Южные песни

CACTUS AND PINE

                SONGS OF THE SOUTHWEST

                BY

                SHARLOT M. HALL

                [Illustration]

                BOSTON
                SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
                1911




                Copyright, 1910
                SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY




  To the mother who bore my body;
  To the land that mothered my soul;
  To the Ultimate Guide who led me
  Scarred through the battle, but whole;
  Mother, and Land, and The Vision,
  Stern trails where my feet were set;
  Take these from the Price I owe ye--
  Whose life is less than the Debt.




CONTENTS


                PAGE

  THE WEST                1

  THE SANTA FE TRAIL                5

  THE SONG OF THE COLORADO                9

  TWO BITS                12

  SPRING IN THE DESERT                16

  IN OLD TUCSON                18

  THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MARY                20

  THE SONG OF THE PINE                23

  SHEEP HERDING                26

  THE MERCY OF NA-CHIS                28

  THE SEA TO A DESERT DWELLER                31

  HIS PLACE                33

  THE TRAIL OF DEATH                35

  THE PINES OF THE MOGOLLONES                38

  THE IVORY CRUCIFIX                40

  A SONG FROM THE HILLS                43

  JUAN OF THE SLAG POTS                45

  OVER THE RANGE                47

  A SADDLE SONG                49

  AT MISSION PURISSIMA                51

  POPPIES OF WICKENBURG                54

  BOOT HILL                55

  THE DESERT QUEEN                57

  TO A HOME IN A CANON                58

  THE DEATH OF THE OLD HUNTER                59

  THE MASS OF MANGAS                61

  THE WATER TANK AT DUSK                64

  DOLORES’ OLLA                67

  NIGHT IN THE PINES                69

  THE DESERT                71

  THE EAGLE OF SACRAMENTO                72

  CACTUS AND ROSE                77

  OUR LADY OF MIRAGE                79

  THE MAID OF TUCANO                80

  A FLOWER ON THE TRAIL                85

  THE OCCULTATION OF VENUS                86

  A FOREST LULLABY                87

  THE COLORADO RIVER                88

  THE END OF THE TRAIL                89

  THE RANGE RIDER                90

  THE YUCCA PALMS                92

  IN THE BRACKEN                93

  ARIZONA                94


  CAMP FIRE TALES

  THE HASH-WRASTLER                101

  WATCH                105

  MONTE BILL                109


  BEYOND THE DESERT

  THE GREATER FLAG                115

  THE HYMN OF THE MEN THAT FAIL                119

  THE LAST CAMP-FIRE                122

  THE GIVERS                124

  A CREED                125

  QUITS                126

  MEDUSA TO PERSEUS                127

  THE LONG QUEST                130

  A LITANY OF EVERY DAY                132

  WIND SONG                134

  THE LOST THOUGHTS                136

  THE STRANGER                138

  DAY’S END                139

  THE FIRST FIRE ON THE HEARTH                140

  A TRUCE WITH DEAD SOULS                142

  A FRIEND                143

  MAGDALEN                145

  THE EARTH MADONNA                146

  LOVE’S WISDOM                147

  THE GIFTS                149

  LIFE IS A DAY                151

  THE COMPACT                153

  COMPANIONED                155

  ALONE                157

  THE INHERITOR                158

  ON MY OWN PORTRAIT                161

  THE IMMORTAL                162

  THE BEDESMAN OF THE YEAR                165

  THE LONG MARCH                166

  THE RACE MOTHER                170

  ROAD’S END                172

  THE CHOOSING                173

  WINE OF DREAMS                175

  MY GARDEN                177

  SUMMER APPLES                178

  HER FINGER FATE                179

  DUMB IN JUNE                181

  MEMORIAM                182

  AS A LITTLE SHADOW ON THE GRASS                184

  DAWN                185

  A BALLAD OF CHARLIE’S MEN                186

  A LOST IDEAL                188

  THE LIFE-BOND                189

  TO SONG                190

  HER GIFT                191

  THE LIFE EXPRESS                192

  FOR A BIRTHDAY                193

  GOD SPEED                194

  A CHANT TO DEATH                195

  THE FAR-CALLED                197

  TIRED                199

  WHEN SHE WENT ON                200

  O GREAT CONSOLER                201

  AND THIS IS LIFE                203

  THE THINKER                204




                CACTUS AND PINE




THE WEST


  When the world of waters was parted by the stroke of a mighty rod,
  Her eyes were first of the lands of earth to look on the face of God;
  The white mists robed and throned her, and the sun in his orbit wide
  Bent down from his ultimate pathway and claimed her his chosen bride;
  And he who had formed and dowered her with the dower of a royal queen,
  Decreed her the strength of mighty hills, the peace of the plains
   between;
  The silence of utmost desert, and ca;ons rifted and riven,
  And the music of wide-flung forests were strong winds shout to heaven.

  Then high and apart he set her and bade the gray seas guard,
  And the lean sands clutching her garments’ hem keep stern and solemn
   ward.
  What dreams she knew as she waited! What strange keels touched her
   shore!
  And feet went into the stillness and returned to the sea no more.
  They passed through her dream like shadows--till she woke one pregnant
   morn
  And watched Magellan’s white-winged ships swing round the ice-bound
   Horn;
  She thrilled to their masterful presage, those dauntless sails from
   afar,
  And laughed as she leaned to the ocean till her face shone out like a
   star.

  And men who toiled in the drudging hives of a world as flat as a floor
  Thrilled in their souls to her laughter and turned with face to the
   door;
  And creeds as hoary as Adam, and feuds as old as Cain,
  Fell deaf on the ear that harkened and caught that far refrain;
  Into dungeons by light forgotten, and prisons of grim despair,
  Hope came with pale reflection of her star on the swooning air;
  And the old, hedged, human whirlpool, with its seething misery,
  Broke bound, as a pent-up river breaks through to the healing sea.

  Calling, calling, calling; resistless, imperative, strong;
  Soldier and priest and dreamer--she drew them, a mighty throng;
  The unmapped seas took tribute of many a dauntless band,
  And many a brave hope measured but bleaching bones in the sand;
  Yet for one that fell a hundred sprang out to fill his place;
  For death at her call was sweeter than life in a tamer race.
  Sinew and bone she drew them; steel-thewed--and the weaklings shrank;
  Grim-wrought of granite and iron were the men of her foremost rank.

  Stern as the land before them, and strong as the waters crossed;
  Men who had looked on the face of defeat nor counted the battle lost;
  Uncrowned rulers and statesmen, shaping their daily need
  To the law of brother with brother, till the world stood by to heed;
  The sills of a greater empire they hewed and hammered and turned,
  And the torch of a larger freedom from their blazing hilltops burned;
  Till the old ideals that had led them grew dim as a childhood’s dream,
  And Caste went down in the balance, and Manhood stood supreme.

  The wanderers of earth turned to her, outcast of the older lands;
  With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them
   pitying hands;
  And she cried to the Old World cities that drowse by the Eastern main:
  “Send me your weary, house-worn broods, and I’ll send you Men again!
  Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow,
  Is room for a larger reaping than your o’ertilled fields can grow;
  Seed of the Man-Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun;
  Free, with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won.”

  For men, like the grain of the cornfields, grow small in the huddled
   crowd;
  And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud;
  For hills like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track;
  And sick with the clang of pavements, and the marts of the trafficking
   pack;
  Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound;
  The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground
  Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Eden-birth,
  That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth.




THE SANTA FE TRAIL


  This way walked Fate; and as she went flung far the line of destiny
  That bound an untracked continent to brotherhood from sea to sea;
  That long gray trail of dream and hope, marked mile by mile with
   graves that keep
  On every barren hill and slope some stout heart lost in dreamless
   sleep.
  Patience and faith and fortitude were willed to it and justified;
  Stern, homely virtues, plain and rude; eternal as the sky, and wide.
  Nor ever sea king dared the sea in braver mood than those who went
  Strong-armed to wrest from Mystery their birth-right, half a
   continent.

  Gay, hawk-eyed, brown-faced voyageurs, tired of the river’s muddy
   tide,
  Or drawn by whispered, golden lures, or beckoned by the prairies
   wide;
  These first, and lightly down the wind their songs float backward as
   they pass;--
  So light they go they leave behind scarce one dim footprint on the
   grass.
  And after them, lean, rugged, grim,--one marked untrodden heights to
   scan;
  The gray peak looking down on him knew something kindred in the man:
  Prophetic his keen eyes could trace in those lone wastes that seemed
   to wait,
  The larger promise of his race, the germ of many an unborn State.

  Then Fremont, leading Empire’s way; beside him, silent, dim,
   unguessed,
  Unheralded to claim her own, the Soul of the Awakening West:
  Behind above the thundering flight of fear-swept bison vaguely beat
  A murmur dominant with might, the trample of a million feet.
  That long gray trail! That path of fate! For gain or loss, for life or
   death,
  Driven by greed or hope or hate, it drew them to the latest breath;
  It broke them to its giant mold; it seared their weakness to the bone;
  It stripped them stark to sun and cold and mocked at whimperer and
   drone.

  And they were Men that bore its mark; and they were Men its service
   made--
  Strong-souled to face the utter dark, and watch with Fear still
   unafraid;
  Stern school of heroes unconfessed; unweighed for meed of right or
   wrong;
  By glib late-comers dispossessed of honors that to them belong;
  As in the fire-tried furnace hour strange, warring elements will fuse
  To purpose, unity, and power; to truer strength and nobler use--
  Unconscious, save that here was life a man might live as manhood
   meant,
  They wrought a nation from their strife and shaped it with their
   discontent.

  No pulseless, still-born hope was theirs; each man a later Argonaut,
  Who from great dreams and ceaseless cares outwove the golden fleece
   he sought;
  And single-handed out of need made potent opportunity;
  Nor shamed the hour with laggard deed; nor quailed at naked Destiny:
  They touched the Wilderness to flower; they gave the unvoiced solitude
  A tongue that spoke with master power the message of its iron mood:--
  But ah! the coast! The hands that bled! The toll of heart-aches and of
   tears!
  The stern, white faces of the dead that paved that highway through the
   years!

  The long grass hides the rutted trail where tracked those mighty
   caravans
  Whose far-lit camp fires low and pale, elude, howe’er the vision scans
  That lost horizon, shrunk to fit the little roads that come and go,
  By easy ways of greatness quit, that any chance-drawn foot may know;
  Light trails and traffic o’er the dust of them that were a braver
   breed;
  Forgotten in the careless lust for larger gain and lesser deed.--
  Mother of all the Roads that hold that power o’er men that makes or
   mars!
  These lead to cities, lands, and gold--this led to the eternal stars!




THE SONG OF THE COLORADO


  From the heart of the mighty mountains strong-souled for my fate I
   came,
  My far-drawn track to a nameless sea through a land without a name;
  And the earth rose up to hold me, to bid me linger and stay;
  And the brawn and bone of my mother’s race were set to bar my way.

  Yet I stayed not, I could not linger; my soul was tense to the call
  The wet winds sing when the long waves leap and beat on the far sea
   wall.
  I stayed not, I could not linger; patient, resistless, alone,
  I hewed the trail of my destiny deep in the hindering stone.

  How narrow that first dim pathway--yet deepening hour by hour!
  Years, ages, eons, spent and forgot, while I gathered me might and
   power
  To answer the call that led me, to carve my road to the sea,
  Till my flood swept out with that greater tide as tireless and
   tameless and free.

  From the far, wild land that bore me, I drew my blood as wild--
  I, born of the glacier’s glory, born of the uplands piled
  Like stairs to the door of heaven, that the Maker of All might go
  Down from His place with honor, to look on the world and know

  That the sun and the wind and the waters, and the white ice cold and
   still,
  Were moving aright in the plan He had made, shaping His wish and will.
  When the spirit of worship was on me, turning alone, apart,
  I stayed and carved me temples deep in the mountain’s heart,

  Wide-domed and vast and silent, meet for the God I knew,
  With shrines that were shadowed and solemn and altars of richest hue;
  And out of my ceaseless striving I wrought a victor’s hymn,
  Flung up to the stars in greeting from my far track deep and dim.

  For the earth was put behind me; I reckoned no more with them
  That come or go at her bidding, and cling to her garment’s hem.
  Apart in my rock-hewn pathway, where the great cliffs shut me in,
  The storm-swept clouds were my brethren, and the stars were my kind
   and kin.

  Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went as one who goes
  On some high and strong adventure that only his own heart knows.
  Tireless, alone, unstaying, I went in my chosen road--
  I trafficked with no man’s burden--I bent me to no man’s load.

  On my tawny, sinuous shoulders no salt-gray ships swung in;
  I washed no feet of cities, like a slave whipped out and in;
  My will was the law of my moving in the land that my strife had made--
  As a man in the house he has builded, master and unafraid.

  O ye that would hedge and bind me--remembering whence I came!
  I, that was, and was mighty, ere your race had breath or name!
  Play with your dreams in the sunshine--delve and toil and plot--
  Yet I keep the way of my will to the sea, when ye and your race are
   not!




TWO BITS

Two Bits was an old race horse well known from Texas to Arizona. He
belonged at the time of his death to Lieut. Charles Curtis (now Capt.
Curtis, Military Instructor at the University of Wisconsin), who built
the first stockade on the site of the present Fort Whipple, Arizona.
The incident is true; wounded to his death, the old horse out-ran
the Apaches and after his rider, who was severely wounded, fell off,
Two Bits went on to Fort Wingate where the sight of his wounds and
the bloody pouches told the story. The old horse headed the relief
party and led them back to his fallen rider and then dropped dead.
The troops, to all of whom the old race horse was a familiar comrade,
buried him under a heap of lava bowlders beside the old Government
Trail a few miles west of Fort Wingate, New Mexico.


  Where the shimmering sands of the desert beat
    In waves to the foothills’ rugged line,
  And cat-claw and cactus and brown mesquite
    Elbow the cedar and mountain pine;
  Under the dip of a wind-swept hill,
    Like a little gray hawk Fort Whipple clung;
  The fort was a pen of peeled pine logs
    And forty troopers the army strong.

  At the very gates when the darkness fell,
    Prowling Mohave and Yavapai
  Signalled with shrill coyote yell,
    Or mocked the night owl’s piercing cry;
  Till once when the guard turned shuddering
    For a trace in the east of the welcome dawn,
  Spent, wounded, a courier reeled to his feet:--
    “Apaches--rising--Wingate--warn!”

  “And half the troop at the Date Creek Camp!”
    The Captain muttered; “Those devils heard!”
  White-lipped he called for a volunteer
    To ride Two Bits and carry the word.
  “Alone; it’s a game of hide and seek;
    One man may win where ten would fail.”
  Himself the saddle and cinches set
    And headed Two Bits for the Verde Trail.

  Two Bits! How his still eyes woke to the chase!
    The bravest soul of them all was he!
  Hero of many a hard-won race,
    With a hundred scars for his pedigree.
  Wary of ambush, and keen of trail,
    Old in wisdom of march and fray;
  And the grizzled veteran seemed to know
    The lives that hung on his hoofs that day.

  “A week. God speed you and make it less!
    Ride by night from the river on.”
  Caps were swung in a silent cheer,
    A quick salute, and the word was gone.
  Sunrise, threading the Point of Rocks;
    Dusk, in the ca;ons dark and grim,
  Where coiled like a rope flung down the cliffs,
    The trail crawls up to the frowning Rim.

  A pebble turned, a spark out-struck
    From steel-shod hoofs on the treacherous flint--
  Ears strain, eyes wait, in the rocks above
    For the faintest whisper, the farthest glint;
  But shod with silence and robed with night
    They pass untracked, and mile by mile
  The hills divide for the flying feet,
    And the stars lean low to guide the while.

  Never a plumed quail hid her nest
    With the stealthiest care that a mother may,
  As crouched at dawn in the chaparral
    These two, whom a heart-beat might betray.
  So, hiding and riding, night by night;
    Four days, and the end of the journey near;
  The fort just hid in the distant hills--
    But hist! A whisper--a breath of fear!

  They wheel and turn--too late. Ping! Ping!
    From their very feet a fiery jet.
  A lurch, a plunge, and the brave old horse
    Leaped out with his broad breast torn and wet.
  Ping! Thud! On his neck the rider swayed;
    Ten thousand deaths if he reeled and fell!
  Behind, exultant, the painted horde
    Poured down like a skirmish line from Hell.

  Not yet! Not yet! Those ringing hoofs
    Have scarred their triumph on many a course;
  And the desperate, blood-trailed chase swept on,
    Apache sinews ’gainst wounded horse.
  Hour crowding hour till the yells died back,
    Till the pat of the moccasined feet was gone;
  And dumb to heeding of foe or fear
    The rider dropped,--but the horse kept on.

  Stiff and stumbling and spent and sore,
    Plodding the long miles doggedly;
  Till the daybreak bugles of Wingate rang
    And a feint neigh answered the reveille.
  Wide swung the gates--a wounded horse--
    Red-dabbled pouches and riding gear;
  A shout, a hurry, a quick-flung word--
    And “Boots and Saddles” rang sharp and clear.

  Like a stern commander the old horse turned
    As the troop filed out, and straight to the head
  He guided them back on that weary trail
    Till he fell by his fallen rider--dead--
  But the man and the message saved. And he
    Whose brave heart carried the double load,
  With his last trust kept and his last race won,
    They buried him there on the Wingate road.




SPRING IN THE DESERT


  Silence, and the heat lights shimmer like a mist of sifted silver,
  Down across the wide, low washes where the strange sand rivers flow;
  Brown and sun-baked, quiet, waveless, trailed with bleaching,
   flood-swept bowlders;
  Rippled into mimic water where the restless whirlwinds go.

  On the banks the gray mesquite trees droop their slender, lace-leafed
   branches;
  Fill the lonely air with fragrance, as a beauty unconfessed;
  Till the wild quail comes at sunset with her timorous, plumed covey,
  And the iris-throated pigeon coos above her hidden nest.

  Every shrub distills vague sweetness; every poorest leaf has gathered
  Some rare breath to tell its gladness in a fitter way than speech;
  Here the silken cactus blossoms flaunt their rose and gold and
   crimson,
  And the proud zahuaro lifts its pearl-carved crown from careless
   reach.

  Like to Lillith’s hair down-streaming, soft and shining, glorious,
   golden,
  Sways the queenly palo verde robed and wreathed in golden flowers;
  And the spirits of dead lovers might have joy again together
  Where the honey-sweet acacia weaves its shadow-fretted bowers.

  Velvet-soft and glad and tender goes the night wind down the ca;ons,
  Touching lightly every petal, rocking leaf and bud and nest;
  Whispering secrets to the black bees dozing in the tall wild lilies,
  Till it hails the sudden sunrise trailing down the mountain’s crest.

  Silence, sunshine, heat lights painting opal-tinted dream and vision
  Down across the wide, low washes where the whirlwinds wheel and
   swing;--
  What of dead hands, sun-dried, bleaching? What of heat and thirst and
   madness?
  Death and life are lost, forgotten, in the wonder of the spring.




IN OLD TUCSON


  In old Tucson, in old Tucson,
  How swift the happy days ran on!
  How warm the yellow sunshine beat
  Along the white caliche street!
  The flat roofs caught a brighter sheen
  From fringing house leeks thick and green,
  And chiles drying in the sun;
  Splashes of crimson ’gainst the dun
  Of clay-spread roof and earthen floor;
  The squash vine climbing past the door
  Held in its yellow blossoms deep
  The drowsy desert bees asleep.

  By one low wall, at one shut gate,
  The dusty roadway turned to wait;
  The pack mules loitered, passing where
  The muleteers had sudded care
  Of cinche and pack and harness bell.
  The oleander blossoms fell,
  Wind-drifted flecks of flame and snow;
  The fruited pomegranate swung low;
  And in the patio dim and cool
  The gray doves flitted round the pool
  That caught her image lightly as
  The face that fades across a glass.

  In old Tucson, in old Tucson,
  The pool is dry, the face is gone.
  No dark eyes through the lattice shine,
  No slim brown hand steals through to mine;
  There where her oleander stood
  The twilight shadows bend and brood,
  And through the glossed pomegranate leaves
  The wind remembering waits and grieves;
  Waits with me, knowing as I know,
  She may not choose to come and go--
  She who with life no more has part
  Save in the dim pool of my heart.

  And yet I wait, and yet I see
  The dream that was come back to me;
  The green leek springs above the roof,
  The dove that mourned alone, aloof,
  Flutes softly to her mate among
  The fig leaves where the fruit has hung
  Slow-purpling through the sunny days;
  And down the golden desert haze
  The mule bells tinkle faint and far;--
  But where her candle shone, a star;
  And where I watched her shadow fall,--
  The gray street and a crumbling wall.




THE LITTLE HOUSE OF MARY

Throughout the desert region of the Southwest are abandoned mining
camps; shafts caved, machinery silent and rusting away, sand drifted in
the long-empty cabins. In one such deserted camp a child’s play-house
was found beside a great bowlder, the little toys and treasures
undisturbed through all the years.


  The hoof-worn pack trails still wind down past barren cliff and ledge,
  And fail and fade like water spilled at the sage gray desert’s edge;
  Lost in the shifting sand banks, clear where the long dykes lift
  Their rough, brown, sun-burned shoulders out of the wind-blown drift.

  Like scars long-healed the weed-grown dumps where the miners plied
   their craft,
  And the tuna drops its crimson fruit down the mouth of the caving
   shaft.
  A broken shovel, a worn-out pick--and down in the gulch below
  A lean coyote homes her whelps where the stamps beat blow on blow.

  Where the tent camp took its careless way to the rocky ca;on’s brink,
  The plumed quail leads her covey, and the wild deer come to drink;
  But then the mule bells tinkled, and, proud of her rank and place,
  The old white bell mare took the lead, setting the train its pace.

  And close by a gray-ribbed bowlder, shading her eyes with her hands,
  Watching the ore trains passing out to the unknown lands,
  A little, wistful figure with dreaming, gentle face,
  Like a flower from some old-time garden abloom in that rugged place.

  Child of the sun-white desert; no other land she knew;
  Its cactus and sage were her greenest green; its skies were her
   deepest blue;
  The shy, wild things were her playmates, and under the old cleft stone
  She builded a little kingdom for her and them alone.

  And here are her guarded treasures, quaint little shapes of clay,
  Fashioned by small brown fingers as she sang at her lonely play;--
  But the dust lies thick upon them, and sand drifts bar the door,
  And only a swift green lizard shimmers across the floor.

  Like memories worn too deep to lose the pack trail still winds down,
  Out past the old gray bowlder and the ledges seamed and brown;
  Till here it swerves a hand-width back, where once the rough cross
   stood,
  With a child’s brief name and a child’s scant years carved in the
   sun-bleached wood.

  The cross is fallen and crumbling, but still the wild quails call
  As if they missed a comrade through the sage brush thick and tall;
  And where the love vine tangles and the wind croons low at even,
  The little playhouse waits for her, for “Mary, aged seven.”




THE SONG OF THE PINE


  Hear now the song of the pine
    That is sung when strong winds sweep
  Hot-flung from the mighty South,
    Or the North Wind bellows deep:
  Hear thou the song of the pine
    When the sea-wet West beats in,
  Or the East from his tether breaks
    With clamorous, human din.
  The long boughs quiver and shake,
    Uproused from their primal ease,
  And bend as an organ reed
    When a strong hand strikes the keys;
  And a mighty hymn rolls forth
    To the far hills farthest line,
  Earth’s challenge and trumpet call--
    Hear now the song of the pine.

  The strong gray hills are my throne, the rock-ribbed thews of the
   earth;
    There have I marshalled my brethren, and laughed at wind and sun;
  I tent with the crag and the eagle; the Cloud Gods saw my birth;
    I have drunk the strength of ages--a thousand years as one.

  I have warred with rift and crevice, with avalanche and shale,
    Grappling my barren ridge with the grip of a mail-clad fist;
  Storms roll their anger around me, torn through with lightnings pale,
    Or robe me in lonely ermine, or garb me with sodden mist.

  The stars are my near companions; ever to them I lift,
    And grow to their nightly splendor with soul as far and free;
  Counting the swinging seasons by the planet’s veer and drift,
    Till again the wild Spring-Joy wells up from the earth to me:--

  The old, fierce joy of living, all primitive, undenied;
    As breathed from the Maker’s lips on clay still warm with its touch;
  When no soul skulked or whimpered, or in impotent weakness cried,
    And life was a strong man’s gift to be held in an iron clutch.

  Held--or flung down as the pine-top shakes down a ripened cone;
    Then stretches green fingers skyward with larger faith and hope;
  Glad without thought or question, undoubtful of earth or sun,
    From the bent blue overhead to the mold where the dark roots grope.

  But level sinketh to level as height calls up to height;
    Courage is born of danger; the deed of the naked need;
  Came Ease to sit on the hearth, dear-bought with the ancient might,
    And drunk with her smile men slept and lapsed to a weaker breed,

  O men that dream in the lowland, men that drowse in the plain,
    Wake ye, and turn to the forest, turn to the far, high hills;
  Ye shall win from their unspent greatness the olden strength again;
    Ye shall hear in that lofty silence the battle shout that thrills.

  Ye shall find in those utmost reaches power undefiled;
    Wisdom untaught of sages, and patience and truth divine;
  Life tameless still; untainted; primal and potent and wild--
    Rouse ye, nor linger belittled,--shamed by the wind-swung pine.




SHEEP HERDING


  A gray, slow-moving, dust-bepowdered wave,
    That on the edges breaks to scattering spray,
  Round which the faithful collies wheel and bark
    To scurry in the laggard feet that stray:
  A babel of complaining tongues that make
    The dull air weary with their ceaseless fret;
  Brown hills akin to those of Gallilee
    On which the shepherds tend their charges yet.

  The long, hot days; the stark, wind-beaten nights;
    No human presence, human sight or sound;
  Grim, silent land of wasted hopes, where they
    Who came for gold oft times have madness found;
  A bleating horror that fore-gathers speech;
    Freezing the word that from the lip would pass;
  And sends the herdsman grovelling with his sheep,
    Face down and beast-like on the trampled grass.

         *       *       *       *       *

  The collies halt; the slow herd sways and reels,
    Huddled in fright above a low ravine,
  Where wild with thirst a herd unshepherded
    Beats up and down--with something dark between;
  A narrow circle that they will not cross;
    A thing to stop the maddest in their run--
  A guarding dog too weak to lift his head,
    Who licks a still hand shriveled in the sun.




THE MERCY OF NA-CHIS

Felix Knox was killed by a band of renegade Apaches under Na-chis,
son of the famous chief Ca-chis, near York’s Ranch in south-eastern
Arizona. Knox made a brave fight and when found his body was not
mutilated, and the face had been covered to keep away the coyotes and
vultures.


  Knox the gambler--Felix Knox;
    Trickster, short-card man, if you will;
  Rustler, brand-wrangler--all of that--
    But Knox the man and the hero still!
  For life at best is a hard-set game;
    The cards come stacked from the Dealer’s hand;
  And a man plays king of his luck just once--
    When he faces death in the last grim stand.

  Knox had been drummer in Crook’s command;
    A devil of daring lived in his drum;
  With his heart in the call and his hand on the sticks
    The dead from their sand-filled graves might come:
  Crippled for life he drummed his last;
    Shot through the knee in the Delshay fight--
  But he crawled to a rock and drummed “Advance”
    Till the Tonto renegades broke in flight.

  That was the man who shamed Na-chis!
    Two miles out on the Clifton Road
  Beyond York’s Ranch the ambush lay,--
    Till a near, swift-moving dust-whirl showed
  Where the buckboard came. Na-chis crouched low
    And gripped his rifle and grimly smiled
  As he counted his prey with hawk-like eyes--
    The men, the woman, the little child.

  They halted--full in the teeth of the trap.
    Knox saw--too late. He weighed the chance
  And thrust the whip in the driver’s hand
    And wheeled the mules: “Back! Back to the ranch!”
  He cried as he jumped; “I’ll hold them off.
    Whip for your life!” The bullets sung
  Like swarming bees through the narrow pass,
    And whirred and hummed and struck and stung.

  But he turned just once--to wave his hand
    To wife and child; then straight ahead,
  With yell for yell and shot for shot,
    Till the rocks of the pass were spattered red;
  And seven bodies bepainted and grim
    Sprawled in the cactus and sand below;
  And seven souls of the Devil’s kin
    Went with him the road that dead men know.

  Ay! That was Knox! When the cowboys came
    On the day-old trail of the renegade,
  Na-chis the butcher, the merciless,
    This was the tribute the chief had paid
  To the fearless dead. No scarring fire;
    No mangling knife; but across the face
  His own rich blanket drawn smooth and straight,
    Stoned and weighted to keep its place.




THE SEA TO A DESERT DWELLER


  Lo here is the sea, the sea!
  And long waves leaped to my feet;
  Foam-white the breakers beat,
  Or crept to the hedging rocks
  As a whipped cur creeps to the knee--
  Look, here is the sea, the sea!

  Was it regal, as I had dreamed,
  With its far-drawn dole of ships?
  Or sad with the breath of lips
  That greet their beloved no more?
  Wetly the white sands gleamed;
  Like those other sands they seemed.

  I have stood as the sun went down,
  At dusk on the desert’s edge,
  In the grip of a sheltering ledge,
  And watched the wide plain burn
  To silver from red and brown;
  Gem-set like a royal crown.

  These waves that ripple and roll
  Have rippled in waves of light
  Long since to my childish sight;
  And the pale heat vapors that glide
  Were sea sprites taking toll
  For a chartless voyager’s soul.

  Low lights ashine on the lee,
  Where the orient steamers come;
  E’en so the stars at home
  Hang low in the purple sky;--
  ’Twas the face of a friend to me,
  But they cry “The sea! The sea!”




HIS PLACE

To the enduring memory of Clarence H. Shaw, who knew the desert as few
men know it, and who lies at rest in one of its most beautiful corners.


  This is his place--here where the mountains run,
  Naked and scarred and seamed up to the face of the sun;
  His place--reaches of wind-blown sand, brown and barren and old;
  Where the creosote, scorched and glazed, clings with a stubborn hold;
  And tall and solemn and strange the fluted cactus lifts
  Its arms like a cross that pleads from the lonely, rock-hedged rifts;
  His place--where the great, near stars lean low and burn and shine
  Still and steady and clear, like lamps at the door of a shrine.

  This is his land, his land--where the great skies bend
  Over the wide, clean sweep of a world without measure or end:
  His land--where across and between the pale, swift whirlwinds go
  Like souls that may not rest, by their quest sent to and fro:
  And down the washes of sand the vague mirages lay
  Their spell of enchanted light, moving in ripple and spray
  Of waters that gleam and glisten, with joy and color rife--
  Streams where no mouth may drink, but fair as the River of Life.

  This is his place--the mesquite, like a thin green mist of tears,
  Knows the way of his wish, keeps the hope of his years;
  Till, one appointed day, comes the with-holden spring;
  Then, miracle wrought in gold, that swift, rare blossoming!
  This is his place--where silence eternal fills
  The still, white, sun-drowsed plain, and the slumbering, iron-rimmed
   hills;
  Where To-day and Forever mingle, and Changeless and Change are one--
  Here in his own land he waits till To-day and Forever are done.