Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp Part 16

How I long so to see you come into the doorway, As you used to, of old, when weary, to rest.

May the days be but few when again I can greet you, My comfort and staff, is your mother's request.'

"Say, pard, here's your letter. I'm not good at writin', I think you'd do better to answer them lines; An' fer fear I might want it I'll take off that la.s.so, An' the hoss you kin leave when you git to the pines.

An' Jim, when yer see yer old mother jist tell her That a wee bit o' writin' kinder hastened the day When her boy could come eastward to stay with her always.

Come boys, up and mount and to Denver away."

O'er the prairies the sun tipped the trees with its splendor, The dew on the gra.s.s flashed the diamonds so bright, As the tenderest memories came like a blessing From the days of sweet childhood on pinions of light.

Not a word more was spoken as they parted that morning, Yet the trail of a tear marked each cheek as they turned; For higher than law is the love of a mother,-- It reversed the decision,--the court was adjourned.

_Sherman D. Richardson._

THE VIGILANTES

WE are the whirlwinds that winnow the West-- We scatter the wicked like straw!

We are the Nemeses, never at rest-- We are Justice, and Right, and the Law!

Moon on the snow and a blood-chilling blast, Sharp-throbbing hoofs like the heart-beat of fear, A halt, a swift parley, a pause--then at last A stiff, swinging figure cut darkly and sheer Against the blue steel of the sky; ghastly white Every on-looking face. Men, our duty was clear; Yet ah! what a soul to send forth to the night!

Ours is a service brute-hateful and grim; Little we love the wild task that we seek; Are they dainty to deal with--the fear-rigid limb, The curse and the struggle, the blasphemous shriek?

Nay, but men must endure while their bodies have breath; G.o.d made us strong to avenge Him the weak-- To dispense his sure wages of sin--which is death.

We stand for our duty: while wrong works its will, Our search shall be stern and our course shall be wide; Retribution shall prove that the just liveth still, And its horrors and dangers our hearts can abide, That safety and honor may tread in our path; The vengeance of Heaven shall speed at our side, As we follow unwearied our mission of wrath.

We are the whirlwinds that winnow the West-- We scatter the wicked like straw!

We are the Nemeses, never at rest-- We are Justice, and Right, and the Law!

_Margaret Ashmun._

THE BANDIT'S GRAVE

'MID lava rock and glaring sand, 'Neath the desert's bra.s.sy skies, Bound in the silent chains of death A border bandit lies.

The poppy waves her golden glow Above the lowly mound; The cactus stands with lances drawn,-- A martial guard around.

His dreams are free from guile or greed, Or foray's wild alarms.

No fears creep in to break his rest In the desert's scorching arms.

He sleeps in peace beside the trail, Where the twilight shadows play, Though they watch each night for his return A thousand miles away.

From the mesquite groves a night bird calls When the western skies grow red; The sand storm sings his deadly song Above the sleeper's head.

His steed has wandered to the hills And helpless are his hands, Yet peons curse his memory Across the s.h.i.+fting sands.

The desert cricket tunes his pipes When the half-grown moon s.h.i.+nes dim; The sage thrush trills her evening song-- But what are they to him?

A rude-built cross beside the trail That follows to the west Casts its long-drawn, ghastly shadow Across the sleeper's breast.

A lone coyote comes by night And sits beside his bed, Sobbing the midnight hours away With gaunt, up-lifted head.

The lizard trails his aimless way Across the lonely mound, When the star-guards of the desert Their pickets post around.

The winter snows will heap their drifts Among the leafless sage; The pallid hosts of the blizzard Will lift their voice in rage; The gentle rains of early spring Will woo the flowers to bloom, And scatter their fleeting incense O'er the border bandit's tomb.

_Charles Pitt._

THE OLD MACKENZIE TRAIL

SEE, stretching yonder o'er that low divide Which parts the falling rain,--the eastern slope Sends down its waters to the southern sea Through Double Mountain's winding length of stream; The western side spreads out into a plain, Which sinks away o'er tawny, rolling leagues At last into the rus.h.i.+ng Rio Grande,-- See, faintly showing on that distant ridge, The deep-cut pathways through the shelving crest, Sage-matted now and rimmed with chaparral, The dim reminders of the olden times, The life of stir, of blood, of Indian raid, The hunt of buffalo and antelope; The camp, the wagon train, the sea of steers; The cowboy's lonely vigil through the night; The stampede and the wild ride through the storm; The call of California's golden flood; The impulse of the Saxon's "Westward Ho"

Which set our fathers' faces from the east, To spread resistless o'er the barren wastes, To people all the regions 'neath the sun-- Those vikings of the old Mackenzie Trail.

It winds--this old forgotten cattle trail-- Through valleys still and silent even now, Save when the yellow-breasted desert lark Cries shrill and lonely from a dead mesquite, In quivering notes set in a minor key; The endless round of sunny days, of starry nights, The desert's blank immutability.

The coyote's howl is heard at dark from some Low-lying hill; companioned by the loafer wolf They yelp in concert to the far off stars, Or gnaw the bleached bones in savage rage That lie unburied by the gra.s.s-grown paths.

The prairie dogs play sentinel by day And backward slips the badger to his den; The whir, the fatal strike of rattlesnake, A staring buzzard floating in the blue, And, now and then, the curlew's eerie call,-- Lost, always lost, and seeking evermore.

All else is mute and dormant; vacantly The sun looks down, the days run idly on, The breezes whirl the dust, which eddying falls Smothering the records of the westward caravans, Where silent heaps of wreck and nameless graves Make milestones for the old Mackenzie Trail.

Across the Brazos, Colorado, through Concho's broad, fair valley, sweeping on By Abilene it climbs upon the plains, The Llano Estacado (beyond lie wastes Of alkali and hunger gaunt and death),-- And here is lost in s.h.i.+fting rifts of sand.

Anon it lingers by a hidden spring That bubbles joy into the wilderness; Its pathway trenched that distant mountain side, Now grown to gulches through torrential rain.

De Vaca gathered pinons by the way, Long ere the furrows grew on yonder hill, Cut by the creaking prairie-schooner wheels; La Salle, the gentle Frenchman, crossed this course, And went to death and to a nameless grave.

For ages and for ages through the past Comanches and Apaches from the north Came sweeping southward, searching for the sun, And charged in mimic combat on the sea.

The scions of Montezuma's low-browed race Perhaps have seen that knotted, thorn-clad tree; Or sucked the cactus apples growing there.

All these have pa.s.sed, and pa.s.sed the immigrants, Who bore the westward fever in their brain, The Norseman tang for roving in their veins; Who loved the plains as sailors love the sea, Braved danger, death, and found a resting place While traveling on the old Mackenzie Trail.

Brave old Mackenzie long has laid him down To rest beyond the trail that bears his name; A granite mountain makes his monument; The northers, moaning o'er the low divide, Go gently past his long deserted camps.

No more his rangers guard the wild frontier, No more he leads them in the border fight.

No more the mavericks, winding stream of horns To Kansas bound; the dust, the cowboy songs And cries, the pistol's sharp report,--the free, Wild days in Texas by the Rio Grande.

And some men say when dusky night shuts down, Dark, cloudy nights without a kindly star, One sees dim hors.e.m.e.n skimming o'er the plain Hard by Mackenzie's trail; and keener ears Have heard from deep within the bordering hills The tramp of ghostly hoofs, faint cattle lows, The rumble of a moving wagon train, Sometimes far echoes of a frontier song; Then sounds grow fainter, shadows troop away,-- On westward, westward, as they in olden time Went rangeing o'er the old Mackenzie Trail.

_John A. Lomax._

THE SHEEP-HERDER[3]

ALL day across the sagebrush flat, Beneath the sun of June, My sheep they loaf and feed and bleat Their never changin' tune.

And then, at night time, when they lay As quiet as a stone, I hear the gray wolf far away, "Alo-one!" he says, "Alo-one!"

A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh!

The tune the woollies sing; It's rasped my ears, it seems, for years, Though really just since Spring; And nothin', far as I can see Around the circle's sweep, But sky and plain, my dreams and me And them infernal sheep.

I've got one book--it's poetry-- A bunch of pretty wrongs An Eastern lunger gave to me; He said 'twas "shepherd songs."

But, though that poet sure is deep And has sweet things to say, He never seen a herd of sheep Or smelt them, anyway.

A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh!

My woollies greasy gray, An awful change has. .h.i.t the range Since that old poet's day.