Santa Maria, I need your blessings.
Please guide my hand and my gun.
You’ve seen my sweet señorita and I in deep caressing.
Now if I don’t save my love, mamasita, your boy is done.
I admit, she’s not in the purest of professions,
but she’s got nothin’ but her body left to sell,
and with your help, I was plannin’ to get her into confession
and send the dirty dog that holds her straight to hell.
But shhhhh, Santa Maria......
Don’t tell.

The people step aside as I come down the street,
they can tell by my look that I’m lookin’ for heat.
My black hair’s back and there’s spurs on my feet,
a six gun’s the only tongue I got that speaks.
And everybody knows who I came here for:
the name “Sand Man” hangs on his door.
And everybody knows that I can’t afford
to buy my love, so I’m stealin’ his whore.

“Sand Man, come outside!” I scream, “I’m hungry for your blood.
I’m finding you guilty for the crime of puttin’ a price on love.
The penalty is death,” I say, “come on and beat it if you can.”
The door swings wide, the children hide. Santa Maria, hold my hand!

“Are you talkin’ to me?” he says, “I can’t believe your cahones,
never mind the gun that your pointin’ at me, hombre´.
You gotta lotta nerve, son, comin’ to serve some
death warrant to the fastest gun in the desert.
But never mind that now. It’s too late to go back.
You’re gonna die for your angel, and there’s honor in that.
Though I should probably let you know that there’s only whores here,
and you’ll die anyway. Oh well, vivir es morir!”

I pull my pistol quick and I let go a few loud shots.
The adrenalin runs like razors and my stomach’s all in knots.
I’m chokin’ on the gun smoke, and I’m tryin’ not to believe
that the Sand Man’s lead is lodged inside me
and there’s blood runnin’ down my sleeve.

Santa Maria, I feel I’m dyin’.
My soul’s as empty as my pockets.
Santa Maria, is that you cryin’?
I feel the world roll just like my eyes in their sockets.

What’s this now? I don’t know how
there’s light comin’ up behind the one that shot me down.
Lift my head up off the ground
to see the Sand Man turnin’ around.
There’s a gun at his head, starin’ him down,
held tightly in my senorita’s hand.
“Tu eres el diablo. Adios, Sand Man.”
CLICK BAM!

Now I’m leanin’ on my girl as I stagger down the street.
I never thought death was somethin’ I could ever cheat,
but the bullet in my shoulder hurts every time I hold her.
It reminds me of Maria and all I owe her.

I am just a poor boy from north Michuacan,
and now we live in Saulitas; we have both retired our guns.
And the bullet near my heart forever reminds me of that day
when Santa Maria shouted loud as a gun shot just to say:
“LOVE SAVES!”