Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate and Dirty Deadeye Dan
Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate was a very evil man,
He used to eat his dinner from a filthy frying pan,
And when he’s finished eating he’d play “catch me if you can”
With his desperado first-mate known as Dirty Deadeye Dan.
Now Dan was quite a ladies man, but also fond of booze,
In bars and streets and hotels he liked to drink and cruise,
He used to taunt old-Peg Leg Pete by dragging up old news,
Like Pete had only ever needed half a pair of shoes.
One day Pete had quite enough and things got pretty scary,
Confronting Dirty Deadeye Dan whose mood was always lairy,
A sudden hush fell on the room when Pete clumped in the bar
And Dan called out: “Hey, Peg-Leg, hop on over, have a jar.”
Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate clasped the pistol on his hip
And snarled at Dirty Deadeye Dan: “Enough of your damn lip.”
The floozy sat upon Dan’s lap was dumped onto the floor
And Dan rose to his feet and hissed: “You’d best limp out the door.”
Across the sawdust, blood-stained floor they faced each other down,
And you could hear a pin drop from the other side of town,
Eyes were locked and fingers twitched and seconds seemed like days
The tension burned unbearably and shimmered in the haze.
Both men drew their pistols and both men fired fast,
Flame spat from the barrels with the bullets roaring past,
But neither man could aim for squat and when their guns were done
They’d killed two people in the bar but they weren’t either one.
The barman Blind-man Billy Bragg and the floozy Scar-Faced Sue
Lay dead as dead as doornails, as doornails tend to do,
And through the pall of gun-smoke and the mist of rum and beer
Deadeye Dan called out to Pete: “We’d best get out of here.”
And so they did, they fled the bar, and vanished in the night,
Back to their ship, The Crippled Cock, and sailed on out of sight,
Never to return to shore, and never seen again,
The rumour is they sank and drowned just off the Spanish Main.
The moral of the story is that when you draw a gun,
Be prepared to end your days always on the run,
“Or in your case, always on the limp,” said Dirty Deadeye Dan
To Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate, that very evil man.
Copyright © Tony Bush | Year Posted 2006
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