"The Lesson at Fort Grant" I’m standing by the old stone wall where the desert breeze blows cold At the edge of old Fort Grant, where the ghosts are growing old I put my palm against the wood, where the grain is worn and gray And the hundred years between us just seem to melt away I was eighteen when the hammer fell, the same age you were then Standing at the crossroads where a boy becomes a man. And I didn't come to judge you, Billy, or tell you you were wrong The desert knows the heavy price of an outlaw’s bitter song But you taught me how to look ahead when the blood is running hot You taught me what a man can lose from a single panic shot We were both just eighteen, Billy, under that same Arizona sky But because you ran... I learned how to stand by. You had a fight with Cahill, it was self-defense and clean But the devil whispered "run" into a boy of seventeen You took the lifestyle to the limit, let the panic take the reins And you left a trail of sorrow across the dusty plains I was headed down that same dirt road, with a pistol in my hand Until I stopped and saw your ghost out in the desert sand. Chorus No, I didn't come to judge you, Billy, or tell you you were wrong The desert knows the heavy price of an outlaw’s bitter song But you taught me how to look ahead when the blood is running hot You taught me what a man can lose from a single panic shot We were both just eighteen, Billy, under that same Arizona sky But because you ran... I learned how to stand by. Bridge (Whistle takes a haunting solo over the G major chord progression) I did my time in prison, I took my heavy load But I came out to a family and a straight and narrow road You could've had a wife, Kid, and children of your own Instead of just a gravestone where the yucca flowers grown Your life became my warning, the turning of my mind You showed me what I'd leave behind. My hand comes off the building, the memory starts to fade The hawk is circling higher in the shadow that it made I’m walking back to my life, fully grown and free Thankful for the lesson that the legend gave to me.
