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How'd you lose your eye?
It was in the war.
The lone jack.
Little scrap outside of kansas city.
What did you do after the war?
I robbed me a federal paymaster,
Went to cairo, illinois,
And bought a eating place there called the green frog
And married a grass widow.
Place had a billiard table.
You never told me you had a wife.
Oh, well, I didn't have her long.
My friends was a pack of river rats.
She didn't crave their society,
So she upped and left me and went back
To her first husband
Who was clerking in a hardware store in paducah.
"goodbye, reuben," she says,
"the love of decency does not abide in you."
That's a divorced woman talking for you,
About decency.
Well, I told her. I said, "goodbye, nola,
"and I hope that nail-selling ***
"makes you happy this time."
Did you have any children?
There was a boy.
Nola taken him with her.
He never liked me anyway.
A clumsier child you'll never see than horace.
I bet he broke 40 cup.
Never did get you for stealing that money.
I didn't consider it stealing.
It didn't belong to you.
I needed a road stake.
It was like that little high-interest bank in new mexico.
Needed a road stake, and there it was.
I never robbed no citizen or taken a man's watch.
It's all stealing.
That's the position them new mexicans took.
I had to flee for my life.
Bo was a young colt then.
No horse could run him into the ground.
When that posse thinned out,
I turned old bo around,
And taking them reigns in my teeth,
I charged them boys
Firing two navy sixes.
They must've all been married men
That loved their families
'cause they scattered and run for home.