Story Behind The Song

I'm a lover of Marty Robbins' Gunfighter ballads and the old western folk songs. So I wrote this with him in mind.

Song Description

Out of the Northlands, a lawman heads south to a small desert town and confronts a killer. There in the dust a man dies.

Lyrics

Out of the Northlands

Where the cold biting wind is a danger

From the snow and the ice rode a Ranger

He'd left the Northlands

And the star on his chest caught the sun.

He'd a promise he'd tied to his gun deep in the Northlands

And he's riding a horse black as coal.

Far from the Northlands

In a barroom that's rundown and fading, playing poker and patiently waiting

Holding a good hand,

The bandit knew someone would come.

Cause when you murder an innocent son up in the Northlands

There's a price on your head and your soul.

Now the lawman hits town,
and starts asking around
If anyone had seen the man on the poster

Then it didn't take long to find the Red River Saloon.

As the hot sun set down on the old western town
He readied the gun in his holster
And called out the killer to meet neath bright summer moon.

Back in the Northlands

In her dreams a widow is weeping

While the small northern farm town is sleeping

It's cold in the Northlands

But she dreams of a small southern town
Where the hot desert pulls the sun down
On a good and a bad man
And memories turning to gray.

It's dark in the Southlands
except for the silvery moonlight
Shining down on a dark deadly gunfight
Soon only one man will be here to see the sun rise
In a moment the other one dies
In the dust and the red sand
With his blood pouring out in the clay.

A pistol is fanned with the bandit's left hand

Six bullets spray into the night.
But the ranger is steady and fires his off one at a time.

With the smoke in the air, it's hard to see there iss a dying man in the moonlight
And with his last breath, the church bell is starting to chime.


Down in the Southlands, aA promise will no longer tarry
with a gun that a lawman must carry

Back to the Northlands
On his horse that is blacker than coal.

Back to the Northlands
To the Northlands
Northlands.