From the recording Between the Wars
Lyrics
Cold Ohio City
m.litton
With a grubstake from Ohio he went there long ago
Brought a pack mule, a pickax, and a pan to search for gold
Bullet casings, tobacco tins, coffee cans, and bones
Are the remnants left behind his log/sod mountain home
Moss-roofed and fallen now on a high granite slope
Where a lone pine stands sentinel by a dynamite-cratered hole
Gold! was a booming cry in 1900 or so
Gold was a fever
There was gold in Colorado
But the stillness reigns like starlight
And near a dying patch of snow
Lie the rusting, bleaching remnants
Of bullets, tobacco, coffee, and bones
The night was just rolling in
When I finally reached the west end of town
I drifted on down the far side of the street
And the people I did meet in silence passed me by
For I cruelly stared ‘em each one in the eye
The season was late autumn and the wind blew uncommonly hard
As I stepped up to the bar of the “Gold Creek Sporting House”
Where the chorus gals in gowns waved from the balcony
And swarmed about the fair, raven-haired queen
Of cold Ohio City, Colorado gold mining town
She was know as the Bluebell of Beau Simone I clearly do recall
She dazzled ‘em all with her warm and liquid eyes
Blue as the mountain sky above a late evening silhouette
A night with her a mortal man could never forget
She leaned upon the shoulder of a handsome gambler
Name of Beau Simone
The cigar he smoked never left his lips
He wore a pistol on his hip and silver-plated Spanish spurs
Suffice it to say he was dressed beyond words
In cold Ohio City, Colorado gold mining town
I knew ‘em both by other names from a situation I’ll explain in time
The months now number nine since their whereabouts was known
And a bitter seed had grown
I’d come to play the card of revenge
Against this lady, my wife, and this gentleman, my friend
I sat down at their table with a Winchester cradled in my arms
All the others drew apart as I called the cheatin’ pair
They straightened in their chairs
But when he went for that ace up his sleeve
Lord, he never knew what hit ‘im when my hammer hit the breach
In cold Ohio City, Colorado gold mining town
Through Denver the word was spread
Next morning as they read the telegram
A drifter killed a gambler and his belle
But the drifter died as well
For when he knelt at the dying lady’s side
She shot him with a derringer holstered on her thigh
The mining shacks all are gone
As the breezes blow beyond the Great Divide
And where the stream runs behind the old Hickory Mill
Up yonder on a hill beneath a lone white Aspen tree
There lay the bones of Bluebell, Beau Simone, and me
In cold Ohio City, Colorado gold mining town