ALVMNW BOOK FVND 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN FORD PIPER 
 
 THE MIDLAND PRESS 
 1917 
 
Copyright, 1917, 
 
 by 
 EDWIN FORD PIPER 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER 
 
 PIONEERS IN NEBRASKA 
 
 IN THE YEAR 
 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND 
 
 SIXTY-NINE 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 THE MOVERS 1 
 
 BY THE ROAD 2 
 
 DRY BONES 3 
 
 ONCE ON A TIME 4 
 
 THE LAST ANTELOPE 5 
 
 THE COWBOY 6 
 
 THE SETTLER 8 
 
 THE HORSE THIEF 9 
 
 BARBED WIRE 13 
 
 THE WELL 
 
 I. WATER BARRELS 15 
 
 II. THE WINDMILL 17 
 
 III. THE WELL DIGGER 18 
 
 BREAKING SOD 21 
 
 THE SOD HOUSE 22 
 
 THE DROUGHT 24 
 
 THE FORD AT THE RIVER 25 
 
 THE PRAIRIE FIRE 26 
 
 THE BOY ON THE PRAIRIE 28 
 
 ANNIE 30 
 
 THE GRASSHOPPERS 32 
 
 THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 34 
 
 THE RIVER ONCE MORE 38 
 
 TEN CENTS A BUSHEL 41 
 
 THREE PER CENT. A MONTH 43 
 
 MEANWHILE 45 
 
 THE CHURCH 49 
 
THE NEIGHBORHOOD 
 
 HAVE You AN EYE 55 
 
 THE RIDGE FARM 57 
 
 IN THE CANYON 62 
 
 ROAD AND PATH 74 
 
 THE NEIGHBORHOOD 76 
 
 THE BANDED 80 
 
 NATHAN BRIGGS 82 
 
 MISTER DWIGGINS 85 
 
 THE CLAIM-JUMPER 
 
 I. AT HER DUGOUT 90 
 
 II. THE JUMPER 93 
 
 III. JARVIS WAITED 98 
 
 JOE TAYLOR 100 
 
 THE PARTY 
 
 MOON WORSHIP 104 
 
 I. THE GATHERING 105 
 
 II. THE GAMES 107 
 
 THE KEY HI 
 
 THE DRIVER 
 
 I. AT THE POST-OFFICE 113 
 
 II. IN A PUBLIC PLACE ..... 118 
 
 III. THE MAN WITH THE KEY ONCE MORE . 122 
 
Barbed Wire 
 
THE MOVERS 
 
 The meadow-larks rejoice, as the bright sun 
 Drinks up the burdening dew from slender grass, 
 From flower cups, purple, yellow, white, and blue, 
 In the green swells o er which the dusty trail 
 Lies like a loose gray ribbon. Westward creeps 
 The jolting prairie schooner, and its wheels 
 Talk on the axle while the sweating bays 
 Draw sturdily, nodding their patient heads. 
 Humped on his spring seat neath the canvas roof, 
 The bearded, weather-beaten driver guides 
 With slackened line. An eager boy and girl 
 The lass with yellow curls, the lad well tanned 
 Peer close beside him. From the hidden depths 
 Comes the low crooning of a lullaby. 
 The meadow-larks rejoice, the wild flowers blow 
 He eyes the dusty margin of the trail 
 Communing with his vision of a home. 
 
BY THE EOAD 
 
 The dusty wheels have left the rutted road 
 For the shelter of the elm tree. Boy and girl, 
 Glad to stretch muscles cramped the whole day long, 
 Explore the brook bank; from the camp-fire smoke 
 A kneeling woman shields her eyes ; the smell 
 Of savory meat and coffee calls the man 
 From mending harness ; on the wood grass sweet 
 The horses mouths are noisy ; golden light 
 Sifts through the lower elm leaves, and afar 
 The quail gives challenge, and the wood dove 
 mourns. 
 
 The symphony of night lays starry glooms 
 Upon the open spaces. Overhead, 
 The faintest stream of air goes trickling slow 
 Among the sleeping leaves, while in the dew 
 The blossomed grape and elderberry drip 
 With honeyed fragrance. In such luxury 
 The movers lie under the smiling stars 
 One night more on the road to the new land. 
 
 [2] 
 
DRY BONES 
 
 Late August glares, a wagon filled with bones, 
 Strange harvest from the prairies, seeks the town. 
 The buyer pays a dollar for a ton. 
 
 The square, squat houses, the low shedlike stores 
 "Weathering unpainted, toe the littered street 
 That finds the railway station. By the track, 
 A fenced lot heaped with well bleached skeletons, 
 Mountainous wreckage, shin and back confused, 
 Crowned with horned skulls grotesquely menacing. 
 
 So ends the buffalo. Five years since he tossed 
 In great earth-shaking herds his shaggy mane; 
 Now not one calf. Once furious bulls did roar 
 The challenge moving terribly to fight. 
 Dry bones the price one dollar for a ton. 
 
 [3] 
 
ONCE ON A TIME 
 
 Once on a time the plain with breeze and sun 
 On wild brown herds a-grazing where the trails 
 Wind to the living water; once is done, 
 Once is the chosen word of old wives tales. 
 
 The keen-faced Indian, arrow to bent bow, 
 Steers on the hounding pony with his knees, 
 Outriding some huge thundering buffalo 
 That he may couch on robe, and feast at ease. 
 
 With needlegun the sportsman, jaunty, brisk, 
 Three before breakfast slaughters; lets them lie; 
 Writes in his diary. Still the yearlings frisk 
 As to the waterholes the herds roll by. 
 
 The buffalo skinner stacks the reeking pelt; 
 One stench of rotting carcass drowns the plain; 
 Buzzard and coyote, ant and fly have smelt 
 The offence, but all their scavengery is vain 
 
 To sweeten any breeze. The hireling skins 
 Fresh kill and noisome carrion in his greed, 
 Glutting, the while, his fancy on the sins 
 His dirty pay in his cheap soul may breed. 
 
 Once on a time the rival bulls did roar 
 
 Their fighting challenge; once nevermore! 
 
 [4] 
 
THE LAST ANTELOPE 
 
 Behind the board fence at the banker s house 
 
 The slender, tawn-gray creature starves and thirsts 
 
 In agony of fear. A dog may growl, 
 
 It cowers; the cockcrow shakes it with alarm. 
 
 White frost lay heavy on the buffalo grass 
 That winter morning when three graceful shapes 
 Slipped by the saddle-back across the ridge 
 Along the rutted pathway to the creek. 
 In former years the track was bare, and worn 
 With feet of upland creatures every day. 
 A boy spied these three outlaws. Two hours chase, 
 Fifty pursuers, and the ways all stopped, 
 Guns, dogs, and fences. Torn by the barbed wire, 
 Drilled by a dozen buckshot, one ; the next, 
 O erheaped by snapping jaws, cried piteously 
 An instant; but the last on treacherous ice 
 Crashed through, a captive. 
 
 Eopes the jolting wagon 
 Its heart was audible as you touched its fur. 
 
 Behind the board fence at the banker s house, 
 0, once it capered wild on dewy grass 
 In grace and glee of dancing, arrowy bounds ! 
 At the banker s house, behind the high board fence 
 The last slim pronghorn perishes of fear. 
 
 [5] 
 
THE COWBOY 
 
 "0 once in my saddle I used to go dashing, 
 O once in my saddle I used to be gay!" 
 
 Belted with Colt and cartridge, spur on heel, 
 The tall, spare form is tricked for holiday, 
 With bowlegs curved in buckskins, a snake s hide 
 Banding his hat, while round his leaning neck, 
 Half hidden by the curling, sunburnt hair, 
 A silken rainbow rolls to a large gold ring. 
 Sun browned mustache half hides his laughing 
 mouth. 
 
 Mexican dollars shine as the rosettes 
 On saddle and braided bridle. Let him mount! 
 In his long stirrups with what ease he takes 
 The pony s motion, while it moves at speed 
 Snatches the trailing lariat ! 
 
 Of his skill 
 
 To rope and ride he is silent, and his gun 
 Stays in his belt till needed. He can swear, 
 Can lose unruffled six months pay at cards, 
 Bestow in nameless bounty his last cent, 
 And spite of wind, and dust, and Texas steers, 
 And undiluted whisky, still can sing 
 In the night wind the longhorn s lullaby. 
 
 By innate force of spirit he is kin 
 
 To old adventurers. While trick, and trade, 
 
 [6] 
 
And blue-sky lots made fat the souls and speech 
 Of men, this romantic rebel, sick of smugness 
 And cheatery, let his birthright blessing go, 
 Wild for free life, the pony, and the range. 
 
 He might have been conductor, congressman 
 With a post-office named after him ; he is 
 Unstable as water, loyal to the death, 
 A creature of impulse, and he still can sing ; 
 Not quite a grown-up spite of forty years. 
 
 [7] 
 
THE SETTLER 
 
 In Westertown a statue rules the square, 
 The settler as the sculptor visioned him. 
 Nor slender, nor yet massive ; sinewy, 
 Bearded, erect, broad shouldered, hand on spade. 
 Shirt sleeve uprolled o er muscular forearm, 
 Alert eye, faithful mouth, and forehead full 
 Of hope. 
 
 Such is the image. The real man 
 Is fat, is scrawny, is Apollo-like; 
 Glares like a hawk, blinks like some bleary pig, 
 Moves like a Victory, hirples like a hare. 
 The spirits of the just are perfected ; 
 The sculptor carves ideal form in stone. 
 
 Nay, the real settler is not simply man ; 
 But wife and child in laughing, loving group 
 Lead the celestial sunshine of man s dreams 
 Which he names home. And after them in troops, 
 The beast and bird that own man s mastery 
 Graze the new pastures to his comforting; 
 While afar, hover arts that minister 
 To the spirit, lingering till the plough shall break 
 The thorny wilderness to the fruitful field. 
 
 [8] 
 
THE HOBSE THIEF 
 
 By the ditch in the hollow stands the tree, 
 
 A cottonwood with deeply wrinkled bark 
 
 About its mighty trunk, and limbs that spread, 
 
 And leaves that gleam and shimmer in the sun, 
 
 The oracle of any moody breeze. 
 
 Aloft, the bee-bird spies ; here orioles sing, 
 
 In vain we boys risked necks to reach their nests, 
 
 To see, touch, boast of 0, no thievery. 
 
 Here in a gentle wind the body swayed. 
 
 His hands were bound behind, and his dead weight 
 
 Dangled with feet not far above the ground 
 
 Where the sombrero lay brim uppermost. 
 
 His shoes were frayed by grass blades ; a gold ring 
 
 Shone from one hand ; about his blackened throat 
 
 The gay silk kerchief loosely knotted lay. 
 
 The rope was higher, right against his chin. 
 
 A boyish face, scarce bearded, but now marked 
 
 With the last agony in those bursting eyes, 
 
 A glassy blue, mouth drawn in grinning pain 
 
 To show with what a struggle life broke loose 
 
 From his young body. Yet his soft brown hair 
 
 Was neatly parted, just one lock waved low 
 
 Over the forehead. All of this we saw 
 
 While men sought out a tool to cut the rope. 
 
 [9] 
 
n 
 
 His watch contained a picture I was told, 
 They thought his mother s, but they could not find 
 A hint. No doubt the horse thief saw to that, 
 Took comfort thence. The prison cells are full 
 Of men who veil themselves with alias 
 Lest kindred share disgrace. And nameless graves, 
 And vagabonds in exile ! Lost, and lost ! 
 Perhaps this whole long winter evening through, 
 While the wood fire hums its low, sad tune, 
 And the knitting needles click, and the open page 
 Is scarcely turned, father and mother muse 
 Of the boy who vanished alive in the strange wild 
 land. 
 
 Was it for love, or hate, or avarice? 
 Or untamed blood that wantons in the breast, 
 Spurring the soul to pass all barriers 
 As it had wings, not limping feet of clay, 
 That brought him to the unmarked, grassy mound 
 They call the horse thief s grave? We shall not 
 know. 
 
 [10] 
 
Ill 
 
 Old Gray gone ? Why, we loved him human-like ! 
 "It s thirty miles with loads to market, store !" 
 "The plough rusts in the furrows !" "Ripened 
 
 wheat 
 
 Must fall for birds I" "He is professional, 
 Outrides pursuit, and makes horse stealing pay ! 
 "A gang with stations!" 
 
 0, a dozen like 
 
 Reasons of sentiment and poise. Did such 
 Lead twenty men to coolly hang this boy? 
 Or did some underlying passion burn 
 Their hearts, flare up in cruelty? 
 
 Hear, and judge. 
 
 He answered or kept silence as he would, 
 Without manhandling, till the proof of guilt 
 Cast its black shadow. Slowly to the tree, 
 His captors all rode mute. The thief might pray, 
 Or plead or curse. By glimmering lantern light 
 He stands in the saddle while the rope is tied ; 
 The leader speaks, the horses start, the dark 
 Enfolds the dangling struggler. 
 
 Custom this ; 
 Stark custom, wherein rough men harden heart 
 
 [ii] 
 
Melting so kindly to the desperate plea 
 For mercy. This youth knew what path he chose ; 
 Played life against the slipnoose snare and lost. 
 The people judged, and carried out their law, 
 Effecting sentence rather than revenge. 
 
 Their law takes life for that which money buys? 
 
 Unduly harsh, perhaps. Consider this : 
 What money has the settler, and wherewith 
 Shall he make purchase? Livelihood and life, 
 From settler and his family? Death to thieves! 
 Of course, rope won t reform a horse thief s soul, 
 But it warns stealers of such heavy risk 
 A man can tie his team on grass at night 
 And find it in the morning. Life is life 
 Nor cheaper here than in the city streets, 
 Except to those who covet horse, or rope. 
 
 [12] 
 
BAEBED WIEE 
 
 The prairie cleft by skirmish lines of fence 
 High-headed longhorns bound for pastures new 
 Torn denim fluttering and profane dispraise 
 The sod house and the ranks of silking corn, 
 But, oh, the crippled horses at the plough! 
 
 Dobbin was mettlesome two years ago ; 
 
 But he ll prance no more, he ll never kick up his 
 
 heels, 
 
 For one knee crooks out, one leg has a dragging limp ; 
 He s notched and scarred with gashes. Gray s front 
 
 foot 
 
 Is doubled in size, stiff, lumpy, hairless, too. 
 The poor colt pawed that hoof over the fence, 
 And pulled and sawed for hours. The pine tar 
 With which we filled the wound did heal it up. 
 Horses are horses. Curses on barbed wire ! 
 
 When longhorns overran the settler s land 
 The herd law would not grant him damages 
 Unless his crop was fenced. Hail to barbed wire ! 
 It broke the free range, sent the cowman west, 
 Cowboys in dimmer distance, riding, riding 
 Into rich sunset light whence lingering notes 
 Drift over dusky distances of trail. 
 
 [13] 
 
[ Come on, old Slowf oot, sift along, 
 We got to make Mud River to-night. 
 Your ribs is lank and your hair is long, 
 But a month on the range 11 put you right. 
 
 ! You re going to wish for the bluestem hay, 
 And the buffalo grass so sweet and high ; 
 But you 11 get a home on the Cactus Range 
 If you don t strike too much alkali. 
 
 : Good-bye, good-bye to the Frenchman Fork, 
 To the sandbar mush they call the Platte ; 
 We 11 make our home in the sagebrush hills 
 Till the devil puts a fence on that. 
 
 ; They say that heaven is a free range land, 
 Good-bye, good-bye, fare you well, 
 But it s barbed wire for the devil s hat band, 
 And barbed wire blankets down in hell." 
 
 [14] 
 
THE WELL 
 
 The brimming bucket at my mouth 
 
 Coolness of water! 
 In all my veins the heat, the drouth, 
 
 O, the well tvater! 
 
 WATER BARRELS 
 
 Within the lumber wagon by the well 
 The barrels stand, and little snowflakes drive 
 Across them while the pulley groans and creaks 
 As on the stubborn frozen rope, the wrists 
 Of the hauler lean till the bucket clears the curb. 
 He seizes the bail, and drags, and strains tiptoe 
 To reach above the barrel. Driblets wet 
 His garments through and stiffen into ice. 
 Seventy buckets and done ! Cover the barrels. 
 Three miles of windy road ! The nervous bays 
 Surge heavily on the bits, while numb hands ache 
 Holding them in lest jolting waste the water. 
 The driver walks. Meanwhile the pulley laboring 
 Over the fifty feet from bucket to bucket 
 Groans on in the snow to serve another hauler. 
 
 [15] 
 
The upland wells will be deep, they are long a-dig- 
 
 ging; 
 
 So wagons rattle down with the empty water barrels, 
 And wagons creep heavily home with the barrels 
 
 sloshing. 
 
 Yes, I did hear. If, if there came a fire? 
 Be still ! To that no one but God can answer. 
 
 [16] 
 
II 
 
 THE WINDMILL 
 
 Yes, July heat. You ll drink another dipper. 
 
 The old wheel creaks and strains. Give her good 
 breezes, 
 
 She spins around as pretty as a picture. 
 
 And it blows every day as if to keep 
 
 Our hundred barrel tank full to the brim. 
 
 Two hundred feet, and half the depth hard rock, sir. 
 
 Yes, dug. A sizable hole ; you see that dirt pile. 
 
 A dollar for each foot down, and board and lodging; 
 
 He took his five months wages, bought an eighty. 
 
 yes, we lived here while the well was digging ; 
 
 Each day for stock and house we hauled three bar 
 rels. 
 
 It grew a little stale, sucked up a wood taste ; 
 
 Now this comes clear and cold from porous sand 
 stone, 
 
 And on a hot day there, the tank runs over. 
 
 [17] 
 
Ill 
 
 THE WELL DIGGER 
 
 "Spring up, well; 
 Sing ye unto it: 
 The princes digged the well, 
 The nobles of the people digged it, 
 By the direction of the lawgivers 
 With their staves." 
 
 Numbers XXI, 17, 18. 
 
 Jim surely did not look much like a prince ; 
 
 As owning no horse he toiled with a sack of 
 
 flour 
 
 Six miles across the prairie to his soddy. 
 He stopped at our place, wiped the sweat away; 
 His Adam s apple shuttling as he held 
 The dipper long to his mouth while he sat stooped 
 In a big chair in the shadow of the house. 
 A tall, thin, wiry man with rusty beard, 
 Flat nose, and scrawny brows over hollow eyes 
 Glinting with fire. 
 
 " Sonny, I dug this well." 
 "It s a good well, Jim." 
 
 "You bet she is, damn good! 
 My wells dug end on end would make a mile. 
 
 "Did you like digging?" 
 
 [18] 
 
"No, I won t say like. 
 
 Paid me when pay was scarce. Too much stone- 
 grit; 
 
 Bad for the lungs. They lower pretty slow 
 So that the rope won t spin you on the walls. 
 You look up, see a silver dime of the sky 
 Crossed by the windlass. You don t know the sky 
 Till you see her from a well hole. And your voice 
 Answers the tender with a boomin sound 
 As if from seventy barrels. If he kicks 
 Some grains of gravel, stings you worse n hail 
 At a hundred feet." 
 
 "Anything ever fall?" 
 
 "Yes, yes. I was a diggin Blakesley s well. 
 I hunch myself up closer than the most, 
 And make a hole that s only three foot ten 
 Stead of four feet. It saves a heap o dirt. 
 Down ninety foot, his brother tendin me. 
 We used a nail keg with a bail of wire ; 
 I filled it with small stone, he drawed it up 
 Most of the way. I heard a kind of swish, 
 Looked, saw her comin . Yes, the wire had broke 
 Got bent wrong, snapped. Kebunk, kebunk, ke- 
 
 bunk, 
 
 She hit first one then tother side. I stood 
 Flat to the wall in no time, and kewhiz, 
 The nail keg took my shirt a glancing blow. 
 Buttons and cloth and hide went. Good I m thin. 
 
 [19] 
 
I fell on the bucket in a shower of stones. 
 No, didn t feel em, didn t know a thing. 
 My breast was black for three weeks. N I said 
 
 then, 
 
 *I work hereafter where I ve room to dodge; 
 I don t want all hell a-fallin on my head 
 Without a hole to run to. Then they got 
 A drill machine bout seven miles below. 
 It drills em. N I quit. My wife was after me 
 To quit before." 
 
 " Jim, tell me what you thought 
 When you saw her comin ." 
 
 1 < Think f There wasn t time. 
 I thought, if she hits she makes a pancake of me. 
 Thin, to the wall!" 
 
 4 Was that the only time?" 
 
 "I must be movin ! Another dipper, sonny." 
 
 "But weren t you often afraid the rope might 
 break?" 
 
 "No, hardly ever. Your mind is on your work. 
 Once a week, maybe, it would come to me, 
 If she caves, good-bye. Yes, once she caved. 
 
 "My gosh! 
 
 I got to travel. Thank you, that s good water 
 Some other time, boy. Home by noon. Good-bye." 
 
 [20] 
 
BREAKING SOD 
 
 The level field of gray-green buffalo grass 
 
 Still narrows as the sweating bays plod on, 
 
 And that black ribbon at the ploughtail rolls 
 
 Beside its drier neighbor. Clevis gear 
 
 And doubletree complain while the plough sings, 
 
 Shearing through grass roots, burying weed and 
 
 flower, 
 
 Unhousing worm and grub for eager beaks, 
 The blackbird and the meadow-lark that flit 
 To the heels of the ploughman. 
 
 Never any more 
 
 Shall wild flock pasture here on grasses wild; 
 But bearded wheat shall flourish, corn shall ear, 
 The weeds shall burr and blossom, strong battalions. 
 And man shall serve the land in hunger and sorrow, 
 Worship and love the bounteous, old earth-mother, 
 Rejoicing in the furrows of his field. 
 
 [21] 
 
THE SOD HOUSE 
 
 The hoof-beats sound, the harness clacks and clinks, 
 The wagon rattles in the frosty air 
 Along the level prairie road that swings 
 To the low, dark bulk whereon the sodded roof 
 Bristles with meager, winter-beaten weeds. 
 Before it, ranks of whip-like trees stand guard; 
 Behind lie cribs, straw sheds, the well, the woodpile, 
 And the garden square fenced in by a gooseberry 
 
 hedge 
 From weathering stalks and stubble. The house 
 
 front 
 
 Shows but two windows and one deep-set door. 
 How plain the lines of old gray grass that check 
 Layer from layer all the mud-brown wall 
 Though rain, and wind, and sun, and frost have 
 
 crumbled 
 
 The edges from the sods. A visitor 
 May pass the gable to lift the home-made latch 
 Of the lean-to kitchen buttressing the rear. 
 
 What warmth! How smooth and clean the earthen 
 
 floor! 
 
 The low room shines with kitchen-gear in order. 
 The living room is curtained. Smooth, bright 
 
 boards 
 
 [22] 
 
O erlie the dressed log rafters ; braided rugs 
 Bless the pine floor, and homely chairs draw near 
 To table, stove, and bookshelf. Last and best, 
 Within the windows deep recesses, flowers, 
 Wax plant, geranium, fuchsia, and oxalis, 
 Full-blossomed spite of every wintry wind. 
 
 [23] 
 
THE DROUGHT 
 
 The light of noon comes reddened from a sky 
 A-blur with dust; the irritable wind 
 Burns on your cheek, and leans against your gar 
 ments 
 
 Like a hot iron. Cloud after cloud, the dust 
 Sweeps the road, rattles on the dirty canvas 
 Of the schooner so dispiritedly drawn 
 By drooping horses. On the whitening grass, 
 With bright and helpless eyes, a meadow-lark 
 Sits open-beaked, and desperately mute. 
 The thin, brown wheat that was too short to cut 
 Stands in the field ; the feeble corn, breast high, 
 Shows yellowed leaf and tassel. With slack line 
 The bearded, gaunt, stoop-shouldered driver sits 
 As if in sleep some mounting wave of sorrow 
 Had overpassed him, and he still dreamed on. 
 Within the schooner children s voices wail; 
 A mother s tones bring quiet. The sun glares, 
 The wind drones and makes dirty all the sky. 
 The horses scarcely fight the vicious flies. 
 
 This is departure, but there are who stay. 
 
 [24] 
 
THE FOED AT THE EIVER 
 
 Through thin, gray, moving clouds a summer sun 
 Lies like dull silver on the rippled stream. 
 Now gusts alarm, now quiet stills the leaves 
 That shade the steep bank where the wagon presses 
 The shrinking team to splash in belly deep. 
 The wagon sways, a breeze tugs at our hats, 
 And the clear water, clutching near our feet 
 The wheel-spokes, spins on into roilly flurries. 
 Our hearts beat fast. It deepens now, and strikes 
 The tongue, the tugs, the box-floor, spurts up in 
 The lurching wagon, as over hidden hole 
 And treacherous dip we venture. The box lifts, 
 The current drags, the horses well nigh swim, 
 We speak not, scarcely breathe. 
 
 It shallows fast; 
 
 The horses knees splash out and in, we near 
 The gravel bar, the water lets us go ; 
 We drip across bright sand to the weedy road 
 Under the singing leaves, still looking back 
 To the dull silver water, and the minutes 
 Vibrant with beatings of the heart. 
 
 A bridge 
 
 Echoes to dry-shod feet, but in the fordway 
 Man grapples still the spirit of the stream. 
 
 [25] 
 
THE PRAIRIE FIRE 
 
 0, the red tongues! The leavings of the fire! 
 
 Red sunshine in October s smoky air 
 
 With all dry grasses rustling in the breeze 
 
 Where fireguards saved them. But most fields and 
 
 hills 
 Lie black, and one can smell and taste burned grass. 
 
 Grim landscape, grim as death! Leavings of fire! 
 Wild things to whom the grass was as a forest 
 Woven with saving colors, naked, famishing, 
 Face sharp-eyed foes. Next season s bud is 
 
 scorched, 
 
 Her butterfly roasted. Only the green-lobed cactus, 
 Cooked to pale yellow, writhes half dead. 
 
 Red sunshine ! 
 
 Twas yesterday a pillar of leaning smoke 
 Surprised us, speeding from the north. Men hur 
 ried 
 
 With water and wet cloth for beating flames ; 
 And at the furrows kindled wavering lines 
 Of backfire that must eat against the wind 
 To meet the blaze racing through delicate grass 
 A-flash like tinder. But where bluestem grew 
 The flame rose yards, and the counter-fire leaped 
 Whirling, and their red wings embracing lifted them 
 Into the roaring smoke. 
 
 [26] 
 
O, the red leaping! 
 
 Jack-rabbits aimlessly scurried, the while enormous 
 Tumbleweeds ablaze came rolling, rolling, rolling 
 Over the widest guards. 
 
 0, the red sunshine ! 
 Wreckage and ashes where wheat ricks clustered 
 
 ready, 
 With the threshing machine among them. That 
 
 mound was a barn; 
 
 The straw heaped over poles flared up like a torch; 
 A youth rushed in to rescue his horse, but the 
 
 creature 
 Wild-eyed with stupor and terror kept leaping and 
 
 cowering. 
 We heard his voice ring out from the roar of the red 
 
 tongues. 
 Ashes covered their bones. 
 
 The leavings of fire ! 
 
 The smile in his eyes, the laughter, the soft, boyish 
 mouth - 
 
 Yesterday s sunshine! 
 
 The praise from his sweetheart, the tunes of the first 
 adoration 
 
 A-ripple, a-dance in his breast 
 
 0, the leavings of fire! 
 
 [27] 
 
THE BOY ON THE PRAIRIE 
 
 At thirteen he first saw a railway train 
 
 With all the amazing violence of the wheels, 
 
 And the coughing engine, and the rebuking bell, 
 
 A theme for round-eyed wonder. He could ride 
 
 A bucking pony, cut strange toys in wood, 
 
 Braid hair or leather into lasso knot, 
 
 Dive, swim, throw stones, lacked mates for bat and 
 
 ball- 
 But with a rifle could behead a quail, 
 Such lore men taught him. 
 
 And he whiled long hours 
 Of lonely sunshine with his horse and dog; 
 Their hearty love dilating soft, bright eyes, 
 Pricking the glossy ears, their comradeship 
 In quiverings, poisings of graceful bodies, 
 Plain, age-old words of the beasts. 
 
 He learned to read 
 
 The look and life of all that roamed the wild ; 
 Where the first elm seeds showered on April grass, 
 Why creatures slipped through thicket, or stirless, 
 
 hid; 
 Where coyotes denned, how plover nest on the 
 
 ground, 
 
 Two pear-shaped eggs the color of grass in dust, 
 Open to sight, so hard to see. 
 
 [28] 
 
And he knew 
 
 The frowns and benedictions of the sky; 
 Whether piled thunderheads bridged all the blue, 
 Or horsetails wavered in the path of wind, 
 Or solid gray led up the long, long rain. 
 He saw the earth arrayed in all its hours; 
 The level sun laugh in the morning dew 
 A-shimmer on each grass-blade while bare feet 
 Were happy in that coolness ; he saw the snow 
 One dazzle under winter sunlight shoot 
 A flickering rainbow in rebellious eyes. 
 
 Sometimes he read the weekly newspaper; 
 And winter evenings helped him into books. 
 On him the Ancient Mariner cast a spell ; 
 The Lady of the Lake answered his horn ; 
 He struck the proudest blow in Chevy Chase, 
 Linking the while Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, 
 With Grant and Lincoln as his greatest men. 
 
 [29] 
 
ANNIE 
 
 Maybe nine years, her hair in yellow braids, 
 Blue eyes that smiled and wondered. Unto her 
 The prairie had a spirit; its wild dells 
 Might catch you, lose you; and its pathless slopes 
 Swung twenty miles, and melting into sky 
 Curtained a world of marvels. 
 
 She had heard 
 
 Her father and her mother speak of such. 
 The pictures, too, in the geography 
 Entranced her. How conceive Gibraltar Rock, 
 Straight up a hundred times as high as the house? 
 The water roared and foamed at Hinton s Dam; 
 Niagara then ? And her one fairy book 
 Eead all to pieces, rendered little clue 
 To the wide prairies and their witchery. 
 
 She heard the crane s cry, and the wild goose note, 
 
 The grouse make love at dawn ere April came, 
 
 The groans of nighthawks, screaming of killdeer, 
 
 Twittering of swallows, blackbirds cheerful call. 
 
 The flowers were her good gossips; violets, 
 
 The buffalo peas, sheep sorrel, spiderwort ; 
 
 The milky sheen of poppies, red moss rose 
 
 A mellow velvet, spikes of blazing star; 
 
 The evening primrose delicately pale; 
 
 The Spanish bayonet s spire of drooping bells; 
 
 The sensitive plant s red ball o erspiced with gold; 
 
 [30] 
 
Voluptuous yellow of the honey cups 
 
 The cactus guards; plain-thinking goldenrod. 
 
 For playmates a cat, solemnity on four legs, 
 And a doll for which her needle made awkward 
 
 seams. 
 
 She read and wrote, filled pages with criss-cross, 
 Knitted on spools, helped mother, hunted eggs ; 
 Learned one by one all the beatitudes, 
 Abou, A Psalm of Life, and Lucy Gray; 
 Was patient over faults in featherstitch 
 If mother s mellow voice sang sweet old songs. 
 
 Sometimes she changed a timid, helpless word 
 With little girls at church; or rarer still, 
 An old-time visit gave for a whole half-day 
 Some child for comrade. 
 
 Of the world beyond 
 
 The horizon she had fancies. It was bright, 
 Strange, and exciting like the stories told 
 In twilight by her father; never sad, 
 Nor lonely ; full of romance and of dreams. 
 In the long lingering sunset I have seen 
 The steady eyes and wistful mouth appeal 
 One moment to the colors of the heavens 
 For answer, ere the dimple of her cheek 
 Was found by her father s lips, or the childish voice 
 Sang to her doll a formal lullaby. 
 
 [31] 
 
THE GRASSHOPPERS 
 
 Down by the orchard plot a man and boy, 
 
 The boy s hat just above the whitened floor 
 
 Of oats half hiding the young trees and swaying 
 
 Under a strong breeze in the blazing noon. 
 
 The man looks upward, blinks with dazzled eyes, 
 
 Then shading face with hand peers painfully; 
 
 Little winged creatures drive athwart the sun, 
 
 High up, in ceaseless, countless flight to the north. 
 
 His mood runs hot envisioning the past. 
 
 "It was three years ago this very day. 
 
 i Three years ago that clinging, hopping horde 
 Made the earth crawl. With slobbery mouths, 
 All leafage, woody twig, and grain, and grass, 
 They utterly consumed, leaving the land 
 Abominable. The wind-borne plague rained down 
 On the full-leaved tree where laughter rippled light 
 To answer odorous whispers of the flowers. 
 Soon, naked to the blistering sun, it stared 
 At the bones of its piteous comrades. Afterwards, 
 A jest to strangers charity cattle hungering 
 Women and children starving! But the power of 
 
 the creatures! 
 
 The daughters of the locust, numberless, number 
 less! 
 
 Jaws bite, throats suck, the beauty of lovely fields 
 Is in their guts, the world is but a mummy !" 
 
 [32] 
 
Man and boy turn from the oats and the vigorous 
 
 orchard ; 
 
 But as they go the lad is looking, looking 
 To see, high up, like gnats, the winged millions 
 Moving across the sun. May God rebuke them! 
 
 [33] 
 
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 
 
 In morning breeze, the Indian summer s gold 
 Of sun on Mildred s happy cheeks aglow 
 Beneath dark hair; it glistens on the horse, 
 A glossy chestnut tossing his thick mane 
 In spirited canter, held straight on the path 
 Across the rolling prairie the four miles 
 To the little, low, log schoolhouse by the creek, 
 Two windows on the side, a home-made door, 
 Sod roof a trifle weedy, the rough ends 
 Of split ash rafters showing at the edge. 
 A shed, and ponies that will carry double 
 Half of the children ride. 
 
 Within the house 
 
 Pine tables in four rows, benches to match, 
 Incipiently notched; a joyous map, 
 A painted blackboard; a high walnut desk 
 Brightened with flowers above the slender stem 
 Of a glass vase. Mid-room the mighty stove, 
 A swallower of enormous chunks of wood 
 So that the fire may roar within the drum, 
 And all the stove s girth turn a glowing red 
 In challenge to the fury of winter wind. 
 
 This is but brisk October. The bell calls, 
 And the tanned children in coarse, home-made 
 clothes 
 
 [34] 
 
Come clattering to stow head-gear on the hooks 
 Above the baskets, tiptoe to the seats, 
 Sing, hear the Bible, fall to study fast. 
 Jimmie s worn shoes must dangle in mid-air 
 As he prints with pride old news about the cat ; 
 Here dark curls with red ribbons shake and bob 
 As Susie struggles with her fraction sums ; 
 Here Philip s mouth is grim as he tears apart 
 Some tough old sentence, settling word and word 
 On the painful diagram. Here Johnnie sits 
 Enraptured with the animals and trees, 
 Cities and ships and wondrous waterfalls 
 Of the big geography, while up in front 
 A class drones heavily through Paul Eevere. 
 
 The walls are chinked with plaster; overhead 
 Bun tie-beam, purlin, ridge-pole, cleanly barked, 
 Supporting rafters overlaid by willows 
 Cut in green leaf, and now upholding sod. 
 Somtimes a mouse runs rustling; harmless snakes 
 Come sliding to the floor, or up the logs 
 A dusky lizard darts. 
 
 "Tis here she moves, 
 The genius of the place, viewed as all wise 
 In booklore, honest, patient, loving, kind, 
 Courageous : all these talents for the sum 
 Of twenty-five a month and board herself. 
 
 [35] 
 
II 
 
 Shall not life pay the man who catches dogs? 
 In his soul s garden, mildew. Does a tree 
 Not utter unconscious joy in the exquisite 
 Color and form and fragrance of its fruit? 
 There s natural joy in healthy human service, 
 Natural, not sacrificial. Monthly salary 
 Is token laborers are somehow worthy; 
 Tis useful, too, for beefsteak, books, vacations. 
 
 For Mildred much of worth lay in the store 
 Her memory could treasure: the old room, 
 The children clustering, happiness in eye 
 And grace in movement ; Willie s gentle lisp 
 Struggling with stubborn words; the lame boy s 
 
 look 
 
 Of speechless worship with a yellow rose ; 
 The five year olds clinging about her skirts ; 
 The half-grown girls with arms about her waist 
 Asking her to their homes ; great awkward boys, 
 Heady as bulls, the slaves of her every word, 
 Toiling prodigiously in Ray s Third Part 
 Over cube root, and roaring at recess 
 In Prisoner s Base, or old-time games of ball. 
 
 If Mildred looked out when the sweeping rain 
 
 Blurred the gray prairie, limiting her sight 
 
 To scanty fields, did fancy mark far miles 
 
 With rose-lanes of romance, nor show the drudgers 
 
 [36] 
 
In sweat and dust, or did she clearly sense 
 Workaday folk with private griefs at heart 
 And a tune on the lips in the field? 
 
 If she had dreams 
 
 They colored and perfumed shrines not unveiled 
 To vulgar gaze. The girl had been through college, 
 Travelled to California and New York; 
 For some seven months she rode a chestnut horse, 
 And was the teacher of this country school 
 At twenty-five a month and board herself. 
 
 [37] 
 
THE RIVER ONCE MORE 
 
 Since yesterday under a stiff north wind 
 
 The slanting rain with intermittent hail 
 
 Had clinked against our windows. Now I peered 
 
 To where the black road split the dreary gray 
 
 Of the buffalo grass, and saw through the veil of 
 
 rain, 
 
 On a dark horse a lad in a slicker lean 
 Into the storm. A white hat partly saved 
 His face from the pelting; one bare hand held firm 
 The reluctant horse at canter as with low head 
 It butted stormward. Came a burst of hail 
 And the horse whirled its back to stones that stung 
 Upon its cold, wet skin, and set its nose 
 To the ground, and shook its widely drooping ears. 
 i What is it, John?" my father asked, and I, 
 "Bill Turner riding Molly ". 
 
 "Ben, will you " 
 
 My father spoke now to the hired man 
 "Take a horse, ride and stop him? He must stay 
 With us to-night. The ford will not be safe. 
 I left Gray saddled. Hurry !" 
 
 Ben reports 
 
 That when he reached the road he scarce could see, 
 In the coming dusk and the veil of driving rain, 
 The boy, already half of the short mile 
 
 [38] 
 
To the ford. He galloped after, breathless, sending 
 Against the gusts his hoarse halloos, but lost 
 The lad in the rain-blurred, leafless trees that 
 
 masked 
 The river. Yet Gray shook from his eyes the 
 
 stinging 
 
 Drops, and lunged on with nose almost at knee 
 Until the water, four feet of flood stage 
 Lapping the tree trunks, cut the roadway. Ben 
 Lashed his horse ahead for a clearer view 
 To where the rough stream struck his saddle skirts, 
 Saw the brown current ruffled by the wind 
 Eace in mid-channel, where strongly quartering, 
 Old Molly s head outstretched was swimming brave, 
 And Bill showed head and shoulders. Then came 
 
 hail 
 
 Like bullets, and the spurts of water rose 
 Blinding. When Molly reached the other side 
 She hit the landing fair, Ben said, the bank 
 In other places is too steep and high, 
 He saw the saddle was empty. 
 
 We heard next day, 
 It was nearly dark when Molly, riderless, 
 Came trotting in at Turner s. Little Ruth 
 On watch at the window glimpsed her in the rain, 
 Eushed breathless to the barn and breathless back 
 To her bedridden mother, and out once more 
 To the nearest neighbor s house a mile away. 
 
 [39] 
 
Past midnight when they took him out at the dam 
 Seven miles below. There, in the lantern light, 
 One moment ere they carried him in, I saw 
 Him lying on the cold wet grass with eyes 
 Wide open up to the beating rain. 
 
 You see, 
 Bill was my age, my playmate. What I felt 
 
 It was last fall the county built the bridge. 
 
 [40] 
 
TEN CENTS A BUSHEL 
 
 The level sunrise brings a simple glory 
 To hoarfrost in November. Brilliance soft 
 Lives in the buffalo grass of prairie spaces, 
 Lives in the gray of weathering tassel-top 
 On the dun rows of corn as in the field 
 The husker starts and stops his patient team. 
 Above the jangle of neckyoke, clatter of stalk 
 On rattling wagon, thud of the flung ear, 
 His voice is masterful. 
 
 With awkward vigor, 
 
 Over the rough and frozen ground he stumps, 
 Tearing the corn from heavy husks that rasp 
 Through glove and finger-cot to fray the flesh. 
 A rhythm rules the hands, the jerking arm, 
 No muscle wincing as the silk-fringed ears 
 Fly true, thump lightly on the towering board 
 Hour after hour. At noon the well-heaped wagon 
 Creeps groaning to the stackyard. Steadily 
 The farmer bends and rises heaving weight 
 Of yellow corn to roll from the shoulder-slope 
 Of an uncribbed mountain. The fields have blessed 
 
 the tiller, 
 And corn is king. 
 
 To market one day s drive, 
 The price ten cents a bushel. Tis sturdily up 
 And down the five bad hills ; and wearily home 
 
 [41] 
 
At dusk from the long, long miles ; three trips a week 
 Is all a team can stand. 
 
 Corn moulds and rots; 
 The kitchen fire is fed with yellow ears 
 Till the house reeks, and all the doors fly wide 
 To free the odor. Yet to market, King, 
 To pay the notes and the three per cent, a month. 
 
 [42] 
 
THREE PER CENT. A MONTH 
 
 Soft April sunshine sweetens all the world, 
 Yes, even the county-town with smells of spring; 
 And life is busy where the green blades shoot 
 Through last year s matted grasses, and crisp leaves 
 At mid-forenoon light up the little maples 
 Set pioneering in the square s raw sod. 
 
 Across the three blocks of untidy street, 
 
 Thirty low structures skirmish with their mates 
 
 In naked staring. At one windowed box 
 
 Some twelve feet square, team, wagon, driver stand ; 
 
 The farmer in gray jeans, form unrelaxed, 
 
 And face without a mask, trouble writ large. 
 
 The open door slowly emits a man 
 
 Knee-sprung, with hunching shoulders, wrinkly neck, 
 
 And a beaked and bulbous face with narrowing eyes, 
 
 To note for the mortgage Billy s three white feet, 
 
 And Molly s star in forehead, sixteen hands, 
 
 Weight over eleven-fifty, and their ages, 
 
 Eight years and ten. 
 
 The farmer follows in; 
 
 Stands downcast, watching what a nervous frown 
 Pursues the scratching pen on the chattel form. 
 Now speaks a throaty voice : 
 
 [43] 
 
"At three per cent., 
 
 Four months, twelve dollars, and leaves eighty- 
 eight. 
 And you ll have wheat to sell when the note is due." 
 
 In the sun the farmer straightens, mounts his seat. 
 
 How listlessly the wagon rattles off 
 
 Through April sunshine and the smells of spring. 
 
 [44] 
 
MEANWHILE 
 
 The August sun had still two hours of sky 
 When the white flag a-flutter from the house 
 Signalled him in to find his wife at watch 
 At the boy s bed. He laid his calloused hand 
 Lightly on that soft face now fever flushed. 
 " Much worse, " she said. 
 
 "Yes, much worse. I ll ride Jeff 
 Cross-country, try to borrow a saddle horse 
 At Campbell s. If the doctor is at home 
 Get there by one, to-night, and home again 
 In the morning, maybe eight, at most by nine. 
 His rough lips touched the boy who moaned and 
 stirred. 
 
 The sweating plough-horse changed from jolting trot 
 
 To clumsy gallop, soon was winded, fell 
 
 Back to a walk, gained breath and galloped on. 
 
 At Campbell s ranch few words. They learned his 
 
 need, 
 
 Saddled the pony, promised to relay 
 The doctor s team in the morning. It was ride. 
 
 When sunset came the man was galloping 
 
 On gentle prairie. Soon he dropped from the ridge, 
 
 Picking a way down canyon banks to follow 
 
 In the chill dusk of the draw a winding mile ; 
 
 Then stiff ascent and upland track. The sky 
 
 [45] 
 
Afar off held its tender sunset hues, 
 
 Slow fading. One by one the big white stars 
 
 Budded and blossomed. Sometimes prairie owls 
 
 Gave chuckling notes and made dim fluttering. 
 
 The balm of cooling dews healed all the air, 
 
 And ripening grass was fragrant, and late flowers, 
 
 While from the wheeling stars a gentle glow 
 
 Fell on the prairies like a luminous veil. 
 
 The vast plain s prayer was answered utterly. 
 
 As the dusk gathered in the little room 
 The woman still could see the pillow white, 
 And the child s tousled hair in outline dark 
 About his face. He broke from out his sleep 
 Babbling of strange wild fancies ; hardly knew 
 At times, his name, her kindness. Lest the dark 
 Loose more disorder in his wits, she brought 
 A lighted lamp and sang old ballad songs 
 In a soft voice that won him ease again, 
 And quiet breathings. She could hear the clock 
 Lag noisily, and from the distant draws 
 The shrill wail of the coyote, and close by 
 The creaking misery of some cricket-thing. 
 Minutes seemed hours. She would try to read. 
 She got her Bible, but the tears came fast. 
 Try praying : surely there is help in prayer 
 That the boy should recover, that her man 
 Might find the doctor ready. She can see 
 As in a living vision the sunshine, 
 
 [46] 
 
The doctor s rattling buggy racing up 
 In time. 
 
 In time ? Thus praying, a slight noise 
 Led her eyes to the door. She saw it move, 
 Open, and a strange, dirty face looked in 
 Bristling with thickets of wild, brush-like beard. 
 How her heart did beat! She did not rise nor 
 
 scream, 
 
 But with a finger at her lip, said, "Hush. 
 My boy is sick, out of his head, indeed, 
 And must not see you. It might make him die. 
 So leave us. Maybe you are hungry. Look 
 In the cupboard, you will find some bread and meat, 
 And coffee on the stove. Go, wash and eat. " 
 Came a low "Thank ye," and the door went shut. 
 She turned to where the clock hands pointed ten. 
 There would be minutes while the tramp would eat, 
 This outcast fifty miles from the grading camps 
 Meant anything. She could not think nor move, 
 A chill so numbed her, weakening every pulse. 
 But something somehow steadied all her tone 
 When the door opened once more, and the voice 
 Asked, "Is there only you!" 
 
 1 1 My husband s gone 
 
 For the doctor, and should be here even now. 
 Hush, the boy s waking. Go to the pump, and bring 
 Cold water for the headcloths. Put the bucket 
 
 [47] 
 
Upon the table. In the shed you will find 
 Fresh hay and blankets." 
 
 He was gone. Once more 
 The sweet voice crooning low the ballad tune 
 Without a tremble or any sign of fear 
 Mastered the boy s wild fancies, brought him rest. 
 She listened to the clock, and hours went by ; 
 She looked out to the stars, and hours went by ; 
 At last a grayness, light grew, dawn increased, 
 In two more hours. At nine o clock they came 
 In time and happily. 
 
 How like a tale, 
 
 Or a heart-breaking dream the afterwards ! 
 But while death s presence from the noiseless dark 
 Saturates all the air of some child s room 
 Where the mother prays for one more breath un 
 harmed 
 
 Meanwhile how measure her agony of fear? 
 How ease the watching of her wide-stretched eyes? 
 
 [48] 
 
THE CHURCH 
 I 
 
 The blinding July sun at ten o clock 
 
 Glares on the white walls of the little church, 
 
 The shingles silver-gray, the shutters green, 
 
 Sunflowers man-high in bloom against the wall, 
 
 And glares on dingy wagons trailed by dust, 
 
 Slow jolting to the platform at the door. 
 
 Women alight and enter, while the men 
 
 Tie sweating teams to the much gnawed hitching- 
 
 posts. 
 
 How drowsily the horses stamp at flies ! 
 The landscape wavers in the shimmering heat. 
 
 Come in from the strong sunlight. The pine pews 
 Are filled with settlers. Men with grizzled beards, 
 And faces weathered rough by sun and wind - 
 Wind that would wear down granite listless stand, 
 Awkwardly easing muscles now relaxed 
 Longer than is their use. The women move 
 Graceful and gracious, whether pale or tanned, 
 Thin, nervous, or in rosy health. Their eyes 
 Are bright, and bearing cheerful. Least at ease 
 Are growing girls and boys. Welcomes go round, 
 And gossips buzz until the organ wails 
 The slow, sad measures of the opening hymn. 
 
 [49] 
 
II 
 
 Beside the open window, dreamily, 
 
 A sunflower pokes its stiff and oily head 
 
 Droned over by a hairy bumblebee. 
 
 An awkward boy sits gazing ; does not hear 
 
 Or text or sermon ; only sees the flower 
 
 Nod in the breeze, and finds the pew grow hard, 
 
 While muscles twitch and ache for liberty. 
 
 A little church ; the settlers come for miles. 
 
 Some few, unhearing, sit in selfish dreams; 
 
 For life is vilely mingled, sweetly mixed, 
 
 Scanty or bounteous in vital force ; 
 
 But here the most are really worshippers 
 
 Seeking in fellowship a sympathy 
 
 With God. Their simple faces plainly show 
 
 What feelings stir the heart, for hard looks melt, 
 
 And thin, worn wretchedness in garb grotesque 
 
 Is eased of uglinesses while it feeds 
 
 On love and hope. This meager hour may lift 
 
 Some grovelling face to see the blessed sky; 
 
 Master a soul, and yield it back to life 
 
 Tempered against the evil days to be. 
 
 A little thing, this church? Eemove its roots, 
 Ossa on Pelion would not fill the pit. 
 
 [50] 
 
The Neighborhood 
 
HAVE YOU AN EYE 
 
 Have you an eye for the trails, the trails, 
 
 The old mark and the new! 
 What scurried here, what loitered there, 
 
 In the dust and in the dew? 
 
 Have you an eye for the beaten track, 
 
 The old hoof and the young? 
 Come name me the drivers of yesterday, 
 
 Sing me the songs they sung. 
 
 0, was it a schooner last went by, 
 And where will it ford the stream ? 
 
 Where will it halt in the early dusk, 
 And wiiere will the camp-fire gleam? 
 
 They used to take the shortest cut 
 
 The cattle trails had made; 
 Get down the hill by the easy slope 
 
 To the water and the shade. 
 
 But it s barbed wire fence, and section line, 
 
 And kill-horse-travel now; 
 Scoot you down the canyon bank, 
 
 The old road s under plough. 
 
 Have you an eye for the laden wheel, 
 
 The worn tire or the new? 
 Or the sign of the prairie pony s hoof 
 
 Was never trimmed for shoe? 
 
 [55] 
 
little by-path and big highway, 
 
 Alas, your lives are done! 
 The freighter s track is a weed-grown ditch 
 
 Points to the setting sun. 
 
 The marks are faint and rain will fall, 
 
 The lore is hard to learn. 
 heart, what ghosts would follow the road 
 
 If the old years might return. 
 
 [56] 
 
THE RIDGE FAEM 
 
 The ridge is open to all moody weather : 
 The bruisings of the blizzard leave it numb ; 
 From the scorched south the waves swim over, over, 
 Tireless ; late afterglow brings stars and dews 
 Like motherly caresses ; and black clouds 
 Deep bellowing lash its face with gusty rain. 
 
 From the crest Allen s soddy won a view 
 Of wide slopes rich with grasses brown and gray, 
 And scattered little fields, and far-spaced groups 
 Of mud-brown dots that mark a fellow farm, 
 Two miles the nearest. Yet on calm days, smoke, 
 From some deep wrinkle rising, promised plain 
 A nearer neighbor. 
 
 Two rooms, Allen s house. 
 Yellow clay hillocked the convenient cave; 
 Bound the sod stable crouched the cribs and stacks 
 Girt with a barbed wire fence, and over all 
 Stood sentinel the windmill. 
 
 Allen s wife 
 
 Found loneliness the lord of this great plain: 
 Impalpable, a spirit serpent wise; 
 Thin shadows in the daylight; in the dark 
 A misty lurker marching o er the ridge 
 From his wild canyon fastness. He rules thought, 
 Bids the ear listen, the eye watch and weary, 
 
 [57] 
 
While the strained nerve pleads that it is not eased 
 By the querulous sighs, nor by that whistling drone 
 Like to the far-off wail of long lost souls 
 Eolled dull and thin, the voices of the wind 
 Waving the green grass, waving still the gray. 
 
 Her life was blunt with sameness: house and hens 
 And garden and the wind s voice. Few and prized, 
 The trips to town, to church, the visit changed, 
 Grew to misfit proportions. Was she frayed? 
 Twas not with toil. Her body was depressed 
 By what wore down her mind. The livelong day, 
 Except at meal time, was her husband gone 
 About his labors. At the first she sang 
 To dull her mood, but this grew rare and rare; 
 Her voice forewent its tune, she scarcely hummed; 
 Her set eyes found in fixed melancholy 
 The lingering patches of the snow in March 
 And the autumnal drifts of goldenrod 
 Dappling the prairie, while from listless hands 
 Her sewing fell, and in the silences 
 A cricket s chirping shook with pain the nerves 
 That had been fearless. Then she longed to be 
 Where children s prattle once might ease her ears 
 And children s faces feed her hungry eyes. 
 
 Her husband noted how the songs were stilled; 
 Was troubled over the unvarying gaze, 
 The lines about the mouth, and the head poised 
 Like one whose body lifts a grievous weight, 
 
 [58] 
 
Yet may not ease its burden. The last year 
 His counsel that she visit her old home 
 The winter through while work was slack had been 
 Denied for his sake. Now the care for health, 
 Urged firmly, won assent. Assent once made, 
 She brightened visibly, thought to recall 
 Her word of going. Allen would not hear. 
 He knew how stark a spell the prairie wrought 
 In league with loneliness quite to disrank 
 Wits, fancies, memory. 
 
 His final word 
 
 At the station, " Bring some cousin back with you 
 Kidnap an aunt or grandmother. Goodbye." 
 
 It was late February with the sun 
 
 Glinting from the fresh snow when Allen stood 
 
 Again at the frowsy little station. All 
 
 The futile uglinesses of the place 
 
 Wore shining beauty. 
 
 When the noisy wheels 
 
 Ceased grinding, Mollie led down by the hand 
 A rosy boy of seven, diffident 
 To Allen s hearty welcome. Very soon 
 The farmer s wagon lumbered out of town 
 With easy joltings while the drowsy lad 
 On straw and comforts gathered childish dreams. 
 Then Mollie filled in the particulars 
 Her letters had but sketched. To her home town 
 
 [59] 
 
Came boys and girls some fifty in a group, 
 Orphans from New York City. Those in charge 
 Granted them only unto chosen folk 
 On surety of good home and loving care. 
 And little Robert s father and mother, both 
 Fine people, had been dead for two whole years. 
 Then he lived with an aunt, and she was dead, 
 Scarcely five months. There was no property. 
 So the home-finders took him in their charge. 
 1 He reads and writes, and ciphers cleverly. 
 Plenty of spirit, mischief too, and fun. 
 He wakes at morning with a charming smile, 
 And when he puts his arms about your neck, 
 And warms you in the laughter of his eyes, 
 You can t refuse his askings. Lively? Yes. 
 A healthy growing boy, and only once 
 Found crying over memories." 
 
 Spring waxed glad, 
 
 And summer s bounteous promises increased. 
 The house was full of singing, gay with notes 
 Of childish laughter. Now the little lad 
 Knew which end first a cow or horse would rise ; 
 Had watched their noisy browsings while the dew 
 Glinted so rich under the level sun; 
 Had given a name to every colt and calf 
 As it moved staggering on awkward legs 
 With eyes too young for wonder. He could ride 
 The big, mouse-colored mare, shrug as she might; 
 Could hold the lines ; now chasing in the field 
 
 [60] 
 
The chittering ground-squirrel, now in the shade 
 Of the house gable busy with mud pies, 
 Or stick and knife and string and board and nail. 
 For him life held surprises : he had come 
 Into a wondrous land, and every day 
 Gladdened with gazings. 
 
 Loneliness, the lurker, 
 Impalpable, untiring, serpent wise, 
 Scared by the rippling of a childish laugh 
 Skulks into canyon fastnesses, and scouts 
 For easier victims. He has lost the ridge. 
 
 [61] 
 
IN THE CANYON 
 
 This is her diary. Come with me to view 
 The canyon; think you see it as of old 
 When Martha lived, and hear the simple tale. 
 
 Down the steep, rough slope for a hundred yards, 
 The stiff, brown bunch-grass swishing round our 
 
 knees, 
 
 Until the shelving bank abruptly falls 
 To the canyon floor divided by a ditch 
 ergrown with ironweeds, horsemint, currant bush, 
 And clumps of the dwarf cherry with black fruit 
 Thick clustering among the leathery leaves. 
 The uneven canyon jogging right and left, 
 Brown slopes to east, and west, and north, and south, 
 Forms a deep cup ; one notch to the southeast 
 Eeveals, miles off, the buildings of a farm. 
 
 Such view and skyline for the sodded mound 
 Pierced by the rusting stovepipe. The roof s front 
 O erbrows a window and an ample passage 
 Cut smooth in the clay and cleanly swept. 
 
 Tis noon. 
 
 In the open door against the inner dusk 
 Stands Martha gazing; her blue sunbonnet 
 Is pressed back, and reveals coarse, graying hair 
 Over a face dealt harshly with by sun 
 
 [62] 
 
And wind. She looks right down the canyon bed 
 Past rope-and-pulley well, chokecherry patch 
 Beyond the bean poles, and the withered vines, 
 And yellowing sweet corn, to the stretch of the slope, 
 The notch, and the buildings. 
 
 With long weary moods 
 
 This childless widow faced the lonesome months 
 Here in the canyon, for the nearest soddy 
 Lay out of sight fully a mile away. 
 She said once to this neighbor, shyness melting 
 Under kindly eyes: "You say it s half a visit 
 To see folk pass on the road. You touch their lives. 
 The who, and when, and why, fill up your heart 
 With friendly thoughts and hopes. I chose a spot 
 In which the dugout could be cheaply made. 
 My well is shallower by a hundred feet 
 Than any on the ridge, and easily works 
 With rope and pulley. I don t mind coarse clothes, 
 Nor gardening with the hoe, nor guarding fowls 
 Against hawk, coyote, but to be alone ! 
 If I could see your house, and you watch mine!" 
 She paused with a sigh, her parted lips grew firm. 
 "It s only four more years." 
 
 Some weeks had passed, 
 
 She came again, resumed the thread abruptly 
 In some such words as these: 
 
 "My dugout room 
 Is very lonesome. Let your child come stay 
 
 [63] 
 
The night with me. I long to hear a voice, 
 
 Be it chatter ne er so trifling. I make pets 
 
 Of the fowls, hold foolish talk with my dozy horse, 
 
 Have named the seven jackrabbits that play 
 
 On the slope in front. Beasts have no words to 
 
 give 
 
 In answer, and tasks fail that filled the time. 
 The curious quilt is finished; there remain 
 No scraps for working. " 
 
 Now the child has come, 
 
 Tossing her soft brown curls from eager eyes, 
 To stand by Martha folded in her arm. 
 The mother made assent. 
 
 Folk seldom thought 
 
 Of Martha s struggle, for she did not give 
 Her burdens unto others. She took charge 
 Of her course, and moved with delicate steps to meet 
 At the surprising turns of the stony path 
 The unpitying spies of fate. And while she groped 
 In silence on, lone hour and hour might sap 
 The health of body and soul. The neighbors saw 
 Her hands hang listless, and her shoulders sag, 
 The tan forsake her cheek, languor eat through 
 The strength from every muscle. Like a vine 
 Struck at the root by beetles, she drooped fast. 
 Good gossips sensed her weakness, visited, 
 Brought delicacies, gave companionship; 
 Saw her eyes lose the strange bewildered lights, 
 
 [64] 
 
And that she breathed once more free from shudder 
 ing dreams 
 
 Waking her in the midnight s stifling black; 
 And that she ceased from muttering to herself. 
 
 One woman urged, "Come, Martha, stay with us 
 A week, a month !" 
 
 "Thank you, I cannot come. 
 I should be in your way, my fowls, my horse ! 
 Besides, " 
 
 "Why, sell your chickens, bring the horse ! 
 I worry when I think of you alone. 
 Suppose, of course, it s no affair of mine. 
 You must get strength." 
 
 "Indeed, you are most kind! 
 Thank you, I cannot come. I ll manage here." 
 No querulous note from the quiet voice; the head 
 Held a rebellious poise. Now visits ceased 
 Because work drove the neighbor women hard. 
 
 On Martha s loneliness the dreams returned, 
 Flooded her mind, and overwashed and drowned 
 All its defences. This the diary tells, 
 Not all coherently. Its simple words 
 Say much, suggest to understanding folk 
 The height and weight of woe. Its leaves were 
 found 
 
 [65] 
 
When the nearest neighbor woman taking thought 
 How Martha was not seen this fortnight space 
 Let drop her tasks, half ran to the canyon slope, 
 And breathless down. Loose tumble-weeds con 
 fused 
 The passageway to the door. She knocked; she 
 
 called ; 
 
 She knew the secret trick to lift the bar, 
 Opened and peered. Disorder everywhere. 
 The farthest corner showed a barricade 
 Of washstand, chair, and woodbox. Behind this, 
 Crumpled uneasily upon the floor, 
 The woman lay. Profusion of gray hair 
 Half hid the terror wrinkled in her face 
 And a-stare in her wide blue eyes. 
 
 This diary 
 
 Is intimate and not for careless gaze. 
 Its first page the first Sunday on her claim. 
 Much reminiscence in the early leaves. 
 Married two years, her husband died. She tells 
 Her fear of snakes, and how a flood in the ditch 
 Heaps weed-drift on the bushes. 
 
 Here she writes : 
 "Gray clouds, cold rain. Whatever light comes 
 
 through 
 
 My one small window soaks into dirt walls, 
 Leaving me in a shivering dusk." 
 
 [66] 
 
"The men 
 
 Plastered my walls with native lime rough coat, 
 Dull gray. I tacked white muslin all above 
 To the rafters; it keeps dirt from sifting down, 
 And it makes the dugout lighter. I ll not choke 
 On rainy days with darkness." 
 
 Farther on 
 
 Six months to-day. The snow was dazzling white, 
 And the sun gave a blindness. The horse drank 
 A single bucket and shivered with the cold. 
 I got three eggs ; two leghorns froze their combs. 
 Warmer to-night. My monthly trip to town 
 To-morrow if it s fine. To Ashby s place 
 By sunrise, there get warm, and leave my horse. 
 Less chilly in his wagon. Home by dark, 
 Or moonlight, lantern ready. I dread the cold 
 Long to see people. I ll borrow on the hill 
 The county paper, bring the feeble stuff, 
 The idle precinct locals and bought praise 
 Of patent curealls home to read. Thin food, 
 It sours on the mind. I hate and fear this place ; 
 Such stillness lies upon it all day long! 
 And with the dusk, day s quiet has increased, 
 The little lamp calls all the shadows up 
 From stove, chair, table, woodbox, vivifies 
 The lines in the checked curtain o er the shelves 
 That hold the dishes. I move to the door, " 
 
 [67] 
 
One can imagine how she wrote this page, 
 The bent thin shoulders, and the firm sweet mouth, 
 Stillness, the lingering whisper of her pen 
 With the shadows listening, 
 
 "I move to the door. 
 
 Such moonlight on the snow, shadows and stars! 
 Out here the stars are always near at hand. 
 The air is stirless, fearing the least noise. 
 I wonder that my heart can beat so loud, 
 I long to free my senses with a shriek. 
 What if f Oh ! Oh ! the coyote >s cry, 
 That wildly shrilling ululation bursts 
 Shattering the nerves. And now his eager mates 
 Multiply wailing answers from the slope. 
 The cries die off. To-morrow to the town." 
 
 " Midsummer s hand is heavy. Heat and light 
 
 And wind that never ceases. If my life 
 
 Were like a man s I might go striding free 
 
 To fresh adventures, hardying my soul, 
 
 Choosing my ground of vantage. When I came, 
 
 This was adventure ; it is penance now. 
 
 Days die in turn. But I have set my steps 
 
 To this path, and I keep it, spite of sun, 
 
 And wind, and dust, and thirst, or beasts that growl, 
 
 Or brutes that bristle. 
 
 [68] 
 
"0, to be away! 
 
 Lake water, trees, the wood-thrush! In four 
 years. " 
 
 "My cherry patch is white with spires of bloom, 
 I smell the piquant sweetness. April sun 
 Makes my fowls noisy. Tiny bands of green 
 Cross the black garden, and I should be glad, 
 But loneliness is heavy. Just five years 
 Last night since the fire. Shall I have again 
 Books, music, place in life? tale of days, 
 Pinching and scraping, buried in this hole ! 
 I write no letters. They reveal my mind 
 Drugged by this solitude, beaten too low, 
 Quiescent, not rebellious save in nerves 
 Acutely sensitive, bidding me hide 
 From pity. All alone, yes, all alone! 
 Three years, three months yet. I say to myself 
 At morn, seven hours till noon, then seven more, 
 Night; two more hours, and then to bed 
 In hope to sleep. Shall I dawdle, spin work out? 
 Then sit to wear the dragging day quite through, 
 Counting my breathings seven thousand times? 
 This diary helps. That s why I write so much, 
 And give it pains for the most part. 
 
 As we turn 
 
 Through many a leaf, the neat and even form 
 Of the word begins to waver. 
 
 [69] 
 
(. t 
 
 I have laughed! 
 The little girl who stayed with me last night 
 Was full of talk and glee. My dugout room 
 Had never heard such merriment, and I, 
 He called my laughter silvery long ago, 
 As in another world. How good to laugh !" 
 
 "Why not give up! I lack the power to choose 
 
 Another project. 0, for some strong will 
 
 To establish me. I have read my one book over 
 
 Story by story, promise after promise. 
 
 I need help now. If God is in this world, 
 
 He has forgot the corner where I lie, 
 
 And no one cares. And yet, the clouds, the stars!" 
 
 "Better to write than mutter to myself; 
 
 The page bears moody words my tongue might bring 
 
 Into the open; and when tears would flow, 
 
 Or terror crush, I clutch the pen and write. " 
 
 "Yes, I can love my neighbors. They have been 
 Loving to me. And when my health returns 
 I will throw off timidity, reserve, 
 Try mixing with their gayety. 
 
 "A road 
 
 Bears witness men have passed, makes promises 
 That men will come. If I lived by a road, " 
 
 [70] 
 
"The heat of August burns the bunch-grass brown; 
 It makes my body fail. I hadn t breath 
 To climb the canyon slope, and found no taste 
 For my own cooking. Early then to bed. 
 Through all the shimmering quiet of the dusk 
 I lay in utter loneliness. The wind 
 Went on in long drawn sighs. At last a doze, 
 Then dreams, the mind indulging fancy s whim 
 And terror s utmost threatening. Habit this. 
 My senses need relief. I wake, and watch 
 Through the window the dark sky soak up the light 
 Of coming day, deep blue, then silver blue, 
 Then all day s splendor. Opening the door, 
 I look on the chaste grasses, see the dew 
 In shine and shadow, feel the morning breeze 
 Tighten my nerves, and win a kind of strength. 
 Yet not such force as when from healthful sleep 
 And quiet dreams of friends, the body wakes 
 Purified as by music s happiest streams 
 From all the dregs of yesterday. 
 
 "I write 
 
 In this high mood one moment. How days wear ! 
 Nights wear, months wear ! I never can grow used 
 To loneliness. This canyon seems a trap 
 Closing me in. The weight of pent-up moods 
 Must find some floodways of escape or burst 
 Explosively the barriers. Sunset time 
 Brings causeless tears, and while the brief dusk 
 glooms, 
 
 [71] 
 
I shake with sobbings. When my heart is hushed, 
 
 Sleep holds aloof. I mutter to myself, 
 
 Tis two years more, ten months, eleven days ." 
 
 " 
 
 I hear the migrant plover whistling high. 
 Five hawks wheel screaming down the dirty wind. 
 Had I but wings " 
 
 The other lines are blank. 
 A little further on three leaves are gone. 
 The final page is crumpled, slightly torn, 
 Shows haliings, fresh departures; words begin 
 Precisely, snarl themselves. 
 
 "The door still holds. 
 
 They have besieged me two days and two nights. 
 Water, I fear to go the ditch the well 
 The cherry patch. In the shed the biggest one 
 Got in the horse. I chopped him. Night 
 Six more tap window beat the stovepipe 
 Will break in. One said if open the door 
 I could go home, and . No escape, afraid ! 
 Four nights awake. If I were but a child 
 Sleeping in mother s arms ! Oh hush ! I hear 
 God in Heaven, how they howl and yell. Lord God, 
 Help! Help! Help! Help! Help! Help! Why 
 won t you help?" 
 
 [72] 
 
The wilderness shall blossom as the rose. 
 Its grasses cover graves, its canyons bury 
 In deep forgetfulness. 
 
 Down the steep slope, 
 With the brown bunchgrass swishing round your 
 
 knees. 
 
 The rusty stovepipe rises through a beard 
 Of starveling herbage. A mat of tumble-weeds 
 In the doorway is o erhung with bluestem blades; 
 They blot the path to the well. The garden place 
 Bristles with ragweed; at one corner spire 
 Red and white hollyhocks, and the dying souls 
 Of damask roses drench the sultry noon. 
 
 [73] 
 
EOAD AND PATH 
 
 0, road and path, and path and road, 
 
 They write the story plain; 
 To the picnic grounds, to the little church, 
 
 And for water, wood, and grain. 
 
 They point to the friend, and the dearest friend, 
 
 The gossip, the recluse ; 
 To the cloud of grief, and the star of love, 
 
 And all life s human use. 
 
 There s a rain-washed mark leads up the hill 
 
 Because two boys were chums ; 
 And a bridle path steals down the draw, 
 
 Romance in its season comes. 
 
 0, fennel and chickweed fill the ruts 
 
 In the sunny buffalo grass ; 
 For Andy Marsh and his cousin Bill 
 
 Look sidewise when they pass. 
 
 Twas a well worn track to Heathering s farm, 
 
 But the courting s over now; 
 Mary and Belle chose husbands well, 
 
 And Jane the veil and the vow. 
 
 To Connor s house is a welcome road, 
 And jollity is ringing; 
 
 [74] 
 
O, the open door and the dancing-floor, 
 The laughter and the singing ! 
 
 There are highways born, the old roads die, 
 
 Can you read what once they said? 
 From the rain-worn ditch, and the sunflower clump, 
 
 And the needs of folk long dead? 
 
 [75] 
 
THE NEIGHBORHOOD 
 
 Once more twas spring! The meadow-lark gave 
 
 note 
 
 About Ms grassy nest, and builders hummed 
 Old songs while sod on sod their houses rose. 
 Through widening strips of field all rusty-black, 
 The first fine blades of corn sprang laughingly, 
 And men had joy of neighbors. Fellowship 
 Budded and blossomed into a schoolhouse-church 
 Just where the Carico swings a wooded arm 
 Across wide meadows to the upland slope. 
 Twenty-five settlers brought their families 
 And built as brothers build. Log after log, 
 Strong hand to hand was helpful. Last, a feast 
 Summoned the hearty workers. 
 
 All roads meet 
 At the schoolhouse-church; it gives to Fairview 
 
 Eidge 
 
 A rallying sign, a name, a bond. Upgrows, 
 Enveloping this jangling human group, 
 The personality of neighborhood. 
 
 Who and whence were the neighbors? Illinois 
 Sent grimy miners from the smothering pits 
 To steep themselves in sunshine; and thin clerks 
 Came from great cities, asking health and strength 
 From the open prairie ; renters from New York 
 And Pennsylvania ; the Georgia cracker ; 
 
 [76] 
 
Old-soldier farmers out of Iowa ; 
 
 Hoe-wielders from the Indiana clay; 
 
 A sunburnt plainsman who had fought the tribes ; 
 
 Lumberjacks from the camps in Michigan ; 
 
 Soft-voiced plantation-lords aristocrats 
 
 Unbowed by loss of slaves ; hill-billy fiddlers 
 
 Full of the music of the mountain brooks ; 
 
 A gold-seeker who dropped the battered sledge ; 
 
 A faro dealer with long curly hair 
 
 And soft and guileless eye ; gray schoolteachers ; 
 
 Carpenters out of cities in the east; 
 
 Broken-down cowboys singing of the range; 
 
 A widower dentist, spoken of as "Doc", 
 
 And called about to heal the countryside ; 
 
 A bankrupt grocer; men from over sea, 
 
 Danes, Germans, Swedes, and Irish, marrying wit 
 
 To words misfashioned. 
 
 As a group, these men 
 
 Scarce matched in vigor and resource the first 
 Old pioneers who set adventurous feet 
 In lonely wildernesses. Straggled in 
 The empty-handed, weary with long years 
 Of gainless toil ; and the land-hungry came 
 Like thirsty cattle to the shadowy pools. 
 On hand and knee, young strength and old goodwill 
 Oombed through the matted grass for corner stones ; 
 And many a bold-heart brought his family, 
 Their faces brightening like prairie flowers, 
 To own a home. 
 
 [77] 
 
Once more the world was new. 
 It sunned itself in kindness and good will : 
 Old women s gossip, chats b yroad and door; 
 Singings and frolics ; weddings, funerals ; 
 While love strode in to lighten evil days, 
 And souls grew large with human sympathy. 
 If eyes in solitary jealousies 
 Burned, or men in their natural desires 
 Should buzz like hornets to the tune of spite, 
 Sad neighbors they. 
 
 A good world in the main. 
 Jack borrowed here a horse or lent a plough; 
 Saw pipes relighted while his summery mood 
 Tongued his life story into friendly ears. 
 Bess heard loud hoofbeats in the deepening dusk 
 Bearing an eager lover, or she saw 
 The hushed room, the white-aproned woman, all 
 A mother s generosity of love 
 Answering six months acquaintance. 
 
 A new world ! 
 
 Once more began for worthy and unfit 
 The shaking of the sieve that sorts to size. 
 Men held up heads to a society 
 Expectant of backbone. Who won the place 
 Of underling had just himself to thank, 
 Blame as he might his neighbors and his wife. 
 Chance could not keep men equal ; it could give 
 More strength to all, yet unto him that hath . 
 
 [78] 
 
Spring on the land, and meadow-larks a-singing ! 
 On Fairview Bidge, the joy of human neighbors, 
 And boys and girls with wonderful May weather 
 In brave young hearts ! Spring on the blossoming 
 land! 
 
 [79] 
 
THE BANDED 
 
 Who are the banded! Gather from the four 
 
 Broad winds one hundred strangers varying 
 
 In tongue, age, disposition; set them down 
 
 On the wild prairie where a neighbor s help 
 
 Is priceless. Each has left an ordered world 
 
 Where every wheel rolls on in its old rut 
 
 To the expected stopping place, and men 
 
 Make law of local patterns, local custom. 
 
 How shall these hundred settlers find adjustment 
 
 To their unsettled neighbors, and to thoughts 
 
 Novel and startling, thoughts which fostering years 
 
 May nourish to strange fruitage? Tis a problem 
 
 Too large for human powers, infinite 
 
 In nice complexities. 
 
 The spirit of life 
 
 Will draw this dusk confusion into form, 
 Will shape the self of the neighborhood wherein, 
 Like wheat straws in the bundle, men are bound, 
 And press upon each other, bringing help 
 Or harm not to be measured. Hate, and love, 
 And hateful love, and loving hate, and low 
 Passions that bind man to his brother beast, 
 And wild sweet hopes, and airy fancies lifted 
 Like a winged song half way from man to God, 
 Must merge into the spirit of the group 
 Which pipes for dancers, mourns to those that 
 mourn, 
 
 [80] 
 
Trains one wolfhound to charge the bristling pack, 
 Pampers another into poodle form, 
 And for a sulky brute lays a rod in brine. 
 
 Brutes may object to rods. Suppose the cur 
 
 When threatened, snarls, when beaten, howls and 
 bites ; 
 
 Dogs, children, wives, and neighbors swell the clam 
 or, - 
 
 Bow-wow and boo-hoo, Fairview Ridge eruptive. 
 
 It s easier to start than end a fracas, 
 And status quo may seem beyond the reach 
 Of thought itself, demanding that each bristle 
 Shall lie sleek on the dog, and not a tremor 
 Stir in the extinct volcano. 
 
 Here the banded 
 
 Fashion the fate of man. Who prays for blessing 
 Shall ask for health, a clean soul, and good neigh 
 bors. 
 
 [81] 
 
NATHAN BBIGGS 
 
 Through two small windows sunshine slanted in 
 To die upon the splintery schoolroom floor, 
 While the October gusts whipped dirt and weeds 
 Against the rough-hewn logs, or through loose chinks 
 Sang, keying children s nerves to concert pitch. 
 
 At eleven fell a loud vehement fit 
 Of knocking at the door. Little Ernest plumped 
 Out of his seat, fell flat, and the children stared 
 While the teacher turned the knob. There stood 
 
 Nate Briggs 
 
 With face well smeared with dust, a bloody nose, 
 Torn overalls, a cudgel in his hand, 
 And eyes on fire with fury, and to her 
 "Good morning, Mr. Briggs," showed teeth and 
 
 barked, 
 
 "You whipped my little Willie yesterday, 
 Because that cussed Jones girl pulled his hair. 
 God damn the Joneses! By the holy golden " 
 
 swift, 
 The door went shut in his face and the key was 
 
 turned. 
 
 At noon the teacher wrote, and Arthur Flynn 
 Galloped to the road and waited for the stage. 
 In three days came the upshot. Nathan Briggs 
 Sailed gloriously past the country store, 
 
 [82] 
 
Top buggy, driver with a spanking team, 
 To trudge back, two days later, coat on arm, 
 Afoot, the thirty dusty miles from town. 
 
 A thresher s outfit close beside the road 
 Had halted work to mend the driving belt. 
 Began the grinning: 
 
 " H lo Nate, where Ve you been ? 
 "Sold your horse and buggy? Didn t like to ride?" 
 "You ought to have made the sheriff fetch you 
 
 back." 
 "What s the fine for cussin schoolma ams?" "Old 
 
 man Jones 
 
 Says he wants to lick you agin ; says he d be glad 
 To pay once more for his cattle in your corn 
 For the pleasure of fightin . " " Ha-ha ! Ha-ha-ha ! 
 We ain t no schoolma ams. You can t frighten us 
 By shakin your fist and cursin ." 
 
 Nathan Briggs 
 Like a footsore dog toiled home. And glance, and 
 
 gibe, 
 
 And grins like lashes fell where the bruisings ached. 
 How to set right his world out-puzzled him. 
 Apologize, atone? Such acts require 
 Eomantic fineness, power to undertake, 
 And will that stoops with a shoulder-load of blame 
 Along the public road on a holiday. 
 It was his wish that people should forget. 
 
 [83] 
 
In spite of curse and clod, humiliations 
 
 Dogged every step to make him hide his head. 
 
 If his slow thoughts fermenting bitterly 
 
 Did not burst out, some fostering spirit saved him. 
 
 He set no foot off his farm for the next six months ; 
 
 Indeed, he thought of moving farther west. 
 
 But folk need neighbors, time cures every woe, 
 
 So this fault found oblivion. Once a year, 
 
 Perhaps, some store-box winker may refer 
 
 To the stylish buggy-ride of Nathan Briggs. 
 
 His young son had to bear the father s crimes 
 At school, poor tearful champion of a love 
 Already gibbeted. The teacher s care 
 Guarded him when it might. And Mrs. Briggs 
 Who had a reputation for currant jell 
 Sent her a dozen glasses of the best. 
 
 [84] 
 
MISTER DWIGGINS 
 
 Bill Dwiggins had been Billy thirty years, 
 
 A boyish name which piqued his clever wife, 
 
 As if her man were ticketed light-weight 
 
 Out here as in Ohio. He had land, 
 
 A team, and stock. Let him be Mister now, 
 
 Take office as assessor, constable, 
 
 Or school director, and by slow degrees 
 
 Grow into larger duties. It may be 
 
 She had excuse, had suffered in old days 
 
 The patronage of those whose men had hired 
 
 Good-natured, easy Billy. 
 
 Mister Dwiggins 
 
 Was huge, flat-bodied, moved with the swinging gait 
 Of a slow, steady ox. I ve seen him toil 
 At knotty problems, tilted in his chair, 
 In strained attention drawing on his pipe, 
 Bristly mustache, arched brows, uplifted eye. 
 Now blessed be good counsel ! 
 
 His wife helped. 
 
 The slight, shawled figure with the sunny face 
 Found welcome at the Ashbys ; lively chat 
 The Browers held with her ; and she talked around 
 With Butterpaugh, Embree, and Himmelblau, 
 Casey, Flynn, Boyd, O Reilley, Mclntyre, 
 Oltrogge, Davis, Matzybon, and Trinque, 
 Fox, Martin, Marsh, King, Anderegg, and more, 
 
 [85] 
 
They should uphold the interests of the Bidge 
 By starting a literary. 
 
 Pettigrew 
 
 Helped by objecting. Four or five gave ear 
 To his hoarse voice on mail-day as he sat 
 On the puncheon bench outside, with big hat slouch 
 ing 
 
 To drooping shoulders. Thin, unsmiling lips 
 Moved in that bony face, as steeped in sourness 
 As if his soul were lined with colic-cramp. 
 1 Worthless performance crude ! Hoary debate 
 On Fire and Water. Let the children speak 
 At Christmas, Decoration, last of school. 
 Paper bound to be bad; learns younger folk 
 To disrespect their elders. And remember, 
 For every idle word in that last day. " 
 
 Casey was holding match to his dudeen, 
 Delaying answer; from the inner room 
 A woman s tones: "I m glad you told me, Janet, 
 How to make that melon pickle; Mister Dwiggins 
 Has praised it over and over. Then, in the door, 
 Black lisle gloves found adjustment, and a smile 
 Sentenced the culprit : 
 
 0, there will be faults 
 Our faults which make us humble. But I like 
 To work with those who put their whole hearts in, 
 And the spirit of the neighborhood, communion 
 In sympathy, and in laughter : 
 
 [86] 
 
"Vanity, woman! 
 
 Folly and sin increase, while we pursue 
 Idle frivolity." 
 
 Come and make that speech 
 At the literary! Thoughts, shut up, want air, 
 And spoil like bales unopened to the sun. 
 
 " Let the women keep a silence in the churches! 
 
 * Nor laugh with one another. I pity his wife, 
 Married to such a bully ! But we 11 sing 
 Together, Janet, nor mind if pessimists 
 Wear scratchy woollens. " 
 
 Deep, unbroken silence ; 
 
 Dazed by the indelicate word, Jim Pettigrew 
 Kept glum eyes on the ground. His auditors 
 Moved chuckling forth with gossip for their wives. 
 
 Standing room only, that November night ; 
 
 The aisles were full, the windows. Cheering rocked 
 
 The schoolhouse when Bill Dwiggins, flushed with 
 
 pride, 
 
 As president-elect ended his speech, - 
 There are who hint a woman wrote it for him, 
 And introduced the dentist to orate 
 On Aaron Burr. The genial worthy stepped 
 Square to mid-platform, gestured right and left 
 
 [87] 
 
A college medal glittering on his coat 
 Boomed in brave language : 
 
 "Lo, the bea-uteous 
 Aurora had arisen in the majestic east, 
 And shed long garnet beams across the surface 
 Of the waters rippling in the morning breeze 
 Like a sea of broken mirrors, and reflecting 
 The shattered scintillations. Hudson s cliffs 
 With violets were sprinkled. Fifteen minutes 
 Of artificial flowers. His applause 
 Was nigh an uproar. 
 
 Now two sisters sang; 
 Their voices overflowed the little room, 
 The bell-like alto lifting hopeless grief 
 Till many eyes had tears. Next, children spoke 
 Breitmann and Carleton ballads. 
 
 A recess. 
 
 Young lads rushed out for moonlit pullaway ; 
 The organ drew the singers: Vacant Chair, 
 The Little Old Sod Shanty, Billy Boy, 
 Tenting To-night, Sweet Afton, Rosy Nell, 
 And Rocking on the Billows had their turns; 
 Then business meeting. 
 
 [88] 
 
Truly, a success, 
 
 This literary ! Mister Dwiggins won 
 The place of constable two successive years. 
 Next fall he will be sheriff if he minds 
 The counsel of Mrs. Dwiggins, so men say; 
 They call him Billy yet, but change the tone. 
 
 [89] 
 
THE CLAIM-JUMPER 
 
 AT HER DUGOUT 
 
 Because it s cut in the canyon bank, you looked 
 For a rabbit hole with a window and a door? 
 Come in; the supper s on the stove. You see 
 Rag carpet, bright cretonne for the shelves. The 
 
 lounge 
 
 And the table once were boxes. In September 
 Goldenrod is my favorite, and I ve filled 
 Both vases. I shall have a handsome soddy 
 After I prove up and pay off my debts ; 
 Saving is slow for schoolma ams. 
 
 You will pardon 
 
 My going on to spread the cloth, I know, 
 For you ll be hungry. 0, that mound of sod 
 Off yonder on the hill? That used to be 
 The house that Jarvis built to jump my claim 
 While I was teaching on the Frenchman Fork, 
 Forty miles off. The neighbors tore it down. 
 I didn t know! So terrible a chance 
 For death or cripplings ! People feared him, too. 
 Maybe in part his looks. He stooped by habit, 
 As tall men stoop in following the plough. 
 
 [90] 
 
From Ms sloping shoulders hung great length of 
 
 arms 
 
 Ending in knobby fingers. His Adam s apple 
 Made an elbow joint in trying to lift straight 
 His shaggy, rough-hewn head. Wide flaring ears, 
 Under the slouch of a big white hat, and eyes 
 Bounder than common, hard bright blue, like mar 
 bles, 
 
 Set, starey eyes. Maybe that s what scared people, 
 Or just that he was a jumper. Someone came 
 At night and shot three bullets through the stove 
 pipe 
 
 On my roof. Yes, I was here. -- The biscuit need 
 Another minute, and the baked potatoes 
 Are done. I like the smell. May have been Jarvis, 
 As they said, or maybe not. With a needlegun 
 He could pick an egg from a post at a hundred yards. 
 The law! I was at law. Law isn t everything. 
 Too much set rules, delays, and costs, and fees. 
 
 You see, I had a right to earn my living. 
 I had to ! I wish the government official 
 Who says continuous residence just means, 
 Sleep on your claim once every thirty days 
 Or lose your right, - I wish he had to teach 
 Forty miles from his dugout all the winter, 
 Drive all day Saturday up and down canyons 
 So steep the buckboard s all the team can manage, 
 And walking safer, and in the drifts, or the wind 
 On the open prairie, spend one night in the dugout, 
 
 [91] 
 
And Sunday driving back. This year my school- 
 house 
 Is only six miles off, and there s no Jarvis. 
 
 I ll tell you all about him after supper. 
 How do you have your teal One lump, or two? 
 I like them crisp and brown and piping hot. 
 My cousin sent this tea from New York City. 
 
 [92] 
 
II 
 
 THE JUMPER 
 
 Twas brisk October, and the sun was down 
 
 When Mrs. Kinsey bringing in some wood 
 
 Heard a rattling wagon pass on to the draw; 
 
 Its clatter increased, ended in a thud, - 
 
 Silence then muffled calls. She rushed to the road. 
 
 At the bottom of the slope a wagon box 
 
 Lay upside down, cries came from underneath. 
 
 The team, still fastened to the running gears, 
 
 Stood quiet. 
 
 "Are you hurt?" 
 
 No, not much hurt. 
 Liftoff the box! " 
 
 "And you, who may you be!" 
 "I mJarvis. Help me out!" 
 
 Mrs. Kinsey paused. 
 
 "No, Mr. Jarvis, you have jailed yourself. 
 I leave you. When my husband comes, he may 
 Help you if he likes. 
 
 "But woman, my God!" 
 
 [93] 
 
"I help no thief to steal a woman s claim !" 
 i i By law help me, my shoulder hurts. 
 
 "The law! 
 
 And her in debt establishing her rights ! 
 Anyway, I can t lift it." She paid no heed 
 To his shouts while she unhooked and tied his team. 
 
 The first soft moonlight mellowed all the draw 
 
 When farmer Kinsey tilted the big box, 
 
 And Jarvis crawled out. Silently the two 
 
 Set all to rights. If Jarvis s left arm 
 
 Was painful, he could use it as he pushed 
 
 The singletree with his leg, and hooked the tugs. 
 
 Kinsey s slow voice was vibrant. "Better stay here, 
 
 To-night." 
 
 Thank you, I can t. My pigs and cow 
 Need food and water." 
 
 "Well, you better stay. 
 
 Yes, true, my wife won t have you in the house. 
 But you can sleep in the shed. Wait, listen to me ! 
 Stay here!" 
 
 You think there s danger at my place. 
 The shoulders lifted, and the wide mouth gave 
 Tones harsh and rigorous as granite stone. 
 "I ve had their threats. Some will go home in boxes. 
 I won t be scared nor bullied, not by fifty." 
 
 [94] 
 
" Jarvis, I think you know that if you shoot, 
 The boys will make a sieve of you. Otherwise, 
 They ll have a frolic with feathers and rail. 
 I m not your friend; perhaps I run a risk. 
 But you can sleep in the hay. 
 
 "One minute, Kinsey! 
 As to the lie that says I went at night 
 Shooting at that girl s dugout, I m no such fool. 
 If I could find who did it I would make him 
 Eat the dirt of the stable. First I knew 
 Was when the store refused me credit. The neigh 
 borhood 
 
 Is ready to mob me, and I ve got to kill 
 Or be killed, and it s God damn tough on me!" 
 He spoke from the wagon, and his eyes were fixed 
 Where the rough track climbed the steep bank ahead. 
 
 The horses trotted. Jarvis let his thought 
 
 Move with the w^agon s rattling tune. Such a group 
 
 Would not be ready to start till after ten, 
 
 Or maybe midnight. Everyone in it, of course. 
 
 Claim jumpers have no friends. These men would 
 
 find 
 
 His rifle held sixteen bullets. He would be glad 
 At last to have it out. For all these months 
 He had stood them off. And yet, what end, what 
 
 end? 
 
 [95] 
 
He looked about. Perhaps his last of nights. 
 A gentle breeze, such moonlight, and the stars 
 Pouring soft splendor. All the prairie rolled 
 As in enchanted beauty. Why remain 
 To see the harshness, ugliness, the day 
 Must soon bring back for him? The children hid 
 If he passed on the road. Men would not speak; 
 And women would not speak but only look. 
 His hide was not so tough but he could feel, 
 This Kinsey woman, now ! 
 
 Well, when he came, 
 
 The claims were taken, and no good land left 
 Unless by jumping. Once you jump, you must 
 Go on to win, to justify yourself 
 In the teeth of all who fight you. 
 
 A way out ? 
 
 Was it like his father s garden? Crabgrass grew; 
 His father only cursed, and next year s planting 
 Was choked the sooner with the help of sandburs. 
 Lay hand to the roots ! The worst is not the fighting ; 
 But standing alone, with no one to give help, 
 To laugh with you, to think in sympathy, 
 More than with a steer goaded on to a cattle car. 
 Life is too short. Unless there s more in the world 
 Than law and guns . Is there no happier spot 
 With friends, and neighbors, and companionship, 
 And laughter, and a home ? His horses love him, 
 Will follow with dumb nosings ; and to-night 
 
 [96] 
 
It seems the prairie loves him while the moon 
 Touching its beauty tenderly, - 
 
 Bosh! The fall 
 
 Had jolted worse than he thought, for his shoulder 
 ached. 
 
 The pigs reproached him as he reached the yard ; 
 The cow called softly. Once their wants relieved 
 He threw in the wagon some small movables, 
 And drove off the back way and down the draw. 
 
 [97] 
 
Ill 
 
 JARVIS WAITED 
 
 The moon was down when a knock at Kinsey s door 
 Brought the wakeful man of the house. "Come in! 
 
 Come in! 
 What has happened ? Are you hurt 1 
 
 no, not hurt. 
 
 I m going away must leave my cow and pigs; 
 And farming tools and junk about the place. 
 Will you look after it? I ll give ten per cent. 
 Of what they sell for." 
 
 "Sure, sure I will. 
 Never mind the per cent. What s your address!" 
 
 "Don t know. I ll write. Some place to make a 
 
 start, 
 
 A home in the world. A man can fight, and fight, 
 But he needs a rest. I saw the mob a-tearing 
 My house all down, I heard their oaths and abuse, 
 And didn t shoot, but, well, good-bye." 
 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 The voice of Mrs. Kinsey sounded now : 
 
 "Best make a writing so people will understand 
 
 What you are doing, Kinsey. And Kinsey, say ! 
 
 [98] 
 
Tell Jarvis to wait. I ll fix a basket up. 
 
 Some eggs and fresh baked bread and a pie and 
 
 jelly. 
 
 This camping out by the road is a kind of hardship 
 When a man does the cooking." 
 
 Doubly harsh, 
 
 Kindness from those who cursed you. Yet I ve seen 
 Before an opening door the trembling eyes 
 Of a homeless hound; and something of that image 
 Takes shape when I recall the lamplight glow 
 Flung through the door and framed in by the dark 
 On that gaunt figure. What could be the stress 
 Of feeling in the outcast though his hide 
 Be thick and coarse ! Not on sod walls alone 
 The banded struck. 
 
 In silence Jarvis waited. 
 
 [99] 
 
JOE TAYLOR 
 
 September afternoon. The farmers teams 
 In Belford all along the straggling street 
 Stamped drowsily at flies. The rough board walk 
 Sounded from bank to corner store where stood 
 Joe Taylor in blue denims, wide straw hat, 
 Tall, burly, ruddy. His clear eyes looked hard 
 At a wagon trailed by dust in its noisy rush 
 From the livery. The blacksnake swung, the horses 
 Leaped on the bits, the driver s comrade gripped 
 The spring seat, while a huge man stood behind, 
 Yelling hoarse words. Traffic was paralyzed. 
 A staring hush fell over sunbonnets, 
 Bare heads out of the stores, and childish curls 
 Lifted to see. 
 
 l Any man in this town ! 
 I ll give him fifty dollars if he licks me!" 
 
 From the street end the wagon made return, 
 
 The charioteering bully bellowing 
 
 Insults profane. "No man? All cowards ? Fifty 
 
 dollars ! 
 
 You bob-tailed, weasel-eyed, scared puppies, you ! 
 You stinking bastards !" 
 
 "The town marshal, where 1" 
 Asked women. That defender lay dead drunk 
 At the livery stable. Bearded men felt arms 
 
 [100] 
 
With heavy muscles. Such a strutter s comb 
 Demanded cutting. 
 
 Back the charioteer 
 
 Swooped in a cloud of dust, pouring abuse 
 And filth upon all heads. Joe halted him, 
 Lifting a big right hand. " I do not live 
 In Belford, but I ll fight you." 
 
 "Where s your home!" 
 1 On Fairview Eidge. 
 
 Down sat the fighting man, 
 And in the slowly moving wagon rose 
 His comrade up to ring a bell, and shout, 
 Fi-i-ight ! On the creek ba-n-nk ! 
 
 First the hero s car, 
 
 Then Joe marched sturdily, while men and boys, 
 A cavalcade in a great smoke of dust, 
 Streamed after. From the sidewalk one high voice 
 Remonstrant, "Joseph Taylor, if your wife 
 Was here, she d- 
 
 Under trees a grassy plot, 
 A ring of faces, little jets of talk. 
 "Three men last week at Kearney." "Nearly 
 
 killed - 
 Bird City." "Ain t got nothing over Joe 
 
 [101] 
 
In size, six foot, a hundred ninety. " Odds ? 
 Don t bet. The bruiser is profesh." "Living too 
 
 fast. 11 
 " Young bucks get mad." "No use, Joe can t back 
 
 out! 
 You get a dog by the ears, you can t let go." 
 
 Joe made no sign of hearing ; to choice of gloves 
 He only shook his head. 
 
 "Your cash, my lad. 
 
 Only twenty dollars, boy? Don t fool with me!" 
 Contempt blared in the tone. 
 
 "I have no more. 
 
 I give you this to fight. You need not pay 
 Me anything if I win. 
 
 "You? Win? Ha-ha! 
 Ha-ha!" 
 
 "Then fight for this!" Joe s bare hand 
 
 sounded 
 Upon the boaster s cheek. 
 
 An old-time game 
 
 Is rough and tumble; thus wild men fought beasts. 
 Grip, wrestle, strike, on ground, and now on knee. 
 Blows fall with dull sound, muscles swell and 
 stretch ; 
 
 [102] 
 
Fighters puff, grunt, and sweat, and gather dust ; 
 The hot, moist skin slips in the finger clutch. 
 With nostrils wide, strained eye, and bloody face, 
 Garments in shreds, they struggle with a rage 
 And craft and will beyond the power of brutes. 
 
 Twenty long minutes of such give and take, 
 
 The bully s breath came scant. Joe pressed him 
 
 hard, 
 
 And wore him under, and struck heavily 
 Until the prizer cried "Enough." 
 
 Joe rose, 
 
 Wiped bloody face, drew out the yellow bill, 
 Thrust it upon the speechless one, and turned 
 Back to the village. 
 
 Ruddy sunset gleams 
 Fell richly all about Joe, jogging home 
 With empty wagon, musing how he bought 
 A fight with money borrowed at the bank 
 To buy seed grain, and won therefrom an eye 
 Discolored, and a lip grotesquely swollen, 
 Bruisings and weariness. "I wonder what 
 My wife 0, I m a fool ! But how explain? 
 And yet, I couldn t help it after all. 
 
 [103] 
 
THE PAETY 
 
 MOON-WORSHIP 
 
 I hear them singing in the open spaces 
 The old, old rites, the music of the moon; 
 
 The rougher and the sweeter voices blending 
 To lift the joyous tune. 
 
 I see them dancing in the open spaces 
 
 As moonlit nights grow long; 
 Clasped hands and circling steps and charmed faces. 
 
 And witchery of song. 
 
 A harmony of hearts to rule the singing 
 
 As loud and low they croon; 
 I see them dancing in the open spaces 
 
 The worship of the moon. 
 
 [104] 
 
THE GATHERING 
 
 Father and Mother Lawrence, the boy Joe, 
 Lottie and Elsie, all were full of life, 
 And fond of company. Their new sod house 
 Boasted four rooms. The first play-party fell 
 To them by luck and privilege. 
 
 That night gave 
 
 A full moon silvering all the autumn grass, 
 Big stars, a deep sky, and the fresh, sweet notes 
 Of young folk singing as the wagons rolled 
 On to the Lawrence house. 
 
 What jollity 
 
 Of hearty greeting ! How the spirit of mirth 
 Beams in the twinkling eyes of Daddy Lawrence ! 
 I ve seen him laugh among the harvest help 
 From his toes upward, his plump body shaking, 
 His hair one breeze of merriment; to-night 
 His round and ruddy face as yet but smiles. 
 Gracious and motherly the welcoming 
 Of Mrs. Lawrence; son and daughters join 
 Good comradeship with a fine courtesy 
 To happy guests. Nell Davis trips in first, 
 A lively blonde with nose tip-tilted ; clumps 
 In her tow a bashful youth whose shiny face 
 Displays its freckles as gooseberry jam 
 
 [105] 
 
Makes show of seeds; now enters Arabella, 
 
 The cowgirl who can conquer a wild pony; 
 
 Sam Violet, conscious of his first mustache, 
 
 With him his sisters, Ella, Jessie, just 
 
 Arrived last week from Elgin, Illinois, 
 
 Eeady of laugh and word ; three giantesses, 
 
 Blonde, tanned, the Andersons; they till the fields, 
 
 Having no brothers ; then the bullet heads 
 
 And round, stiff bodies of the Baker boys ; 
 
 Lou Silver s coming animates the room 
 
 Like living music ; tis a gentle face, 
 
 As delicate as a flower, Ann Wilson lifts 
 
 In greeting ; Barney Mclntyre holds high 
 
 His dark-curled head ; close at his elbow grins 
 
 Jed Butterpaugh the bashful; comes a ripple 
 
 Of wholesome, happy girls, Eose, Bessie, Jane, 
 
 And Margaret; then three Brandstetter brothers, 
 
 Ample of girth, and rusty haired. 
 
 The house 
 
 Grows crowded, guests move to the moonlit grass, 
 Where laughters rise, and merry voices chat 
 In lively melody. 
 
 Joe Lawrence calls, 
 
 "Your partners! Form the lines for Old Brass 
 Wagon." 
 
 [106] 
 
II 
 
 THE GAMES 
 
 Luck makes him head, he meets it pranksomely, 
 Dapper Ulysses, five feet in his boots, 
 And proud as Satan of a black mustache 
 Would grace a Spanish pirate ; half a hand 
 In the wheat, first class at baking. Buxom Sue 
 Towers last in the line of girls; she could pitch 
 
 bundles 
 
 All day for any partner: mirth arises 
 To see them countering between the ranks, 
 First shuttles in the good old weaving game, 
 The blithesome maze of the Virginia reel : 
 
 "Meet half way to your best liking, 
 Meet half way to your best liking, 
 Meet half way to your best liking, 
 You re the one, my darling ! 
 
 "Lead er up an down the old brass wagon, 
 Lead er up an down the old brass wagon, 
 Lead er up an down the old brass wagon, 
 You re the one, my darling! 
 
 "Wheel an turn the old brass wagon, 
 Wheel an turn the old brass wagon, 
 Three wheels off an the axle draggin , 
 You re the one, my darling!" 
 
 [107] 
 
The seven stanzas near monotony 
 
 When each has led the weaving. Welcome change 
 
 Is the graceful round of a good old harvest dance: 
 
 " 0, it rains, and it hails, and it s cold stormy 
 
 weather ; 
 
 In comes the farmer, drinking up cider. 
 I ll be the reaper if you ll be the binder, 
 I ve lost my true love and I cannot find her." 
 
 They race through Tansy with a merry speed 
 
 Before the circle spins into rollicking rings 
 
 In the whirls of " Three by three with a polkay 0!" 
 
 "0, great big sheep jumped over the meetin 
 
 house, 
 
 Over the meetin house, over the meetin house, 
 Great big sheep jumped over the meetin house, 
 Down in Alabama ! 
 
 Some echo rises as from age-old rites 
 In Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley. Weevilly Wheat 
 Times lightsome dancers, then, a flouting song 
 With a flower for the girl, a gibe to tease the boy : 
 
 "0, now we ve got the little red rose, 
 The little red rose, the little red rose; 
 And now we ve got the little red rose 
 So early in the morning! 
 Go choose you out a partner, 
 The prettiest you can find. 
 
 [108] 
 
"And now we Ve got the old plough horse, 
 The old plough horse, the old plough horse ; " 
 
 Comes Happy Miller with its round of shifts ; 
 Then Chase the Squirrel; boys and girls in lines, 
 With the head couple dancing through and back : 
 
 "Up and down the center we go, 
 Up and down the center we go, 
 Up and down the center we go 
 This cold and frosty morning ! 
 
 "Now s the time to chase that squirrel, 
 Now s the time to chase that squirrel, " 
 
 The girl runs round the rank of girls, the boy 
 Circles at speed the rank of boys in hope 
 Of sweet reward in the lane. The lads take space 
 Lengthening the line to see the pursuer puff : 
 
 "Catch her and kiss her if you can, " 
 
 And he may catch her if luck favors him, 
 Otherwise, he is chaffed for running slow. 
 
 Voices need rest. Youth turns with lively relish 
 To coffee and fried chicken, rolls and cakes, 
 Doughnuts and pies. An hour of chat and laughter; 
 Then the cool moon may spill its gracious ease 
 
 [109] 
 
On what might else seem awkward, while the space 
 Lends harmony to youthful voices blent 
 In folk-tunes of the good old courtship games, 
 Where dancing is the maid, romance the lady : 
 Juniper Tree, We re Marching Round the Levee, 
 Here Comes a Loving Couple, Lazy Mary, 
 Then the lively turns of The Girl I Left Behind Me, 
 With, Here She Stands, and a partners march for 
 ending : 
 
 "We are marching down to old Quebec, 
 And the drums are loudly beating; 
 The Americans have gained the day, 
 And the British are retreating. 
 
 "The war s all o er, and we ll turn back 
 To the place from whence we started ; 
 We 11 open the ring, and choose a couple in 
 To see if they ll prove true hearted." 
 
 The moon is rolling half-way down the sky 
 When the last wagon rumbles to the road ; 
 And you hear Suwanee River, Old Black Joe, 
 And Annie Laurie, sweet and faint and far, 
 Dying in silver haze along the hills. 
 
 prairie spaces, joyous boys and girls, 
 Youth, and romance, and music of the moon ! 
 
 [110] 
 
THE KEY 
 
 He turned in at the gate and asked a drink; 
 
 Shabby, but neat of garment. His white hat 
 
 Drooped over friendly eyes ; his face was clean, 
 
 Ascetic. Surly Towser wagged to greet 
 
 His coming, and my timid little boy 
 
 Smiled him a welcome. The tramp s easy voice 
 
 Came slow and musical. 
 
 "Have you a need 
 
 For some repairs on woodwork, furniture? 
 Yes! Food will pay me." 
 
 His lean hands were deft 
 Over an injury the walnut desk 
 Met in its journey. Pulsings from within, 
 Some charm from an intensity of spirit, 
 Marked the man while he worked. 
 
 He laid a key 
 
 On the cloth by his plate, and bowed his head. 
 Ending the meal he gently spoke : 
 
 "My house, 
 
 A four room house, I built it by the stream. 
 The woodthrush sings, the quail are very tame, 
 And nested orioles and bluebirds flit 
 Where the wild grape is matted in the trees. 
 Wild flowers nod, and the untrodden grass 
 
 [in] 
 
Waves in the soft wind, hearkening the while 
 To the sweet water running. Little boy, 
 You can come to my house and bring your smile. 
 I thank you now. The food was very good. 
 Yes, I have friends. No matter for their names. 
 This is my key. I go to find my house. 
 I made the prettiest furniture for it. 
 Good-bye to you, and thank you once again. 
 
 His sad eyes smiled farewell; he took the road, 
 A lean and stooping tramper by the streams. 
 The key seemed like a symbol from such quest 
 As mothers old romance. His limp, subdued, 
 Hinted that he had come a weary way. 
 
 [112] 
 
THE DRIVER 
 
 I 
 AT THE POST-OFFICE 
 
 It was a gray, midwinter afternoon. 
 A noisy wind pursued the fine hard flakes 
 Of blinding snow, and piled sharp, ridgy drifts 
 Where swale or grass gave shelter. The front room 
 At Fiddler s house held loungers waiting mail. 
 Over the checkerboard hung four or five; 
 With head turned down and nose to wall, one stooped 
 In the dim light to read newspaper print 
 Pasted upon the plaster. Brady moved 
 From the ruddy stove to the window. "Six hours 
 late." 
 
 "He ll come. He s Uncle Sam s man. Pretty slow 
 Through drifts. He ll stay all night, and travel 
 
 Sunday 
 
 To make two trips this week. So Fiddler drawled, 
 Thumping a cob pipe on his heavy boot. 
 
 With fingers upon eyes, the man at the wall 
 Straightened and stretched. "This time I read her 
 
 through ! 
 
 How come you paste that paper bottom up, 
 About Guiteau a-shooting Garfield? Gosh! 
 A man can t hold the sense." 
 
 [113] 
 
"I ll use more care 
 
 Next spring when I repaper ; these are yellow 
 With age and smoke. 
 
 i i I see him on the hill ! > 
 Came Brady s voice. 
 
 "Bert, fix up, take his team; 
 He ll be nigh froze," called Fiddler to his son. 
 Out of the buckboard stiffly climbed the man 
 Wrapped in great coat and scarf, and looming tall 
 Beside his ponies, gently freed from ice 
 Their eyes and mouths, instructing Bert with care 
 Concerning feed and water. He came in 
 While Fiddler sorted mail, and stooping, spread 
 His rough, dark hands to the warmth. Above his 
 
 beard 
 
 His cheeks were weather-dark; a great scar seamed 
 His forehead. He laughed back to hearty words 
 From men who had come miles for letters, papers, 
 And now moved out to the storm. 
 
 At dusk our fire 
 Koared, while outside through creaking trees, the 
 
 wind 
 Exulted. 
 
 "What s your route like?" 
 
 [114] 
 
t Up this creek, 
 
 Cross the divide, back down Old Sandy. Twice 
 A week, about a hundred forty miles. 
 Monotonous? Most men know little road, 
 Travel on fair days. I have shift of light 
 And weather upon changing scenes. This stream 
 Elbows round bluffs that shoulder in to choke 
 The woods and the valley. Farther up, the groves 
 Of willow, ash, and elm thin out to a line ; 
 Beyond the headsprings, lonely cottonwoods 
 Bulk huge above the plum and cherry thickets ; 
 Last, buckberry and ironweed fringe the ditch 
 Until the canyon ends: On the high divide 
 The sky is set far back, and the prairie runs 
 For miles and miles. Your eye can just make out 
 On clearest days, far to the north, the crests 
 Of sandhills. Now head down the other creek. 
 One bit of road there, say in blossom time, 
 A soft wind soaked plumb full of meadow smells 
 And fluttering the leaves, with oriole, 
 Brown thrasher, blackbird, bluebird, meadow-lark 
 A-chirrup and a-trill, one lazy fleece-cloud 
 The green and the sunshine I ve heard about a 
 
 place, 
 All things perfected: there s that stretch of road. 
 
 Of course, it changes. August brings a drouth; 
 The dust dries in the sweat upon your face. 
 All months have storms; these blizzards are the 
 worst. 
 
 [115] 
 
A mile to-day is plenty; thirty miles, 
 
 The frost gets into the marrow of your bones, 
 
 It tires your blood and your will. Now these men 
 
 here 
 
 Wanted their mail, expected it ; and I, 
 I brought it. Driving mail is hard to stop. 
 When the contract ends you re tempted two years 
 
 more. 
 
 Seven years at seventy a month ! Maybe 
 I ll change next summer. Ponies are too small 
 To farm, and I don t want to sell them off. 
 They might receive abuse. Poor brutes, poor brutes ! 
 Eelay as you will, road-life is hard for them." 
 
 "You ve had adventures." 
 
 He slowly shook his head. 
 "No, mostly weather. I used to have a soft 
 And ruddy face like little Mabel there. 
 You ve seen a board under the wind and sun 
 And rain and sleet. It wears and warps a man 
 Into my shape." 
 
 Came Fiddler s easy drawl: 
 6 Tell us about the time they stopped the mail, 
 When you got the scar. 
 
 The child s voice fluted in, 
 "Mother says, come to supper." 
 
 [116] 
 
We drew round 
 
 The kitchen table. Coffee, steak, potatoes 
 Were richly odorous ; conversation fell. 
 Our hostess saw and did, but seldom spoke ; 
 Neat, matronly, low-voiced, with gracious eyes 
 That guessed and answered thoughts. In that low 
 
 room, 
 
 In the mellow lamplight, hospitality 
 Admitted us to see the tender glow 
 Of family love ; and as we broke the bread, 
 We knew the blessing, while we heard without 
 The storm s white fury moving through the dark. 
 
 [117] 
 
II 
 
 IN A PUBLIC PLACE 
 
 We men and little Mabel had drawn near 
 To the purr of the great heater. She was whispering 
 Night-counsel to her dolly. Fiddler s voice 
 Boomed slow: "We want the story of the scar, 
 And the highwaymen. 
 
 That mark went white and red. 
 
 "No, I can t! Ain t worth while. Fiddler, you, 
 You know a-plenty stories, for you made 
 The first house and first well along this road. 
 We ll smoke and listen." 
 
 Fiddler nothing loath 
 
 Of spokesmanship began. "There s Beaver office 
 Down stream, you know. The country was just new. 
 The government was called on, but a woman 
 Settled the matter. 
 
 "In a two room shack, 
 
 Jim Lane and Mrs. Lane and three grown girls 
 Kept the office. Maybe sixty dollars pay 
 A year for stamps he cancels. Folks for mail 
 All hours, and every day, and not convenient 
 People should just walk in. 
 
 "There was a lad, 
 An old bach nigh on forty years of age, 
 
 [118] 
 
Named Charley Baxter, lived off on the ridge, 
 
 A cousin to the Baxters up above, 
 
 Set in his way, respecting his own word 
 
 As if from Scripture. Like old Shakespeare said, 
 
 * Now when I speak, let all the dogs keep still. 
 
 This Baxter fellow would walk in at Lane s, 
 
 No ceremony. And Mrs. Lane, she said, 
 
 Real easy, not at all correcting like, 
 
 Charley, it ain t convenient for us folks. 
 
 Why don t you knock? We ll open up the door. 
 
 " Because, says Baxter, this is a public place; 
 Government office. I come in when I like. 
 
 " You d better not, she says; this is my house, 
 And now you got your mail, clear out of it ! 9 
 
 " I d stay, says he, but the men are waiting for me 
 In the road to go a-threshing! 
 
 "Old man Lane, 
 
 Dodger of trouble, wanted to resign. 
 The neighbors wouldn t hear it. All the roads 
 Bun by his house. Government couldn t find 
 Another man to take it. Baxter would, 
 But frightful roads to his place. 
 
 "Months rolled on, 
 
 This Baxter fellow raspin at the Lanes, 
 And folk a-grinnin at him bout his rights, 
 Just like a pack of schoolboys set to tease 
 Some chap that s easy mad. 
 
 [119] 
 
" Bout six o clock 
 
 One April morning, lie went to Lane s door, 
 Opened and started in. Lane, doin chores, 
 Heard shrieking, rnn, laid holt and jerked him out; 
 And they begun. Now Lane was getting old; 
 Baxter soon had him under pounding him. 
 But Mrs. Lane come charging on the scene, 
 Soon changed all that. She grabbed a garden rake ; 
 The iron teeth tore Baxter s shirt away, 
 And scratched his scalp, and notched him in the ear ; 
 His hat come off while he was fighting Lane. 
 She chased him, raked him good while he was rolling 
 Under the barbed wire out into the road, 
 And threw his black hat after him. 
 
 l Old man Eyan 
 
 Was passing with a load, and so the story 
 Didn t lose nothing from the Irishman 
 That had the telling of it. 
 
 " Charley Baxter 
 
 Couldn t give in. Eidicule, too. Some fellow 
 Say t garden rake and Charley d try to whip him. 
 He wanted law, and swore to the J. P. 
 That Lane assaulted him in a public place. 
 
 "They all with old man Eyan, up to Stevens s 
 
 To try to settle it. The justice sat, 
 
 Heard everything all parties had to say, 
 
 Baxter oratin on the rights of man, 
 
 Eubbed his bald head, looked in the book of statutes ; 
 
 Took three chews of tobacco, passed the plug; 
 
 [120] 
 
Says, * Out of my jurisdiction : for all turns 
 
 On whether Lane s house is a public place, 
 
 Or whether the office is a private dwelling. 
 
 The statutes are silent. I will write to Washington. 
 
 Meantime the court will order peace be kept, 
 
 And costs assessed to the plaintiff. 7 
 
 6 i Government 
 
 At Washington ain t in a hurry. They ve 
 A lot to think of. Finally come word, 
 Tell Charley Baxter that he ll have to knock. 
 And Mrs. Lane wrote: Baxter ain t been here 
 For ten months. If he comes, we ll make him 
 knock. " 
 
 "What did the fellow do about his mail?" 
 
 "Changed his address to town. Twas fifteen mile. 
 And two years afterwards he left these parts ; 
 I don t know what become of him, went west." 
 
 [121] 
 
Ill 
 
 THE MAN WITH THE KEY ONCE MORE 
 
 Our pipes drummed brisk approval ; we refilled. 
 Fiddler enjoyed slow whiffs. "I wish I knew 
 The way to tell a thing. This is a man 
 A-looking for a house to fit his key." 
 
 "What! Him? Heard of him lately!" 
 
 "No." 
 
 The driver 
 
 Sat bolt upright. "That s the lad helped me out 
 When I got this. A finger touched the scar. 
 Somewhere a cricket chirped ; the storm was loud ; 
 Fiddler stowed chunks in the heater, and flame petals 
 Curled eagerly about them. 
 
 "It was five, 
 
 No, six years back, and farther up the creek. 
 You see, he always follows streams. I heard 
 Two men a-riding up behind, and looked, 
 But didn t know em. Suddenly, my head 
 Went busted on a loaded club. I lay 
 In the dirt and couldn t move. They started cutting 
 The mail bags loose. In front, over a rise 
 Bout sixty yards away he came. They saw him. 
 One fired and missed. Maybe to scare him, 
 
 [122] 
 
Maybe, the nerves of a new hand. He just kept 
 
 walking ; 
 
 They grabbed the bags and rode. The government 
 Gave them a contract down at Leavenworth. 
 He brought me water, and he drove me back 
 To the next house, and I laid off one trip. 
 Six years ago. I saw him just once since. 
 
 " About this house, this key?" I ventured. 
 
 "0," 
 
 Drawled Fiddler; "it s his house, but it isn t there. 
 He keeps the key and carries it all round. " 
 
 "Yes, an imagined house? The perfect place 
 You d build if you were rich?" 
 
 "No, this was real. 
 
 A house he built upon his claim. The land 
 Was river bottom. Came a flood. We think 
 We know the rains. It pours half a day. 
 Come three, four days together, local fall 
 And upstream waters joining, make the floods 
 Our fathers tell of. So the river bed 
 Got shifted, muxed his fields, and spread fine sand 
 Deep on his crops. The house was gone. Nobody 
 Would recognize the place ; then he went looney, 
 And goes a-lookin , lookinV 
 
 [123] 
 
Mrs. Fiddler 
 
 Had put the little girl to bed and come 
 To sit in the rocker. Easy music lived 
 In her quiet voice. "I know, he told me once, 
 Or tried to tell. And my sister wrote about him. 
 A girl was coming out to be his wife ; 
 Clear from Ohio, by herself. He went 
 To the railroad town, and waited. No trains came 
 Because of floods, and no news, for the wires 
 Went down. He waited, heard of wrecks ; 
 Still waited trembling, till the third day brought 
 The list of killed, her body. 
 
 "He turned back, 
 
 Alone, the forty miles. The flood had drowned 
 His farm, left just such ruin in his mind. 
 The stream s bed where the garden used to be. 
 The suffering of it isn t understood 
 Until you see the man. Her low tones ceased, 
 The tears were in her eyes. 
 
 We studied, moveless, 
 
 The dull glow of the stove, and the clicks of the fire 
 Till the driver s voice began with little jars, 
 As when a wagon wheel grinds on the brake. 
 "I hope he s in a good warm house to-night. 
 It s time to find our bunks. What a roar in the woods 
 Of the wind and the snow ! This man he scarcely 
 
 changes ! 
 The ants soon honeycomb a log in the grass. 
 
 [124] 
 
Life shines and showers, or blows and drips on the 
 
 mind, 
 And burns and freezes. Something in his nature 
 
 "Be nasty roads to-morrow, even if 
 
 The storm dies down, and tough on pony flesh. " 
 
 125] 
 
. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 cossoacwts 
 
 38S565 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY