you find to face yourself each day Well we always known Mama had seen trouble In the days before My sisters and I came And she gave us each Our first gun at seven For when the wild side claim to claim us too one day And the sun comes up Along the eastern desert Where the Barnsdale gang Is comin' soon they say And mama said, "It's that gun That will see you through to morning And your code is how you face yourself each day" I was a teenage boy on a summer night At a party 'neath the warm moonlight When Becky Smith crushed my heart in her hand I felt the tears well in my eyes If other kids would see me cry Their mocking would be more than I could stand So off into forest there I ran There's rumours 'bout a werewolf tribe Outside the town and on that night I found one lying there beneath the moon Wounded, bleeding from her side Half-girl, half-wolf and to my eyes Such beauty to that point I'd never known Three days I stayed and tended to her wounds I never saw a mountain I never saw a sky I never saw a sight that looks Quite like you look tonight It's you who are the reason The stars fall from the sky Into my heart and light my soul The way you look tonight Oh, I never saw an angel A sunrise or a light That held a candle to you Oh, to you here on this night If I live to be a thousand Or had seen the birth of time It would never take my breath away The way you do tonight Them summer nights then she would come Outside my house and out I'd run Boy and she-wolf running paw and hand Together in the moonlit woods The summer smells, her eyes of gold Together in our magic midnight land And one night there she made of me a man I never saw a mountain I never saw a sky I never saw a sight that looks Quite like you did tonight It's you who are the reason The stars fall from the sky Into my heart and light my soul The way you look tonight Oh, I never saw an angel A sunrise or a light That held a candle to you Oh, to you here on this night If I live to be a thousand Or had seen the birth of time It would never take my breath away The way you do tonight As we lay there naked, smiling, curled Her furry ears picked up, she heard Some sounds of trouble somewhere far away She said that "It's the Barnsdale gang They're at your place" and so we raced In desperation but we took too long My sisters and my mama, they were gone She caught their scent We tracked them down To a ranch outside of town She told me she was sure they were alive But 15 men were there and I Had just one gun strapped to my side She softly growled and told me not to mind She said, "My love, I'll get you inside" (Growling, gunshots, and screaming) I would have wept upon her fallen body My heart still aches for her to this day But in that house, upstairs in that bedroom Barnsdale had my mama locked away So I burst in, my gun all locked and loaded That man, he had my mama in his bed And he stared at me with a look I still remember Before I filled him full of lead My mama, she looked at me And lit a cigarette Glanced at the dead body And took a nice long drag "Well boy," she said real slowly Then sighed and shook her head "You just killed your daddy Me and him, we go way back"