Song Search

Black Magic Gun

by Tom Rush

on Ladies Love Outlaws (1974)

Berry

I was on the south road
Headed for Savannah
I was tired of being poor
Didn't suit me anymore
I'd sung up all the songs you dream on
Trying to stay ahead
The dollar I had left to live on
I'd drank it down instead
When I run up on this stranger in the dirt
and he looked like some unfinished dirty work
He was barely breathing
Wasn't nothing left to say
I helped myself and took his gun
He was dying anyway

I was down in Texas
Barely two months later
I had found myself a name
I had stumbled into fame
I shot a man from Louisiana
with the strangers gun
He never even cleared his leather
before the shot had run
And I'd never shot a six-gun in my life
So it's strange to me
How I could take a life
Now they're telling me I'm faster
Than any living man
It must have been black magic
I was holding in my hand

If I take it off they'll shoot me down
If I wear it someone dies
The devil made that deadly thing
You know I do not lie
I don't believe in fortune
I do believe in sin
It must have been black magic
In that gun that done him in

I was riding across the border
Just outside Durango
When a bullet split the night
Off behind me to my right
I never saw the coward's face
I never got no plan
I tried to get a shot off
I never got the chance
And the pain was like no pain I'd ever known
So I was satisfied I'd die alone
I was barely breathing
Wasn't nothing to be said
He helped his self and stole my gun
and left me there for dead