CACTUS AND PINE
SONGS OF THE SOUTHWEST
BY
SHARLOT M. HALL
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1911
Copyright, 1910
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
To the mother who bore my body;
To the land that mothered my soul;
To the Ultimate Guide who led me
Scarred through the battle, but whole;
Mother, and Land, and The Vision,
Stern trails where my feet were set;
Take these from the Price I owe ye--
Whose life is less than the Debt.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE WEST 1
THE SANTA FE TRAIL 5
THE SONG OF THE COLORADO 9
TWO BITS 12
SPRING IN THE DESERT 16
IN OLD TUCSON 18
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MARY 20
THE SONG OF THE PINE 23
SHEEP HERDING 26
THE MERCY OF NA-CHIS 28
THE SEA TO A DESERT DWELLER 31
HIS PLACE 33
THE TRAIL OF DEATH 35
THE PINES OF THE MOGOLLONES 38
THE IVORY CRUCIFIX 40
A SONG FROM THE HILLS 43
JUAN OF THE SLAG POTS 45
OVER THE RANGE 47
A SADDLE SONG 49
AT MISSION PURISSIMA 51
POPPIES OF WICKENBURG 54
BOOT HILL 55
THE DESERT QUEEN 57
TO A HOME IN A CANON 58
THE DEATH OF THE OLD HUNTER 59
THE MASS OF MANGAS 61
THE WATER TANK AT DUSK 64
DOLORES’ OLLA 67
NIGHT IN THE PINES 69
THE DESERT 71
THE EAGLE OF SACRAMENTO 72
CACTUS AND ROSE 77
OUR LADY OF MIRAGE 79
THE MAID OF TUCANO 80
A FLOWER ON THE TRAIL 85
THE OCCULTATION OF VENUS 86
A FOREST LULLABY 87
THE COLORADO RIVER 88
THE END OF THE TRAIL 89
THE RANGE RIDER 90
THE YUCCA PALMS 92
IN THE BRACKEN 93
ARIZONA 94
CAMP FIRE TALES
THE HASH-WRASTLER 101
WATCH 105
MONTE BILL 109
BEYOND THE DESERT
THE GREATER FLAG 115
THE HYMN OF THE MEN THAT FAIL 119
THE LAST CAMP-FIRE 122
THE GIVERS 124
A CREED 125
QUITS 126
MEDUSA TO PERSEUS 127
THE LONG QUEST 130
A LITANY OF EVERY DAY 132
WIND SONG 134
THE LOST THOUGHTS 136
THE STRANGER 138
DAY’S END 139
THE FIRST FIRE ON THE HEARTH 140
A TRUCE WITH DEAD SOULS 142
A FRIEND 143
MAGDALEN 145
THE EARTH MADONNA 146
LOVE’S WISDOM 147
THE GIFTS 149
LIFE IS A DAY 151
THE COMPACT 153
COMPANIONED 155
ALONE 157
THE INHERITOR 158
ON MY OWN PORTRAIT 161
THE IMMORTAL 162
THE BEDESMAN OF THE YEAR 165
THE LONG MARCH 166
THE RACE MOTHER 170
ROAD’S END 172
THE CHOOSING 173
WINE OF DREAMS 175
MY GARDEN 177
SUMMER APPLES 178
HER FINGER FATE 179
DUMB IN JUNE 181
MEMORIAM 182
AS A LITTLE SHADOW ON THE GRASS 184
DAWN 185
A BALLAD OF CHARLIE’S MEN 186
A LOST IDEAL 188
THE LIFE-BOND 189
TO SONG 190
HER GIFT 191
THE LIFE EXPRESS 192
FOR A BIRTHDAY 193
GOD SPEED 194
A CHANT TO DEATH 195
THE FAR-CALLED 197
TIRED 199
WHEN SHE WENT ON 200
O GREAT CONSOLER 201
AND THIS IS LIFE 203
THE THINKER 204
CACTUS AND PINE
THE WEST
When the world of waters was parted by the stroke of a mighty rod,
Her eyes were first of the lands of earth to look on the face of God;
The white mists robed and throned her, and the sun in his orbit wide
Bent down from his ultimate pathway and claimed her his chosen bride;
And he who had formed and dowered her with the dower of a royal queen,
Decreed her the strength of mighty hills, the peace of the plains
between;
The silence of utmost desert, and cañons rifted and riven,
And the music of wide-flung forests were strong winds shout to heaven.
Then high and apart he set her and bade the gray seas guard,
And the lean sands clutching her garments’ hem keep stern and solemn
ward.
What dreams she knew as she waited! What strange keels touched her
shore!
And feet went into the stillness and returned to the sea no more.
They passed through her dream like shadows--till she woke one pregnant
morn
And watched Magellan’s white-winged ships swing round the ice-bound
Horn;
She thrilled to their masterful presage, those dauntless sails from
afar,
And laughed as she leaned to the ocean till her face shone out like a
star.
And men who toiled in the drudging hives of a world as flat as a floor
Thrilled in their souls to her laughter and turned with face to the
door;
And creeds as hoary as Adam, and feuds as old as Cain,
Fell deaf on the ear that harkened and caught that far refrain;
Into dungeons by light forgotten, and prisons of grim despair,
Hope came with pale reflection of her star on the swooning air;
And the old, hedged, human whirlpool, with its seething misery,
Broke bound, as a pent-up river breaks through to the healing sea.
Calling, calling, calling; resistless, imperative, strong;
Soldier and priest and dreamer--she drew them, a mighty throng;
The unmapped seas took tribute of many a dauntless band,
And many a brave hope measured but bleaching bones in the sand;
Yet for one that fell a hundred sprang out to fill his place;
For death at her call was sweeter than life in a tamer race.
Sinew and bone she drew them; steel-thewed--and the weaklings shrank;
Grim-wrought of granite and iron were the men of her foremost rank.
Stern as the land before them, and strong as the waters crossed;
Men who had looked on the face of defeat nor counted the battle lost;
Uncrowned rulers and statesmen, shaping their daily need
To the law of brother with brother, till the world stood by to heed;
The sills of a greater empire they hewed and hammered and turned,
And the torch of a larger freedom from their blazing hilltops burned;
Till the old ideals that had led them grew dim as a childhood’s dream,
And Caste went down in the balance, and Manhood stood supreme.
The wanderers of earth turned to her, outcast of the older lands;
With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them
pitying hands;
And she cried to the Old World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
“Send me your weary, house-worn broods, and I’ll send you Men again!
Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
Is room for a larger reaping than your o’ertilled fields can grow;
Seed of the Man-Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun;
Free, with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won.”
For men, like the grain of the cornfields, grow small in the huddled
crowd;
And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud;
For hills like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track;
And sick with the clang of pavements, and the marts of the trafficking
pack;
Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound;
The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground
Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Eden-birth,
That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth.
THE SANTA FE TRAIL
This way walked Fate; and as she went flung far the line of destiny
That bound an untracked continent to brotherhood from sea to sea;
That long gray trail of dream and hope, marked mile by mile with
graves that keep
On every barren hill and slope some stout heart lost in dreamless
sleep.
Patience and faith and fortitude were willed to it and justified;
Stern, homely virtues, plain and rude; eternal as the sky, and wide.
Nor ever sea king dared the sea in braver mood than those who went
Strong-armed to wrest from Mystery their birth-right, half a
continent.
Gay, hawk-eyed, brown-faced voyageurs, tired of the river’s muddy
tide,
Or drawn by whispered, golden lures, or beckoned by the prairies
wide;
These first, and lightly down the wind their songs float backward as
they pass;--
So light they go they leave behind scarce one dim footprint on the
grass.
And after them, lean, rugged, grim,--one marked untrodden heights to
scan;
The gray peak looking down on him knew something kindred in the man:
Prophetic his keen eyes could trace in those lone wastes that seemed
to wait,
The larger promise of his race, the germ of many an unborn State.
Then Fremont, leading Empire’s way; beside him, silent, dim,
unguessed,
Unheralded to claim her own, the Soul of the Awakening West:
Behind above the thundering flight of fear-swept bison vaguely beat
A murmur dominant with might, the trample of a million feet.
That long gray trail! That path of fate! For gain or loss, for life or
death,
Driven by greed or hope or hate, it drew them to the latest breath;
It broke them to its giant mold; it seared their weakness to the bone;
It stripped them stark to sun and cold and mocked at whimperer and
drone.
And they were Men that bore its mark; and they were Men its service
made--
Strong-souled to face the utter dark, and watch with Fear still
unafraid;
Stern school of heroes unconfessed; unweighed for meed of right or
wrong;
By glib late-comers dispossessed of honors that to them belong;
As in the fire-tried furnace hour strange, warring elements will fuse
To purpose, unity, and power; to truer strength and nobler use--
Unconscious, save that here was life a man might live as manhood
meant,
They wrought a nation from their strife and shaped it with their
discontent.
No pulseless, still-born hope was theirs; each man a later Argonaut,
Who from great dreams and ceaseless cares outwove the golden fleece
he sought;
And single-handed out of need made potent opportunity;
Nor shamed the hour with laggard deed; nor quailed at naked Destiny:
They touched the Wilderness to flower; they gave the unvoiced solitude
A tongue that spoke with master power the message of its iron mood:--
But ah! the coast! The hands that bled! The toll of heart-aches and of
tears!
The stern, white faces of the dead that paved that highway through the
years!
The long grass hides the rutted trail where tracked those mighty
caravans
Whose far-lit camp fires low and pale, elude, howe’er the vision scans
That lost horizon, shrunk to fit the little roads that come and go,
By easy ways of greatness quit, that any chance-drawn foot may know;
Light trails and traffic o’er the dust of them that were a braver
breed;
Forgotten in the careless lust for larger gain and lesser deed.--
Mother of all the Roads that hold that power o’er men that makes or
mars!
These lead to cities, lands, and gold--this led to the eternal stars!
THE SONG OF THE COLORADO
From the heart of the mighty mountains strong-souled for my fate I
came,
My far-drawn track to a nameless sea through a land without a name;
And the earth rose up to hold me, to bid me linger and stay;
And the brawn and bone of my mother’s race were set to bar my way.
Yet I stayed not, I could not linger; my soul was tense to the call
The wet winds sing when the long waves leap and beat on the far sea
wall.
I stayed not, I could not linger; patient, resistless, alone,
I hewed the trail of my destiny deep in the hindering stone.
How narrow that first dim pathway--yet deepening hour by hour!
Years, ages, eons, spent and forgot, while I gathered me might and
power
To answer the call that led me, to carve my road to the sea,
Till my flood swept out with that greater tide as tireless and
tameless and free.
From the far, wild land that bore me, I drew my blood as wild--
I, born of the glacier’s glory, born of the uplands piled
Like stairs to the door of heaven, that the Maker of All might go
Down from His place with honor, to look on the world and know
That the sun and the wind and the waters, and the white ice cold and
still,
Were moving aright in the plan He had made, shaping His wish and will.
When the spirit of worship was on me, turning alone, apart,
I stayed and carved me temples deep in the mountain’s heart,
Wide-domed and vast and silent, meet for the God I knew,
With shrines that were shadowed and solemn and altars of richest hue;
And out of my ceaseless striving I wrought a victor’s hymn,
Flung up to the stars in greeting from my far track deep and dim.
For the earth was put behind me; I reckoned no more with them
That come or go at her bidding, and cling to her garment’s hem.
Apart in my rock-hewn pathway, where the great cliffs shut me in,
The storm-swept clouds were my brethren, and the stars were my kind
and kin.
Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went as one who goes
On some high and strong adventure that only his own heart knows.
Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went in my chosen road--
I trafficked with no man’s burden--I bent me to no man’s load.
On my tawny, sinuous shoulders no salt-gray ships swung in;
I washed no feet of cities, like a slave whipped out and in;
My will was the law of my moving in the land that my strife had made--
As a man in the house he has builded, master and unafraid.
O ye that would hedge and bind me--remembering whence I came!
I, that was, and was mighty, ere your race had breath or name!
Play with your dreams in the sunshine--delve and toil and plot--
Yet I keep the way of my will to the sea, when ye and your race are
not!
TWO BITS
Two Bits was an old race horse well known from Texas to Arizona. He
belonged at the time of his death to Lieut. Charles Curtis (now Capt.
Curtis, Military Instructor at the University of Wisconsin), who built
the first stockade on the site of the present Fort Whipple, Arizona.
The incident is true; wounded to his death, the old horse out-ran
the Apaches and after his rider, who was severely wounded, fell off,
Two Bits went on to Fort Wingate where the sight of his wounds and
the bloody pouches told the story. The old horse headed the relief
party and led them back to his fallen rider and then dropped dead.
The troops, to all of whom the old race horse was a familiar comrade,
buried him under a heap of lava bowlders beside the old Government
Trail a few miles west of Fort Wingate, New Mexico.
Where the shimmering sands of the desert beat
In waves to the foothills’ rugged line,
And cat-claw and cactus and brown mesquite
Elbow the cedar and mountain pine;
Under the dip of a wind-swept hill,
Like a little gray hawk Fort Whipple clung;
The fort was a pen of peeled pine logs
And forty troopers the army strong.
At the very gates when the darkness fell,
Prowling Mohave and Yavapai
Signalled with shrill coyote yell,
Or mocked the night owl’s piercing cry;
Till once when the guard turned shuddering
For a trace in the east of the welcome dawn,
Spent, wounded, a courier reeled to his feet:--
“Apaches--rising--Wingate--warn!”
“And half the troop at the Date Creek Camp!”
The Captain muttered; “Those devils heard!”
White-lipped he called for a volunteer
To ride Two Bits and carry the word.
“Alone; it’s a game of hide and seek;
One man may win where ten would fail.”
Himself the saddle and cinches set
And headed Two Bits for the Verde Trail.
Two Bits! How his still eyes woke to the chase!
The bravest soul of them all was he!
Hero of many a hard-won race,
With a hundred scars for his pedigree.
Wary of ambush, and keen of trail,
Old in wisdom of march and fray;
And the grizzled veteran seemed to know
The lives that hung on his hoofs that day.
“A week. God speed you and make it less!
Ride by night from the river on.”
Caps were swung in a silent cheer,
A quick salute, and the word was gone.
Sunrise, threading the Point of Rocks;
Dusk, in the cañons dark and grim,
Where coiled like a rope flung down the cliffs,
The trail crawls up to the frowning Rim.
A pebble turned, a spark out-struck
From steel-shod hoofs on the treacherous flint--
Ears strain, eyes wait, in the rocks above
For the faintest whisper, the farthest glint;
But shod with silence and robed with night
They pass untracked, and mile by mile
The hills divide for the flying feet,
And the stars lean low to guide the while.
Never a plumed quail hid her nest
With the stealthiest care that a mother may,
As crouched at dawn in the chaparral
These two, whom a heart-beat might betray.
So, hiding and riding, night by night;
Four days, and the end of the journey near;
The fort just hid in the distant hills--
But hist! A whisper--a breath of fear!
They wheel and turn--too late. Ping! Ping!
From their very feet a fiery jet.
A lurch, a plunge, and the brave old horse
Leaped out with his broad breast torn and wet.
Ping! Thud! On his neck the rider swayed;
Ten thousand deaths if he reeled and fell!
Behind, exultant, the painted horde
Poured down like a skirmish line from Hell.
Not yet! Not yet! Those ringing hoofs
Have scarred their triumph on many a course;
And the desperate, blood-trailed chase swept on,
Apache sinews ’gainst wounded horse.
Hour crowding hour till the yells died back,
Till the pat of the moccasined feet was gone;
And dumb to heeding of foe or fear
The rider dropped,--but the horse kept on.
Stiff and stumbling and spent and sore,
Plodding the long miles doggedly;
Till the daybreak bugles of Wingate rang
And a feint neigh answered the reveille.
Wide swung the gates--a wounded horse--
Red-dabbled pouches and riding gear;
A shout, a hurry, a quick-flung word--
And “Boots and Saddles” rang sharp and clear.
Like a stern commander the old horse turned
As the troop filed out, and straight to the head
He guided them back on that weary trail
Till he fell by his fallen rider--dead--
But the man and the message saved. And he
Whose brave heart carried the double load,
With his last trust kept and his last race won,
They buried him there on the Wingate road.
SPRING IN THE DESERT
Silence, and the heat lights shimmer like a mist of sifted silver,
Down across the wide, low washes where the strange sand rivers flow;
Brown and sun-baked, quiet, waveless, trailed with bleaching,
flood-swept bowlders;
Rippled into mimic water where the restless whirlwinds go.
On the banks the gray mesquite trees droop their slender, lace-leafed
branches;
Fill the lonely air with fragrance, as a beauty unconfessed;
Till the wild quail comes at sunset with her timorous, plumed covey,
And the iris-throated pigeon coos above her hidden nest.
Every shrub distills vague sweetness; every poorest leaf has gathered
Some rare breath to tell its gladness in a fitter way than speech;
Here the silken cactus blossoms flaunt their rose and gold and
crimson,
And the proud zahuaro lifts its pearl-carved crown from careless
reach.
Like to Lillith’s hair down-streaming, soft and shining, glorious,
golden,
Sways the queenly palo verde robed and wreathed in golden flowers;
And the spirits of dead lovers might have joy again together
Where the honey-sweet acacia weaves its shadow-fretted bowers.
Velvet-soft and glad and tender goes the night wind down the cañons,
Touching lightly every petal, rocking leaf and bud and nest;
Whispering secrets to the black bees dozing in the tall wild lilies,
Till it hails the sudden sunrise trailing down the mountain’s crest.
Silence, sunshine, heat lights painting opal-tinted dream and vision
Down across the wide, low washes where the whirlwinds wheel and
swing;--
What of dead hands, sun-dried, bleaching? What of heat and thirst and
madness?
Death and life are lost, forgotten, in the wonder of the spring.
IN OLD TUCSON
In old Tucson, in old Tucson,
How swift the happy days ran on!
How warm the yellow sunshine beat
Along the white caliche street!
The flat roofs caught a brighter sheen
From fringing house leeks thick and green,
And chiles drying in the sun;
Splashes of crimson ’gainst the dun
Of clay-spread roof and earthen floor;
The squash vine climbing past the door
Held in its yellow blossoms deep
The drowsy desert bees asleep.
By one low wall, at one shut gate,
The dusty roadway turned to wait;
The pack mules loitered, passing where
The muleteers had sudded care
Of cinche and pack and harness bell.
The oleander blossoms fell,
Wind-drifted flecks of flame and snow;
The fruited pomegranate swung low;
And in the patio dim and cool
The gray doves flitted round the pool
That caught her image lightly as
The face that fades across a glass.
In old Tucson, in old Tucson,
The pool is dry, the face is gone.
No dark eyes through the lattice shine,
No slim brown hand steals through to mine;
There where her oleander stood
The twilight shadows bend and brood,
And through the glossed pomegranate leaves
The wind remembering waits and grieves;
Waits with me, knowing as I know,
She may not choose to come and go--
She who with life no more has part
Save in the dim pool of my heart.
And yet I wait, and yet I see
The dream that was come back to me;
The green leek springs above the roof,
The dove that mourned alone, aloof,
Flutes softly to her mate among
The fig leaves where the fruit has hung
Slow-purpling through the sunny days;
And down the golden desert haze
The mule bells tinkle faint and far;--
But where her candle shone, a star;
And where I watched her shadow fall,--
The gray street and a crumbling wall.
THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MARY
Throughout the desert region of the Southwest are abandoned mining
camps; shafts caved, machinery silent and rusting away, sand drifted in
the long-empty cabins. In one such deserted camp a child’s play-house
was found beside a great bowlder, the little toys and treasures
undisturbed through all the years.
The hoof-worn pack trails still wind down past barren cliff and ledge,
And fail and fade like water spilled at the sage gray desert’s edge;
Lost in the shifting sand banks, clear where the long dykes lift
Their rough, brown, sun-burned shoulders out of the wind-blown drift.
Like scars long-healed the weed-grown dumps where the miners plied
their craft,
And the tuna drops its crimson fruit down the mouth of the caving
shaft.
A broken shovel, a worn-out pick--and down in the gulch below
A lean coyote homes her whelps where the stamps beat blow on blow.
Where the tent camp took its careless way to the rocky cañon’s brink,
The plumed quail leads her covey, and the wild deer come to drink;
But then the mule bells tinkled, and, proud of her rank and place,
The old white bell mare took the lead, setting the train its pace.
And close by a gray-ribbed bowlder, shading her eyes with her hands,
Watching the ore trains passing out to the unknown lands,
A little, wistful figure with dreaming, gentle face,
Like a flower from some old-time garden abloom in that rugged place.
Child of the sun-white desert; no other land she knew;
Its cactus and sage were her greenest green; its skies were her
deepest blue;
The shy, wild things were her playmates, and under the old cleft stone
She builded a little kingdom for her and them alone.
And here are her guarded treasures, quaint little shapes of clay,
Fashioned by small brown fingers as she sang at her lonely play;--
But the dust lies thick upon them, and sand drifts bar the door,
And only a swift green lizard shimmers across the floor.
Like memories worn too deep to lose the pack trail still winds down,
Out past the old gray bowlder and the ledges seamed and brown;
Till here it swerves a hand-width back, where once the rough cross
stood,
With a child’s brief name and a child’s scant years carved in the
sun-bleached wood.
The cross is fallen and crumbling, but still the wild quails call
As if they missed a comrade through the sage brush thick and tall;
And where the love vine tangles and the wind croons low at even,
The little playhouse waits for her, for “Mary, aged seven.”
THE SONG OF THE PINE
Hear now the song of the pine
That is sung when strong winds sweep
Hot-flung from the mighty South,
Or the North Wind bellows deep:
Hear thou the song of the pine
When the sea-wet West beats in,
Or the East from his tether breaks
With clamorous, human din.
The long boughs quiver and shake,
Uproused from their primal ease,
And bend as an organ reed
When a strong hand strikes the keys;
And a mighty hymn rolls forth
To the far hills farthest line,
Earth’s challenge and trumpet call--
Hear now the song of the pine.
The strong gray hills are my throne, the rock-ribbed thews of the
earth;
There have I marshalled my brethren, and laughed at wind and sun;
I tent with the crag and the eagle; the Cloud Gods saw my birth;
I have drunk the strength of ages--a thousand years as one.
I have warred with rift and crevice, with avalanche and shale,
Grappling my barren ridge with the grip of a mail-clad fist;
Storms roll their anger around me, torn through with lightnings pale,
Or robe me in lonely ermine, or garb me with sodden mist.
The stars are my near companions; ever to them I lift,
And grow to their nightly splendor with soul as far and free;
Counting the swinging seasons by the planet’s veer and drift,
Till again the wild Spring-Joy wells up from the earth to me:--
The old, fierce joy of living, all primitive, undenied;
As breathed from the Maker’s lips on clay still warm with its touch;
When no soul skulked or whimpered, or in impotent weakness cried,
And life was a strong man’s gift to be held in an iron clutch.
Held--or flung down as the pine-top shakes down a ripened cone;
Then stretches green fingers skyward with larger faith and hope;
Glad without thought or question, undoubtful of earth or sun,
From the bent blue overhead to the mold where the dark roots grope.
But level sinketh to level as height calls up to height;
Courage is born of danger; the deed of the naked need;
Came Ease to sit on the hearth, dear-bought with the ancient might,
And drunk with her smile men slept and lapsed to a weaker breed,
O men that dream in the lowland, men that drowse in the plain,
Wake ye, and turn to the forest, turn to the far, high hills;
Ye shall win from their unspent greatness the olden strength again;
Ye shall hear in that lofty silence the battle shout that thrills.
Ye shall find in those utmost reaches power undefiled;
Wisdom untaught of sages, and patience and truth divine;
Life tameless still; untainted; primal and potent and wild--
Rouse ye, nor linger belittled,--shamed by the wind-swung pine.
SHEEP HERDING
A gray, slow-moving, dust-bepowdered wave,
That on the edges breaks to scattering spray,
Round which the faithful collies wheel and bark
To scurry in the laggard feet that stray:
A babel of complaining tongues that make
The dull air weary with their ceaseless fret;
Brown hills akin to those of Gallilee
On which the shepherds tend their charges yet.
The long, hot days; the stark, wind-beaten nights;
No human presence, human sight or sound;
Grim, silent land of wasted hopes, where they
Who came for gold oft times have madness found;
A bleating horror that fore-gathers speech;
Freezing the word that from the lip would pass;
And sends the herdsman grovelling with his sheep,
Face down and beast-like on the trampled grass.
* * * * *
The collies halt; the slow herd sways and reels,
Huddled in fright above a low ravine,
Where wild with thirst a herd unshepherded
Beats up and down--with something dark between;
A narrow circle that they will not cross;
A thing to stop the maddest in their run--
A guarding dog too weak to lift his head,
Who licks a still hand shriveled in the sun.
THE MERCY OF NA-CHIS
Felix Knox was killed by a band of renegade Apaches under Na-chis,
son of the famous chief Ca-chis, near York’s Ranch in south-eastern
Arizona. Knox made a brave fight and when found his body was not
mutilated, and the face had been covered to keep away the coyotes and
vultures.
Knox the gambler--Felix Knox;
Trickster, short-card man, if you will;
Rustler, brand-wrangler--all of that--
But Knox the man and the hero still!
For life at best is a hard-set game;
The cards come stacked from the Dealer’s hand;
And a man plays king of his luck just once--
When he faces death in the last grim stand.
Knox had been drummer in Crook’s command;
A devil of daring lived in his drum;
With his heart in the call and his hand on the sticks
The dead from their sand-filled graves might come:
Crippled for life he drummed his last;
Shot through the knee in the Delshay fight--
But he crawled to a rock and drummed “Advance”
Till the Tonto renegades broke in flight.
That was the man who shamed Na-chis!
Two miles out on the Clifton Road
Beyond York’s Ranch the ambush lay,--
Till a near, swift-moving dust-whirl showed
Where the buckboard came. Na-chis crouched low
And gripped his rifle and grimly smiled
As he counted his prey with hawk-like eyes--
The men, the woman, the little child.
They halted--full in the teeth of the trap.
Knox saw--too late. He weighed the chance
And thrust the whip in the driver’s hand
And wheeled the mules: “Back! Back to the ranch!”
He cried as he jumped; “I’ll hold them off.
Whip for your life!” The bullets sung
Like swarming bees through the narrow pass,
And whirred and hummed and struck and stung.
But he turned just once--to wave his hand
To wife and child; then straight ahead,
With yell for yell and shot for shot,
Till the rocks of the pass were spattered red;
And seven bodies bepainted and grim
Sprawled in the cactus and sand below;
And seven souls of the Devil’s kin
Went with him the road that dead men know.
Ay! That was Knox! When the cowboys came
On the day-old trail of the renegade,
Na-chis the butcher, the merciless,
This was the tribute the chief had paid
To the fearless dead. No scarring fire;
No mangling knife; but across the face
His own rich blanket drawn smooth and straight,
Stoned and weighted to keep its place.
THE SEA TO A DESERT DWELLER
Lo here is the sea, the sea!
And long waves leaped to my feet;
Foam-white the breakers beat,
Or crept to the hedging rocks
As a whipped cur creeps to the knee--
Look, here is the sea, the sea!
Was it regal, as I had dreamed,
With its far-drawn dole of ships?
Or sad with the breath of lips
That greet their beloved no more?
Wetly the white sands gleamed;
Like those other sands they seemed.
I have stood as the sun went down,
At dusk on the desert’s edge,
In the grip of a sheltering ledge,
And watched the wide plain burn
To silver from red and brown;
Gem-set like a royal crown.
These waves that ripple and roll
Have rippled in waves of light
Long since to my childish sight;
And the pale heat vapors that glide
Were sea sprites taking toll
For a chartless voyager’s soul.
Low lights ashine on the lee,
Where the orient steamers come;
E’en so the stars at home
Hang low in the purple sky;--
’Twas the face of a friend to me,
But they cry “The sea! The sea!”
HIS PLACE
To the enduring memory of Clarence H. Shaw, who knew the desert as few
men know it, and who lies at rest in one of its most beautiful corners.
This is his place--here where the mountains run,
Naked and scarred and seamed up to the face of the sun;
His place--reaches of wind-blown sand, brown and barren and old;
Where the creosote, scorched and glazed, clings with a stubborn hold;
And tall and solemn and strange the fluted cactus lifts
Its arms like a cross that pleads from the lonely, rock-hedged rifts;
His place--where the great, near stars lean low and burn and shine
Still and steady and clear, like lamps at the door of a shrine.
This is his land, his land--where the great skies bend
Over the wide, clean sweep of a world without measure or end:
His land--where across and between the pale, swift whirlwinds go
Like souls that may not rest, by their quest sent to and fro:
And down the washes of sand the vague mirages lay
Their spell of enchanted light, moving in ripple and spray
Of waters that gleam and glisten, with joy and color rife--
Streams where no mouth may drink, but fair as the River of Life.
This is his place--the mesquite, like a thin green mist of tears,
Knows the way of his wish, keeps the hope of his years;
Till, one appointed day, comes the with-holden spring;
Then, miracle wrought in gold, that swift, rare blossoming!
This is his place--where silence eternal fills
The still, white, sun-drowsed plain, and the slumbering, iron-rimmed
hills;
Where To-day and Forever mingle, and Changeless and Change are one--
Here in his own land he waits till To-day and Forever are done.
THE TRAIL OF DEATH
The Jornado del Muerto, the desert trail across southern New Mexico and
Arizona.
We rode from daybreak; white and hot
The sun beat like a hammer-stroke
On molten iron; the blistered dust
Rose up in clouds to sere and choke;
But on we rode, gray-white as ghosts,
Bepowdered with that bitter snow,
The stinging breath of alkali
From the grim, crusted earth below.
Silent, our footsteps scarcely wrung
An echo from the sullen trail;
Silent, parched lip and stiffening tongue,
We watched the horses fall and fail:
Jack’s first; he caught my stirrup strap;--
God help me! but I shook him off;
Death had not diced for two that day
To meet him in that Devil’s trough.
I flung him back my dry canteen,
An ounce at most, weighed drop by drop
With life; he clutched it, drank, and laughed;
Hard, hideous--a peal to stop
The strongest heart; then turned and ran
With arms outflung and mad eyes set,
Straight on where ’gainst the dun sky’s rim
Green trees stood up, and cool and wet
Long silver waves broke on the sand.
The cursed mirage! that lures and taunts
The thirst-scourged lip and tortured sight
Like some lost hope that mocking haunts
A dying soul. I tried to call,--
The dry words rattled in my throat;
And sun and sand and crouching sky--
God! How they seemed to glare and gloat!
Reeling I caught the saddle-horn;
On, on; but now it seemed to be
The spring-house path, and at the well
My mother stood and beckoned me:
The bucket glistened; drip, drip, drip,
I heard the water fall and plash;
Then keen as Hell the burning wind
Awoke me with its fiery lash.
On, on; what was that bleaching thing
Across the trail? I dared not look;
But on--blind, aimless, till the sun
Crept grudging past the hills and took
His curse from off the gasping land.
The blessed dusk! my gaunt horse raised
His head and neighed, and staggered on;
And I, with bleeding lips, half-crazed,
Laughed out; for just above us there,
Rock-caught against a blackened ledge
A little pool; one last hard climb;
Full spent we fell upon its hedge--
One still forever. Weak I lay
And drank; hot hands and temples laved:
Jack gone, alas! the horses dead;
But night and water--I was saved!
THE PINES OF THE MOGOLLONES
In the forests on the mountains sing the pines a wondrous measure,
As the wind, the master-player, sways their branches to and fro:
Varied music, full of power, full of passion, joy, and sorrow;
Wild and loud with pain and heart-break, then with love and gladness
low.
And that music holds the story of the world since its first waking;
Holds the secret of all living and the life that yet will be;
All the lore the wind has gathered as he roamed the wide earth over,
From the silent, sun-white desert to the restless, moaning sea.
In that singing whisper softly voices of the long lost peoples;
Hymns that rose o’er crumbled altars, prayers for the forgotten dead;
Mothers’ sighs and children’s laughter mingle with the soldiers’ war
cry,
Clash of arms and blare of trumpets, and the conquering army’s tread.
And above this earth-born music rings a higher tone incessant,
Calling: “Upward! Upward! Upward! Rise and follow where I go;
Leave the camp-fire, leave the quarry, seek the joy that comes of
seeking,
While the strong peaks keep their places and the snow-sweet waters
flow.”
And the wind, the master-player, blends these varied tones together
Till they rise, a glorious paean, from the forests wide and free--
Rise and echo on forever; full of courage, hope, and daring;
Wild with all the pain of living, glad with all life’s harmony.
THE IVORY CRUCIFIX
In crossing southern Arizona many years ago the late Captain W. O.
O’Neill, “Buckey” O’Neill, as he was then called, saw something
protruding from a mound of sand at the foot of a giant cactus. Turning
aside to investigate he found the sun-dried bodies of a man and woman,
the withered, skeleton hand of the woman still holding an ivory
crucifix.
Captain O’Neill buried the bodies and brought away the crucifix. Some
time later he learned that it had belonged to the young wife of a
Mexican cattle rancher. She had loved one of her husband’s vaqueros
and they had gone away together. The husband and his men followed till
turned back by the sand storm which had swallowed up the fugitives. It
seemed that the woman, too weak to unclasp the crucifix from her neck,
had stretched the slender rosary to its full length in her effort to
lay the crucifix on her lover’s lips as he breathed his last.
“Ride, Juan, he follows, follows fast!”
Nay, darling, down the wind
You do but hear the trampling herds
That flee our path behind:
Look forward where the sunrise plays
Across the mountain’s rim;
There shall you measure fairer days
With me, and far from him.
“Oh! Juan, the desert lies between,
A waste of fear and dread;
Smitten with bitter winds that shake
The white bones of the dead:
It lies between, as in our hearts
Our sinful loving lies;
Think you that earth will grant us peace
An angry heaven denies?”
“Haste! Haste! I hear the click of steel,
The ring of muffled spur,
And fearful shapes loom grim against
The far mirage’s blur;
Up-swimming on its trembling light
Huge, shadowy giants ride,
Like blood-avengers through the haze--
He, with his men beside!”
Red swung the sun, a sullen disk
Across the copper sky,
And whirling sand-wreaths pale as ghosts
Beat upward spitefully;
Beat up and broke, and whirled anew,
And called their nameless kin
To race with them the race of death
No soul of man may win.
Forgot and far the fear behind;
Before the God of Wrath
Out-stretched his hand upon the storm
And barred their guilty path:
“A cross!” How grim and gray and gaunt
The tall zahauro loomed,
As if in solemn vigil o’er
Some martyr-saint entombed.
“Pray! Pray!” she whispered as they fell;
“The pitying saints may hear.
Jesus! One mercy in the name
Of her that is most dear!
Oh! Mary! Mother! if your grace
Be given to such as we,
I pray you of your tenderness,
Spare him and punish me!”
“The crucifix my mother gave!”
With dying breath she strove
To lay the carven, ivory Christ
Upon the lips beloved.
“Mine be the penance, gracious Lord!”
The dark wall closed apace,
As if earth strove to hide from Heaven
The anguished, pleading face.
Still, still, along the drifted sand;
How still the starlight crept!
How still his vigil sad and lone
The gaunt zahuaro kept!
There, where in wavering shadows that
Like life’s threads intermix,
Her dead hand still to his dead lips
Pressed close the crucifix.
A SONG FROM THE HILLS
Oh, the black bear on the mountain!
Oh, the trout in stream and fountain!
Oh, the bloodhound’s bay that echoes loud and clear!
Oh, the buck, his proud head shaking,
From the leafy covert breaking,
As he scents the air that tells of danger near!
Oh, the sunlight softly streaming,
On the polished rifle gleaming
As we follow on the trail with stealthy tread!
Oh, the camp-fire dimly glowing,
Dusky, flickering shadows throwing
O’er the piney boughs that form the hunter’s bed!
Oh, the woodland life enchanting,
Memory’s farthest chamber haunting
With the mountain air and odor of the pine!
Though a palace door stood waiting,
I would pass its golden grating
With a smile and never wish its splendors mine.
For the forests with their shadows,
Hidden springs and sunny meadows,
And the mountains in their glory are my own:
In the breeze the fir trees whisper
Music like a solemn vesper,
And the pines take up the song in fuller tone.
Life is freer here and fuller;
All beside of earth grows duller;
And the one whose soul this strong enchantment fills
Leaves all other things when dying,
And like a homing pigeon flying
Turns him back to lie and rest among the hills.
JUAN OF THE SLAG POTS
A “Run-away” in the smelter, at Jerome, Arizona.
Juan of the slag pots, sullen and grim,
Scarred of jaw and crooked of limb;
May the Mother of Christ have thought of him!
Ay! Juan, lame Juan; no saint indeed,
But a better thing--a man, at need.
Night long where the reek of the sulphur smoke
Rolls up till the heart is like to choke;
Till the ears are sick with the clang and whirr,
And the eyeballs ache with the fiery blur,
Juan rolled the slag pots, huge and black,
And poured them out in a burning track
Down the slippery dump like a lava flow,
To cool in the cañon depths below.
Behind in the smelter vast and dim
The beat of the great blasts called to him,
And deep in the throat of the furnace glowed
The molten ore on its fiery road;
Soon to flow in a golden stream,
With rainbow shimmer and jeweled gleam
Into the pots like some strange wine.
“Tap!” the foreman gave the sign.
Juan poised the bar on his arm at rest
And swung it straight for the clay-cloaked “breast”;
A touch; a fury of blinding light;
A sweep of the swirling mass flame-white;
Hot drops flung like scorching hail
As the swift flood leaped from its narrow trail
Like a hungry hound on a blood-stained track.
“Back!” the frightened men surged back;
Reeled and ran--but the hindmost fell
Straight in the path of that molten hell.
Cheeks that were black with the stinging smoke
Went white beneath, and a hoarse shout broke
From the swaying crowd--but no man moved;
And the hot flood crept and crawled and shoved
Its flame-tongues out. Then straight and swift
Juan leaped, and they saw him stoop and lift
A fear-dazed burden, and turn and call
On the saints for mercy. Ay! that’s all.
Where the great blasts beat and the smoke drifts low,
Like ragged veils swung to and fro,
Shifting, shimmering, dun and gray,
Juan sits in the sunshine day by day;
Juan of the slag pots, sullen and grim,
Scarred of jaw and crooked of limb--
May the Mother of Christ have thought of him!
OVER THE RANGE
“L---- died at Chilikoot Pass: ‘Good-bye boys,’ he said; ‘I’m going
over the range too--but I’ve got to blaze my own trail.’”
Letter from the Klondyke.
Open the door of the tent, boys,
And turn my face to the snow;
Let me look once more on the grand old peaks
Ere my summons comes to go;
For I start tonight on a stranger trail
Than any our feet have trod--
With never a blaze to mark the way,
Nor a footstep pressed on the sod.
’Tis an old, old road, but who passes there
Goes out in the dark alone;
With no hail from the comrades gone before,
And the camping-grounds unknown;
There’s never a guide for love or gold
Would lead you along that track,
And you needn’t tighten your cartridge belt,
Nor diamond hitch the pack.
What foes may lurk in the shadows dark
No mortal hand can stay;
And the wealth you have heaped with a lifetime’s toil
Is as dust beside the way;
For empty-handed we strike Life’s trail
When the dawn wind sings of hope,--
And empty-handed we turn at last
On the brink of its utmost slope.
I set my face to the stars tonight,
My heart to the Silent Call;
And fearlessly follow the unknown path
That leads to the fate of all.--
Be it rest or work or peace or strife--
Be rust or growth the change--
Here’s one who goes with a joyous soul,
Nor shrinks to cross the range.
A SADDLE SONG
“The jingle of spur and rattle of rein; the musical squeak of good
saddle leather.”
To horse! as rode the knights of old for tourney and affray;
To horse! the world is wide, and ours, free heart and summer day:
Oh! Laughter now shall be our god and every care take wings,
And we’ll take our marching orders from the song the saddle sings.
The gipsey blood is coursing red along each leaping vein;
We are brothers to the bursting flower and kindred with the rain:
How the voice of nature calls us! How it beckons! How it rings,
In the echoes of the marching song the old saddle sings!
The fir trees standing sentinel upon the mountain’s crest
Have sent their message on the wind to fill us with unrest;
To mingle with our dreams the scent the healing balsam flings,
And blend the forest whispers with the song the saddle sings.
O jingling spur and rattling rein, brown earth and bending sky,
We turn to you to brim again the cup of life run dry;
Take toll of all the fancied gain that hard-spent striving brings,
But set our days in measure with the song the saddle sings.
AT MISSION PURISSIMA
The hands are dust that piled these rough brown walls,
Yet still the sunshine falls
Like a touch warm with love upon the gilded cross,
Whose yearly loss
By wind and rain has worn its gilt away,
As youth, which cannot stay
When life frets hard upon its shining stuff:
Yet ’tis enough
That once the cross was gold, the heart alive to joy.
The dark-faced altar boy
Still lights the candles at the Virgin’s feet;
And strange and sad and sweet
The air is dim with long-dead incense-smoke:
Wan Joseph draws his cloak,
Faded and torn, still ’round the Holy Child;
And woman-wise and mild
Pure Mary bends her soft eyes to the floor,
Where from the far-off door,
Through which the sky looks and the green-branched trees,
On bended, praying knees
Sad penitents have worn a weary trail
There to the altar rail.
Down that old road of pain a woman glides;
The dim place hides
Her eyes that plead and lips that wince and pray:
The saints that stay
Up on the painted walls in the sweet dusk
Of sandal-smoke and musk,
And scent of withering altar flowers, and holy myrrh,
Look down on her
With pity--for a saint must understand.
In one slim hand
She bears a small, rude-shapen earthen jar,
Whose roughness cannot mar
The rare, green grace of the mimosa tree
Whose lace-like tracery
Of leaf and stem she touches as she prays.
Suppliant she lays
Her fingers gently, and each little leaf,
Feeling her grief,
Folds to its green mate like two hands in prayer:
The branches share
Her heart’s hurt tremble, as if they would plead
For her at need.
Above the candles in her deep-niched place
Pure Mary’s face,
Compassionate and tender, bids her speak.
Entreating, passion-weak,
The slow words come: “O Queen of Heaven!
Who yet on earth was even
Woman as I--hear this my woman’s plea;
Grant this to me,--
Thou in whose white breast a woman’s heart hath beat.
O Pure! O Sweet!
Keep me, thy little one, still clean and pure.
Let me endure
All pain of life, so that thou make me strong.
Hold me from wrong;
And as these leaves that tremble over-much
Close at my touch,
Shut thou my heart against this evil love.
As the gray dove
Beside the water pool would flee the snare,
Keep me aware
How he who seeks seeks not my soul at all,
Which flies beyond his call;
But for his careless joy one idle hour
Would bind his power
Like Eve’s snake round me, laughing as he crushed.”
There in the hushed,
Sweet darkness, pierced by points of candle light
Like stars at night,
She left the green mimosa at the Virgin’s feet,
Continually to entreat
Her soul’s safety--then across the worn old floor
She walked, with face transfigured, to the door.
POPPIES OF WICKENBURG
Where Coronado’s men of old
Sought the Pecos’ fabled gold
Vainly many weary days,
Now the land is all ablaze.
Where the desert breezes stir,
Earth, the old sun-worshiper,
Lifts her shining chalices
Up to tempt the priestly bees.
Every golden cup is filled
With a nectar sun-distilled;
And the perfume, Nature’s prayer,
Sweetens all the desert air.
Poppies, poppies, who would stray
O’er the mountains far away,
Seeking still Quivira’s gold,
When your wealth is ours to hold?
BOOT HILL
In the old days of the Frontier, the cemetery in every town and
mining camp was called “Boot Hill,” because many of its inmates
died, literally, “With their boots on.” Today these graveyards, with
their sunken, half-obliterated graves, are all that is left of many
a once-thriving camp. Their nameless dead are the drift that mark
forgotten channels where once the tide of human life flowed full and
strong.
Go softly, you whose careless feet
Would crush the sage brush, pungent, sweet,
And brush the rabbit weed aside
From burrows where the ground squirrels hide,
And prairie dog his watch-tower keeps
Among the ragged gravel heaps.
Year long the wind blows up and down
Each lessening mound, and drifts the brown,
Dried wander-weed there at their feet--
Who no more wander, slow or fleet.
Sun-bleached, rain-warped, the head boards hold
One story, all too quickly told:
That here some wild heart takes its rest
From spent desire and fruitless quest.
Here in the greasewood’s scanty shade
How many a daring soul was laid!
Boots on, full-garbed as when he died;
The pistol belted at his side;
The worn sombrero on his breast--
To prove another man the best.
Arrow or knife, or quick-drawn gun--
The glad, mad, fearless game was done,
A life for stakes--play slow or fast--
Win--lose--yet Death was trumps at last.
Some went where bar-room tinsel flared,
Or painted dance-hall wantons stared;
Some, where the lone, brown ranges bared
Their parched length to a parching sky,
And God alone might hear the cry
From thirst-dried lips that, stiff and cold,
Seemed still to babble: “Gold, gold, gold!”
Woman, or wine, or greed, or Chance;--
A comrade’s shot; an Indian lance;
By camp or cañon, trail or street--
Here all games end; here all trails meet.
The ground squirrels chatter in the sun;
The dry, gray sage leaves, one by one,
Drift down, close-curled, in odorous heaps;
Above, wide-winged, a wild hawk sweeps;
And on the worn board at the head
Of one whose name was fear and dread,
A little, solemn ground owl sits.
Ah, here the Man and Life are quits!
Go softly, nor with careless feet--
Here all games end; here all trails meet.
THE DESERT QUEEN
Cereus Giganteus; the “Giant Cactus” of the Southwest.
I was Zenobia in the olden time
And ruled the desert from Palmyra’s walls;
I flung my challenge to imperial Rome
So far that still across the years it calls
In proud defiance--but my halls are dust;
The jackal suns him at the temple door;
The wind-blown sands hide street and corridor
And heap the palace floor.