Crazy with love ? Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.
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"If I may trust your love," she cried, "and you would have me for a bride,
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Ride the wild plain and bring a flask of water from the Mustang Spring.
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Fly as on the eagle's wing 'cross the Llano Estacado."
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He smiled and left without a word, grabbed up saddle, bit, and spur,
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Cinched his horse and rode away through prickley pear and old Maguey,
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Vanished with the dying day on the Llano Estacado.
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All through the night he galloped on, daylight broke, he rode along,
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Spurred his horse and drew no rein across that dry, forsaken plain
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Until the Mustang Spring he gained on the Llano Estacado.
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Crazy with love ? Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.
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A little rest, a few short drinks, across the spring a buzzard winked.
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The flask was filled and so he turned to gain the bride he soon would earn,
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But the sky, bright red it burned, on the Llano Estacado.
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Oh, how the shining desert glowed, his eyes were burning as he rode.
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Was this a dream, a drunken one, or was he really riding on?
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Was that a skull that gleamed and shone on the Llano Estacado?
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"Oh, hold on," to his horse he cried, "ignore the devils in the sky,
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Bear up a little longer yet." His cracked lips he longed to wet,
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His mouth was black with blood and sweat on the Llano Estacado.
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Crazy with love ? Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.
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Still, against his chest he held the water flask for her he'd filled,
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He longed to drink, but well he knew that if he did her love he'd lose,
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But still his raging thirst it grew on the Llano Estacado.
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His horse went down, he wandered on, dizzy, blinded, and alone,
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And you out there with watery eyes, think how it would feel to die
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Beneath that cruel, uncloudy sky on the Llano Estacado.
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At last he stumbled, then he fell, his race was run he knew full well,
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And raising to his lips the flask, his face a blistered, painful mass,
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Drank to her ? no more could she ask of the Llano Estacado.
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Crazy with love ? Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.
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That night at the presidio beneath the torchlight's wavy glow,
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She danced and never thought of him, the victim of a woman's whim,
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Lying with that deathlike grin on the Llano Estacado.
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Crazy with love ? Enamorado! He died out on the Llano Estacado.
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Crazy with love ? Enamorado! Alone out on the Llano Estacado.
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El Llano Estacado
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Brian Burns |