As I hear it:

A LETTER FROM HOME
(Maybelle Carter)

A cowpoke rode in one hot dusty day
To a store down in old San Antone.
He stood at the window and I heard him say:
"Do I have a letter from home?"

The postmaster looked through the mail that had come,
Then smilingly shook his gray head.
The cowpoke looked sadly a moment at him
And these are the words that he said:

CHORUS 1: "No letter from home, no letter from home!
There's never a letter from home.
No message from mother,
Or none of the others;
There's never a letter from home."

That night he was shot on the wrong side of town.
No more on those plains will he roam.
I reached for my Bible and gave it to him,
And said: "Son, here's your letter from home."

"If only I had just a little more time
To read it," the young cowpoke said.
"I can't take it with me and I must go on."
Then he died with his letter unread.

CHORUS 2: The letter from home, the letter from home,
No time for the letter from home!
The cowboy lay dead
With his letter unread,
Too late for the letter from home.

------

In the liner notes to Johnny Cash's Ballads of the True West, Johnny wrote about A Letter From Home:

I asked Mother Maybelle Carter one night to write me a Western song for this album. The next morning she gave me this. Since the Bible on the plains was as uncommon as a letter from home, many cowboys called it that.

Hope this helps,
-Greg