Brian Burns - El Llano Estacado Lyrics

(with Tom Russell)

Crazy with love – Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.

“If I may trust your love,” she cried, “and you would have me for a bride,
ride the wild plain and bring a flask of water from the Mustang Spring.
Fly as on the eagle's wing ‘cross the Llano Estacado.”

He smiled and left without a word, grabbed up saddle, bit, and spur,
cinched his horse and rode away through prickley pear and old Maguey,
vanished with the dying day on the Llano Estacado.

All through the night he galloped on, daylight broke, he rode along,
spurred his horse and drew no rein across that dry, forsaken plain
until the Mustang Spring he gained on the Llano Estacado.

Crazy with love – Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.

A little rest, a few short drinks, across the spring a buzzard winked.
The flask was filled and so he turned to gain the bride he soon would earn,
but the sky, bright red it burned, on the Llano Estacado.

Oh, how the shining desert glowed, his eyes were burning as he rode.
Was this a dream, a drunken one, or was he really riding on?
Was that a skull that gleamed and shone on the Llano Estacado?

“Oh, hold on,” to his horse he cried, “ignore the devils in the sky,
bear up a little longer yet.” His cracked lips he longed to wet,
his mouth was black with blood and sweat on the Llano Estacado.

Crazy with love – Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.

Still, against his chest he held the water flask for her he'd filled,
he longed to drink, but well he knew that if he did her love he'd lose,
but still his raging thirst it grew on the Llano Estacado.

His horse went down, he wandered on, dizzy, blinded, and alone,
and you out there with watery eyes, think how it would feel to die
beneath that cruel, uncloudy sky on the Llano Estacado.

At last he stumbled, then he fell, his race was run he knew full well,
and raising to his lips the flask, his face a blistered, painful mass,
drank to her – no more could she ask of the Llano Estacado.

Crazy with love – Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.

That night at the presidio beneath the torchlight's wavy glow,
she danced and never thought of him, the victim of a woman's whim,
lying with that deathlike grin on the Llano Estacado.

Crazy with love – Enamorado! He died out on the Llano Estacado.
Crazy with love – Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.