If we were crows they’d call us a murder
And you can be sure that’s what there’ll be.
As soon as we find that man Thomas Gentry.
And we meet up with him in West Tennessee.

Beth was our sister.
It was her, plus us three.
She was the prettiest and the youngest amongst us,
And Gentry took her off to West Tennessee.

She had an eye for men of no substance.
She liked the lookers and that’s what he’d be.
A handsome no-good ruffian outlaw
Who came to our town from West Tennessee.

We were the girls of Billy McCree.
We were the daughters of Alice and he.
We were raised to take nothing off strangers.
But they died young and left us alone, her, plus we three.

But we couldn’t hold her.
She cried to be free.
She’d follow that Gentry
Back to West Tennessee.

Tired of our small life,
She wanted to be
The wife of a rich man
Not the sister of three.

But he weren’t no rich man,
It was plain to see,
He was a liar and a crook
And wanted to take things from Beth McCree.

They took all our money 
And our parents things.
In the middle of the night
Thomas and she.

Family is family.
We can forgive and let be.
But we were raised to take nothing off strangers.
Gentry’s a stranger from West Tennessee.

We called. No sign of sister.
He claimed she’d be home in a day or three.
He said that she’d been terrible homesick,
And just couldn’t make it in West Tennessee.

So we waited for Beth a month and a week.
We waited for her to show up and agree
That she was a willful and headstrong young woman,
Who never should have gone to West Tennessee.

We waited and called but nothing came of it.
A tragic car wreck was likely claimed he,
On the winding roads and and deadly switchbacks
In the dark of the night in West Tennesse.

But we knew better because we were connected.
Connected like roots from a big oak tree.
That man Thomas Gentry had killed our sister
And buried her body in West Tennessee.

If we sisters were crows, a murder we’d be.
If witches, a coven. If oxen, a team.
We’re sisters from birth and to death we will be,
The three wrathful sisters of Beth McCree.

We took a gun, a shovel, and rope we three,
To find the man who took our sister to West Tennessee.
We sneaked up on him quiet as can be,
Like the ladies most men hoped they would be.

Quiet but vicious, my sisters and me,
As we bound him up tightly, as tight as can be.
Then we made him show us where he’d put our girl,
Our sister who would stay in West Tennessee.

He showed us the spot, and we prayed that she’d be,
United with our parents and they’d all see,
Us shoot and bury that man Thomas Gentry.
A bad man and a stranger from West Tennessee.

And that’s what we did,
My sisters and me.
We killed him and dug his grave near Beth’s,
And got the hell out of West Tennessee.

If we were crows, a murder we’d be.
Beth was a bluebird, you’d all agree.
A hopeful girl whose death we avenged,
A limb cruelly severed from our family tree.