Nacozari, a desert town.
All day long through its narrow street
Children play in the dust and heat,
Naked of limb and dark of face,
Lithe as fawns in their careless grace,
Chattering shrill in a half-caste speech
Far from the Spanish the school rooms teach.
All day long by the doorways small
Cut through the thick adobe wall,
Or in the narrow belts of shade
Here and there by the flat roofs made,
Lounge the indolent, swarthy men,
Moving sluggishly now and then
Better to scan their dicing throws
Under their low-tipped sombreros.
But, for the most, content to lie
Drowsing the listless hours by,
Watching, each, as the thin, blue jet
Curls from his drooping cigarette.
All day long, from the dawn's first flush
When the mass is said in the morning hush
Till fall of eve, when the vesper's peal
Calls the faithful again to kneel,
Nothing rouses the quiet place,
Lulled in the desert's hushed embrace,
Save when out of the distance dim,
Over the far horizon's rim,
Sudden a purring whisper comes,
Rising swift, like the throb of drums,
And the iron track which stretches forth,
Straight as a lance from south to north,
Quivers and sings in the mighty strain
From the grinding wheels of a through-bound train
Then, for a space, as the whistle screams,
Nacozari awakes from dreams.
Women and children, boys and men
Stream to the station platform then,
Eager to gaze from its long plank walk,
With gesturing arms and rapid talk,
At the huge machine like a comet hurled
From the mystical zone of the outer world.
Thus it was on one summer's day,
While the land in its noontide slumber lay
With never a living creature near
Save a lizard, perhaps, by a cactus spear
Basking himself in the fervid heat,
Or, high aloft, like a pirate fleet,
A flock of vultures on lazy wing
Circling wide in a watchful ring,
That into the street of the desert town
A long, slow freight came rolling down,
Laden with goods of Northern yield
For Mexican mine and town and field.
Rumbling in with failing speed
It came to rest like a. tired steed,
With the mogul engine's dusty flank
Close by the massive water-tank,
As if it longed, like a living thing,
To quench its thirst at the cooling spring
Of the thousand-foot artesian well,
Sunk through the desert's crusted shell.
Just as it stopped with a grinding jar
Rattling back from car to car,
Out of the engine-cab swung clear
Jesus Garcia, the engineer,
Sooted and grimed to his finger-tips
But the lilt of a song on his smiling lips,
For he was handsome and young and strong
And love was the theme of his murmured song.
Slowly he passed his engine by
Scanning its length with a practiced eye,
Touching a polished slide-valve here.
Or there, a shaft of the running-gear,
Which done, he turned in a boyish mood
To a group of children who, gaping, stood
At the side of the track, too wonder-bound
To move a limb or to make a sound.
Into their midst Garcia sprung
And a chubby lad to his shoulder swung,
Who, laughing, clutched at his corded neck
Like a sailor tossed on a rocking deck.
Perhaps to the Mexican engineer
The child suggested a vision dear
Of a little boy of his very own
In a white-washed cottage at Torreon,
And the dark-eyed mother who, day by day,
Told beads for her husband, far away,
And watched, as the trains steamed forth and back,
For his mogul engine along the track.
But only a moment, with swinging feet,
The baby perched on his lofty seat,
For suddenly down by the cars in rear
There rang a shriek of unbridled fear.
Garcia turned, in amaze looked back;
A score of men from the railroad track
Were rushing away in a frantic race
As if they had looked on a demon's face,
And then, as he turned, the cause was plain
For half-way back in the standing train
A flame licked out from a box-car's side,
Yellow and spiteful, a handbreadth wide.
His cheek grew pale, but his lips still smiled
As he slipped from his shoulder the startled child,
Nor even forgot in his haste to place
A good-bye kiss on the upturned face;
Then he sprang to the street with a bound and gazed
Intent, at the spot where the fire blazed.
Barely a glance was enough to tell
It was a car which he knew full well--
Shipped in bond by a fast freight line,
Bound for a great Sonora mine--
Filled to the roof and loaded tight
With closed-tiered boxes of dynamite;
Enough, if its deadly strength found vent,
To rock the land like a billowed tent,
Sweeping the town from the desert sand
Clean as the palm of an opened hand.
What did he do, the engineer,
Face to face with this mortal fear?
Turn, as the rest, to the desert wide,
Mad with dread, for a place to hide,
Leaving the town and its helpless folk
Doomed to death at a single stroke?
No! Though only a peon born
Heart like his might a king adorn!
Waving his arms to his frightened crew,
Such as remained, a scattered few,
Garcia uttered a warning shout--
"Undile! Vamos!" ("Run! Get out!")
Leaped to his engine waiting there,
Opened the throttle, released the air,
And started the jets for the sand to run
On the glassy rails where the drivers spun,
Till, biting the steel with a spurt of fire
Sputtering back from each grinding tire,
The monster conquered its straining load
And, gathering speed on the curveless road,
It rolled from the town and left it whole.
Like death torn loose from a stricken soul.
But looking backward with stern-set face,
Throttle gripped in a firm embrace,
Garcia goaded his panting steed
Ever and ever to faster speed.
Knowing still if the blow should fall
It would shatter the village wall from wall.
Now from the sides of the car behind,
Fanned by its flight through the rushing wind,
Burst the flames in a lashing sheet
Peeling the paint with its fervid heat,
Vomiting sparks like a fiery hail
On the cars that rocked in its lurid trail.
Still the mogul, in giant flight,
Swaying drunkenly left and right,
Strained to the race, while the rails it trod
Thundered behind it, rod by rod;
Still in its cab, foredoomed, alone.
Waiting death like a man of stone,
Stood Garcia, his feet braced wide
To the pitch and plunge of the engine's stride,
With never a frown to show he knew
Regret for the task he was there to do.
Hardly a mile had his wild train fled
Into the desert straight ahead,
When a flare of light to his vision came
As if the world were engulfed in flame.
Perhaps it fell on his closing eyes
Like the great, white light of Paradise;
Perhaps, in the roar which smote him there,
Too deep for a mortal ear to bear,
He heard but the Heavenly trumpet-roll
Blown clear to welcome a hero's soul.
At least, if any have won to rest
In the fair, green land of the ever blest
By earning their right therein to dwell,
Jesus Garcia deserved it well,
For in the blast that strewed his train,
Torn in fragments, along the plain.
Only his soul went forth to meet
The final call at his Master's feet.
So it is that to-day, alone,
In a white-washed cottage at Torreon,
A brown-skinned woman with sad, dark eyes
Looks on her child at his play, and sighs,
Knowing well she will hark in vain
For her husband's step at the door again.
Or watch, as the trains steam back and forth,
For his mogul engine out of the North.
So it is that when evening falls,
Draping the dull adobe walls
Fold on fold in its tender mist,
Purple and blue and amethyst,
And Nacozari kneels down to pray
At the vesper call from the chapel gray,
Many an orison of love
Is wafted up to the stars above
For the peace of Jesus Garcia's soul;
He who had saved the village whole
By the utmost gift which a man can give--
Life, that his fellow men might live.
A CHRISTMAS LETTER
|Dear miss:
For this pink stationery
Forgive me; it's all I could find
In Buck Dalton's store at the Ferry,
So I took it--I hope you won't mind.
For it's Christmas good wishes I'm sending,
Though in words not the best ever slung,
To you, where the Tiber is wending.
From me, on the banks of the Tongue.
Perhaps you've forgotten the morning
When your car of the Overland Mail
Broke loose on a curve, without warning,
And was ditched by the spread of a rail?
I was herding near by in the valley,
And I pulled out your father and you,
And I found that your name, Miss, was Sallie,
And--well, I remember. Do you?
You were there for five hours at least, Miss,
Then the whistle, a smile, a last word,
And you rolled away to the East, Miss,
While I galloped back to the herd.
You back to your world and its beauties.
New York, Paris, Rome, and all those,
I, back to a cowboy's rough duties
In sunshine and rainstorm and snows.
But to-night I'm alone in the shack here
On my quarter-square Government claim,
While coyotes are yelping out back here--
You'd be scared, Miss, I guess, by the same.
The moonlight is white on the river,
And the long, frozen miles of the plain
Seem to shrink in the north wind and shiver
And wish it was summer again.
It's different where you are, I reckon,
Leastways from the books it must be,
Where the green hills of Italy beckon
And the Tiber sings down to the sea;
Where the red roses always are climbing
And the air smells of olives and pines,
And at evening the vesper bells' chiming
Floats up toward the far Apennines.
You like it, no doubt, and you'd never
See beauties that nature can hold
Where the snow lies in drifts on the river
And the prairies are empty and cold.
But somehow I wouldn't forego it
For all of those soft, southern lands.
I breathe it and feel it and know it;
It grips me as if it had hands.
The stars in the night, how they glisten!
The plains in the day, how they spread!
There's room to stand up in, and listen,
And know there's a God overhead.
And then, when the summer is coming
And the cattle start out on the trails,
And you hearken at dawn to the drumming
Of prairie-hens down in the swales.
Why, Italy simply ain't in it!--
But, Miss, here I'm talking too free.
Excuse me; my thoughts for a minute
Got sort of the better of me.
It was just about Christmas I started;
To me, it was only a name
Till that day when we met, talked and parted,
But since it has not been the same.
For you gave me a new kind of notion
Of the countries and people and such
On the trails that lie over the ocean--
I guess we don't differ so much.
And Christmas is chuck full of spirit
That everywhere under the sun
Warms up anyone who comes near it
And fills them with good-will and fun.
So I want you to know from this letter
That the time by the train wreck with you
Made me know all humanity better
And like the whole bunch better, too.
And I hope, if it seems like presuming
That a letter shall come to your door
In the land where the roses are blooming
From me, on the Tongue's icy shore,
You'll forgive, Miss, an uncultured party
In the spirit of Christmas, and take
These thanks and good wishes, all hearty,
From
Your most sincere
CHEYENNE JAKE.
THE COYOTEVILLE PEACE MEETING
|WE held a peace convention in Coyoteville last night,
A reg'lar Haygue Tribunal fer order, law, an' right,
Fer we'd about concluded that fightin' come too free
An' municipal conditions wasn't all they ought to be.
"Dad" Sykes had been to Denver an' Blake to Omaha,
An' they come back a-preachin' of the sights which they had saw,
How no one carried weepons an' folks was nice an' mild.
An', compared with them there cities, Coyoteville was wild.
In Coyoteville the habit of some gentlemen at nights,
If they felt in pleasant spirits, was to puncture out the lights.
Also, in questions dealin' with a social poker game
They was prone to draw their irons an' argue with the same.
All which, from "Dad" Sykes' view-point, an' likewise Mister Blake's,
Was morally pervertin' an' the biggest of mistakes,
Since Coyoteville's best people had begun a-takin' pride
In makin' her the model of the cattle-countryside.
Therefore, we held a meetin' in the Frou-Frou Dancin' Hall;
"Dad" Sykes he played first fiddle an' Blake was there to call--
I mean that Sykes persided an' Billy wrote it down
When motions was perpounded on how to run the town.
"Bat" Blarcum broached the idee, supported by a speech,
That the closin' of the thirst-joints was the only thing would reach,
Since liquor bred dissension which only blood could stop
As he knew from observation, though he "never touched a drop!"
Then Pierpont Robyn Stebbins arose an' begged to say.
That the road to civic virtue lay quite another way:
To punish weepon toters would be the proper feat--
Jest confiscate their weepons an' make 'em clean the street.
But Bobby Earl was doubtful of Pierpont Robyn's plan;
He thought that cleaning roadways would humiliate a man.
"Bat" Blarcum felt as Earl did, an' inferred that Stebbins' scheme
Was degenerate an' Eastern an' an iridescent dream.
Then Pierpont stood up coldly an' stated to the Chair
That Mister Earl's opinions would be weighty anywhere,
Therefore he meekly yielded, lest he be crushed indeed
By the most substantial leader of the law an' order creed.
Now Bobby weighed three hundred an' it somewhat nettled him
To be ridiculed in public there by Stebbins, who was slim,
But the Chairman wouldn't hear him till Pierpont's partner, Drew,
Had made some observations about "Bat" Blarcum, too.
Which last, he said he hated to cast aspersions 'round,
But he felt "Bat's" plan of action was very far from sound,
An' he questioned these reformers whose reform was brought about
Through a hate for rum engendered by the Keeley curin' route.
He finished; whereat Bobby raised objections an' was pained
At the style of Stebbins' language--an' Bobby was sustained.
Then Stebbins said the Chairman might be strong an' somethin' more,
But he dared not try sustainin' Mister Earl down on the floor!
By this time indications made it plain to persons there
That a spirit of contention was a-breedin' in the air,
Fer Drew jumped through a window as Blarcum slowly rose,
While Bobby Earl was aimin' fer Pierpont Stebbins' nose.
The other folks concluded it was gettin' time they went,
An' started fer the doorways by unanimous consent,
While the Chair came down on Stebbins regardless of the law,
An' Blake propelled the Minutes at Mister Blarcum's jaw.
There'll be a bunch of fun'rals in Coyoteville today;
Some well-known ex-reformers in the leadin' parts will play;
An' Coyoteville's considerin' this lesson o'er an' o'er,
That peace may have its battles as well, sometimes, as war.
[Illustration: 086]
[Illustration: 087]
THE SONG OF THE WINCHESTER
|FULL heir to the twist-bored yager gun with its half-inch slug, I stand;
His rest was the Forty-niner's arm, as mine is the sportsman's hand.
I am king of my day as he of his, from the swamp to the saw-backed spur,
And there's never a trail but has heard the hail of the ringing Winchester!
I've saved the leaguered wagon-train from the scalping-knife and stake;
I have held the lead through the blind stampede in the bison's dust-dimmed wake;
By the reeking dives of the placer camp I have killed for a careless jest,
And I've raped the loot from the stage-coach boot at the bandit's stern behest.
Away in the dusk of the Arctic night, where the frozen rivers flow
And the fringed aurora floods and fades on the endless fields of snow,
The hardy hunters trust my sights and my spinning bullet's speed
When they seek the lair of the great white bear or the haunt of the gray wolf's breed.
The steaming glades of the Amazon, where the crouching jaguar springs,
Have felt the breath of the whirring death my long-necked cartridge brings,
And the wind-whipped crests where the condor nests on the roof-ribs of the world
Have marked the thin, blue jet of smoke from my flashing muzzle hurled.
Oh, I am the mate of the deep-lunged men, stout son of a martial line,
From Uruguay to the Kootenay, from mangrove-reef to pine;
In the throbbing glare of the desert air, by the rocks where the rapids purr,
There is never a gun for fight or fun like the steel-blue Winchester!
PRAIRIE FIRE
|OVER the lonely prairie
The autumn twilight dies;
Quick, fitful winds through the hollows pass
That moan and sigh in the long, dry grass,
And ever a kildee cries.
The hovering darkness gathers;
But what is the rose tint there,
That flushes the far horizon
Like a turbulent city's glare?
It gathers and grows and widens,
It swallows the southward sky
And the timid wind, like a hunted deer,
Makes pause to hearken, then leaps in fear
And wails as it hurries by.
The heavens glow red to the zenith
In the ominous, fevered light,
And the glimmering hilltops waver,
Sharp-drawn on the walls of night.
And now, as a wide-flung army,
Hurled hot on the foemen's spears,
With plumes of smoke on its tossing head,
With flaring banners and lances red,
The wavering flood appears.
It runs like a wolf in hunger,
It roars like a mountain storm,
And before it the fleeing creatures
Far over the prairie swarm.
Pigeon and grouse and plover,
The air is alive with wings,
And the firm ground shakes with the pounding feet
Of bellowing bison in mad retreat
And the panic of smaller things.
Behind them the flames speed onward
O'er level and slope and swale,
And the grass is melted to embers,
Whirled high on the parching gale.
As strong as the ocean's billows,
As fierce as the blizzard's breath,
Is aught in Nature that may withstand
The league-long sweep of this scorching brand
That clutters the plains with death?
Ahead is a waiting darkness,
A shadow athwart the glare,
And the wild things have turned them to it,
For they know there is safety there.
The river, at last, the river!
A haven where all may hide.
With toil-spent lungs and with straining feet
They reel from the smoke and the peeling heat
To plunge in its grateful tide.
While the tongue of the hungry demon
Licks out on the naked sand,
And slavers its baffled fury
And sinks, like a dying hand.
Over the lonely prairie
So wan, the white moonrise grows;
From out of the North a chill wind rides
That spins the ash on the black hillsides
And, fading, an ember glows.
The clustered diamonds of midnight
Flash keen in the purple deep,
The hollows and hills are empty;
The desolate prairies sleep.
III. RIVER SONGS
[Illustration: 094]
THE MISSOURI
|WHEN the hollow void of Chaos
By the sun's first flame was lit,
And morning kissed the new earth's leaden sky,
When the hand of God reached downward
To the ocean's utmost pit
And reared the ragged continents on high,
From the naked, dripping ranges
Of the Rocky's granite sweep,
In a pathway through the quaking mud-plains torn,
Surged a waste of briny waters,
Roaring backward to the deep,
And the great Missouri, king of floods, was born.
It was there when, dank and noisome,
On the primal beds of shale
The fern and cycad forests fringed its shore,
And its depths have heaved in whirlpools
To the thresh of fin and tail
As the monster sea-snakes closed in deadly war.
Foot by foot through crumbling valleys
It has fought the Glacial Drift
As from out the North the rock-fanged moraines spread,
Hurling seas of thunderous waters
Through the slowly strangling rift
Where the ice-floes ground and gritted in its bed.
Huge of limb and tusked like tree-trunks,
When the evening sun hung low
Slugged the mammoths down to gambol in its tide,
And 'twas there that, ringed and goaded
By the cave-men's spears and bows,
They fell in blinded agony and died.
So, for dim, uncounted aeons
Did the torrent sweep along,
Rolling centuries like pebbles in its sands,
And the prairies sprung and blossomed
And the bison herds grew strong,
And the red men camped and hunted through its lands.
Till there came at last a season
When a gaunt-limbed figure burst
Through the woods that lipped the current's whirling foam,
And the flint-lock that he shifted
As he stooped to quench his thirst
Told the wilderness the first white man was come!
He, the white man, the magician,
Searcher, soldier, settler, lord,
Heir to all the crusted cycles of the past!
What were endless, lagging eras
While earth's wealth was being stored
To the pageant of his power at the last?
Came new visions to the river;
Came the voyageur's swift canoe,
Gliding ghost-like to the silent, dipping oar;
And the blunt-bowed keel-boat harnessed
To its brawny, sweating crew,
As they trailed the long cordelle-rope up the shore.
Came the block-house of the fur-trade,
Where the trappers brought their spoil
From bison-range and log-laced beaver fall;
French and half-breed, Sioux and Yankee,
Flinging out a season's toil
For a week of drunken revelry and brawl.
Up the swinging, bluff-bound reaches
Where the lonely bittern boomed
Throbbed a dull, insistent whisper, growing strong,
As the steamboat, flame-winged herald
To an age forespent and doomed,
Waked the woodlands with its piston's pulsing song.
Reeling down the rain-washed gullies
To its fertile, grassy vales
The Missouri saw the weary ox-teams plod;
Saw the red scouts on the ridges,
Heard the shots and dying wails,
Knew the unmarked graves beneath the prairie sod.
It has watched the thin, gray dust-cloud
With the summer heat-haze blent,
And the glint below of swords and bridle-chains,
As some squad of blue-clad troopers,
Like a wolf-pack on the scent,
Trailed the fleeing travois' track across the plains.
It has seen the long-horned cattle
Take the bisons' pasture lands,
Seen the cornfields spread where once the wild grass stood,
Marked the railroad bind the prairies,
League by league, with iron bands,
Felt the dizzy bridge-span leap its own dark flood.
Till the cow-town's rutted roadways
Into asphalt pavements grew.
By wires webbed and busy markets walled,
And the steel-trussed office building
Reared its cornice to the blue
Where the shanties of the mining camp had sprawled.
Now the hissing, rock-jammed rapids
Where of yore the fish-hawks bred,
Hear the thirsty turbines mumble in the gorge,
Tearing twice ten thousand horse-power
From the prisoned waters' head
To drive the distant smelter, mill and forge.
Now lakes of water ripple
Where before the sands lay dry,
And beyond the concrete walls which hold them caged--
Run shimmering, silver channels
Through fields of wheat and rye
Where yesterday the searing sand-storm raged.
But splendid though the epic
Of the river's wondrous past
As Homer e'er could sing or Milton pen,
It will know its grandest numbers
In the ages yet uncast
When its worth shall yield full measure unto men.
In this storehouse of the Nations,
Where but thousands prosper now,
The homes of teeming millions soon shall be;
On this noble waste of waters,
Untouched by steamer's prow,
Shall roll a people's commerce toward, the sea.
Unto us and to our children
Will be dealt the untold gains
If, shaping Nature's promise into deeds,
We accept the willing service
Of this Titan of the plains
And compel its mighty muscles to our needs,
Till its flood runs deep and constant
To the Mississippi's tide,
And the wedded torrents down the South are hurled,
Pouring forth their fleets of plenty
O'er oceans far and wide
To bear our country's riches to the world.
[Illustration: 099]
THE OLD CARRY
_(Near the mouth of the Missouri River is a narrow tongue of land
between that stream and the Mississippi over which the Sioux Indians,
on their expeditions in early days, were accustomed to transport their
goods and boats in order to avoid the long journey around the point by
water. Hence the locality received its name, Portage des Sioux.)_
|ROUND by tawny, foam-lipp'd streams,
Portage des Sioux,
In thy name what romance dreams,
Portage des Sioux!
But thy trails, once deep and worn,
Now lie gulfed in rustling corn,
And thy forest depths are shorn,
Portage des Sioux.
Where are all the dusky feet,
Portage des Sioux,
Trod thy pathways like a street,
Portage des Sioux?
Nevermore thy vales shall know
Flash of spear and twang of bow,
Nor the evening camp-fire's glow,
Portage des Sioux.
Yet when summer moonlight falls,
Portage des Sioux,
On thy glades and forest walls,
Portage des Sioux,
Phantom figures seem to go
'Neath the branches bending low,
Moccasined and pacing slow,
Portage des Sioux.
And the hoot-owl's mournful rune,
Portage des Sioux,
Quavers toward the sailing moon,
Portage des Sioux,
While, where shore and river meet,
Sob the waves with pulsing feet
Like a tom-tom's dying beat,
Portage des Sioux.
JAKE DALE
|WHAT, stranger, you never heerd tell o' Jake,
Jake Dale, o' the "Lucky George"?
You must 'a' been raised in the East, my son,
If you never clapped ears to the yarn that's spun
Of Jakey Dale an' the race he won
In the year o' the big ice gorge.
Come March in the Spring o' '81,
An' the river broke at Pierre