Songs of the Prairie Part 6

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

Now there's one of them a millionaire and one of them in jail, And one of them is working on the street; And one is was.h.i.+ng dishes, and one has "hit the trail,"

For six have drunk the sorrows of defeat; And one that's never spoken of where once she was supreme, And one--they found him floating in an eddy of the stream: They have paid the price of knowledge, they have dreamed their little dream: And the City sucked them in.

THE OLD GUARD

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

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

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

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

Way of the men of the Old Guard? What of their end and way?

You may find their bones by the lime-white stones where the sun-dried sleugh-holes lay, For the G.o.ddess Trade is a costly jade, and they were the ones to pay.

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

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

KID McCANN

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

So you never heard how I lost my leg and hobble now on a crutch?

So far as the story relates to me it can't concern you much, For it's really the story of Kid McCann and the price that a girl will pay For the fellow she sets her fancy on, as only a woman may; It isn't every girl who proves her faithfulness in flames, But fellows who listen with moistened eyes speak softly of other names.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Twas but for a moment; the flames were gone; unharmed they had pa.s.sed me by; G.o.d knows why the useless are spared to live while the faithful are called to die, But the form that had sheltered me s.h.i.+vered, and seemed to shrivel away, And when I had raised it clear of my face I looked into lifeless clay. . . .

And darkness fell, and the world was black, and the last of my reason fled, And when I came to myself again I was back at the ranch, in bed.

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

WHO OWNS THE LAND?

Who owns the land?

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

Who owns the land?

The Common Man Said, "Government adopts a plan By which the land is held in fee For common folks, like you an' me.

The man who'd alter it's a crank; I got the transfer--in the bank-- I've little time to think about These theories silly fellows shout, I have to work to beat the band To pay the mortgage on the land."

Who owns the land?

The Statesman said, "The land supplies our daily bread, And raises wheat, and corn, and oats, And simple husbandmen--and votes-- The land was won at awful cost And many soldiers' lives were lost.

Too bad! They're mostly silly boys Who go to battle for the noise.

Here's a quotation I admire: 'The people's voice is G.o.d's desire,'

And as I rule by right divine, I half suspect the land is mine."

Who owns the land?

The Farmer said, "What puts that question in yer head?

I own it. Tuk a homestead here An' lived on it fer twenty year; I bet a new ten dollar bill That I could hold it down until I got the patent, an' I won; The land is mine, as sure's a gun.

When city blokes come here to shoot, You bet, they get the icy boot!

But 't made me mighty mad when that Danged railway come across the flat An' cut my homestead plumb in two, But there I wuz--what could I do?

But jest set down, resigned to fate, Fer fear that they'd expropriate."

Who owns the land?

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

Who owns the land?

The Indian Chief Said, "Ugh, the white man mucha thief!

He steal my lan' because he's strong (By gar, it take him pretty long), He steal my lan', an' call it law, He turn me out, me an' my squaw; He let us die, because we not Like him, can live in one same spot; He talk so much of civilize-- He's civil--sometimes--an' he lies!"

Who owns the land?

The Over-Rich Said, "All these people claim to, which Is satisfactory to me, So long as they cannot agree.

Let them arrange it as they will As long as some one pays the bill.

The present plan is, surely, fine; _The interest, at least, is mine_."

Who owns the land?