Winchester Model 1873

Lyrics

You laid me down on the velvet board
Under a pane of tempered glass.
You read the little placard by my guard:
The lever that brought the future to the pass.
I am twenty-four inches of octagonal steel,
Cooled in the shadow of the great divide.
You look at me and wonder how I feel,
Being the engine of the winning side.

They call me a pioneer.
They call me a border ghost.
But I felt the firing pin dropping,
And I knew what the horizon would lose the most.

I never wanted to win the west.
I was terrified of what the closing meant.
Every time you pulled my stock against your chest
And the brass elevator caught the round you sent,
We were shooting the open country dead.
We were laying down the iron track.
I watched the prairie acres turning red,
Knowing the barbed wire was coming at our back.

Fifteen rounds in the under-tube.
The forty-four forty slipping in the dark.
Your wrist just rolled in a thoughtless loop,
My action waiting for the second spark.
Flesh and iron sharing a single flinch,
Making the canyon echoes suddenly tame.
We took the wilderness inch by quiet inch,
Until there was nothing left to claim.

They call me a pioneer.
They call me a border ghost.
But I felt the firing pin dropping,
And I knew what the horizon would lose the most.

I never wanted to win the west.
I was terrified of what the closing meant.
Every time you pulled my stock against your chest
And the brass elevator caught the round you sent,
We were shooting the open country dead.
We were laying down the iron track.
I watched the prairie acres turning red,
Knowing the barbed wire was coming at our back.

I was forged for the wind and the bitter frost,
For the saddle leather and the sudden rain.
Now I am perfectly clean, and the map is crossed,
Listening to the whistle of a phantom train.
You admire the walnut and the patina of the blue,
But you don't see the cage that I was building around you.

Just the velvet.
And the climate control.
And nowhere left to ride.