Claude Dallas

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 the deserts of Nevada he became a buckaroo

And he learned the ways of cattle and he learned to sit a horse

And he always packed a pistol and he practiced deadly force

And then Claude became a trapper and he dreamt 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 living hand to mouth, aye, aye, aye

Then Claude took to living all alone out many miles from town

A friend, Jim Stephens, brought supplies and he stayed to hang around

That day two wardens, Polk 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

Polk 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

As the wind howled through the bull camp they stared each other down

It's hard to say what happened next, perhaps we'll never know

They were gonna take Claude into jail and he vowed he'd never go

Jim Stephens heard the gunshot and when he turned around

Bill Polk was falling backwards, Conley

Elms, he fell face down, aye, aye, aye

Jim Stephens walked on over, there was a gun near Bill Polk's hand

It's hard to say who'd drawn his first but Claude, he made his stand

Claude said, "I'm justified, they were gonna gun me down

And a man's got a right to hang some meat

When he's living this far from town"

It took eighteen men fifteen 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