Gold Rush Brides

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[Verse 1]
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 Follow the typical signs, the hand painted lines down prairie roads.
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Pass the lone church spire, pass the talking wire from where to who knows?
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  There's no way to divide the beauty of the sky from the wild western plains.
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Where a man could drift in legendary myth by roaming over spaces
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The land was free and the price was right

[Verse 2]
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Dakota on the wall is a white robed woman tall yet maidenly
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 Such power in her hand as she hails the wagon man's family.
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I see Indians that crawl through this mural that recalls our history

[Verse 3]
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Who were the homestead wives?
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Who were the gold rush brides?
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Does anybody know?
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Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in pages they wrote?
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The land was free yet it cost their lives

[Verse 4]
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 In miner's lust for gold a family's house was bought and sold piece by piece
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 A widow staked her claim on a dollar and his name so painfully
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In letters mailed back home her Eastern sisters they would moan as they would read
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Accounts of madness childbirth loneliness and grief
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Accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief