I know a Blackfoot Chief
Whose name is Dark Plume Bill.
He lived beside the Jasper Road--
And lives there still.
He wears a queer checked coat
And a grey bowler hat,
But looks his ninety-seven years
For all of that.
His gaze is unconcerned
As he sits in the sun,
And counts the flashing motor-cars
That pass, one-by-one,
And trucks, like dreary monsters
Of a prehistoric day,
That are rushing down the road
In their crazy way.
"The first Red River cart,"
Said Dark Plume Bill to me,
"Came lurching up the prairie
Like a ship at sea."
(Oh, the long blue road,
And the stealthy pad of feet
And the first patient ox-cart
With its sail-like sheet!)
"Then the carts came faster,
And at the time of snow
We camped outside the Palisade,
Seventy years ago.
"Arrows, guns--big Buffalo hunts,
Much long fight,
And fires to warm the tepees
For the feasts at night.
"But when they laid the steel
And the long trail awoke
My Indian tribe had scattered
Like the wigwam smoke."
His gaze was unconcerned,
Yet he scanned the way he knew,
As though from out its clamour
He had found a vanished clew.
And I thought it must be strange
To sit in the sun
And look upon an ancient road
That you had seen begun
Out of silence and mystery
And crafty, ambushed death,
Come alive with men, and monsters
Of such an alien breath.
(Oh, the long blue road
And the stealthy pad of feet
And the first patient ox-cart
With its sail-like sheet!)