Tom Ames' Prayer

Everyone in Nacodoches

Knew Tom Ames would come to a bad end

'Cause the sheriff caught him

Stealin' chickens and such by the time he was ten

One day his daddy took a ten dollar bill

And tucked it in his hand

He said, I know you're headed for trouble son

Your Momma wouldn't understand

So he took his dad's money and his brother's old bay

He left without a word of thanks

He fell in with this crowd in some border town

And he took to robbing banks

Outside the law his luck run out fast

A few years came and went

Till he's trapped in an alley in Abilene

With all but four shells spent

And he realized prayin' was the only thing

That he hadn't ever tried

Well, he wasn't sure he quite knew how

But he looked up to the sky

He said, you don't owe me nothin' and as far as I know Lord

I don't owe nothin' to you

I ain't askin' for a miracle Lord

Just a little bit of luck will do

You know I ain't never prayed before

'Cause it always seemed to me

That prayin' is the same as beggin' Lord

I don't take no charity

But right now Lord with my back to the wall

I can't help but recall

How they nearly hung me for stealin' a horse

In Fort Smith, Arkansas

Judge Parker said guilty and the gavel came down

Just like a cannon shot

I went away quietly

I began to file a plot

They sent the preacher down to my cell

He said the Lord's your only hope

He's the only friend you're gonna have son

When you hit the end of Parker's rope

And I guess he could have kept preachin' till Christmas

But he turned his back on me

I put a homemade blade to that golden throat

Asked the deputy for the key

It ain't the first trouble I've seen before

As you already know

I've had some help from you Lord and the Devil himself's

been strictly touch and go

Yeah, but who in the hell am I talkin' to

There ain't no one here but me

So he cocked both his pistols and he spit in the dirt

And he walked out into that street