(Originally by Townes Van Zandt)

Living on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean.
Now you wear your skin like iron,
And your breath's as hard as kerosene.
You weren't your mama's only boy
But her favorite one it seems.
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams.

Pancho was a bandit boy,
His horse as fast as polished steel.
He wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel.
Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico.
Nobody heard his dying words,
But that's the way it goes.

All the federales say
They could have had him any day,
They only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose.

Lefty he can't sing the blues
All night long like he used to.
The dust that Pancho bit down south
Ended up in Lefty's mouth.
The day they laid poor Pancho low,
Lefty split for Ohio.
Where he got the bread to go,
There ain't nobody knows.

The poets tell how Pancho fell,
Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel,
The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold,
And so the story ends we're told.
Pancho needs your prayers it's true,
But save a few for Lefty too;
He just did what he had to do,
And now he's growing old.

A few gray federales say
They could have had him any day,
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness I suppose.