VI
The Shooting of the Cup
Bull-roaring March had swept across the land,
And now the evangelic goose and crane,
Forerunners of the messianic Rain,
Went crying through the wilderness aloft.
Fog hid the sun, and yet the snow grew soft.
The monochrome of sky and poplar bough,
Drab tracery on drab, was stippled now
With swelling buds; and slushy water ran
Upon the ice-bound river that began
To stir and groan as one about to wake.
Now, while they waited for the ice to break,
The trappers fashioned bull-boats—willow wrought
To bowl-like frames, and over these drawn taut
Green bison hides with bison sinew sewn.
And much they talked about the Yellowstone:
How fared their comrades yonder since the fall?
And would they marvel at the goodly haul
Of beaver pelts these crazy craft should bring?
And what of Ashley starting north that spring
With yet another hundred? Did his prows
Already nose the flood?—Ah, cherry boughs
About St. Louis now were loud with bees
And white with bloom; and wading to the knees,
The cattle browsed along the fresh green sloughs!
Yes, even now the leaning cordelle crews
With word from home (so far away, alas!)
Led north the marching armies of the grass,
As ’twere the heart of Summertime they towed!
So while they shaped the willow frames and sewed
The bison hides, the trappers’ hearts were light.
They talked no longer now about the fight.
That story, shaped and fitted part by part,
Unwittingly was rounded into art,
And, being art, already it was old.
When this bleak time should seem the age of gold,
These men, grown gray and garrulous, might tell
Of wondrous doings on the Musselshell—
How Carpenter, the mighty, fought, and how
Great Fink went down. But spring was coming now,
And who’s for backward looking in the spring?
Yet one might see that Mike still felt the sting
Of that defeat; for often he would brood,
Himself the center of a solitude
Wherein the friendly chatter of the band
Was like a wind that makes a lonely land
Seem lonelier. And much it grieved Talbeau
To see a haughty comrade humbled so;
And, even more, he feared what wounded pride
Might bring to pass, before their boats could ride
The dawnward reaches of the April floods
And leave behind the village of the Bloods;
For now it seemed a curse was on the place.
Talbeau was like a man who views a race
With all to lose: so slowly crept the spring,
So surely crawled some formless fatal thing,
He knew not what it was. But should it win,
Life could not be again as it had been
And spring would scarcely matter any more.
The daybreak often found him at the shore,
A ghostly figure in the muggy light,
Intent to see what progress over night
The shackled river made against the chain.
And then at last, one night, a dream of rain
Came vividly upon him. How it poured!
A witch’s garden was the murk that roared
With bursting purple bloom. ’Twas April weather,
And he and Mike and Bill were boys together
Beneath the sounding shingle roof at home.
He smelled the odor of the drinking loam
Still rolling mellow from the recent share;
And he could feel the meadow greening there
Beyond the apple orchard. Then he ’woke
And raised the flap. A wraith of thunder-smoke
Was trailing off along the prairie’s rim.
Half dreaming yet, the landscape puzzled him.
What made the orchard seem so tall and lean?
And surely yonder meadow had been green
A moment since! What made it tawny now?
And yonder where the billows of the plow
Should glisten fat and sleek—?
The drowsy spell
Dropped off and left him on the Musselshell
Beneath the old familiar load of care.
He looked aloft. The stars had faded there.
The sky was cloudless. No, one lonely fleece
Serenely floated in the spacious peace
And from the distance caught prophetic light.
In truth he had heard thunder in the night
And dashing rain; for all the land was soaked,
And where the withered drifts had lingered, smoked
The naked soil. But since the storm was gone,
How strange that still low thunder mumbled on—
An unresolving cadence marred at whiles
By dull explosions! Now for miles and miles
Along the vale he saw a trail of steam
That marked the many windings of the stream,
As though the river simmered. Then he knew.
It was the sound of April breaking through!
The resurrection thunder had begun!
The ice was going out, and spring had won
The creeping race with dread!
His ringing cheers
Brought out the blinking village by the ears
To share the news; and though they could not know
What ecstasy of triumph moved Talbeau,
Yet lodge on lodge took up the joyous cry
That set the dogs intoning to the sky,
The drenched cayuses shrilly nickering.
So man and beast proclaimed the risen Spring
Upon the Musselshell.
And all day long
The warring River sang its ocean song.
And all that night the spirits of the rain
Made battle music with a shattered chain
And raged upon the foe. And did one gaze
Upon that struggle through the starry haze,
One saw enormous bodies heaved and tossed,
Where stubbornly the Yotuns of the Frost
With shoulder set to shoulder strove to stem
The wild invasion rolling over them.
Nor in the morning was the struggle done.
Serenely all that day the doughty Sun,
A banished king returning to his right,
Beheld his legions pouring to the fight,
Exhaustless; and his cavalries that rode—
With hoofs that rumbled and with manes that flowed
White in the war gust—crashing on the foe.
And all that night the din of overthrow
Arose to heaven from the stricken field;
A sound as of the shock of spear and shield,
Of wheels that trundled and the feet of hordes,
Of shrieking horses mad among the swords,
Hurrahing of attackers and attacked,
And sounds as of a city that is sacked
When lust for loot runs roaring through the night.
Dawn looked upon no battle, but a flight.
And when the next day broke, the spring flood flowed
Like some great host that takes the homeward road
With many spoils—a glad triumphal march,
Of which the turquoise heaven was the arch.
Now comes a morning when the tents are down
And packed for travel; and the whole Blood town
Is out along the waterfront to see
The trappers going. Dancing as with glee,
Six laden bull-boats feel the April tide
And sweep away. Along the riverside
The straggling, shouting rabble keeps abreast
A little while; but, longer than the rest,
A weeping runner races with the swirl
And loses slowly. ’Tis the Long Knife’s girl,
Whom love perhaps already makes aware
How flows unseen a greater river there—
The never-to-be-overtaken days.
And now she pauses at the bend to gaze
Upon the black boats dwindling down the long
Dawn-gilded reach. A merry trapper’s song
Comes liltingly to mock her, and a hand
Waves back farewell. Now ’round a point of land
The bull-boats disappear; and that is all—
Save only that long waiting for the fall
When he would come again.
All day they swirled
Northeastwardly. The undulating world
Flowed by them—wooded headland, greening vale
And naked hill—as in a fairy tale
Remembered in a dream. And when the flare
Of sunset died behind them, and the air
Went weird and deepened to a purple gloom,
They saw the white Enchanted Castles loom
Above them, slowly pass and drift a-rear,
Dissolving in the starry crystal sphere
’Mid which they seemed suspended.
Late to camp,
They launched while yet the crawling valley damp
Made islands of the distant hills and hid
The moaning flood. The Half Way Pyramid
That noon stared in upon them from the south.
’Twas starlight when they camped at Hell Creek’s mouth,
Among those hills where evermore in vain
The Spring comes wooing, and the April rain
Is tears upon a tomb. And once again
The dead land echoed to the songs of men
Bound dayward when the dawn was but a streak.
Halfway to noon they sighted Big Dry Creek,
Not choked with grave dust now, but carolling
The universal music of the spring.
Then when the day was midway down the sky,
They reached the Milk. And howsoe’er the eye
Might sweep that valley with a far-flung gaze,
It found no spot uncovered with a maze
Of bison moving lazily at browse—
Scarce wilder than a herd of dairy cows
That know their herdsman.
Now the whole band willed
To tarry. So they beached their boats and killed
Three fading heifers; sliced the juicy rumps
For broiling over embers; set the humps
And loins to roast on willow spits, and threw
The hearts and livers in a pot to stew
Against the time of dulling appetites.
And when the stream ran opalescent lights
And in a scarlet glow the new moon set,
The feast began. And some were eating yet,
And some again in intervals of sleep,
When upside down above the polar steep
The Dipper hung. And many tales were told
And there was hearty laughter as of old,
With Fink’s guffaw to swell it now and then.
It seemed old times were coming back again;
That truly they had launched upon a trip
Whereof the shining goal was comradeship:
And tears were in the laughter of Talbeau,
So glad was he. For how may mortals know
Their gladness, save they sense it by the fear
That whispers how the very thing held dear
May pass away?
The smoky dawn was lit,
And, suddenly become aware of it,
A flock of blue cranes, dozing on the sand,
With startled cries awoke the sprawling band
And took the misty air with moaning wings.
Disgruntled with the chill drab scheme of things,
Still half asleep and heavy with the feast,
The trappers launched their boats. But when the east
Burned rosily, therefrom a raw wind blew,
And ever with the growing day it grew
Until the stream rose choppily and drove
The fleet ashore. Camped snugly in a grove
Of cottonwoods, they slept. And when the gale,
Together with the light, began to fail,
They ’rose and ate and set adrift again.
It seemed the solid world that mothers men
With twilight and the falling moon had passed,
And there was nothing but a hollow vast,
By time-outlasting stars remotely lit,
And they who at the central point of it
Hung motionless; while, rather sensed than seen,
The phantoms of a world that had been green
Stole by in silence—shapes that once were trees,
Black wraiths of bushes, airy traceries
Remembering the hills. Then sleep made swift
The swinging of the Dipper and the lift
Of stars that dwell upon the day’s frontier;
Until at length the wheeling hollow sphere
Began to fill. And just at morning-shine
They landed at the Little Porcupine.
Again they slept and, putting off at night,
They passed the Elk Horn Prairie on the right
Halfway to dawn and Wolf Creek. One night more
Had vanished when they slept upon the shore
Beside the Poplar’s mouth. And three had fled
When, black against the early morning red,
The Fort that Henry builded heard their calls,
And sentries’ rifles spurting from the walls
Spilled drawling echoes. Then the gates swung wide
And shouting trappers thronged the riverside
To welcome back the homing voyageurs.
That day was spent in sorting out the furs,
With eager talk of how the winter went;
And with the growing night grew merriment.
The hump and haunches of a bison cow
Hung roasting at the heaped-up embers now
On Henry’s hearth. The backlog whined and popped
And, sitting squat or lounging elbow-propped,
Shrewd traders in the merchandise of tales
Held traffic, grandly careless how the scales
Tiptilted with a slight excessive weight.
And when the roast was finished, how they ate!
And there was that which set them singing too
Against the deep bass music of the flue,
While catgut screamed ecstatic in the lead,
Encouraging the voices used and keyed
To vast and windy spaces.
Later came
A gentler mood when, staring at the flame,
Men ventured reminiscences and spoke
About Kentucky people or the folk
Back yonder in Virginia or the ways
They knew in old St. Louis; till the blaze
Fell blue upon the hearth, and in the gloom
And melancholy stillness of the room
They heard the wind of midnight wail outside.
Then there was one who poked the logs and cried:
“Is this a weeping drunk? I swear I’m like
To tear my hair! Sing something lively, Mike!”
And Fink said nought; but after poring long
Upon the logs, began an Irish song—
A gently grieving thing like April rain,
That while it wakes old memories of pain,
Wakes also odors of the violet.
A broken heart, it seemed, could ne’er forget
The eyes of Nora, dead upon the hill.
And when he ceased the men sat very still,
As hearing yet the low caressing note
Of some lost angel mourning in his throat.
And afterwhile Mike spoke: “Shure, now,” said he,
“ ’Tis in a woman’s eyes shtrong liquors be;
And if ye drink av thim—and if ye drink—”
For just a moment in the face of Fink
Talbeau beheld that angel yearning through;
And wondering if Carpenter saw too,
He looked, and lo! the guileless fellow—grinned!
As dreaming water, stricken by a wind,
Gives up the imaged heaven that it knows,
So Fink’s face lost the angel. He arose
And left the place without a word to say.
The morrow was a perfect April day;
Nor might one guess—so friendly was the sun,
So kind the air—what thread at length was spun,
What shears were opened now to sever it.
No sullen mood was Mike’s. His biting wit
Made gay the trappers busy with the fur;
Though more and ever more on Carpenter
His sallies fell, with ever keener whet.
And Carpenter, unskilled in banter, met
The sharper sally with the broader grin.
But, by and by, Mike made a jest, wherein
Some wanton innuendo lurked and leered,
About the Long Knife’s girl. The place went weird
With sudden silence as the tall man strode
Across the room, nor lacked an open road
Among the men. A glitter in his stare
Belied the smile he bore; and, pausing there
With stiffened index finger raised and held
Before the jester’s eyes, as though he spelled
The slow words out, he said: “We’ll have no jokes
In just that way about our women folks!”
And Fink guffawed.
They would have fought again,
Had not the Major stepped between the men
And talked the crisis by. And when ’twas past,
Talbeau, intent to end the strife at last,
Somehow persuaded Fink to make amends,
And, as a proof that henceforth they were friends,
Proposed the shooting of the whisky cup.
“Shure, b’y,” said Mike, “we’ll toss a copper up
And if ’tis heads I’ll thry me cunning first.
As fer me joke, the tongue of me is cursed
Wid double j’ints—so let it be forgot!”
And so it was agreed.
They cleared a spot
And flipped a coin that tinkled as it fell.
A tiny sound—yet, like a midnight bell
That sets wild faces pressing at the pane,
Talbeau would often hear that coin again,
In vivid dreams, to waken terrified.
’Twas heads.
And now the tall man stepped aside
And, beckoning Talbeau, he whispered: “Son,
If anything should happen, keep my gun
For old time’s sake. And when the Major pays
In old St. Louis, drink to better days
When friends were friends, with what he’s owing me.”
Whereat the little man laughed merrily
And said: “Old Horse, you’re off your feed today;
But if you’ve sworn an oath to blow your pay,
I guess the three of us can make it good!
Mike couldn’t miss a target if he would.”
“Well, maybe so,” said Carpenter, and smiled.
A windless noon was brooding on the wild
And in the clearing, eager for the show,
The waiting trappers chatted. Now Talbeau
Stepped off the range. The tall man took his place,
The grin of some droll humor on his face;
And when his friend was reaching for his head
To set the brimming cup thereon, he said:
“You won’t forget I gave my gun to you
And all my blankets and my fixin’s too?”
The small man laughed and, turning round, he cried:
“We’re ready, Mike!”
A murmur ran and died
Along the double line of eager men.
Fink raised his gun, but set it down again
And blew a breath and said: “I’m gittin’ dhry!
So howld yer noddle shtiddy, Bill, me b’y,
And don’t ye shpill me whisky!” Cedar-straight
The tall man stood, the calm of brooding Fate
About him. Aye, and often to the end
Talbeau would see that vision of his friend—
A man-flower springing from the fresh green sod,
While, round about, the bushes burned with God
And mating peewees fluted in the brush.
They heard a gun lock clicking in the hush.
They saw Fink sighting—heard the rifle crack,
And saw beneath the spreading powder rack
The tall man pitching forward.
Echoes fled
Like voices in a panic. Then Mike said:
“Bejasus, and yeVe shpilled me whisky, Bill!”
A catbird screamed. The crowd stood very still
As though bewitched.
“And can’t ye hear?” bawled Fink;
“I say, I’m dhry—and now ye’ve shpilled me drink!”
He stooped to blow the gasses from his gun.
And now men saw Talbeau. They saw him run
And stoop to peer upon the prostrate man
Where now the mingling blood and whisky ran
From oozing forehead and the tilted cup.
And in the hush a sobbing cry grew up:
“My God! You’ve killed him, Mike!”
Then growing loud,
A wind of horror blew among the crowd
And set it swirling round about the dead.
And over all there roared a voice that said:
“I niver mint to do it, b’ys, I swear!
The divil’s in me gun!” Men turned to stare
Wild-eyed upon the center of that sound,
And saw Fink dash his rifle to the ground,
As ’twere the hated body of his wrong.
Once more arose that wailing, like a song,
Of one who called and called upon his friend.