"The other one ends up dead in the dunes of Mexico."

But he also, perhaps more significantly in the long run, ends up as a folk-hero - "Now poets sing how Pancho fell. As much alive as predecessors like Robin Hood and Jesse James.
.....................................

What typically happens in folk balladry is that it probably starts with a complete version with all the answers provided, but through the proceeds of being handed on this gets pared down to the bone, so that we end with a version in which it open to the imagination of the singer or the listener to fill in the gaps. The end result is less complete in a sense, but there is something gained that can outweigh that.

More often than not, when you go back to the earliest version of some story song in a broadsheet, it just doesn't measure up to what it was transformed into, in the course of being passed along. That's what "the folk process" is centrally about, turning straw into gold.

It seems to me that what Townes van Zandt was doing with this song, intentionally or not - foreshortening the process.