It was a high summer night
Along the Ouachita
We're in a town named Mammoth Hills
A boy was found dead
Times Picker, you said
Left headless by the cotton gin mill
John Law was slow
So the road ran free
From the swamps of Louisiana
To the hills of Tennessee
Then on to the Carolines
Where he brought hard times
To many a family
Our oldest redstone
When nobody's free
He had the look of a righteous man
What?
By day he plied his trade as a teacher
While by night getting blood on his hands
For thirty-five years running high on the loose
Two steps ahead of a hangman's noose
And deep at sea an old stray stone
Would never atone
For what it done to many Paulines
Yet the long arm of justice
Reaches far
From the banks of the Ouachita
To the highest star
Like the iron hand on the wall
The iron hand on the wall
Like a snail creeping at a dead crawl
One fine day in some mysterious way
Justice finds us all
It finds us all
It finds us all
In this work at once
We are both
In this work at once


Be the jacket of the
churches
Which sir Joseph


One mercenary
Our Korea
Then we meet

Many years like this
We enticed
Yes, we have
Old-fashioned
Skills

trial

Lying flat on the hot burning tar
For three long days
Not a drop on his tongue
Suffering every crawl
Underneath the desert sun
An old Otis Ray screamed
While a crow picked his eyes clean
Before his dying was done
Yet the long arm of justice
Reaches far
From the banks of the Ouachita
To the highest star
Like the owl hanging on the wall
Like a snail creeping at a dead crow
Like a snail creeping at a dead crow
One fine day in some mysterious way
Justice finds us all
And now the mortal remains
Of Otis Ray's stone
Were never made manifest
Cause what a crow had done
To both his eyes
Ten buzzards did to the rest
And all that was
Was blood on the land
A heap of grey dust
In the shame of all men
And the last of Otis Ray
Was finally swept away
By the blowing sand
You named the act




you