Chapter II: Part 2

When Lord Landseeker came out West to have a look around,
And spend a little money if the right thing could be found,
He hadn't breathed the prairie air more than a day or two
Until he was the centre of a philanthropic crew
Who sought to show His Lordship all the shortcuts to success
(Though why they should have troubled, His Lordship couldn't guess,
For each was losing money, as he candidly confessed,
Which seemed to be a fashion with the dealers in the West).

Thus His Lordship grew suspicious that his "friends" would turn him
down,
And he quietly bought a ticket to a little country town;
But he didn't know the message that was flashed along the wire
To a simple country dealer in the land of his desire;
And it read: "Look out for Goggles, he'll be with you this a. m."
And the crowd around the station--well, he merely smiled to them,
And thought it jolly decent they'd assemble, don'tcherknow,
And file along behind him as they followed, in a row.

The snow had fallen softly all the calm November night,
And the morning found the praires with a covering of white;
But His Lordship took a citizen who "happened" in his way,
And they drove into the country for the most part of the day,
Until they reached a section that was flat and free from stone,
And the citizen remarked about a fellow he had known
Who offered thirty dollars for this section in the fall,
But the owner wanted forty, or he wouldn't sell at all.

Then His Lordship drove across it, and it seemed to catch his eye,
And he whispered to the driver, "That's the section I will buy;"
So in town they found the owner, who was very loath to sell,
But he finally consented, if His Lordship wouldn't tell
That the price was forty dollars by the acre; this agreed,
A lawyer drew the papers and His Lordship got the deed,
And he sailed across the ocean with the satisfying thought
That he'd followed his own judgment in the bargain he had bought.

The winter snows had vanished and the spring was growing late,
When Lord Landseeker came again to view his real estate,
And he drove out in a buggy to where his section lay,
And his heart was very happy as he smoked along the way
Till the section burst upon them, and he scarce believed his sight,
For the land lay in the sunshine, flashing back a snowy white . . . . .
And His Lordship stooped and felt it, and he heaved a little sigh,
As the knowledge dawned upon him that his land was--_alkali!_

His Lordship did some thinking as they journeyed back to town,
And his wonted happy features were o'ershadowed with a frown;
But he neither crawled nor blustered, neither bluffed nor swore nor
kicked,
(For the men from little England never know when they are licked),
But he advertised for tenders for construction on the land,
And the buildings he erected were the best he could command;
With a hundred rooms for students, and quarters for the staff,
And the workmen often wondered what made His Lordship laugh!

In the papers of Old England there appeared a little ad,
For the benefit of parents whose sons were going bad;
"Teach your boys the art of farming in the great Canadian West;
Our instruction is unrivalled, our curriculum the best;
There's a grate in every chamber and a bath in every hall,
And a full dress-suited dinner every ev'ning, free to all;
There is tennis, polo, marksmanship, and half the day in bed,
And we make them into farmers for a hundred pounds a head."

* * * * * * *

His Lordship's college prospers and is crowded to the doors
With "students" playing poker while the "servants" do the chores;
What they do not know of farming they make up in other lines
They are judges of tobacco and connoisseurs of wines;
They are experts at the races and at sundry other games--
Though they couldn't tell the breeching of the harness from the hames--
Though they're far from home and kindred they occasion no alarm,
_That was what their parents wanted when they sent them out to farm_.

PRAIRIE BORN

We have heard the night wind howling as we lay alone in bed;
We have heard the grey goose honking as he journeyed overhead;
We have smelt the smoke-wraith flying in the hot October wind,
And have fought the fiery demon that came roaring down behind;
We have seen the spent snow sifting through the key-hole of the door,
And the frost-line crawling, crawling, like a snake, along the floor;
We have felt the storm-fiend wrestle with the rafters in his might,
And the baffled blizzard shrieking through the turmoil of the night.

We have felt the April breezes warm along the plashy plains;
We have mind-marked to the cadence of the falling April rains;
We have heard the crash of water where the snow-fed rivers run,
Seen a thousand silver lakelets lying shining in the sun;
We have known the resurrection of the Springtime in the land,
Heard the voice of Nature calling and the words of her command,
Felt the thrill of springtime twilight and the vague, unfashioned
thought
That the season's birthday musters from the hopes we had forgot.

We have heard the cattle lowing in the silent summer nights;
We have smelt the smudge-fire fragrance--we have seen the smudge-fire
lights--
We have heard the wild duck grumbling to his mate along the bank;
Heard the thirsty horses snorting in the stream from which they drank;
Heard the voice of Youth and Laughter in the long, slow-gloaming night;
Seen the arched electric, splendor of the Great North's livid light;
Read the reason of existence--felt the touch that was divine--
And in eyes that glowed responsive saw the End of God's design.

We have smelt the curing wheat fields and the scent of new-mown hay;
We have heard the binders clatter through the dusty autumn day;
We have seen the golden stubble gleaming through the misty rain;
We have seen the plow-streaks widen as they turned it down again;
We have heard the threshers humming in the cool September night;
We have seen their dark procession by the straw-piles' eerie light;
We have heard the freight trains groaning, slipping, grinding, on the
rail,
And the idle trace chains jingle as they jogged along the trail.

We have felt the cold of winter--cursed by those who know it not--
We have braved the blizzard's vengeance, dared its most deceptive plot;
We have learned that hardy races grow from hardy circumstance,
And we face a dozen dangers to attend a country dance;
Though our means are nothing lavish we have always time for play,
And our social life commences at the closing of the day;
We have time for thought and culture, time for friendliness and friend,
And we catch a broader vision as our aspirations blend.

We have hopes to others foreign, aims they cannot understand,
We, the "heirs of all the ages," we, the first-fruits of the land;
Though we think with fond affection of the shores our fathers knew,
And we honor all our brothers--for a brother's heart is true--
Though we stand with them for progress, peace, and unity, and power,
Though we die with them, if need be, in our nation's darkest hour--
Still the prairies call us, call us, when all other voices fail,
And the call we knew in childhood is the call that must prevail.

"A COLONIAL"

(_In some circles the term "colonial" is still allowed to imply inferiority and dependence._)

Only a Colonial!
Only a man of nerve and heart
Who has spurned the ease of the life "at home,"
Only a man who would play his part
In a new breed-birth on a distant loam;
Only a man of sense and worth
Who is not afraid of the ends of earth.

Only a Colonial!
Only a man who has cornered Fate
And matched his strength with the Unattained;
Only the guard at the Outer Gate,
Who holds for you what he has gained,
That your children, seized of a better sense,
May share with him Toil's recompense.

Only a Colonial!
Only a man who has bridged the deep,
And stained the map a British hue,
Who builds an Empire while ye sleep
And deeds the ownership to you.
'Tis the Viking blood which gave you birth
That has driven him to the ends of earth.

Only a Colonial!
Wherever the flag that ye think is great
Is flown to the farthest winds that blow,
Wherever the colonists ye berate
In their blind faith-vision onward go,
Ye may find ye hearts that are British still--
In your self-conceit do ye count them nil?

Only a Colonial!
Rough as the bark of his forest tree
His ways may seem to the fat and sleek,
But ye owe your Empire to such as he,
Though the hoar-frost glisten on his cheek;
He has carried your flag where ye dared not go,
And little ye reck of the debt ye owe.

Only a Colonial!
No doubt he is raw on your social laws
And grates on your sense of caste and creed,
But he lives too near to Facts and Cause
To study heraldry and breed;
And, knowing man in his primal state,
He scorns the claims of the social great.

Only a Colonial!
The name in cheap contempt ye fling,
Is not the whim of birth or chance,
We well ignore the flippant sting,
Or charge it to your ignorance;
The colonist, and sons of his,
Have made the Empire what it is.

LITTLE TIM TROTTER

Little Tim Trotter was born in the West,
Where the prairie lies sunny and brown;
Never was, surely, so welcome a guest
In the stateliest halls of the town;
For Little Tim Trotter was thoughtful and brave,
And a lover of summer and shower,
And Little Tim Trotter took less than he gave
To the hearts that were under his power.

Little Tim Trotter would play in the sun,
Or lie in the buffalo grass,
And in fancy he saw the wild buffalo run
And the brave-riding Indians pass;
And with eyes that were deep as the infinite blue
He would picture himself at their head,
For no one so young as this hunter-man knew
That the herds and the riders were dead.

Little Tim Trotter would lie in his bed
While the fire-light played low on the floor,
And strange were the thought that in Little Tim's head
Played low like the fire at the door;
The hopes that were his, and the wonders he knew,
And the yearning he had in his heart,
With the glimmering light of the future in view,
And Little Tim just at the start!

Little Tim Trotter has heard the long call
And has answered with joy and surprise,
And the thoughts and the things that are hid from us all
To-day are revealed to his eyes;
And he rides in the van of his buffalo herd,
Or in camp with his Indians brave;
But Little Tim Trotter speaks never a word
Through the mound of a little green grave.

THE VORTEX

He farmed his own half-section and was doing fairly well;
There were seasons when the yield was rather small,
But he always had his living and had always stuff to sell,
And a little to his credit in the fall;
But he wearied of his labor and he turned a wistful eye
Where the City flashed its glamour on the stranger passing by;
He was sick of hogs and cattle--he was sick of barn and sty,
And the City sucked him in.

He was doing homestead duties--he was in his second year,
And his quarter was the finest out-of-doors;
He'd a neighbor in the township--and they called that pretty near,
And he only had to eat and do the chores;
Now he should have been contented with a kingdom of his own;
He'd a fiddle and a rifle and a "bally gramophone" . . .
He was sick of isolation, sick of living there alone,
And the City sucked him in.

He owned a little country store and traded goods for eggs;
He was salesman, buyer, manager and clerk;
And the farmers gathered in his shop and sat around on kegs
While they smoked and wished they didn't have to work;
He was tired of tasting butter that he didn't dare condemn,
He was tired of narrow farmers, he was tired of serving them,
And he thought him of the City, where they close at six P. M.,
And the City sucked him in.

He ran a country paper in the town of Easy-go,
And he hustled news and helped to "dis" the "dead";
He was editor and devil, he was master of the show,
And the Union had no halter on his head;
But he couldn't raise his circulation over twenty quires,
He was tired of washing rollers, he was tired of building fires,
He was tired of eulogizing men he knew were mostly liars,
And the City sucked him in.

He practised law and real estate and owned a house and lot;
He'd a client every once-awhile or so;
He drove into the country when the summer days were hot,
Or in winter for a sleigh-ride in the snow;
He'd enough to live in comfort and he always paid his bills,
But he tired of country customs and he wanted Fashion's frills;
He was sick of fire insurance, he was sick of drawing wills,
And the City sucked him in.

He'd a loyal congregation and his views were orthodox
Though his salary was less than he was worth,
He'd a personal regard for the future of his flocks,
And he shared with them their sorrow and their mirth;
But he longed for larger service and for bright companionship,
And a stipend that would justify his wife to take a trip;
And he read his resignation and he packed his little grip,
And the City sucked him in.

She was just a country maiden with ambitions of her own,
She could wash and she could churn and she could cook,
But she longed for broader vision and a bigger, better zone,
And she studied all about it in a book;
She'd a home and she had kindred, she'd a roof above her head,
She had time for work and leisure, she'd a chance to love and
wed;
But they saw her leave the village--they had better seen her
dead--
And the City sucked her in.

Now there's one of them a millionaire and one of them in jail,
And one of them is working on the street;
And one is washing dishes, and one has "hit the trail,"
For six have drunk the sorrows of defeat;
And one that's never spoken of where once she was supreme,
And one--they found him floating in an eddy of the stream:
They have paid the price of knowledge, they have dreamed their
little dream:
And the City sucked them in.

THE OLD GUARD

Knew you the men of the Old Guard? Men of the camp and trail;
Guard of the van when Time began in the land of grass and gale,
Of a sky-wide land they seized command where the mightiest prevail.

Who were the men of the Old Guard? Giants of strength and will,
Trained in the school of hard-luck rule and daring to die or kill;
Staking their lives, and their young, and wives, on the road up
Fortune's hill.

Whence were the men of the Old Guard? Heroes of '82;
From swamp and ledge and ocean's edge they came to see and do,
And they failed at first, and the land they cursed, but they stayed
and struggled through.

Hope of the men of the Old Guard? Little but hope was theirs;
With empty hand in an untried land they clutched at wheat and tares,
And home at night by the wood-fire light was answer to their prayers.

Way of the men of the Old Guard? What of their end and way?
You may find their bones by the lime-white stones where the sun-dried
sleugh-holes lay,
For the Goddess Trade is a costly jade, and they were the ones to pay.

Joy of the men of the Old Guard? The joy of the brave and true;
With joy they paced where Death grimaced and his icy vapors blew,
And with steady tread they bore their dead with the faith of the chosen
few.

What of the men of the Old Guard? Ask of the arching skies,
The grass that waves on their leafy graves is lisping their lullabies,
And the lives they spent are their monument and their title to Paradise.

KID McCANN

Where the farthest foothills flatten to a circle-sweeping plain,
And the cattle lands surrender to the onward march of grain,
Where the prairies stretch unbroken to the corners of the sky,
And the foremost wheat fields rustle in the warm winds droning by--
There a crippled cowboy batches in the haunts of old-time herds,
And the balance of the story is repeated in his words:

So you never heard how I lost my leg and hobble now on a crutch?
So far as the story relates to me it can't concern you much,
For it's really the story of Kid McCann and the price that a girl will
pay
For the fellow she sets her fancy on, as only a woman may;
It isn't every girl who proves her faithfulness in flames,
But fellows who listen with moistened eyes speak softly of other names.

Ned McCann owned the Double Star 'way back in the early days;
He had come out here with a sickly wife and a kid he hoped to raise
Where the climate suited the feeble-lunged, but life was scarce at its
brim,
Till a little mound by a prairie hill held half of the world for him;
And his double love would have spoiled the child had she been like me
or you,
But her only thought was for her dad and the mother she scarcely knew.

'Course, she was bred to the ranges, and before she had reached her
teens
She could straddle a nag with the best of us and ride in her smock and
jeans
Till we all caved in, and she thought it fun to camp with the round-up
bunch,
And she shared her pillow and shared our sky and shared our pipe and
lunch,
And all of us mad in love with her, but she was only a kid,
And she never dreamt what our feelings were, or the love-struck things
we did.

But even girls grow older, and, though always kind and sweet,
There came a day when she realized that we were at her feet,
But I had never spoken, nor anyone in the camp,
When in came a foreign puncher, a thoroughbred black-leg scamp,
And we who had known her since childhood saw, in our unbelieving eyes,
This wily sinner setting himself to carry off the prize.

Of course it couldn't be stood for, and little as I might like,
It fell to my lot to intimate to him it was time to hike,
Which I did in straightforward manner, in a way to be understood,
And he looked at me with a sulky scowl that boded none of us good;
But he did as he was ordered, to be absent before night,
And we lost his form in the shadowy East as he cantered out of sight.

Next day, as I rode on my cayuse, apart from the rest of the gang,
I felt a sudden rip in my leg like the jab of a red-hot tang;
And my horse went down below me, with my leg crushed in the clay,
And over me leered that fiendish face, and he grinned, and rode away;
Rode away to the eastward,--I saw him fade in the sky,
And crushed and pinned from hip to heel I counted the hours to die.

How long I lay I could never tell, for the hours were days to me,
Till struck with sudden terror I tore at my wounded knee,
For the east wind carried a smoky smell, and I read in its fiery breath
That half-a-mile of sun-dried grass was all between me and death;
With my hunting-knife I hacked my leg, but I couldn't cut the bone,
So I set myself as best I could to face my fate alone.

The fire came on like a hungry fiend on the wings of the rising wind,
And I wouldn't care to tell you all the things that were in my mind;
I saw the sun through the swirling smoke and the blue sky far above,
And I bade good-bye to the things of earth and the dearer hopes of
love;
And I figured that I had closed accounts for life's uncertain span,
When a smoke-blind broncho galloped up and there sat Kid McCann!

There wasn't much time for talking, with the death-roll in our ears,
But we sometimes live in seconds more than we could in a thousand of
years,
And before I could guess her meaning she had thrown herself on my face,
And spread her leather jacket, which her warm hands held in place;
I felt her breath in my nostrils and her fingertips in my hair,
And through the roar of the burning grass I fancied I heard a prayer.

'Twas but for a moment; the flames were gone; unharmed they had passed
me by;
God knows why the useless are spared to live while the faithful are
called to die,
But the form that had sheltered me shivered, and seemed to shrivel
away,
And when I had raised it clear of my face I looked into lifeless
clay. . . .
And darkness fell, and the world was black, and the last of my reason
fled,
And when I came to myself again I was back at the ranch, in bed.

That was back in the Eighties, and still I am living here;
I built this shanty on the spot; her grave is lying near;
And when at nights my nostrils sense the smoke-smell in the air
I seem to feel her form again, and hear again her prayer;
And then the darkness settles down and wild night-creatures cry,
But stars come out in heaven and there's comfort in the sky.

WHO OWNS THE LAND?

Who owns the land?
The Duke replied,
"I own the land. My fathers died
In winning it from foreign hands,
They paid in red blood for their lands;
Their swarthy _villeins_ bit the dust
In founding the Landowners' Trust;
And many generations dead
Substantiate what I have said,
The land belongs to us because
We've had the making of the laws."

Who owns the land?
The Common Man
Said, "Government adopts a plan
By which the land is held in fee
For common folks, like you an' me.
The man who'd alter it's a crank;
I got the transfer--in the bank--
I've little time to think about
These theories silly fellows shout,
I have to work to beat the band
To pay the mortgage on the land."

Who owns the land?
The Statesman said,
"The land supplies our daily bread,
And raises wheat, and corn, and oats,
And simple husbandmen--and votes--
The land was won at awful cost
And many soldiers' lives were lost.
Too bad! They're mostly silly boys
Who go to battle for the noise.
Here's a quotation I admire:
'The people's voice is God's desire,'
And as I rule by right divine,
I half suspect the land is mine."

Who owns the land?
The Farmer said,
"What puts that question in yer head?
I own it. Tuk a homestead here
An' lived on it fer twenty year;
I bet a new ten dollar bill
That I could hold it down until
I got the patent, an' I won;
The land is mine, as sure's a gun.
When city blokes come here to shoot,
You bet, they get the icy boot!
But 't made me mighty mad when that
Danged railway come across the flat
An' cut my homestead plumb in two,
But there I wuz--what could I do?
But jest set down, resigned to fate,
Fer fear that they'd expropriate."

Who owns the land?
The Speculator
Said, "Land is just an incubator
In which to let your dollars hatch
And, some fine morning--sell the batch."

Who owns the land?
The Indian Chief
Said, "Ugh, the white man mucha thief!
He steal my lan' because he's strong
(By gar, it take him pretty long),
He steal my lan', an' call it law,
He turn me out, me an' my squaw;
He let us die, because we not
Like him, can live in one same spot;
He talk so much of civilize--
He's civil--sometimes--an' he lies!"

Who owns the land?
The Over-Rich
Said, "All these people claim to, which
Is satisfactory to me,
So long as they cannot agree.
Let them arrange it as they will
As long as some one pays the bill.
The present plan is, surely, fine;
_The interest, at least, is mine_."

Who owns the land?
In meek surprise
The child said, "Like the air, and skies,
And running water, flowers, and birds,
And lullabies, and gentle words,
And rosy sunsets, clouds, and storms,
And God revealed in all His forms--
'Tis plain the land's the right of birth
Of every creature on the earth:
_No man can make a grain of sand;
How can he say he owns the land?_"

A RACE FOR LIFE

(_As related for the benefit of the New Arrival._)

Yes, stranger, I hev trailed the West
Since I wuz a kid on a bob-tailed nag,
I hev known the old land at its best,
An' packed most ev'ry kind of jag;
I hev rode fer life frum a prairie fire,
An' tramped fer life through a snow blockade;
I hev crumpled "bad men" by the quire,
But only once hev I been afraid.

I hev lain alone while the red-men crep'
Aroun' me in their fightin'-paint;
I have soothed the widow while she wep'
Because I'd made her man a saint;
I hev lassooed lobsters frum the East,
Till ev'ry j'int in their system shook,
An' I'd never run frum man or beast
Until I run frum a chinook.

The chinook had his lair in Crow's Nest Pass,
An' he foraged aroun' the Porcupine Hills,
But he'd loafed so long that the ranchin' grass
Had a wool-white cover frum the chills;
An' me, like a chap that wuz not afraid
Of anything with hide an' hair,
Went out in a sleigh to the hills an' stayed
Till the old chinook might find me there.

At last, when I thought I had tempted fate
Enough fer a man with a past like mine,
I hitched the bronks an' struck a gait
Along the slopes of the Porcupine;
An' the day wuz as cold as the Polar Sea,
With a nip as keen as a she-wolf fang;
But frost wuz just like food to me,
An' boldly over the fields I sang:

_"I am the man frum the Hole in the Hills,
Where the Great G. Whiliken capers 'round;
I am the gent that pays the bills
When they plant a greenhorn in the ground;
I am the Finish of folks that think
They can run a bluff on the prairie-bred,
Fer I give their vitals a fatal kink
When I open up with a shower of lead."_

An' the cold bit into my nose an' chin,
An' drilled itself to the marrow-bone;
My face wuz drawn in a frozen grin,
An' my fingers rattled like lumps of stone;
But my heart wuz as brave as an outlaw stag,
An' I laughed though the frost cut like a knife;
Till sudden I felt the hind bob drag,
An' I knew I wuz in fer a race fer life.

Out from his lair the sly chinook
Had hunted me with his fatal breath;
I dared not turn aroun' to look,
Fer to strand on the hillside there wuz death;
The hot wind sizzled along my back,
An' the sweat stood out on my shoulder-blade,
So I yelled at the team through the frozen crack
The roll of the tongue in my mouth had made--

"Get out o' here; by the Polar Star,
The fiend of the South is on your heels!"
An' I felt the old sleigh cringe an' jar,
An' fer once I prayed--fer a pair o' wheels;
But the sleigh stood still as the hind bob stuck
In mud that rolled to the bolster-rail;
So I slipped the tongue an' cursed my luck
As I straddled a bronk an' hit the trail.

Well, we beat it out by half a neck,
But the broncho's tail was scorched a sight,
An' I wuz a blistered, parboiled wreck,
An' nearly dead o' heat an' fright;
An' I squatted down in a shady spot
An' fanned myself with a wisp o' hay,
An' the boys on the lower ranches thought
They heard a voice in the chinook say:

_"I am the dope that was made to feed,
To fresh down-Easters just come out;
They'll swallow it all in their greenhorn greed,
An' send it home, beyond a doubt;
I am the caricature an' bluff
That is part of the play of the Western men"--_
What's that? You say you've had enough?
Well, pass it on to your neighbor, then.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

The following changes were made to the original text: Page 15: An ==> An' Page 16: an ==> an' Page 20: moring ==> morning Page 52: somtimes ==> sometimes Page 70: Lorship ==> Lordship _and_ Lorship ==> Lordship Page 87: wised ==> wished Page 92: and they were the the ones to pay. ==> and they were the ones to pay. Page 94: prarie ==> prairie Page 100: Stateman ==> Statesman Page 105: kew ==> knew

There were 3 stanzas of 12 lines in the midst of poems where the rest of the stanzas are 6 lines. They have been split into 6 line stanzas. The stanzas are:

Page 35: The room was warm and cosy, and the light was soft and low, Page 93: So you never heard how I lost my leg and hobble now on a crutch? Page 96: How long I lay I could never tell, for the hours were days to me,

Minor variations in spelling and punctuation have been preserved.

End of Project Gutenberg's Songs of the Prairie, by Robert J. C. Stead

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