Blood On The Main Street

They rode

They rode in at noon with dust on their reins

Black hats low, no smiles, just chains

Bank doors kicked open, shots cracked the air

Tellers hit the floor, screams everywhere

One grabbed the gold, another lit the fuse

Third put a bullet through the preacher's pews

Folks ran for cover, but the street was a trap

Bullets like rain on a tin-roof clap

No warning, no parley, just iron and lead

Town turned to graveyard in thirty seconds flat

Blood on the main street, red in the sun

Horses screaming wild when the shooting begun

They took what they wanted, left bodies behind

Rode out laughing with death on their mind

Blood on the main street, smoke in the sky

I chased through the alleys while good people died

No glory in winning, no peace in the end

Just more graves dug and more graves to mend

I mounted up fast, spurs in the flank

Through canyons and washes, dust choking rank

They fired back wild, bullets sang past my ear

One horse went down, rider crushed in fear

We traded lead under burning blue sky

Their leader turned, grinned with a dead man's eye

I dropped two more, the last one kept on running

Till the posse caught up and the killing turned stunning

Ropes on the gallows, noon sun hanging high

Three necks jerked tight 'neath a merciless sky

Crowd stood silent, no cheers, no relief

Just the creak of the wood and the smell of grief

They paid with their lives for a morning of sin

But the town paid more, it lost pieces within

Blood on the main street, stains in the dirt

Washed by the rain, but the memory hurts

They hang from the beam, black silhouettes sway

While the living walk past, looking the other way

Blood on the main street, that's the price we all pay

For a law that arrives just a heartbeat too late

I ride out again when the noose does its job

Carrying ghosts that the gallows can't rob