Chapter IV: Introduction (3)

So readily the tentacles of sense
Root in the larger standard of desire,
That Hugh fell farther in the loss of fire
Than in the finding of it he arose.
And suddenly the place grew strange, as grows
A friend’s house, when the friend is on his bier,
And all that was familiar there and dear
Puts on a blank, inhospitable look.
Hugh set his face against the east, and took
That dreariest of ways, the trail of flight.
He would outcrawl the shadow of the night
And have the day to blanket him in sleep.
But as he went to meet the gloom a-creep,
Bemused with life’s irrational rebuffs,
A yelping of the dogs among the bluffs
Rose, hunger-whetted, stabbing; rent the pall
Of evening silence; blunted to a drawl
Amid the arid waterways, and died.
And as the echo to the sound replied,
So in the troubled mind of Hugh was wrought
A reminiscent cry of thought to thought
That, groping, found an unlocked door to life:
The dogs—keen flint to skin one—then the knife
Discovered. Why, that made a flint and steel!
No further with the subtle foe at heel
He fled; for all about him in the rock,
To waken when the needy hand might knock,
A savior slept! He found a flake of flint,
Scraped from his shirt a little wad of lint,
Spilled on it from the smitten stone a shower
Of ruddy seed; and saw the mystic flower
That genders its own summer, bloom anew!

And so capricious luck came back to Hugh;
And he was happier than he had been
Since Jamie to that unforgiven sin
Had yielded, ages back upon the Grand.
Now he would turn the cunning of his hand
To carving crutches, that he might arise,
Be manlike, lift more rapidly the skies
That crouched between his purpose and the mark.
The warm glow housed him from the frosty dark,
And there he wrought in very joyous mood
And sang by fits—whereat the solitude
Set laggard singers snatching at the tune.
The gaunter for their hunt, the dogs came soon
To haunt the shaken fringes of the glow,
And, pitching voices to the timeless woe,
Outwailed the lilting. So the Chorus sings
Of terror, pity and the tears of things
When most the doomed protagonist is gay.
The stars swarmed over, and the front of day
Whitened above a white world, and the sun
Rose on a sleeper with a task well done,
Nor roused him till its burning topped the blue.

When Hugh awoke, there woke a younger Hugh,
Now half a stranger; and ‘twas good to feel
With ebbing sleep the old green vigor steal,
Thrilling, along his muscles and his veins,
As in a lull of winter-cleansing rains
The gray bough quickens to the sap a-creep.
It chanced the dogs lay near him, sound asleep,
Curled nose to buttock in the noonday glow.
He killed the larger with a well-aimed blow,
Skinned, dressed and set it roasting on a spit;
And when ‘twas cooked, ate sparingly of it,
For need might yet make little seem a feast.

Fording the river shallows, south by east
He hobbled now along a withered rill
That issued where old floods had gashed the hill—
A cyclopean portal yawning sheer.
No storm of countless hoofs had entered here:
It seemed a place where nothing ever comes
But change of season. He could hear the plums
Plash in the frosted thicket, over-lush;
While, like a spirit lisping in the hush,
The crisp leaves whispered round him as they fell.
And ever now and then the autumn spell
Was broken by an ululating cry
From where far back with muzzle to the sky
The lone dog followed, mourning. Darkness came;
And huddled up beside a cozy flame,
Hugh’s sleep was but a momentary flight
Across a little shadow into light.

So day on day he toiled: and when, afloat
Above the sunset like a stygian boat,
The new moon bore the spectre of the old,
He saw—a dwindling strip of blue outrolled—
The valley of the tortuous Cheyenne.
And ere the half moon sailed the night again,
Those far lone leagues had sloughed their garb of blue,
And dwindled, dwindled, dwindled after Hugh,
Until he saw that Titan of the plains,
The sinewy Missouri. Dearth of rains
Had made the Giant gaunt as he who saw.
This loud Chain-Smasher of a late March thaw
Seemed never to have bellowed at his banks;
And yet, with staring ribs and hollow flanks,
The urge of an indomitable will
Proclaimed him of the breed of giants still;
And where the current ran a boiling track,
‘Twas like the muscles of a mighty back
Grown Atlantean in the wrestler’s craft.

Hugh set to work and built a little raft
Of driftwood bound with grapevines. So it fell
That one with an amazing tale to tell
Came drifting to the gates of Kiowa.

IV
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST

Not long Hugh let the lust of vengeance gnaw
Upon him idling; though the tale he told
And what report proclaimed him, were as gold
To buy a winter’s comfort at the Post.
“I can not rest; for I am but the ghost
Of someone murdered by a friend,” he said,
“So long as yonder traitor thinks me dead,
Aye, buried in the bellies of the crows
And kiotes!”
Whereupon said one of those
Who heard him, noting how the old man shook
As with a chill: “God fend that one should look
With such a blizzard of a face for me!”
For he went grayer like a poplar tree
That shivers, ruffling to the first faint breath
Of storm, while yet the world is still as death
Save where, far off, the kenneled thunders bay.

So brooding, he grew stronger day by day,
Until at last he laid the crutches by.
And then one evening came a rousing cry
From where the year’s last keelboat hove in view
Around the bend, its swarthy, sweating crew
Slant to the shouldered line.
Men sang that night
In Kiowa, and by the ruddy light
Of leaping fires amid the wooden walls
The cups went round; and there were merry brawls
Of bearded lads no older for the beard;
And laughing stories vied with tales of weird
By stream and prairie trail and mountain pass,
Until the tipsy Bourgeois bawled for Glass
To ‘shame these with a man’s tale fit to hear.’

The graybeard, sitting where the light was blear,
With little heart for revelry, began
His story, told as of another man
Who, loving late, loved much and was betrayed.
He spoke unwitting how his passion played
Upon them, how their eyes grew soft or hard
With what he told; yet something of the bard
He seemed, and his the purpose that is art’s,
Whereby men make a vintage of their hearts
And with the wine of beauty deaden pain.
Low-toned, insistent as October rain,
His voice beat on; and now and then would flit
Across the melancholy gray of it
A glimmer of cold fire that, like the flare
Of soundless lightning, showed a world made bare,
Green Summer slain and all its leafage stripped.

And bronze jaws tightened, brawny hands were gripped,
As though each hearer had a fickle friend.
But when the old man might have made an end,
Rounding the story to a peaceful close
At Kiowa, songlike his voice arose,
The grinning gray mask lifted and the eyes
Burned as a bard’s who sees and prophesies,
Conning the future as a time long gone.
Swaying to rhythm the dizzy tale plunged on
Even to the cutting of the traitor’s throat,
And ceased—as though a bloody strangling smote
The voice of that gray chanter, drunk with doom.
And there was shuddering in the blue-smeared gloom
Of fallen fires. It seemed the deed was done
Before their eyes who heard.
The morrow’s sun,
Low over leagues of frost-enchanted plain,
Saw Glass upon his pilgrimage again,
Northbound as hunter for the keelboat’s crew.
And many times the wide autumnal blue
Burned out and darkened to a deep of stars;
And still they toiled among the snags and bars—
Those lean up-stream men, straining at the rope,
Lashed by the doubt and strengthened by the hope
Of backward winter—engines wrought of bone
And muscle, panting for the Yellowstone,
Bend after bend and yet more bends away.
Now was the river like a sandy bay
At ebb-tide, and the far-off cutbank’s boom
Mocked them in shallows; now ‘twas like a flume
With which the toilers, barely creeping, strove.
And bend by bend the selfsame poplar grove,
Set on the selfsame headland, so it seemed,
Confronted them, as though they merely dreamed
Of passing one drear point.
So on and up
Past where the tawny Titan gulps the cup
Of Cheyenne waters, past the Moreau’s mouth;
And still wry league and stubborn league fell south,
Becoming haze and weary memory.
Then past the empty lodges of the Ree
That gaped at cornfields plundered by the Sioux;
And there old times came mightily on Hugh,
For much of him was born and buried there.
Some troubled glory of that wind-tossed hair
Was on the trampled corn; the lonely skies,
So haunted with the blue of Jamie’s eyes,
Seemed taunting him; and through the frosted wood
Along the flat, where once their tent had stood,
A chill wind sorrowed, and the blackbirds’ brawl
Amid the funeral torches of the Fall
Ran raucously, a desecrating din.

Past where the Cannon Ball and Heart come in
They labored. Now the Northwest ‘woke at last.
The gaunt bluffs bellowed back the trumpet blast
Of charging winds that made the sandbars smoke.
To breathe now was to gulp fine sand, and choke:
The stinging air was sibilant with whips.
Leaning the more and with the firmer grips,
Still northward the embattled toilers pressed
To where the river yaws into the west.
There stood the Mandan village.
Now began
The chaining of the Titan. Drift-ice ran.
The wingéd hounds of Winter ceased to bay.
The stupor of a doom completed lay
Upon the world. The biting darkness fell.
Out in the night, resounding as a well,
They heard the deck-planks popping in a vise
Of frost; all night the smithies of the ice
Reëchoed with the griding jar and clink
Of ghostly hammers welding link to link:
And morning found the world without a sound.
There lay the stubborn Prairie Titan bound,
To wait the far-off Heraclean thaw,
Though still in silent rage he strove to gnaw
The ragged shackles knitting at his breast.

And so the boatman won a winter’s rest
Among the Mandan traders: but for Hugh
There yet remained a weary work to do.
Across the naked country west by south
His purpose called him at the Big Horn’s mouth—
Three hundred miles of winging for the crow;
But by the river trail that he must go
‘Twas seven hundred winding miles at least.

So now he turned his back upon the feast,
Snug ease, the pleasant tale, the merry mood,
And took the bare, foot-sounding solitude
Northwestward. Long they watched him from the Post,
Skied on a bluff-rim, fading like a ghost
At gray cock-crow; and hooded in his breath,
He seemed indeed a fugitive from Death
On whom some tatter of the shroud still clung.
Blank space engulfed him.
Now the moon was young
When he set forth; and day by day he strode,
His scarce healed wounds upon him like a load;
And dusk by dusk his fire out-flared the moon
That waxed until it wrought a spectral noon
At nightfall. Then he came to where, awhirl
With Spring’s wild rage, the snow-born Titan girl,
A skyey wonder on her virgin face,
Receives the virile Yellowstone’s embrace
And bears the lusty Seeker for the Sea.
A bleak, horizon-wide serenity
Clung round the valley where the twain lay dead.
A winding sheet was on the marriage bed.

‘Twas warmer now; the sky grew overcast;
And as Hugh strode southwestward, all the vast
Gray void seemed suddenly astir with wings
And multitudinary whisperings—
The muffled sibilance of tumbling snow.
It seemed no more might living waters flow,
Moon gleam, star glint, dawn smoulder through, bird sing,
Or ever any fair familiar thing
Be so again. The outworn winds were furled.
Weird weavers of the twilight of a world
Wrought, thread on kissing thread, the web of doom.
Grown insubstantial in the knitted gloom,
The bluffs loomed eerie, and the scanty trees
Were dwindled to remote dream-traceries
That never might be green or shield a nest.

All day with swinging stride Hugh forged southwest
Along the Yellowstone’s smooth-paven stream,
A dream-shape moving in a troubled dream;
And all day long the whispering weavers wove.
And close on dark he came to where a grove
Of cottonwoods rose tall and shadow-thin
Against the northern bluffs. He camped therein
And with cut boughs made shelter as he might.

Close pressed the blackness of the snow-choked night
About him, and his fire of plum wood purred.
Athwart a soft penumbral drowse he heard
The tumbling snowflakes sighing all around,
Till sleep transformed it to a Summer sound
Of boyish memory—susurrant bees,
The Southwind in the tousled apple trees
And slumber flowing from their leafy gloom.

He wakened to the cottonwoods’ deep boom.
Black fury was the world. The northwest’s roar,
As of a surf upon a shipwreck shore,
Plunged high above him from the sheer bluff’s verge;
And, like the backward sucking of the surge,
Far fled the sobbing of the wild snow-spray.

Black blindness grew white blindness—and ‘twas day.
All being now seemed narrowed to a span
That held a sputtering wood fire and a man;
Beyond was tumult and a whirling maze.
The trees were but a roaring in a haze;
The sheer bluff-wall that took the blizzard’s charge
Was thunder flung along the hidden marge
Of chaos, stridden by the ghost of light.
White blindness grew black blindness—and ‘twas night
Wherethrough nor moon nor any star might grope.

Two days since, Hugh had killed an antelope
And what remained sufficed the time of storm.
The snow banked round his shelter kept him warm
And there was wood to burn for many a day.

The third dawn, oozing through a smudge of gray,
Awoke him. It was growing colder fast.
Still from the bluff high over boomed the blast,
But now it took the void with numbing wings.
By noon the woven mystery of things
Frayed raggedly, and through a sudden rift
At length Hugh saw the beetling bluff-wall lift
A sturdy shoulder to the flying rack.
Slowly the sense of distances came back
As with the waning day the great wind fell.
The pale sun set upon a frozen hell.
The wolves howled.

Hugh had left the Mandan town
When, heifer-horned, the maiden moon lies down
Beside the sea of evening. Now she rose
Scar-faced and staring blankly on the snows
While yet the twilight tarried in the west;
And more and more she came a tardy guest
As Hugh pushed onward through the frozen waste
Until she stole on midnight shadow-faced,
A haggard spectre; then no more appeared.

‘Twas on that time the man of hoary beard
Paused in the early twilight, looming lone
Upon a bluff-rim of the Yellowstone,
And peered across the white stream to the south
Where in the flatland at the Big Horn’s mouth
The new fort stood that Henry’s men had built.
What perfect peace for such a nest of guilt!
What satisfied immunity from woe!
Yon sprawling shadow, pied with candle-glow
And plumed with sparkling woodsmoke, might have been
A homestead with the children gathered in
To share its bounty through the holidays.
Hugh saw their faces round the gay hearth-blaze:
The hale old father in a mood for yarns
Or boastful of the plenty of his barns,
Fruitage of honest toil and grateful lands;
And, half a stranger to her folded hands,
The mother with October in her hair
And August in her face. One moment there
Hugh saw it. Then the monstrous brutal fact
Wiped out the dream and goaded him to act,
Though now to act seemed strangely like a dream.

Descending from the bluff, he crossed the stream,
The dry snow fifing to his eager stride.
Reaching the fort stockade, he paused to bide
The passing of a whimsy. Was it true?
Or was this but the fretted wraith of Hugh
Whose flesh had fed the kiotes long ago?

Still through a chink he saw the candle-glow,
So like an eye that brazened out a wrong.
And now there came a flight of muffled song,
The rhythmic thudding of a booted heel
That timed a squeaking fiddle to a reel!
How swiftly men forget! The spawning Earth
Is fat with graves; and what is one man worth
That fiddles should be muted at his fall?
He should have died and did not—that was all.
Well, let the living jig it! He would turn
Back to the night, the spacious unconcern
Of wilderness that never played the friend.

Now came the song and fiddling to an end,
And someone laughed within. The old man winced,
Listened with bated breath, and was convinced
‘Twas Jamie laughing! Once again he heard.
Joy filled a hush ‘twixt heart-beats like a bird;
Then like a famished cat his lurking hate
Pounced crushingly.
He found the outer gate,
Beat on it with his shoulder, raised a cry.
No doubt ‘twas deemed a fitful wind went by;
None stirred. But when he did not cease to shout,
A door creaked open and a man came out
Amid the spilling candle-glimmer, raised
The wicket in the outer gate and gazed
One moment on a face as white as death,
Because the beard was thick with frosted breath
Made mystic by the stars. Then came a gasp,
The clatter of the falling wicket’s hasp,
The crunch of panic feet along the snow;
And someone stammered huskily and low:
“My God! I saw the Old Man’s ghost out there!”
‘Twas spoken as one speaks who feels his hair
Prickle the scalp. And then another said—
It seemed like Henry’s voice—“The dead are dead:
What talk is this, Le Bon? You saw him die!
Who’s there?”
Hugh strove to shout, to give the lie
To those within; but could not fetch a sound.
Just so he dreamed of lying under ground
Beside the Grand and hearing overhead
The talk of men. Or was he really dead,
And all this but a maggot in the brain?

Then suddenly the clatter of a chain
Aroused him, and he saw the portal yawn
And saw a bright rectangled patch of dawn
As through a grave’s mouth—no, ‘twas candlelight
Poured through the open doorway on the night;
And those were men before him, bulking black
Against the glow.
Reality flashed back;
He strode ahead and entered at the door.
A falling fiddle jangled on the floor
And left a deathly silence. On his bench
The fiddler shrank. A row of eyes, a-blench
With terror, ran about the naked hall.
And there was one who huddled by the wall
And hid his face and shivered.
For a spell
That silence clung; and then the old man: “Well,
Is this the sort of welcome that I get?
‘Twas not my time to feed the kiotes yet!
Put on the pot and stew a chunk of meat
And you shall see how much a ghost can eat!
I’ve journeyed far if what I hear be true!”

Now in that none might doubt the voice of Hugh,
Nor yet the face, however it might seem
A blurred reflection in a flowing stream,
A buzz of wonder broke the trance of dread.
“Good God!” the Major gasped; “We thought you dead!
Two men have testified they saw you die!”
“If they speak truth,” Hugh answered, “then I lie
Both here and by the Grand. If I be right,
Then two lie here and shall lie from this night.
Which are they?”
Henry answered: “Yon is one.”

The old man set the trigger of his gun
And gazed on Jules who cowered by the wall.
Eyes blinked, expectant of the hammer’s fall;
Ears strained, anticipative of the roar.
But Hugh walked leisurely across the floor
And kicked the croucher, saying: “Come, get up
And wag your tail! I couldn’t kill a pup!”
Then turning round: “I had a faithful friend;
No doubt he too was with me to the end!
Where’s Jamie?”
“Started out before the snows
For Atkinson.”

V
JAMIE

The Country of the Crows,
Through which the Big Horn and the Rosebud run,
Sees over mountain peaks the setting sun;
And southward from the Yellowstone flung wide,
It broadens ever to the morning side
And has the Powder on its vague frontier.
About the subtle changing of the year,
Ere even favored valleys felt the stir
Of Spring, and yet expectancy of her
Was like a pleasant rumor all repeat
Yet none may prove, the sound of horses’ feet
Went eastward through the silence of that land.
For then it was there rode a little band
Of trappers out of Henry’s Post, to bear
Dispatches down to Atkinson, and there
To furnish out a keelboat for the Horn.
And four went lightly, but the fifth seemed worn
As with a heavy heart; for that was he
Who should have died but did not.
Silently
He heard the careless parley of his men,
And thought of how the Spring should come again,
That garish strumpet with her world-old lure,
To waken hope where nothing may endure,
To quicken love where loving is betrayed.
Yet now and then some dream of Jamie made
Slow music in him for a little while;
And they who rode beside him saw a smile
Glimmer upon that ruined face of gray,
As on a winter fog the groping day
Pours glory through a momentary rift.
Yet never did the gloom that bound him, lift;
He seemed as one who feeds upon his heart
And finds, despite the bitter and the smart,
A little sweetness and is glad for that.

Now up the Powder, striking for the Platte
Across the bleak divide the horsemen went;
Attained that river where its course is bent
From north to east: and spurring on apace
Along the wintry valley, reached the place
Where from the west flows in the Laramie.
Thence, fearing to encounter with the Ree,
They headed eastward through the barren land
To where, fleet-footed down a track of sand,
The Niobrara races for the morn—
A gaunt-loined runner.

Here at length was born
Upon the southern slopes the baby Spring,
A timid, fretful, ill-begotten thing,
A-suckle at the Winter’s withered paps:
Not such as when announced by thunder-claps
And ringed with swords of lightning, she would ride,
The haughty victrix and the mystic bride,
Clad splendidly as never Sheba’s Queen,
Before her marching multitudes of green
In many-bannered triumph! Grudging, slow,
Amid the fraying fringes of the snow
The bunch-grass sprouted; and the air was chill.
Along the northern slopes ‘twas winter still,
And no root dreamed what Triumph-over-Death
Was nurtured now in some bleak Nazareth
Beyond the crest to sunward.
On they spurred
Through vacancies that waited for the bird,
And everywhere the Odic Presence dwelt.
The Southwest blew, the snow began to melt;
And when they reached the valley of the Snake,
The Niobrara’s ice began to break,
And all night long and all day long it made
A sound as of a random cannonade
With rifles snarling down a skirmish line.

The geese went over. Every tree and vine
Was dotted thick with leaf-buds when they saw
The little river of Keyapaha
Grown mighty for the moment. Then they came,
One evening when all thickets were aflame
With pale green witch-fires and the windflowers blew,
To where the headlong Niobrara threw
His speed against the swoln Missouri’s flank
And hurled him roaring to the further bank—
A giant staggered by a pigmy’s sling.
Thence, plunging ever deeper into Spring,
Across the greening prairie east by south
They rode, and, just above the Platte’s wide mouth,
Came, weary with the trail, to Atkinson.

There all the vernal wonder-work was done:
No care-free heart might find aught lacking there.
The dove’s call wandered in the drowsy air;
A love-dream brooded in the lucent haze.
Priapic revellers, the shrieking jays
Held mystic worship in the secret shade.
Woodpeckers briskly plied their noisy trade
Along the tree-boles, and their scarlet hoods
Flashed flamelike in the smoky cottonwoods.
What lacked? Not sweetness in the sun-lulled breeze;
The plum bloom murmurous with bumblebees
Was drifted deep in every draw and slough.
Not color; witcheries of gold and blue
The dandelion and the violet
Wove in the green. Might not the sad forget,
The happy here have nothing more to seek?
Lo, yonder by that pleasant little creek,
How one might loll upon the grass and fish
And build the temple of one’s wildest wish
‘Twixt nibbles! Surely there was quite enough
Of wizard-timber and of wonder-stuff
To rear it nobly to the blue-domed roof!

Yet there was one whose spirit stood aloof
From all this joyousness—a gray old man,
No nearer now than when the quest began
To what he sought on that long winter trail.

Aye, Jamie had been there; but when the tale
That roving trappers brought from Kiowa
Was told to him, he seemed as one who saw
A ghost, and could but stare on it, they said:
Until one day he mounted horse and fled
Into the North, a devil-ridden man.
“I’ve got to go and find him if I can,”
Was all he said for days before he left.

And what of Hugh? So long of love bereft,
So long sustained and driven by his hate,
A touch of ruth now made him desolate.
No longer eager to avenge the wrong,
With not enough of pity to be strong
And just enough of love to choke and sting,
A gray old hulk amid the surge of Spring
He floundered on a lee-shore of the heart.

But when the boat was ready for the start
Up the long watery stairway to the Horn,
Hugh joined the party. And the year was shorn
Of blooming girlhood as they forged amain
Into the North; the late green-mantled plain
Grew sallow; and the ruthless golden shower
Of Summer wrought in lust upon the flower
That withered in the endless martyrdom
To seed. The scarlet quickened on the plum
About the Heart’s mouth when they came thereto;
Among the Mandans grapes were turning blue,
And they were purple at the Yellowstone.
A frosted scrub-oak, standing out alone
Upon a barren bluff top, gazing far
Above the crossing at the Powder’s bar,
Was spattered with the blood of Summer slain.
So it was Autumn in the world again,
And all those months of toil had yielded nought
To Hugh. (How often is the seeker sought
By what he seeks—a blind, heart-breaking game!)
For always had the answer been the same
From roving trapper and at trading post:
Aye, one who seemed to stare upon a ghost
And followed willy-nilly where it led,
Had gone that way in search of Hugh, they said—
A haggard, blue-eyed, yellow-headed chap.

And often had the old man thought, ‘Mayhap
He’ll be at Henry’s Post and we shall meet;
And to forgive and to forget were sweet:
‘Tis for its nurse that Vengeance whets the tooth!
And oh the golden time of Jamie’s youth,
That it should darken for a graybeard’s whim!’
So Hugh had brooded, till there came on him
The pity of a slow rain after drouth.

But at the crossing of the Rosebud’s mouth
A shadow fell upon his growing dream.
A band of Henry’s traders, bound down stream,
Who paused to traffic in the latest word—
Down-river news for matters seen and heard
In higher waters—had not met the lad,
Not yet encountered anyone who had.

Alas, the journey back to yesterwhiles!
How tangled are the trails! The stubborn miles,
How wearily they stretch! And if one win
The long way back in search of what has been,
Shall he find aught that is not strange and new?

Thus wrought the melancholy news in Hugh,
As he turned back with those who brought the news;
For more and more he dreaded now to lose
What doubtful seeking rendered doubly dear.
And in the time when keen winds stripped the year
He came with those to where the Poplar joins
The greater river. There Assinoboines,
Rich from the Summer’s hunting, had come down
And flung along the flat their ragged town,
That traders might bring goods and winter there.

So leave the heartsick graybeard. Otherwhere
The final curtain rises on the play.
‘Tis dead of Winter now. For day on day
The blizzard wind has thundered, sweeping wide
From Mississippi to the Great Divide
Out of the North beyond Saskatchewan.
Brief evening glimmers like an inverse dawn
After a long white night. The tempest dies;
The snow-haze lifts. Now let the curtain rise
Upon Milk River valley, and reveal
The stars like broken glass on frosted steel
Above the Piegan lodges, huddled deep
In snowdrifts, like a freezing flock of sheep.
A crystal weight the dread cold crushes down
And no one moves about the little town
That seems to grovel as a thing that fears.

But see! a lodge-flap swings; a squaw appears,
Hunched with the sudden cold. Her footsteps creak
Shrill in the hush. She stares upon the bleak,
White skyline for a moment, then goes in.
We follow her, push back the flap of skin,
Enter the lodge, inhale the smoke-tanged air
And blink upon the little faggot-flare
That blossoms in the center of the room.
Unsteady shadows haunt the outer gloom
Wherein the walls are guessed at. Upward, far,
The smoke-vent now and then reveals a star
As in a well. The ancient squaw, a-stoop,
Her face light-stricken, stirs a pot of soup
That simmers with a pleasant smell and sound.
A gnarled old man, cross-legged upon the ground,
Sits brooding near. He feeds the flame with sticks;
It brightens. Lo, a leaden crucifix
Upon the wall! These heathen eyes, though dim,
Have seen the white man’s God and cling to Him,
Lest on the sunset trail slow feet should err.

But look again. From yonder bed of fur
Beside the wall a white man strives to rise.
He lifts his head, with yearning sightless eyes
Gropes for the light. A mass of golden hair
Falls round the face that sickness and despair
Somehow make old, albeit he is young.
His weak voice, stumbling to the mongrel tongue
Of traders, flings a question to the squaw:
“You saw no Black Robe? Tell me what you saw!”
And she, brief-spoken as her race, replies:
“Heaped snow—sharp stars—a kiote on the rise.”

The blind youth huddles moaning in the furs.
The firewood spits and pops, the boiled pot purrs
And sputters. On this little isle of sound
The sea of winter silence presses round—
One feels it like a menace.
Now the crone
Dips out a cup of soup, and having blown
Upon it, takes it to the sick man there
And bids him eat. With wild, unseeing stare
He turns upon her: “Why are they so long?
I can not eat! I’ve done a mighty wrong;
It chokes me! Oh no, no, I must not die
Until the Black Robe comes!” His feeble cry
Sinks to a whisper. “Tell me, did they go—
Your kinsmen?”
“They went south before the snow.”
“And will they tell the Black Robe?”
“They will tell.”

The crackling of the faggots for a spell
Seems very loud. Again the sick man moans
And, struggling with the weakness in his bones,
Would gain his feet, but can not. “Go again,
And tell me that you see the bulks of men
Dim in the distance there.”
The squaw obeys;
Returns anon to crouch beside the blaze,
Numb-fingered and a-shudder from the night.
The vacant eyes that hunger for the light
Are turned upon her: “Tell me what you saw!
Or maybe snowshoes sounded up the draw.
Quick, tell me what you saw and heard out there!”
“Heaped snow—sharp stars—big stillness everywhere.”

One clutching at thin ice with numbing grip
Cries while he hopes; but when his fingers slip,
He takes the final plunge without a sound.
So sinks the youth now, hopeless. All around
The winter silence presses in; the walls
Grow vague and vanish in the gloom that crawls
Close to the failing fire.
The Piegans sleep.
Night hovers midway down the morning steep.
The sick man drowses. Nervously he starts
And listens; hears no sound except his heart’s
And that weird murmur brooding stillness makes.
But stealthily upon the quiet breaks—
Vague as the coursing of the hearer’s blood—
A muffled, rhythmic beating, thud on thud,
That, growing nearer, deepens to a crunch.
So, hungry for the distance, snowshoes munch
The crusted leagues of Winter, stride by stride.
A camp-dog barks; the hollow world outside
Brims with the running howl of many curs.

Now wide-awake, half risen in the furs,
The youth can hear low voices and the creak
Of snowshoes near the lodge. His thin, wild shriek
Startles the old folk from their slumberings:
“He comes! The Black Robe!”
Now the door-flap swings,
And briefly one who splutters Piegan, bars
The way, then enters. Now the patch of stars
Is darkened with a greater bulk that bends
Beneath the lintel. “Peace be with you, friends!
And peace with him herein who suffers pain!”
So speaks the second comer of the twain—
A white man by his voice. And he who lies
Beside the wall, with empty, groping eyes
Turned to the speaker: “There can be no peace
For me, good Father, till this gnawing cease—
The gnawing of a great wrong I have done.”

The big man leans above the youth: “My son—”
(Grown husky with the word, the deep voice breaks,
And for a little spell the whole man shakes
As with the clinging cold) “—have faith and hope!
‘Tis often nearest dawn when most we grope.
Does not the Good Book say, Who seek shall find?”

“But, Father, I am broken now and blind,
And I have sought, and I have lost the way.”
To which the stranger: “What would Jesus say?
Hark! In the silence of the heart ‘tis said—
By their own weakness are the feeble sped;
The humblest feet are surest for the goal;
The blind shall see the City of the Soul.
Lay down your burden at His feet to-night.”

Now while the fire, replenished, bathes in light
The young face scrawled with suffering and care,
Flinging ironic glories on the hair
And glinting on dull eyes that once flashed blue,
The sick one tells the story of old Hugh
To him whose face, averted from the glow,
Still lurks in gloom. The winds of battle blow
Once more along the steep. Again one sees
The rescue from the fury of the Rees,
The graybeard’s fondness for the gay lad; then
The westward march with Major Henry’s men
With all that happened there upon the Grand.

“And so we hit the trail of Henry’s band,”
The youth continues; “for we feared to die:
And dread of shame was ready with the lie
We carried to our comrades. Hugh was dead
And buried there beside the Grand, we said.
Could any doubt that what we said was true?
They even praised our courage! But I knew!
The nights were hell because I heard his cries
And saw the crows a-pecking at his eyes,
The kiotes tearing at him. O my God!
I tried and tried to think him under sod;
But every time I slept it was the same.
And then one night—I lay awake—he came!
I say he came—I know I hadn’t slept!
Amid a light like rainy dawn, he crept
Out of the dark upon his hands and knees.
The wound he got that day among the Rees
Was like red fire. A snarl of bloody hair
Hung round the eyes that had a pleading stare,
And down the ruined face and gory beard
Big tear-drops rolled. He went as he appeared,
Trailing a fog of light that died away.
And I grew old before I saw the day.
O Father, I had paid too much for breath!
The Devil traffics in the fear of death,
And may God pity anyone who buys
What I have bought with treachery and lies—
This rat-like gnawing in my breast!

“I knew
I couldn’t rest until I buried Hugh;
And so I told the Major I would go
To Atkinson with letters, ere the snow
Had choked the trails. Jules wouldn’t come along;
He didn’t seem to realize the wrong;
He called me foolish, couldn’t understand.
I rode alone—not south, but to the Grand.
Daylong my horse beat thunder from the sod,
Accusing me; and all my prayers to God
Seemed flung in vain at bolted gates of brass.
And in the night the wind among the grass
Hissed endlessly the story of my shame.

“I do not know how long I rode: I came
Upon the Grand at last, and found the place,
And it was empty. Not a sign or trace
Was left to show what end had come to Hugh.
And oh that grave! It gaped upon the blue,
A death-wound pleading dumbly for the slain.
I filled it up and fled across the plain,
And somehow came to Atkinson at last.
And there I heard the living Hugh had passed
Along the river northward in the Fall!
O Father, he had found the strength to crawl
That long, heart-breaking distance back to life,
Though Jules had taken blanket, steel and knife,
And I, his trusted comrade, had his gun!

“They said I’d better stay at Atkinson,
Because old Hugh was surely hunting me,
White-hot to kill. I did not want to flee
Or hide from him. I even wished to die,
If so this aching cancer of a lie
Might be torn out forever. So I went,
As eager as the homesick homeward bent,
In search of him and peace.
But I was cursed.
For even when his stolen rifle burst
And spewed upon me this eternal night,
I might not die as any other might;
But God so willed that friendly Piegans came
To spare me yet a little unto shame.
O Father, is there any hope for me?”

“Great hope indeed, my son!” so huskily
The other answers. “I recall a case
Like yours—no matter what the time and place—
‘Twas somewhat like the story that you tell;
Each seeking and each sought, and both in hell;
But in the tale I mind, they met at last.”

The youth sits up, white-faced and breathing fast:
“They met, you say? What happened? Quick! Oh quick!”

“The old man found the dear lad blind and sick
And both forgave—‘twas easy to forgive—
For oh we have so short a time to live—”
Whereat the youth: “Who’s here? The Black Robe’s gone!
Whose voice is this?”

The gray of winter dawn
Now creeping round the door-flap, lights the place
And shows thin fingers groping for a face
Deep-scarred and hoary with the frost of years
Whereover runs a new springtide of tears.

“O Jamie, Jamie, Jamie—I am Hugh!
There was no Black Robe yonder—Will I do?”

NOTES

BY JULIUS T. HOUSE, PH.D. (Chicago)

Head of the Department of English at the State Normal School, Wayne,
Nebraska

NOTES

GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR

Before beginning the poem carefully read the Introduction.

PAGE 1

In the study of this poem it is necessary to learn the geography and topography of the country. Define “topography.” Tell about Leavenworth Campaign; Major Henry.

The story of Hugh Glass is historical and may be found in the following works: Chittenden’s History of the American Fur Trade, New York, 1902; Sage’s Scenes in the Rocky Mountains, Boston, 1857; Ruxton’s Adventures in Mexico, London, 1847; Howe’s Historical Collections of the Great West, Cincinnati, 1857; Cooke’s Scenes and Adventures in the U. S. Army, Philadelphia, 1857; The Missouri Intelligencer for June 18, 1825. Accounts of the death of Hugh Glass, in 1832, are given in The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, London, 1892, and in Maximilian’s Travels, London, 1843.

=2.= ‘Twas when the guns that blustered at the Ree

Ree—Aricara or Rickaree Indians. Locate them in 1823.

Where are they now?

=3.= Had ceased to brag, and ten score martial clowns

Why “clowns”? See Introduction.

=6.= A withering blast the arid South still blew,

What is “South”? Why capitalized? Did Homer and Vergil personify
the winds?

=9.= Southward before the Great White Hunter’s face:

Who is the Great White Hunter? What is the time of year?

=13.= With eighty trappers up the dwindling Grand,

Why “dwindling”?

=14.= Bound through the weird, unfriending barren-land

“Unfriending” whom?

=15.= For where the Big Horn meets the Yellowstone;

Locate the junction of the streams.

PAGE 2

=1.= Deep-chested, that his great heart might have play,

Describe Hugh Glass. Hugh’s physical characteristics are drawn
in large lines. Compare this with the more elaborate
descriptions of persons in other books. Which is more effective?

=2.= Gray-bearded, gray of eye and crowned with gray

Our author’s descriptions leave much room for the play of the
reader’s imagination. Is this method effective with you?

=4.= And, for the grudging habit of his tongue,

“For”—by reason of.

=8.= And hate in him was like a still, white hell,

Why “white”?

=9.= A thing of doom not lightly reconciled.

What does “reconciled” modify? What is this figure called?

=14.= Old Hugh stared long upon the pictured blaze,

What were the pictures Hugh saw in the blaze? Would you like to
know more of Hugh’s past? Why does not the author tell us more
concerning it?

=17.= The veil was rent, and briefly men discerned

What “veil”?

=19.= Beneath the still gray smoldering of him.

What figure in “still gray smoldering”? Was Hugh a good fighter?
A man whose anger was to be feared?

PAGE 3

=2.= So, tardily, outflowered the wild blond strain

Whence the “wild blond strain”?

=4.= A Ganymedes haunted by a Goth

Who was Ganymedes? The Goths?

=5.= When the restive ghost was laid,

What was the “restive ghost”? How old was Jamie?

=17.= When Ashley stormed a bluff town of the Ree,

Who was Ashley? See Introduction.

=20.= Yet, hardly courage, but blind rage agrope

What is courage?

=23.= Tore off the gray mask, and the heart shone through.

What was the “gray mask”?

=24.= For, halting in a dry, flood-guttered draw,

Define “draw” as here used. How does it differ from “ravine”?
from “gully”?

PAGE 4

=24.= As though spring-fire should waken out of snow.

Explain the figure.

PAGE 5

=4.= So with their sons are women brought to bed,

Of whom is Hugh thinking when he uses these words?

=13.= Nor could these know what mocking ghost of Spring

Express in other words the idea contained in “mocking ghost of
Spring.”

=16.= So might a dawn-struck digit of the moon

Explain the figure and interpret it in terms of Hugh’s feelings
for Jamie.

=18.= And ache through all its craters to be green.

What is the present condition of the surface of the moon?

=21.= Pang dwelling in a puckered cicatrice

Define “cicatrice.” Explain the figure.

=23.= Yet very precious was the hurt thereof,

=24.= Grievous to bear, too dear to cast away.

These lines constitute a paradox. Define “paradox.” Explain the
meaning of the lines. Can pain be “precious”?

PAGE 6

What lines in this page forecast an approaching disaster? Can you recall such forecasts in other pieces of literature?

=10.= A phantom April over melting snow,

Why “phantom” April?

=11.= Deep in the North some new white wrath is brewed.

Express the meaning of this line in other language. How does it
apply to the story?

=16.= Tales jaggéd with the bleak unstudied word,

Was the language of Hugh’s stories polished? Effective? Are men
natural story tellers? Answer from your own experience.

What does the life of primitive man tell us with regard to the
matter?

=17.= Stark saga-stuff.

Define “saga.” What is meant by the words: “stark saga-stuff”?

=19.= A mere pelt merchant, as it seemed to him;

Define: pelt, epic, whist. Is “Hugh Glass” epic in material and
form?

PAGE 7

Which of these men loves the other more? In case of severe trial will each be true to the other? Is either likely to be vengeful? unforgiving? fickle?

=3.= That myth that somehow had to be the truth,

What is “that myth”? What feeling is expressed in “had to be the
truth”?

=4.= Yet could not be convincing any more.

Why could it not “be convincing any more”?

=17.= And so with merry jest the old man went;

Note in the passage the second forecast of disaster.

PAGE 8

=9.= The dusty progress of the cavalcade

=10.= The journey of a snail flock to the moon;

What feeling in Jamie is made clear in this figure?

=11.= Until the shadow-weaving afternoon

Explain the figure “shadow-weaving afternoon,” etc.

=17.= Hoofbeats of ghostly steeds on every hill,

=18.= Mysterious, muffled hoofs on every bluff!

=19.= Spurred echo horses clattering up the rough, etc.

Explain “hoofbeats of ghostly steeds,” “muffled hoofs,” “echo
horses.”

=21.= The lagging air droned like the drowsy word

Why “drowsy” word? The transfer of an epithet is called a
“trope,” from a Greek word meaning _to turn_.

PAGE 9

=1.= Lean galloper in a wind of splendid deeds,

Note the vivid imagery and the effect of the broken meter.

=4.= The horse stopped short—then Jamie was aware, etc.

What gives the effect of loneliness in these lines?

Note the effect of vast stretches of space in the use of the
names of heavenly bodies to denote the points of the compass. A
sense of the infinity of space arises often in the reader of
this poem.

Any imaginative person feels this sense ever deepening upon him
on looking long at the prairies.

=11.= Save for a welter of cawing crows,

What is the effect of the cawing of the crows in the general
stillness?

Note that the meter is intentionally changed. What effect?

=13.= One faint star, set above the fading blush, etc.

What is the effect of the mention of the star and its growing
from faint to clear?

=16.= For answer, the horse neighed.

What is the effect of the neighing of the horse?

=17.= Some vague mistrust now made him half afraid, etc.

Mistrust of what? Is disaster near?

PAGE 10

=1.= “Somewhere about the forks as like as not;

=2.= And there’ll be hunks of fresh meat steaming hot,

=3.= And fighting stories by a dying fire!”

Why does Jamie talk to himself?

=4.= The sunset reared a luminous phantom spire

=5.= That, crumbling, sifted ashes down the sky.

What is the effect of these two lines?

=8.= And in the vast denial of the hush

=9.= The champing of the snaffled horse seemed loud.

What is the effect of these two lines? What is the “vast
denial”?

Why mention “the champing of the horse”? Pages 9 and 10 are used
to induce in the reader a sense of extreme loneliness.

Where is the climax? What devices have been employed for the
purpose?

=17.= The laggard air was like a voice that sang,

Why is the air now as a voice that sings rather than drowsy and
weird?

=18.= And Jamie half believed he sniffed the tang

=19.= Of woodsmoke and the smell of flesh a-roast;

These lines indicate the lad’s eagerness.

PAGE 11

=2.= And in the whirlwind of a moment there, etc.

Could Jamie perceive so much in so brief a time under such
circumstances? Does the picture in “huddled, broken thing” seem
realistic?

=11.= A landscape stares with every circumstance etc.

Jamie’s experience in the preceding lines is here explained. Did
you ever notice how plainly things stand out in a flare of
lightning?

=14.= Then before his eyes, etc.

Is this consistent with the part of Jamie in the fight with the
Rees?

=22.= Heard the brush crash etc.

Onomatopœia. Define “rubble.”

PAGE 12

=1.= A swift thought swept the mind of Jamie clear, etc.

Is the change in Jamie from anger to coolness good psychology?

Why?

=8.= Swerved sharply streamward. Sliddering in the sand,

Note onomatopœia. How did Jamie elude the bear?

=17.= Like some vague shape of fury in a dream,

Why did the sight of the bear seem thus to Jamie?

PAGE 13

=4.= Would think of such a “trick of getting game”!

For a moment Jamie feels as if Hugh were still living and he can
now triumph in his skill. Was that natural in a boy?

=6.= Like a dull blade thrust back into a wound.

Memory of sorrow “like a dull blade,” etc. Is that true to life?

=10.= Like some familiar face gone strange at last.

Meaning of “gone strange at last”?

In this and the next three pages note the sincerity and the
boyishness of Jamie’s affection and grief. It is necessary to
understand Jamie now that the reader may interpret his later
conduct.

Define: eld, blear.

PAGE 14

=6.= Had wiped the pictured features from a slate! etc.

Note two powerful similes in these lines. Do they convey
adequately the horror of the spectator? This “ruined face” of
Hugh’s has much in the remainder of the story. The lines are not
pleasant to read, but life is not always pleasant. Homer and
Shakespeare often wrote lines that shock by their naked truth.

=15.= Still painted upon black that alien stare

Why “alien stare”?

=16.= To make the lad more terribly alone.

Why “more terribly alone”?

=21.= Pale vagrants from the legendry of death

Pale vagrants, _i.e._ ghosts.

Define: funereal, alien, legendry, potential.

PAGE 17

=6.= For, though the graybeard fought with sobbing breath, etc.

A wrestling match in which death has a “strangling grip” on
Hugh. Note the vividness of physical imagery, “neck veins like a
purple thong tangled with knots.” What biblical allusion in
“break upon the hip”?

=11.= There where the trail forked outward far and dim;

What “trail forked outward”?

=13.= His moan went treble like a song of pain,

Does the voice become like a shrill song under such
circumstances?

=20.= For dying is a game of solitaire, etc.

A grim epigram.

Define: treble, solitaire.

PAGE 18

The rest of this division of the poem develops the catastrophe of cowardice and treachery. The elements of it are (1) Jamie’s youthfulness and unsettled character, (2) Le Bon’s ability to play upon his weakness, (3) the actual nearness of the Rees, (4) the apparently hopeless condition of Hugh prolonged over several days.

=12.= That mercenary motives prompted him.

Do you believe the protestations of Jules that mercenary motives
do not prompt him? Does he “protest too much”?

=16.= The Rickarees were scattered to the West:

Why mention the Indians so early?

=19.= Three days a southwest wind may blow

A southwest wind on the plains is always warm, and seldom
carries rain.

Explain the application.

PAGE 19

Why does Jules talk always as though the death of Hugh were certain?

=10.= Unnumbered tales accordant with the case,

Do you think Le Bon knew these tales?

=18.= A bear’s hug—ugh!’ And Jamie winced etc.

What was the effect on Jamie?

Define: dialectic, colophon.

PAGE 20

=8.= So summoning a mood etc.

How do Le Bon’s stories change as night comes on? Is his
psychology effective? Note the increase in the fears of Jamie.

=11.= Of men outnumbered: and like him of old, etc.

“Him of old”—Æneas in Æneid, Book II.

=23.= Gray-souled, he wakened to a dawn of gray,

“Gray-souled”—meaning? “A poet is known by his epithets.”

Define: lugubriously, garrulous.

PAGE 21

=1.= And felt that something strong had gone away.

What strong thing had gone away?

=5.= Jules, snug and snoring in his blanket there, etc.

Is it natural that the conscious living Jules should seem more
real to the boy than his unconscious friend?

=6.= Just so, pain etc.

Note the epigram. Is it a true one?

=14.= But grappled with the angel.

Jacob in Genesis.

=18.= Many men May tower, etc.

Would such a statement be peculiarly true of a boy like Jamie?

Recall his conduct in the Ree fight.

=24.= Nor might a fire be lit,

Note the shrewdness of Jules in failing to light a fire.

PAGE 22

What shows that Jamie is at the breaking point?

=4.= And with it lulled the fight, as on a field, etc.

The crisis of the disease.

=9.= It would soon be o’er, etc.

Jules talks in sentimental vein. Sentimental people are very
often cruel.

=17.= To dig a hole that might conceal a man;

Would Jamie have resented the digging of a grave four days
earlier?

Jules easily weeps. So do many insincere people.

Define: beleaguered, mutability, immemorial, funerary.

PAGES 23–25

The last stage of Jamie’s breakdown.

Had you any doubt that Jules would beget panic in Jamie? How much do you blame Jamie? Why did Le Bon take Hugh’s gun, blanket, and knife?

THE AWAKENING

PAGE 26

Note that the last line of the first division of the poem rhymes with the first line of the second division. Have you noticed that many times the rhyming lines close one paragraph and open the next? The effect of this device is to keep the mind of the reader in strain for what is to follow.