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Down in the scrub oak timber
Of southeast Texas gulf
There used to ride a brakeman
And a brakeman double tough
He worked the town of Kilgore
And Longview nine miles down
Us travelers called him East Texas Red
The meanest bully around
If you rode by night or by broad daylight
In the rain or snow or sun
You'd always see little East Texas Red
Sportin' his smooth runnin' gun
Well the tale got switched down the stems and the mains
And everybody said
That the toughest dick on that shiny iron
Was little East Texas Red
It was early in the mornin'
Along towards nine or ten
When a couple of boys on the hunt of a job
Stood in the blizzardy wind
Hungry and cold they knocked on the doors
Of the workin' folks around
For a piece of meat or a spud or two
To boil their stew around
Red come down the cinder dump
And he waved old number two
He kicked their bucket over a bush
And he dumped out all of their stew
One traveler said, "Mr. East Texas Red
You better get your business fixed right
'Cause you're gonna ride your little black train
Just one year from tonight."
Red just laughed as he climbed the bank
And swung on the side of a wheel
The boys caught a tanker to Seminole
And a westward to Amarillo
They struck them a job of oilfield work
And they followed the pipeline down
And it took them lots of places
'Til that year had rolled around
It was on one cold and wintry day
They hitched them a Gulf-bound train
They beat their way 'cross the froze gumbo
To the scrub oak flats again
Over sandy hills and hard froze roads
Where the cottony wagons rolled
On past the town of Kilgore
And on towards old Longview
With their warm suits of clothes and their overcoats
They walked into a store
They paid the man for some meat and stuff
To boil their stew once more
The ties they tracked back to the yards
'Til they came to the same old spot
Where East Texas Red just one year ago
Had dumped their last stew pot
The smoke of their fire went higher and higher
And a man come down the line
His head ducked low in the blizzardy wind
And he waved old number nine
Red come down the cinder dump
'Til they come to the same old spot
There was the same two men again
Around that same stew pot
Red went to his knees and he hollered
"Please don't pull that trigger on me
I never did get my business fixed"
But Red never got his say
A gun wheeled out of an overcoat
And it laid the old one too
And Red lay dead as the other two men
Sat down to eat their stew
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