Chapter II: Part 2

Strength of the mighty hills, and peace of them;
Peace of white, silent peaks against the sky,
And silence of far deserts gray and wide;
Freedom of winds that blow in earth’s lone places,
And the brooding rest of night above the pines,
Are in these walls; eternal as the hills,
The desert, and the wind that goes between.
The hands will pass; the written word grow dim;
The name an echo’s echo faint and die;
But when its farthest whisper is forgot
These walls shall speak of human hope and love;
Shall say to unknown men in unguessed years:
“Here one made truce with Time a little hour;
Fought, worked; held hard-won victory--knew defeat;
Drained Life’s cup from the bubbles to the lees
And tossed it down and took him to the dust.”

THE DEATH OF THE OLD HUNTER

For a third of a century William Reavis, the “Old Hunter,” “The Hermit of Superstition Mountains,” lived alone with his traps and rifle and burros, and died at last as he had lived: “Alone with the wind and the stars and the sky.” In his life and death he was a type of frontiersman now passed and almost forgotten.

Out! Carry me out! I choke in these cabin walls!
Lay me down on the earth under the wide night sky:
Straight on the strong, clean earth--no idle blanket between;
Cheek to cheek with the dust I will watch my last lean hour go by.

Farther! Push back that bough till I face the stars:
North star--Dipper--Pointer that still holds true;
Many a night ye have led--through storm and wind-whipped cloud;
Lead still, old guides--I line my last long course by you.

Hark! The night wind sweeps through the crackling grass,
Nosing the thin, sere weeds that hide in the prairie swale;
Rattling the hunted reeds that shiver and shrink in the marsh,
With whimper and snarl and whine, like a hound that bays on the
trail.

Lift me up! My soul hunts with you tonight,
Old mate of a hundred trails; speed on the eager pack;
There was never a road ye knew too wild for my feet to take--
Tonight they will keep the way when even ye turn back.

Lift me up! To my feet! A hand-clasp each!
May your trail be long as mine--knife keen--and powder dry!
Eye true to the bead! Now go--quick--while I keep my feet!
I die as I lived--alone with the wind and the stars and the sky.

THE MASS OF MANGAS

Mission San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson, Arizona.

Years had the Mission stood alone,
Its silent chapels bat-tenanted;
On its altars the gray owl nested her young,
And the ground squirrels burrowed above the dead
By the western wall, nor stirred their sleep;
Bare lay the fields, sun-scorched and white;--
As black hawks scatter the timorous quail
Padre and soldier and neophyte

Scattered before the Apache hordes
That swept the valley with death and flame--
Now back at last like quail to their nests,
Timorous, fearing, they slowly came,
Priest and people; to wring anew
From the sullen desert a grudging chance
For scanty food and room to toil,
Or a quick-won end on a blood-stained lance.

With fragrant branches of gray mesquite,
And waxen yuccas fair and tall;
Lifting their bells like hands in prayer,
Slender and snowy and virginal;
And desert lilies as frail as hope,
They wreathed the altars, and lit once more
The long-dead altars, and set the rood
Over the arrow-bitten door.

The pale Christ leaned from the iron-wood cross
High in its niche deep-walled and gray;
And under his feet, in order set,
Censer and chalice in rough-wrought clay
Where once was silver shaped in Spain--
Now spoil of fight to the savage foe,
And bandied from careless hand to hand
Unblest uses and lips to know.

The tapers flickered and tenderly
The last words whispered and echoed up
To the painted saints in the dusk above,
As the padre lifted the earthen cup
And the blessed wine--but crash it fell,
Staining the floor with a crimson tide
Unseen of the startled worshipers--
For look! where the door unbarred swings wide!

Sombre and splendid in paint and plume,
With claws of eagle and puma skin,
Mangas, the dread Apache chief,
And a hundred braves at his back crowd in;
He swept the shards of the cup aside
And its silver mate on the altar set:
“Padre, the boy you stopped to draw
From the lion’s jaw makes good his debt.

“With Death hot-heel on your track you turned
To save a child of the enemy;
Let these, beloved of your hidden God,
Be bond of peace for mine and me;
And these in thanks for that other day.”
Censer and chalice he set them down,
And bared his arms of their turquoise beads,
And stripped the robe from his shoulders brown.

Man by man his men heaped up
The pile till it grew to the Virgin’s feet;
Skin and blanket, and beads that hung
Like jeweled buds in the pale mesquite.
Then swift as they came they went again;
But, so ’tis writ in the Mission rolls,
With wine and incense the padre straight
Said holy mass for their heathen souls,

And held them saved to the Mother Church;
For a grateful heart is a thing indeed
That weighed in the palm of the Savior’s hand
Out-values penance and prayer and creed;
And year by year when the yucca bells
Like flags of truce swung tall and white,
The name of Mangas was blessed anew
With book and taper and solemn rite.

THE WATER TANK AT DUSK

(In the Harqua Hala desert.)

The wild, bare, rock-fanged hills that all day long
Shut in the hand-width valley from the world,
Like wolfish out-posts which no foot might pass,
Creep close as friendly dogs with head on paws
And drowsy eyes that watch the evening fire.
Their sun-baked, tawny brown melts into mist
Of rose and violet and translucent blue,
With gold dust powdered softly through the air
That swims and shimmers as if all the earth
Were carven jewels bathed in golden light.
In the soft dusk the desert seems to pant,
Only half-rested from the burning day;
Yet stirs a little happily to feel
The night wind, cool and gentle, whispering
In the white-flowered mesquite where wild bees hum
Delirious with honey sweets and fragrances;
And through the leafless thorn whose tortured boughs
Were wreathed, men say, to crown the suffering Christ
On his high cross. (And still each Passion Week
The sorrowing tree wears buds like drops of blood
In memory.) With swift, soft whirr of wings
The gray doves flutter down beside the pool,
Cooing their love notes sweet as fairy flutes,
And in the grass the fiddler-crickets chirp.
The spotted night hawk saws his raucous note,
Like some harsh rasp upon an o’er-drawn string;
The squeaking bats drop from the cotton-wood trees,
Dipping and diving round the shining pool
Where night moths hover like moon-elves astray.
It seems the deep blue sky has fallen there
In the blue, star-set water, where the wind
Makes mimic waves that hardly over-toss
The peach-leaf boat on which the dragon fly
Rides sailor-wise to rest his gorgeous wings.
The hot, dry, day-time scent of sun-burned sand
Is drowned in sweetness of the blossoming grape,
And pungent odour of the wax-white cups
Of yerba mansa, hedging the blue pool
With a green wall whose every flower
Blooms twice, once on its tall-leafed stalk, and once
Down where the waves like silver mirrors mix
Its whiteness with the red pomegranate stars.
In the shadow of the plume-branched tamerask
There is a half-hushed, honey-throated call,
And from the cotton-wood’s topmost moonlit bough
Music’s enraptured soul seems waked to answer.
So sweet, so low, so pure, so tender-clear;
So brimmed with joy; so wistful, plaintive-sad;
As if all love o’ the world pulsed in that throat;
As if all pain o’ life beat in the heart below.
It is the mocking bird to his brown mate,
The desert’s vesper song of rest and peace.

DOLORES’ OLLA

In Mexico the fiesta of San Juan, in the heart of June, is a time of sport and pleasure and love-making. The eve of All Soul’s Night in November is a time of universal prayer for the dead. Friendless indeed is the soul for which no word is uttered then, and dearest treasures go, if need be, to buy prayers and candles for the loved one’s rest.

SAN JUAN’S DAY

San Juan’s Day in Guadalupe; the plaza is astir
With caballeros bold and gay and senoritas shy,
And Miguel the alfarero wends through the crowd to her,
Dolores with the dusky eyes as soft as twilit sky.

Dolores ’neath whose lightest touch his heart is like the clay;
Who molds him as he molds his wares upon the whirring wheel;
Oh! may the Saints be good to him on this auspicious day,
And grant him words to tell her all the love a man may feel.

Mi alma, see, this olla--how it flashes in the sun,
And shimmers with the iris of paloma’s dimpled breast!
Lift thou the lid and look within, querida, little one;
My heart lies warm below your gaze as birds lie in the nest.

ALL SOUL’S NIGHT

“Ay de mi! Valgame Dios! Senor, but a moment, stay!
The jar! The olla! Will you buy it? Very little you shall pay.
Look you, burnished green and copper, flecked with waves of rainbow
light;
Miguel, best alfarero--Good saints keep his soul tonight!
Miguel made it. Ah! The padre--going to the mass so soon!
Father, wait--a prayer for Miguel! Mary, Mother, grant the boon!--
Senor, gracias! When the aves rise tonight for Miguel’s rest,
Know a woman in the darkness prays that you too may be blest.”

NIGHT IN THE PINES

It were mid-day one had said, with a brighter sun o’erhead,
When a little hush came stealing through the branches swaying low;
Such a space of silence tender as the pause that serves to render
Some sweet music even sweeter in its pulsing after-flow.

The gold-sifted light that rested on the bracken plumes green-crested,
Shimmered faintly into silver on the diamond-dusted firs;
Upward where the mountain lifted one brown shoulder seamed and rifted,
Grew a shadow ’gainst the sky line, softly as the shade that stirs

Lightly o’er a sleeper dreaming;--then the star lamps trimmed and
gleaming,
From the dim, blue dome near-bending flashed their jewelled radiance
down:
Where the timid aspens quiver gusty wind-puffs start and shiver,
Like the ghosts of wandering night elves rustling through the
needles brown.

Night that elsewhere silently lays her spell on land and sea,
Soothing restless souls to quiet in the shadow of her wings,
Here with hushing tone and slow through the rocking pines croons low
Earth-old lullabies as tender as a watching mother sings.

Rest ye, weary hearts and lone; lean ye down against mine own;
Put aside the fret of living and be glad in dreamless sleep;
Lose awhile the vain regretting in the balm of sweet forgetting--
Or remember but the promise that the coming mornings keep.

THE DESERT

That silence which enfolds the Great Beyond
Broods in these spaces where the yucca palms
Like gray old votaries chant unworded psalms,
Grand, voiceless harmonies where-to the Heavens respond.

Lone, vast, eternal as Eternity,
The brown wastes crawl to clutch the wrinkled hills,--
Till night lets down her solemn dusk and fills
The waiting void with haunting mystery.

Here Solitude hath made her dwelling place,
As when of old amid untrodden sands,
Slow-journeying, wise men of all alien lands
Sought at her feet life’s hidden roads to trace.

All ways of earth, still glad or sad they go,
The roads of life--till breath of man shall cease--
Silent, the desert keeps her ancient peace,
And that last secret which the dead may know.

THE EAGLE OF SACRAMENTO

This poem is founded upon an incident in Colonel Doniphan’s campaign with the Army of the West in 1846-47. The battle of Sacramento was fought Feb. 28, 1847; the Mexican army, accompanied by the governor and leading citizens of Chihuahua, had taken a strong position in the rocky foothills of the Sierra de Victoriano, and there awaited Colonel Doniphan who had about nine hundred men. The Mexican army numbered 2200 men, with heavy artillery and entrenched. They expected to rout the Americans at the first fire, and amused themselves with feasting and sports while awaiting their approach.

Colonel Doniphan was compelled to make his attack across a small plain in full range of the artillery and cut by a deep gulch which offered a serious stay to the charge. Just as the column halted on its brink some of the men saw a bald eagle hovering over the plain and set up a shout of “Victory! The eagle!” They charged up the hill, sweeping the Mexican army before them, with the loss of but one man, Major Owens, who was shot from his horse.

The Chihuahuan army lost 1100 men and all stores, sheep, cattle, hard bread, and much silver coin. Several wagons were found filled with ropes cut in lengths with which to tie the captured Americans. The governor, citizens, and army fled in confusion back to the city of Chihuahua, which was occupied by Doniphan’s troops and held for some weeks.

The Hills of Victoriano were gay that winter morning;
Chihuahuan gentlemen looked down tricked out in brave array;
When Trial with the ebon flag rode forth to give us warning.
“Your leader”--“Come and take him--and luck be yours the day!”
“No quarter to the Gringo”! the skull and cross-bones fluttered;
Four thousand throats took up the yell, the echoes flung it back;
How boastfully, exultantly, the taunting threat they uttered--
As coyotes bold with number yelp round a gray wolf’s pack.

Nine hundred men in buckskin, in patches and in tatters;
Lean and hungry as the deserts we had traversed wearily;
But little versed in pipe clay, in gold lace and such matters--
Only our bare brown rifles to match their pageantry.
There on the hills above us the proud senores gathered
As for some rare fiesta, laughed with their men below;
“Now by the flag they jest at they’ll pray they ne’er were fathered;
Their jaunty coats shall sit awry ere this day’s sun is low.”

Their peons manned the cannon, their rabble filled the trenches--
We were too mean a crew to soil the hands of gentlemen;
Their mocking words they fling at us, till Mitchell fiercely
clenches
His fist and shouts: “Now, rangers! Sweep the vermin from their
den!”
Barred with a rain-washed gulley the hill sloped up before us;
A deep-worn trench too wide to leap and like to cost us dear;
Just on its edge we halted--broad wings were hovering o’er us--
“An omen! Look! the eagle!” uprose a mighty cheer.

With one wild charge we crossed the gulch, half on our comrades’
shoulders,
And, the great bald eagle leading, stormed up the rocky hill;
Their grape went wide below us, or crashed among the bowlders,
And when our rifles spoke them back the beaten guns were still:
We scared them from their cover, we sent the peons flying;
We turned on them the cannon they had not wit to fire;
What way the battle led us was strewn with dead and dying,
And we heaped their gaudy trappings to feed the funeral pyre.

One knee around the saddle horn, half lounging in his saddle,
Sat Doniphan, and whistled as he whittled carelessly,
Shaping a cedar splinter to a rough-turned wooden paddle:--
“With my compliments to Trial for his pirate flag,” said he.
The flag was torn and trampled and the throats that cried “No
quarter!”
Were silent on the bloody field or sullen in defeat;
The ropes they’d cut to bind our hands we cut again still shorter,
And we bound the fleeing stragglers as we caught them in retreat.

Back on the road where late they came with pomp and jest and
laughter,
They fled, the governor leading, to Chihuahua’s very gate;
And in their gay-decked carriages our rangers followed after,
Or on their prancing horses rode down in martial state.
What spoil was ours for taking--bread and corn and sheep and cattle!
How the “Gringo beggars” feasted on the feast the Dons had spread!
And the priest Ortiz who cursed us and reviled us through the battle,
Was left to scare the vultures and say masses for the dead.

We had three score captured cannon, guns and gun mules all together;
Our saddle bags were heavy with peso and doubloon;
We had bridles silver-studded and carved of Spanish leather--
Ah! well we turned the tale of them that boasted all too soon!
And well we cheered the eagle till the hills above us thundered;
We set the old cathedral bells to peal triumphantly--
And in the gray old plaza, while our prisoners scoffed and wondered,
We shamed our sullen foemen when we gave them amnesty.

CACTUS AND ROSE

She wore red roses as a queen
Her jewels when she wills to shine;
She pressed one full bud to her lips,
The while she bent her eyes to mine:
“Were not life cheap for such a flower?”
Was it by chance her fingers strayed
So near my own? But ere the touch
The tempter in my blood was stayed.

A mist was on the laughing eyes,
It veiled her soft, enticing grace;
Beyond her lure of gold and blue
A tender, shadowy, haunting face
Grew like a star in twilit skies
When evening fades to rarer light;
Again I saw the cactus flowers,
Blood red, in braids as black as night.

Again we paced the earthen floor
In waiting measure, till the dance
Swept to its swift and dizzy whirl;
And there were eyes that looked askance
Because her brown hand lay in mine
Like some small, gentle, brown-winged bird;
And there were hearts had given life
For that one shy, low-spoken word

That made the night so more than dear;
That set my years to one strange tune
Of footfalls on the hard-beat earth,
And soft guitar and low-hung moon;
And wind that whispered through the roof’s
Rude thatch of branches interlaced;
And bare, dark, earthen walls whereon
The leaping firelight roughly traced

Her shadow, swaying as we danced.--
Then morning came, as calm and pale
As some dead face where tapers shine;
And through the tule reeds the quail
Called mournfully--as if they knew
No other night would ever be
So dear, so rare, so blessed of God,
From sunrise to eternity.

White-robed as any bride she lay;
Like weary stars the tapers shone;
And what I vowed in that dim place
Was vowed to her dead heart alone:
I went forth old, that had been young;
But still I keep till life’s last hour
The quail call through the tule reeds,
And one dead, crumbling, cactus flower.

OUR LADY OF MIRAGE

She walks across the desert and the shuttle in her hand
Weaves out behind her webs of light that clothe the shifting sand;
Where her swift footstep passes strange, shadowy cities rise,
And chartless seas roll shoreward where never sea-shore lies;
And where no house was builded nor ever home shall be
Stretch green and peaceful homelands with tender witchery:
Like flowers that bend to greet her soft colors glow and gleam
Of gardens never tended beside an unknown stream;
And there like silver shadows move women gentle-eyed,
And children run before them and lovers walk beside;
And all that life has banished and all that love has missed
Comes in that mystic vision to keep a holy tryst.
The restless winds are music, the shifting sands reveal
The truth beyond the substance, the dream forever real--
Across life’s poorest barrens, o’er desert waste and slope,
She weaves her bright illusions, the blest mirage of hope.

THE MAID OF TUCANO

Some years ago a small agate carved with the head of a woman was found in a pre-historic mound near Phoenix, Arizona. More recently the explorations made by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes at Casa Grande have proven these mounds to have been the communal homes of a considerable people, of whom the Pima Indians of the region retain some traditions. Based somewhat upon the carved agate and with a slight thread of tradition in it the poem is still mostly fanciful.

Fair lies the vale of Tucano,
Rich Heart of the Land of the Sun;
Broad spread its emerald mesas,
Sparkling its bright waters run;
Far spread the golden-plumed maize fields,
With orchard and garden between,
To where like sentinels watching
The pines of the uplands lean.

Here in the days long forgotten
Ruled Che-he-ah-pik the Chief,
And here lived a maid of his people,
Fair in her love and her grief.
Sister in grace to the yuccas,
Swaying white-chaliced and tall;
But her heart was the heart of the snow-flower
That blooms on the high mountain wall;

Far from the reach of the many,
Who mar with the dust of their feet
And the plucking of idle fingers
Blossoms that else were sweet.
Yet the fleet-footed, venturesome climber
May win to the snowy peaks;
And to him who is true in his loving
At last turns the love that he seeks.

When the signal-smoke rose on the mountain
Like a gray banner tossed in the wind,
Or the watch fires at night glimmered star-like
Against the grim darkness behind;
The Chief said: “My forts are still holden,
No enemy strives at the pass;”
But the maid with eyes misty and tender
Looked upward and whispered “Alas!

“For the distance that lieth between us!
O Heart of my Heart! Do you dream
Of me here in the vale as you wander
By rock-riven cañon and stream,
Where in childhood we gathered the pine nuts,
Or plundered the blue pigeon’s nest,
Or standing knee deep in the bracken
Watched the sun burn to gold in the west?

“The red roses bloom for my taking,
But fairer the roses we knew,
Swaying over the cliffs in the spring time,
Their pale blossoms dappled with dew;
And sweet is the mocking bird’s music,
And the laughter in garden and hall;
But sweeter the wind in the pine trees
And the slow-pacing sentinel’s call.”

So the maiden dreamed, twining the garlands
To lay on the Harvest God’s shrine,
And mingling the fruits of the lowland
With balsamic cedar and pine;
Till the chief on his roof-terrace lying
A-weary of rule and of sport,
Let his gaze idly rest on the worker,
Alone in the old temple court.

The gray walls seemed bright with her presence,
As when a stray moonbeam illumes
With its silvery radiance the shadow
That darkens in desolate rooms:
Soft-crooning a melody tender,
And low with her home-longing grief,
She turned at a footstep and, startled,
Looked up from the flowers to the chief.

Smiling into her dark eyes that questioned
He raised the fresh garlands, “Now see
How each blossom you touch, making sweeter,
Is robbed of its sweets by a bee.
Can you wonder that I, being stronger,
And you than the blossoms more sweet,
Was drawn like the bees to the honey
And found myself here at your feet?

“Leave the garlands to fingers less slender,
These rough walls to faces less fair,
And come where love laughs in the sunshine,
And joy waits to welcome you there;
Here is silence and service and shadow,
There is music and gladness and light,
And I, who am chief to all others,
Will serve you and love you to-night.”

“Nay, your bees seek the garden buds only;
Scant honey the cactus flowers hold;
Nor careless hands linger to pluck them,
For all of their crimson and gold;
Desert born with the birthright of freedom,
They wither and fade in the close,
As I pine in the garden-set valley
For the breath of the hills and the snows.

“Think you love can be bought with a jewel?
Or caught in the net of a name?
Or a black mountain eaglet held captive
Sing sweet as your mocking bird tame?
Like to like--go you back to your roses;
For me, warrior’s daughter and bride,
Fitter home is the cloud-beaten fortress
Than here by the green river side.

“When the feast of the Harvest is over
Comes one whom you fighting-men know,
Whose station was won at the spear point,
Whose fortune is bent with the bow;
Stern guard of your battle-swept passes,
As free as the winds are and bold;
Yet with honor and truth above jewels,
And faithfulness dearer than gold.

“So farewell! Nor remember the madness
That tempted your fancy and hour;
Know no bud ever swells in the desert
But thorns hedge the heart of the flower.”
Che-he-ah-pik passed out of the courtyard
And seeking with wonder-lit face
A keen-fingered carver of gem stones,
He bade him to cunningly trace

On red agate the head of the worker,
And set it his necklace within;
“So shall those who forget me remember
The love that a chief could not win.”

* * * * *

Dust is the Harvest God’s altar;
Naught of his people is known--
Only the face of the maiden
Carved on the red agate stone.

A FLOWER ON THE TRAIL

My heart was weary yesterday;
I said: “The road is long;
The busy hum of middle day
Shuts out the morning song;
The rush of careless, hurrying feet
That crowd the upward slope,
Have crushed the daisies into dust,
And spent the dews of hope.”

Then straight within the trampled path
The eager throng had trod,
A little purple flower unclosed,
Nor pined for greener sod:
And one whose load had weighed him sore
Looked down at it and smiled,
And dreamed of woodland trails he loved
To follow when a child.

So still when bitterness and fret
Would drown the melody,
Some little harmony steals in
To set the music free;
And we may keep till day is done
The morning dreams we knew,
If ever in our hearts there live
The daisies and the dew.

THE OCCULTATION OF VENUS

The occultation of Venus and the moon, in March, 1899, was wonderfully beautiful and impressive as seen in the desert.

A jeweled crown for an old man’s brow,
That mystical, splendid, tropic sky
Arched low o’er the desert, reaching far
Its weary leagues wind-parched and dry:
So bare and lone and sad it lay,
The gray old land that seemed to yearn
With a human longing for some caress
From its granite barriers, grim and stern.

Shouldering up to the very stars
The strong peaks lifted their solemn might;
And through their rock-gapped pinnacles burned
The wondrous glory that charmed the night.
Like a giant’s scimeter wrought in gold
The late moon rose in the dawn-touched east,
And close beside white Venus shone,
As once she shone on shrine and priest.

Like a soul’s white flame the planet passed--
Alone the moon rode proud and high--
O wait of God! the lost star swung
A silver sphere in the hither sky;--
(Is it so, O Life, that thy light is lost
In the disk of Death if we could but know?)
And the old land blushed with sudden youth
In the tender fire of the morning-glow.

A FOREST LULLABY

Wind among the green leaves singing,
Bend the branches as you go;
Gently, gently, that their swinging
Hush the little heart below;
Still the busy little fingers,
Softly close the dark-fringed eyes,
For no gleam of daylight lingers
In the dusky, twilight skies.

Silver stars, come peeping, peeping,
Weaving with your shining beams,
Round my drowsy blossom sleeping,
Fairy spells of happy dreams:
Lullaby, O captive rover,
All your playmates are at rest;
Bees have left the scented clover,
Baby birds are in the nest.

Little rabbits warmly cuddle
In the grasses soft and deep;
And the wee white daisies huddle
In the shadow fast asleep:
Lullaby my bird, my blossom;
Sleep my light-winged butterfly,
Cradled safe on earth’s brown bosom
Till the morning you shall lie.

THE COLORADO RIVER

Long, silent leagues of ever-shifting sand,
White-hot and shimmering to the distant hills
Where wheeling slow the whirlwind dips and fills,
Or beckons like some shadowy, giant hand.
Gray wisps of greenwood and mesquite that stand
In withered patches like an old man’s beard,
Ragged and grizzled: nearer, dark and weird,
The river slips along the cringing land,
Swift to possess and loath to give again.
Foam-ribbed and sullen, staggering with the weight
Of forests spoiled, he takes his price in full,
Stern toll for every drop to land and men;
In witness there--Poor pawn of love or hate!--
Caught in a drift a grinning human skull.

THE END OF THE TRAIL

Sunset--and the end of the Trail;
Here the last faint footsteps fail
And I go on alone
Into the untracked ways;
I who in other days
Blazed many a road straight up
To the peaks that touch the sun--
But now is the climbing done.

No more to my feet the trail;
No more to my hand the rein;
No more--Ah! never again
The sun and the wind, and free!
The far stars over me!
As the Wilderness called I went;
Now deep and solemn and low
A Mightier calls--and I go.

Nor guide nor compass nor sign;
Face out, to the uttermost dark;
And the wind in the strong boughs--Hark!
Paean and dirge for a king!
Life, I have loved you well;
Forget the rest when you tell--
This soul did not falter, nor quail,
Nor shrink at the end of the Trail.

THE RANGE RIDER

Up and saddle at daybreak,
Into the hills with the light,
While still on piñon and cedar
Lingers the wings of night;
Clatter of hoofs in the cañon,
Scatter of horns on the trail;
Dim forms lost in the chaparral,
Fleeing like frightened quail.

Follow! the deer behind them
Pant in a beaten race;
Light in its flight is slower
Than a mountain steer in chase.
’Ware! That black bull charges;
Head down, red eyes aglow;
Crack! Crack! the pistol flashes--
God, but a noble foe!

His black bulk reels from the pathway,
The horses reek and sweat;
Unsaddle a space and breathe them,
The day’s before us yet:
Look back from our bed of bracken
Here on the world’s green roof,
You’d lie at less ease in the green below
But for pistol and sure-set hoof.

What! Is your nerve so shaken?
A man can die but once!
Who shirks the game for the chance-sent end
Is a coward soul, or a dunce.--
The turn of a loose-cinched saddle,
The plunge of a keen-curved horn--
Play down to-day--and to-morrow
Who cares that we were born!

THE YUCCA PALMS

Gray pilgrims without pouch or staff,
Or dust-stained robe, or cockle shell;
Seek ye the path to some lost shrine
Here in the desert grim as Hell?

No arched cathedral dome bends down;
The earth is iron, the sky is brass;
’Tis ages since these blistered sands
Forgot the touch of flower and grass.

Stern penance do ye for old wrongs
Mayhap, or saintship seek from pain;
With suppliant hands that never win
The benison of cooling rain.

In beggar rags like that wild throng
That once in old Perugia stood,
Ye bear your serried scourges high,
A flagellante brotherhood.

IN THE BRACKEN.

Scent of the pine on the hilltops,
Rush of the mountain breeze,
And long, deep slopes of bracken fern
Like sun-lit emerald seas.

Gray old rocks where the lizards hide
And chattering chipmunks play;
Where the brown quail leads her timorous brood
Through the fronds that bend and sway.

Home of the doe and her spotted fawns,
(Shyest of woodland things.)
Haunt of the hawks that dip and dive
On circling, fearless winds.

The skies bend down with a deeper blue
Where the white clouds drift and hover;
And the tall peaks drowse in the golden haze
That dapples their forest cover.

The needles whisper an endless song
As the brown cones bend and nod:
“O rest, O rest, with the bracken and pine
In the strong, green hills of God.”

ARIZONA

In his message of December, 1905, President Roosevelt advised that Arizona and New Mexico be admitted to the Union as one state. In Arizona the opposition to this “joint-statehood” measure was bitter and determined.

No beggar she in the mighty hall where her bay-crowned sisters wait,
No empty-handed pleader for the right of a free-born State;
No child, with a child’s insistance, demanding a gilded toy;
But a fair-browed, queenly woman, strong to create or destroy.
Wise for the need of the sons she has bred in the school where
weaklings fail;
Where cunning is less than manhood, and deeds, not words, avail:
With the high, unswerving purpose that measures and overcomes;
And the faith in the Farthest Vision that builded her hard-won homes.

Link her, in her clean-proved fitness, in her right to stand alone,--
Secure for whatever future in the strength that her past has won,--
Link her, in her morning beauty, with another, however fair?
And open your jealous portal and bid her enter there
With shackles on wrist and ankle and dust on her stately head,
And her proud eyes dim with weeping? No! Bar your doors instead
And seal them fast forever! But let her go her way--
Uncrowned, if you will, but unshackled, to wait for a larger day.

Ay! let her go bare-handed; bound with no grudging gift;
Back to her own free spaces, where her rock-ribbed mountains lift
Their walls like a sheltering fortress; back to her house and blood;
And we of her blood will go our way and reckon your judgment good.
We will wait outside your sullen door till the stars you wear grow dim
As the pale dawn-stars that swim and fade o’er our mighty Cañon’s rim;
We will lift no hand for the bays ye wear nor covet your robes of
state--
But ah! By the skies above us all we will shame ye while we wait!

We will make ye the mould of an empire here in the land ye scorn;
While ye drowse, and dream in your well-housed ease that States at
your nod are born.
Ye have blotted your own beginnings, and taught your sons to forget
That ye did not spring fat-fed and old from the powers that bear and
beget;
But the while ye follow your smooth-made roads to a fireside safe of
fears,
Shall come a voice from a land still young to sing in your age-dulled
ears
The hero song of a strife as fine as your father’s fathers knew.
When they dared the rivers of unmapped wilds at the will of a bark
canoe.

The song of the deed in the doing; of the work still hot from the
hand;
Of the yoke of man laid friendly-wise on the neck of a tameless land.
While your merchandise is weighing we will bit and bridle and rein
The floods of the storm-rocked mountains and lead them down to the
plain;
And the foam-ribbed, dark-hued waters, tired with that mighty race,
Shall lie at the feet of palm and vine and know their appointed place;
And out of that subtle union, desert with mountain flood,
Shall be homes for a nation’s choosing, where no home else had stood.

We will match the gold of your minting, with its mint-stamp dulled and
marred
By the blood and tears that have stained it, and the hands that have
clutched too hard,
With the gold that no man has lied for; the gold no woman has made
The price of her truth and honor, plying a shameless trade:
The clean, pure gold of the mountains, straight from the strong, dark
earth;
With no tang or taint upon it from the hour of its primal birth.
The trick of the Money-changer, shifting his coins as he wills,
Ye may keep--no Christ was bartered for the wealth of our lavish
hills.

“Yet we are a little people--too weak for the cares of state!”
Let us go our way--when ye look again ye may find us, mayhap, too
great.
Cities we lack--and gutters where children snatch for bread:
Numbers--and hordes of starvelings, toiling but never fed.
Spare pains that would make us greater in the pattern that ye have
set;
We hold to the larger measure of the men that ye forget--
The men who from trackless forests and prairies lone and far,
Hewed out the land where ye sit at ease and grudge us our fair-won
star.

“There yet be men, my masters,”--though the net that the trickster
flings
Lies wide on the land to its bitter shame, and his cunning parleyings
Have deafened the ears of Justice, that was blind and slow of old:
Yet Time, the last Great Judge, is not bought, or bribed, or sold;
And Time and the Race shall judge us--not a league of trafficking men,
Selling the trust of the people to barter it back again;
Palming the lives of millions as a handful of easy coin--
With a single heart to the narrow verge where Craft and State-craft
join.

CAMP-FIRE TALES

THE HASH-WRASTLER

Being the story of the life and death of the camp cook, as told by an old cow puncher.

Of course the boss he carries some weight, tho’ the owner’s a
figger-head;
(Handy fer signin’ checks an’ sich-- the Lord in His pity makes some
folks rich!
Fortune at best’s a skittish bitch as’ll neither be drove er led;
An’ “A fool fer luck!” is a standing rule, which I reckon Solomon
said.)

There’s some as growed on the own home range, an’ some as was vented
young;
An’ I’ve knowed buckaros as can’t be beat that wrastled the Greaser
tongue;
An’ there’s now an’ again a tenderfoot the cinches don’t seem to rub;
But the man that the outfit hitches to is the man that hustles the
grub.

It ain’t no cinch in the summer time to tighten a hungry belt,
When yer horse is lathered an’ steamin’ hot, an’ ye think yer goin’ to
melt;
But that old chuck wagon’s a bigger throne than the Czar of Rushy owns
When you’ve punched a blizzard from dark to dark, an’ the marrer
chilled in yer bones.

Yer _chaps_ is froze to the saddle skirts an’ the froth on yer bridle
white,
An’ the sigh ye let it ain’t no bluff when that camp-fire heaves in
sight;
An’ ye see him grab up the coffee pot an’ rattle the lid like sin;
An’ holler away to beat the band: “Grub pile! Fa-all in! Fa-a-all in!”

It’s then that ye know yer friend o’ friends, an’ that wrastler gits
his due--
In cussin’ an’ sich--fer a haloed saint couldn’t cook to suit the
crew.
It’s: “Slushy, say, yer off yer base; them biskits is dough inside.
Did ye bile the critter that Noah milked, or only her horns an’ hide?”

“Stove?” Oh, sure! A hole in the ground on the leeward side of the
camp;
The end-gate dropped fer a kneadin’ board, an’ some grease an’ rag fer
a lamp:
But his kittles was slammin’ by three o’clock, along with the bosses
snore;
A-knowin’ we’d polish his skillets clean an’ yell possessed fer more.

There was me an’ Jim an’ Otero’s Kid, I reckon we didn’t make
That wrastler’s life one shinin’ round of lemon pie an’ cake:
But he paid us off as slick an’ clean as ever a debt was paid--
An’ I low if our pull was better Beyond he’d git some boot on the
trade.

The fall rodear was all but done an’ the beef steers waitin’ to ship,
When it seemed that the Kid an’ me an’ Jim was booked fer a longer
trip.
Smallpox--an’ the way them boys lit out was worse’n the worst stampede
Of buffaloed steers on a rainy night the Old Trail ever seed.

All but that lank-jawed slinger o’ pots, that blamed hash-wrastlin’
fool;--
“I’m runnin’ this camp--you tend to biz;” he says, as stiddy an’ cool
As a chunk of ice on a Christmas tree--an’ I reckon we didn’t dispute;
Fer the Kid an’ me was as crazy as loons, an’ Jim on the cut an’
shoot.

He tied Jim up with a hackamore, an’ he pulled the three of us
through--
But I swear when I think o’ the way things went, an’ him, I feel plumb
blue;

Fer that same disease jist doused his glim as quick as you’d holler
“Scat!”
Jist cut him out an’ afore we knew he was gone like the drop of a hat.

“Th’ boys is comin’,” he says quite wild; “an’ them beans ain’t
seasoned right;
An’ Jim’ll kick at th’ bread an’ say th’ coffee’s a holy fright.
You tell ’em”--he fingered the kiverlid, an’ his words come choked
an’ thin--
“Reddy jist to th’ minnit, boys--Grub pile! Fa-a-ll in! Fa-a-ll in!”

WATCH

The Old Prospector’s Dog

What’s that ye say? That yaller dog
Ain’t killed with handsomeness, ye low?
Well, he ain’t travellin’ on his shape,
I tell ye that right here an’ now.

Ye wouldn’t have him follerin’ _you_,
Ner be ketched dead with him beside?
Well, I don’t want no better pard
When I tramp up the Great Divide.

The beauty club shied off I guess
An’ hit him pretty middlin’ light;
But looks don’t fill no empty tanks--
An’ plain old _stay’s_ what wins a fight.

An’ that dog’s got the stayin’ powers
A long sight more’n the most o’ men;
He’s just clean grit an’ “stay there” mixed,
An’ don’t ask no odds how an’ when.

’Twas crossin’ of the Plomas Range;
I’d made a right big strike, ye see,
An’ ever’ loafer in the camp
Was hangin’ round an’ watchin’ me.

So thinks I: “You’d better pull your freight
Between two suns an’ cache that dust,
Unless ye want some knife to let
Th’ daylight in through your ol’ crust.”

Well, me an’ Watch an’ my ol’ mule
Jest humped ourselves fer three hull days,
An’ then, sez I: “We’ll rest, ol’ pard;
Nobody’s follered us this ways.”

So I just cooks a bit o’ grub
An’ lays right down an’ goes to snorin’,
An’ never knows another thing
Untell I hear ol’ Watch a-roarin’.

I jumped right up an’ into Hell--
A pair o’ Greasers chokin’ me,
An’ punchin’ of me with a knife--
Another’n fightin’ Watch--an he

Jest looks at me an’ keeps a-chawin’
The rascal’s throat, an’ growlin’ low
As if to say: “Hold on, ol’ pard--
I’m comin’ soon’s I git a show.”

I fit an’ scratched an’ dodged that knife--
An’ then my foot slipped on a stone
An’ things looked dark--but next I knowed
Ol’ Watch was playin’ it alone.

He dropped his man an’ tackled mine--
An’ when my head got clear agin
I see a pile o’ rags an’ truck
Where them three Greaser thieves had bin.

An’ that ol’ dog was guardin’ me,
An’ lickin’ of my hands an’ face--
An’ him just red with drippin’ blood--
There wasn’t nary yaller place

On his ol’ hide frum head to foot.
I’se most as bad--but I caught that mule
An’ somehow histed me an’ Watch
Up on ’er back--the night was cool--

An’ we lit out--an’ long near day
I hear ’way off a rooster crowin’--
An’ jest what happened after that
I haint no certain way o’ knowin’;

Fer next I knowed I hear a voice
That kep’ a tellin’ me: “Be still--
Jest swaller this here mighty quick,
An’ when ye’ve et an’ drunk yer fill

I’ll let ye talk. Th’ dog, ye say?
Oh! he’s all right--he saved yer skin;
Come howlin’ here ’fore break o’ day,
An’ we lit out an’ brung ye in--

Him leadin’ right to where you lay--
Down crost th’ wash an’ up th’ hill--
Live? Course he’ll live. Now you hol’ on--
This haint your talk--you jes’ keep still.”

So I lays still--an’ Watch does too--
Jest sort o’ laid up fer repairs,
Fer weeks an’ weeks--till last we got
As hearty as a pair o’ bears.

Then we lit out--a-headin’ straight
Back to th’ ol’ home in Mizzury--
An’ me an’ Watch’ll settle down
An’ take our ease, I jest assure ye.

An’ any feller that thinks our looks
Haint up to par, ner apt to mash
Th’ most o’ folks, kin have his say--
But me an’ Watch has got th’ cash.

An’ its cash that counts--clean cash an’ grit;
An’ Watch has got th’ grit, I low,
An’ me th’ cash--an’ we two’s pards--
But he’s th’ best I tell ye now.

An’ when Life’s fight is fit an’ done,
An’ we go crost th’ Great Divide,
W’y Watch an’ me has made it up
That we’ll be planted side by side.

MONTE BILL

As told by the old stage driver

See that big black zahuaro[1]
Out there alone on the hill,
With the sand piled up at its sun-bleached roots?
Well, there lies Monte Bill.
Rough? Well I reckon you’d think so!
A devil to cut an’ shoot;
He’d face all the men in Creation,
An’ the fiends in Hell to boot.

His business? Oh! that was the pasteboards,
They was just the whole o’ his game;
An’ he handled ’em like greased lightnin’--
That’s how he got his name.
(An’ a name is a durned poor measure
When you’re weighin’ th’ worth of a man;
An’ you can’t go all by his business
To git at his clean ground plan.)

Bill was stagin’ it up from Ehrenberg--
I was drivin’ the six that fall!
It was hotter’n all tarnation
An’ the desert shut in like a wall;
The mirage it was sloshin’ an’ shinin’
Like the water before an’ behind;
An’ the dust in your throat near chokin’,
An’ burnin’ your eyes fair blind.

They was only two other passengers
A-making the trip that day;
A little mite of a woman,
An’ a child like a bird at play:
She was goin’ up to Fort Whipple,
Were an officer’s wife, she said,
An’ the way her baby took to Bill
Just mighty near turned his head.

We was joggin’ along through a sand-wash,
An’ talkin’ an’ laughin’ the while,
An’ nobody s’posed an Apache
Was nearer’n fifty miles;
But the time that ye think yer safest
It’s good to be sayin’ a prayer,
An’ the yell that come from a patch o’ mesquite
Plumb raised the roots o’ my hair.

Bill gobbled the situation--
Took it all to onct at a glance;
An’ to save that woman an’ baby
He saw they was just one chance.
He yelled up the boot to warn me,
An’ out o’ the side he jumped,
An’ I swung the whip an’ swore for life,--
An’ I tell ye them six bronks humped.

Bill lit on his feet an’ runnin’
An’ down by a greasewood dropped--
He knowed he had nary a show to beat
But he wasn’t the breed that stopped.--
An’ the rest? Well, Cullin’s station
Was a long ten mile away;
’Twas a run with Death--but that baby
An’ woman wan’t hurt that day.

An’ Bill? Well, it’s no good talkin’--
You know what Apaches is!
An’ a man that they git their claws on
Had better take Hell for his
When the troop from old Camp Date Creek
Got to him they came too late--
Just a smolderin’ pile of ashes
Was left to tell his fate.

We dug out a grave on the hillside
An’ filled it with cactus an’ stones;
For we didn’t want the kiotes
To chaw what was left of his bones:
An’ that “giant” growed up above him,
An’ the wind piled the sand below--
But I reckon as how old Bill don’t care,
For he’s gone where brave men go.

[1] Giant cactus of the Southwest

BEYOND THE DESERT

THE GREATER FLAG

Fling out its folds to the winds of earth from every crest and crag,
Roll strong salute from a million throats to honor this greater flag;
The flag of a larger freedom, the flag of a wider trust,
From the Arctic snow-peaks circling to the sun-scourged desert dust:
Flower of the New World’s morning; noon promise and prophesy,
Spanning the reach of endeavor into the vast To Be:
Broadening its stripes that their shadow shelter a mightier brood,
A nation reckoned of nations, fearless of temper and mood.

Never the past forgetting, to the hope of the past still true;
But formed to a larger stature ’neath skies of a deeper blue;
Grown to a fuller being; wise with the price of the years;
The wisdom born of mistakes outwrought, the tenderness taught of
tears;
Strong with the pain of the purchase, tense muscle and sweat of brow,
When Destiny over the nation’s heart drove deep its iron plow,
Fit with the brawn of battle for guarding the ways of peace,
That the factions of evil dwindle and the forces of right increase.

Hemmed no more in the cradle by the marge of the Eastern Sea,
No more for a home-hedged people the Stars of the West float free;
As the pine to its tall pride reaches, as the man to his power and
prime,
So the life of the nation broadens, strong-souled, to its riper time:
With the might of a Titan impulse, a million hands at the wheel;
A million minds far-serving, a million hearts to feel;
Upborn as a ship sea-driven when the full tides sweep and roll,
In the track of the gods fore-destined to the one unchanging goal.

In the front of the great World-Shapers given to lead and mold,
Lining the course of the New to plumb with the tried of the Old:
On the broad foundation whose mortar was leavened with blood and
tears,
Rounding the temple fore-tokened in dreams of prophets and seers;
Wide-domed as the vault of heaven; including as heaven includes;
Puny and strong alike, full-handed or bare of goods:
Holding no caste in justice, no fief of air and light--
Not flung as a bone to beggars but ceded a primal right.

No more shall the Grail of the ages for the few be sought and won;
But alike and alike the sharing when the strife is striven and done.
Each man by the flag above him bound to his bravest and best;
To full, free chance for his making, to room for his highest quest;
Bound by the flag above him to reckon his brother’s need;
Bound by the flag above him to hearken and help and heed
The voices crying in darkness, as the crying of kind and kin;
The call of the scourged and outcast, as the call of the housed
within.

Unfurl its folds to the winds of earth from every crest and crag;
Roll strong salute from a million throats to honor this greater flag;
The flag of a larger freedom, the flag of a wider trust;
From the Arctic snow-peaks waving to the sun-scourged desert dust;
With the light of its starry halo out-tossed on the utmost seas,
And its stripes in the sunshine rippling caressed by the farthest
breeze;
With the hope of the hearts that won it our torch and beacon still,
And the blood yet red for its keeping that flowed on Bunker Hill.

THE HYMN OF THE MEN THAT FAIL

Lo, here we face the Weigher with our balance; we, who out of all our
toil have won
Only hope fore-spent and ideals vanished; only scars and sweat beneath
the sun;
All we dared, and spent our hearts in daring, grasping as a hand that
grasps a star,
Star-wise in its beauty and eluding lies beyond us still as dim and
far.

And the soul that panoplied for battle once rode bravely forth in
Fortune’s train;
Wise now by futile march and foray, knows the high adventure was in
vain:
We have gained no laurels for our striving, naught of praise from them
that sit to judge;
Yet while there is room for new endeavor life is all too full for
fret or grudge.

We have failed--and bitter was the failing; full the price we paid of
faith and trust;
Still our souls turn backward unavailing to the Gods thrown prostrate
in the dust:
For we could not keep the sight of childhood; and the Grail our hearts
set out to seek--
It was but a vessel, empty, earthen--yet we had the joy of them that
seek.

All the winds of earth have blown us backward; all her tides have
turned our course awry;
And though night be gemmed with starry splendor there is never lode
star in our sky:
Straight against the winds of Fate we venture; in the teeth of every
tide we steer;
High above the darkness that enfolds us burns our guiding hope forever
clear.

We are them that fail; our hands are empty; hall and mart and temple
know us not;
Power is not to us, nor place uplifted; wit is not of us to plan and
plot;
But the wide and lonely places know us; hill and plain and wood and
dark morrass;
And the light of homes and smoke of cities rise behind our footsteps
as we pass.