The Song of Hugh Glass + 

I + 

Graybeard and Goldhair + 

The year was eighteen hundred twenty three. + 

’Twas when the guns that blustered at the Ree + 

Had ceased to brag, and ten score martial clowns + 

Turned from the unwhipped Aricara towns, + 

Earning the scornful laughter of the Sioux. + 

A withering blast the arid South still blew, + 

And creeks ran thin beneath the glaring sky; + 

For ’twas a month ere honking geese would fly + 

Southward before the Great White Hunter’s face: + 

And many generations of their race, + 

As bow-flung arrows, now have fallen spent. + 

It happened then that Major Henry went + 

With eighty trappers up the dwindling Grand, + 

Bound through the weird, unfriending barren-land + 

For where the Big Horn meets the Yellowstone; + 

And old Hugh Glass went with them. + 

Large of bone, + 

Deep-chested, that his great heart might have play, + 

Gray-bearded, gray of eye and crowned with gray + 

Was Glass. It seemed he never had been young; + 

And, for the grudging habit of his tongue, + 

None knew the place or season of his birth. + 

Slowly he ’woke to anger or to mirth; + 

Yet none laughed louder when the rare mood fell, + 

And hate in him was like a still, white hell, + 

A thing of doom not lightly reconciled. + 

What memory he kept of wife or child + 

Was never told; for when his comrades sat + 

About the evening fire with pipe and chat, + 

Exchanging talk of home and gentler days, + 

Old Hugh stared long upon the pictured blaze, + 

And what he saw went upward in the smoke. + 

But once, as with an inner lightning stroke, + 

The veil was rent, and briefly men discerned + 

What pent-up fires of selfless passion burned + 

Beneath the still gray smoldering of him. + 

There was a rakehell lad, called Little Jim, + 

Jamie or Petit Jacques; for scarce began + 

The downy beard to mark him for a man. + 

Blue-eyed was he and femininely fair. + 

A maiden might have coveted his hair + 

That trapped the sunlight in its tangled skein: + 

So, tardily, outflowered the wild blond strain + 

That gutted Rome grown overfat in sloth. + 

A Ganymedes haunted by a Goth + 

Was Jamie. When the restive ghost was laid, + 

He seemed some fancy-ridden child who played + 

At manliness ’mid all those bearded men. + 

The sternest heart was drawn to Jamie then. + 

But his one mood ne’er linked two hours together. + 

To schedule Jamie’s way, as prairie weather, + 

Was to get fact by wedding doubt and whim; + 

For very lightly slept that ghost in him. + 

No cloudy brooding went before his wrath + 

That, like a thunder-squall, recked not its path, + 

But raged upon what happened in its way. + 

Some called him brave who saw him on that day + 

When Ashley stormed a bluff town of the Ree, + 

And all save beardless Jamie turned to flee + 

For shelter from that steep, lead-harrowed slope. + 

Yet, hardly courage, but blind rage agrope + 

Inspired the foolish deed. + 

’Twas then old Hugh + 

Tore off the gray mask, and the heart shone through. + 

For, halting in a dry, flood-guttered draw, + 

The trappers rallied, looked aloft and saw + 

That travesty of war against the sky. + 

Out of a breathless hush, the old man’s cry + 

Leaped shivering, an anguished cry and wild + 

As of some mother fearing for her child, + 

And up the steep he went with mighty bounds. + 

Long afterward the story went the rounds, + 

How old Glass fought that day. With gun for club, + 

Grim as a grizzly fighting for a cub, + 

He laid about him, cleared the way, and so, + 

Supported by the firing from below, + 

Brought Jamie back. And when the deed was done, + 

Taking the lad upon his knee: “My Son, + 

Brave men are not ashamed to fear,” said Hugh, + 

“And I’ve a mind to make a man of you; + 

So here’s your first acquaintance with the law!” + 

Whereat he spanked the lad with vigorous paw + 

And, having done so, limped away to bed; + 

For, wounded in the hip, the old man bled. + 

It was a month before he hobbled out, + 

And Jamie, like a fond son, hung about + 

The old man’s tent and waited upon him. + 

And often would the deep gray eyes grow dim + 

With gazing on the boy; and there would go⁠— + 

As though Spring-fire should waken out of snow⁠— + 

A wistful light across that mask of gray. + 

And once Hugh smiled his enigmatic way, + 

While poring long on Jamie’s face, and said: + 

“So with their sons are women brought to bed, + 

Sore wounded!” + 

Thus united were the two: + 

And some would dub the old man “Mother Hugh”; + 

While those in whom all living waters sank + 

To some dull inner pool that teemed and stank + 

With formless evil, into that morass + 

Gazed, and saw darkly there, as in a glass, + 

The foul shape of some weakly envied sin. + 

For each man builds a world and dwells therein. + 

Nor could these know what mocking ghost of Spring + 

Stirred Hugh’s gray world with dreams of blossoming + 

That wooed no seed to swell or bird to sing. + 

So might a dawn-struck digit of the moon + 

Dream back the rain of some old lunar June + 

And ache through all its craters to be green. + 

Little they know what life’s one love can mean, + 

Who shrine it in a bower of peace and bliss: + 

Pang dwelling in a puckered cicatrice + 

More truly figures this belated love. + 

Yet very precious was the hurt thereof, + 

Grievous to bear, too dear to cast away. + 

Now Jamie went with Hugh; but who shall say + 

If ’twas a warm heart or a wind of whim, + 

Love, or the rover’s teasing itch in him, + 

Moved Jamie? Howsoe’er, ’twas good to see + 

Graybeard and Goldhair riding knee to knee, + 

One age in young adventure. One who saw + 

Has likened to a February thaw + 

Hugh’s mellow mood those days; and truly so, + 

For when the tempering Southwest wakes to blow + 

A phantom April over melting snow, + 

Deep in the North some new white wrath is brewed. + 

Out of a dim-trailed inner solitude + 

The old man summoned many a stirring story, + 

Lived grimly once, but now shot through with glory + 

Caught from the wondering eyes of him who heard⁠— + 

Tales jaggèd with the bleak unstudied word, + 

Stark saga-stuff. “A fellow that I knew,” + 

So nameless went the hero that was Hugh⁠— + 

A mere pelt merchant, as it seemed to him; + 

Yet trailing epic thunders through the dim, + 

Whist world of Jamie’s awe. + 

And so they went, + 

One heart, it seemed, and that heart well content + 

With tale and snatch of song and careless laughter. + 

Never before, and surely never after, + 

The gray old man seemed nearer to his youth⁠— + 

That myth that somehow had to be the truth, + 

Yet could not be convincing any more. + 

Now when the days of travel numbered four + 

And nearer drew the barrens with their need, + 

On Glass, the hunter, fell the task to feed + 

Those four score hungers when the game should fail. + 

For no young eye could trace so dim a trail, + 

Or line the rifle sights with speed so true. + 

Nor might the wistful Jamie go with Hugh; + 

“For,” so Hugh chaffed, “my trick of getting game + 

Might teach young eyes to put old eyes to shame. + 

An old dog never risks his only bone.” + 

“Wolves prey in packs, the lion hunts alone” + 

Is somewhat nearer what he should have meant. + 

And so with merry jest the old man went; + 

And so they parted at an unseen gate + 

That even then some gust of moody fate + 

Clanged to betwixt them; each a tale to spell⁠— + 

One in the nightmare scrawl of dreams from hell, + 

One in the blistering trail of days a-crawl, + 

Venomous footed. Nor might it ere befall + 

These two should meet in after days and be + 

Graybeard and Goldhair riding knee to knee, + 

Recounting with a bluff, heroic scorn + 

The haps of either tale. + 

’Twas early morn + 

When Hugh went forth, and all day Jamie rode + 

With Henry’s men, while more and more the goad + 

Of eager youth sore fretted him, and made + 

The dusty progress of the cavalcade + 

The journey of a snail flock to the moon; + 

Until the shadow-weaving afternoon + 

Turned many fingers nightward⁠—then he fled, + 

Pricking his horse, nor deigned to turn his head + 

At any dwindling voice of reprimand; + 

For somewhere in the breaks along the Grand + 

Surely Hugh waited with a goodly kill. + 

Hoofbeats of ghostly steeds on every hill, + 

Mysterious, muffled hoofs on every bluff! + 

Spurred echo horses clattering up the rough + 

Confluent draws! These flying Jamie heard. + 

The lagging air droned like the drowsy word + 

Of one who tells weird stories late at night. + 

Half headlong joy and half delicious fright, + 

His day-dream’s pace outstripped the plunging steed’s. + 

Lean galloper in a wind of splendid deeds, + 

Like Hugh’s, he seemed unto himself, until, + 

Snorting, a-haunch above a breakneck hill, + 

The horse stopped short⁠—then Jamie was aware + 

Of lonesome flatlands fading skyward there + 

Beneath him, and, zigzag on either hand, + 

A purple haze denoted how the Grand + 

Forked wide ’twixt sunset and the polar star. + 

A-tiptoe in the stirrups, gazing far, + 

He saw no Hugh nor any moving thing, + 

Save for a welter of cawing crows, a-wing + 

About some banquet in the further hush. + 

One faint star, set above the fading blush + 

Of sunset, saw the coming night, and grew. + 

With hand for trumpet, Jamie gave halloo; + 

And once again. For answer, the horse neighed. + 

Some vague mistrust now made him half afraid⁠— + 

Some formless dread that stirred beneath the will + 

As far as sleep from waking. + 

Down the hill, + 

Close-footed in the skitter of the shale, + 

The spurred horse floundered to the solid vale + 

And galloped to the northwest, whinnying. + 

The outstripped air moaned like a wounded thing; + 

But Jamie gave the lie unto his dread. + 

“The old man’s camping out tonight,” he said, + 

“Somewhere about the forks, as like as not; + 

And there’ll be hunks of fresh meat steaming hot, + 

And fighting stories by a dying fire!” + 

The sunset reared a luminous phantom spire + 

That, crumbling, sifted ashes down the sky. + 

Now, pausing, Jamie sent a searching cry + 

Into the twilit river-skirting brush, + 

And in the vast denial of the hush + 

The champing of the snaffled horse seemed loud. + 

Then, startling as a voice beneath a shroud, + 

A muffled boom woke somewhere up the stream + 

And, like vague thunder hearkened in a dream, + 

Drawled back to silence. Now, with heart abound, + 

Keen for the quarter of the perished sound, + 

The lad spurred gaily; for he doubted not + 

His cry had brought Hugh’s answering rifle shot. + 

The laggard air was like a voice that sang, + 

And Jamie half believed he sniffed the tang + 

Of woodsmoke and the smell of flesh a-roast; + 

When presently before him, like a ghost, + 

Upstanding, huge in twilight, arms flung wide, + 

A gray form loomed. The wise horse reared and shied, + 

Snorting his inborn terror of the bear! + 

And in the whirlwind of a moment there, + 

Betwixt the brute’s hoarse challenge and the charge, + 

The lad beheld, upon the grassy marge + 

Of a small spring that bullberries stooped to scan, + 

A ragged heap that should have been a man, + 

A huddled, broken thing⁠—and it was Hugh! + 

There was no need for any closer view. + 

As, on the instant of a lightning flash + 

Ere yet the split gloom closes with a crash, + 

A landscape stares with every circumstance + 

Of rock and shrub⁠—just so the fatal chance + 

Of Hugh’s one shot, made futile with surprise, + 

Was clear to Jamie. Then before his eyes + 

The light whirled in a giddy dance of red; + 

And, doubting not the crumpled thing was dead + 

That was a friend, with but a skinning knife + 

He would have striven for the hated life + 

That triumphed there: but with a shriek of fright + 

The mad horse bolted through the falling night, + 

And Jamie, fumbling at his rifle boot, + 

Heard the brush crash behind him where the brute + 

Came headlong, close upon the straining flanks. + 

But when at length low-lying river banks⁠— + 

White rubble in the gloaming⁠—glimmered near, + 

A swift thought swept the mind of Jamie clear + 

Of anger and of anguish for the dead. + 

Scarce seemed the raging beast a thing to dread, + 

But some foul-playing braggart to outwit. + 

Now hurling all his strength upon the bit, + 

He sank the spurs, and with a groan of pain + 

The plunging horse, obedient to the rein, + 

Swerved sharply streamward. Sliddering in the sand, + 

The bear shot past. And suddenly the Grand + 

Loomed up beneath and rose to meet the pair + 

That rode a moment upon empty air, + 

Then smote the water in a shower of spray. + 

And when again the slowly ebbing day + 

Came back to them, a-drip from nose to flank, + 

The steed was scrambling up the further bank, + 

And Jamie saw across the narrow stream, + 

Like some vague shape of fury in a dream, + 

The checked beast ramping at the water’s rim. + 

Doubt struggled with a victor’s thrill in him. + 

As, hand to buckle of the rifle-sheath, + 

He thought of dampened powder; but beneath + 

The rawhide flap the gun lay snug and dry. + 

Then as the horse wheeled and the mark went by⁠— + 

A patch of shadow dancing upon gray⁠— + 

He fired. A sluggish thunder trailed away; + 

The spreading smoke-rack lifted slow, and there, + 

Floundering in a seethe of foam, the bear + 

Hugged yielding water for the foe that slew! + 

Triumphant, Jamie wondered what old Hugh + 

Would think of such a “trick of getting game”! + 

“Young eyes” indeed!⁠—And then that memory came, + 

Like a dull blade thrust back into a wound. + 

One moment ’twas as though the lad had swooned + 

Into a dream-adventure, waking there + 

To sicken at the ghastly land, astare + 

Like some familiar face gone strange at last. + 

But as the hot tears came, the moment passed. + 

Song snatches, broken tales⁠—a troop forlorn, + 

Like merry friends of eld come back to mourn⁠— + 

O’erwhelmed him there. And when the black bulk churned + 

The star-flecked stream no longer, Jamie turned, + 

Recrossed the river and rode back to Hugh. + 

A burning twist of valley grasses threw + 

Blear light about the region of the spring. + 

Then Jamie, torch aloft and shuddering, + 

Knelt there beside his friend, and moaned: “O Hugh, + 

If I had been with you⁠—just been with you! + 

We might be laughing now⁠—and you are dead.” + 

With gentle hand he turned the hoary head + 

That he might see the good gray face again. + 

The torch burned out, the dark swooped back, and then + 

His grief was frozen with an icy plunge + 

In horror. ’Twas as though a bloody sponge + 

Had wiped the pictured features from a slate! + 

So, pillaged by an army drunk with hate, + 

Home stares upon the homing refugee. + 

A red gout clung where either brow should be; + 

The haughty nose lay crushed amid the beard, + 

Thick with slow ooze, whence like a devil leered + 

The battered mouth convulsed into a grin. + 

Nor did the darkness cover, for therein + 

Some torch, unsnuffed, with blear funereal flare, + 

Still painted upon black that alien stare + 

To make the lad more terribly alone. + 

Then in the gloom there rose a broken moan, + 

Quick stifled; and it seemed that something stirred + 

About the body. Doubting that he heard, + 

The lad felt, with a panic catch of breath, + 

Pale vagrants from the legendry of death + 

Potential in the shadows there. But when + 

The motion and the moaning came again, + 

Hope, like a shower at daybreak, cleansed the dark, + 

And in the lad’s heart something like a lark + 

Sang morning. Bending low, he crooned: “Hugh, Hugh, + 

It’s Jamie⁠—don’t you know?⁠—I’m here with you.” + 

As one who in a nightmare strives to tell⁠— + 

Shouting across the gap of some dim hell⁠— + 

What things assail him; so it seemed Hugh heard, + 

And flung some unintelligible word + 

Athwart the muffling distance of his swoon. + 

Now kindled by the yet unrisen moon, + 

The East went pale; and like a naked thing + 

A little wind ran vexed and shivering + 

Along the dusk, till Jamie shivered too + 

And worried lest ’twere bitter cold where Hugh + 

Hung clutching at the bleak, raw edge of life. + 

So Jamie rose, and with his hunting-knife + 

Split wood and built a fire. Nor did he fear + 

The staring face now, for he found it dear + 

With the warm presence of a friend returned. + 

The fire made cozy chatter as it burned, + 

And reared a tent of light in that lone place. + 

Then Jamie set about to bathe the face + 

With water from the spring, oft crooning low, + 

“It’s Jamie here beside you⁠—don’t you know?” + 

Yet came no answer save the labored breath + 

Of one who wrestled mightily with Death + 

Where watched no referee to call the foul. + 

The moon now cleared the world’s end, and the owl + 

Gave voice unto the wizardry of light; + 

While in some dim-lit chancel of the night, + 

Snouts to the goddess, wolfish corybants + 

Intoned their wild antiphonary chants⁠— + 

The oldest, saddest worship in the world. + 

And Jamie watched until the firelight swirled + 

Softly about him. Sound and glimmer merged + 

To make an eerie void, through which he urged + 

With frantic spur some whirlwind of a steed + 

That made the way as glass beneath his speed, + 

Yet scarce kept pace with something dear that fled + 

On, ever on⁠—just half a dream ahead: + 

Until it seemed, by some vague shape dismayed, + 

He cried aloud for Hugh, and the steed neighed⁠— + 

A neigh that was a burst of light, not sound. + 

And Jamie, sprawling on the dewy ground, + 

Knew that his horse was sniffing at his hair, + 

While, mumbling through the early morning air, + 

There came a roll of many hoofs⁠—and then + 

He saw the swinging troop of Henry’s men + 

A-canter up the valley with the sun. + 

Of all Hugh’s comrades crowding round, not one + 

But would have given heavy odds on Death; + 

For, though the graybeard fought with sobbing breath, + 

No man, it seemed, might break upon the hip + 

So stern a wrestler with the strangling grip + 

That made the neck veins like a purple thong + 

Tangled with knots. Nor might Hugh tarry long + 

There where the trail forked outward far and dim; + 

Or so it seemed. And when they lifted him, + 

His moan went treble like a song of pain, + 

He was so tortured. Surely it were vain + 

To hope he might endure the toilsome ride + 

Across the barrens. Better let him bide + 

There on the grassy couch beside the spring. + 

And, furthermore, it seemed a foolish thing + 

That eighty men should wait the issue there; + 

For dying is a game of solitaire + 

And all men play the losing hand alone. + 

But when at noon he had not ceased to moan, + 

And fought still like the strong man he had been, + 

There grew a vague mistrust that he might win, + 

And all this be a tale for wondering ears. + 

So Major Henry called for volunteers, + 

Two men among the eighty who would stay + 

To wait on Glass and keep the wolves away + 

Until he did whatever he should do. + 

All quite agreed ’twas bitter bread for Hugh, + 

Yet none, save Jamie, felt in duty bound + 

To run the risk⁠—until the hat went round, + 

And pity wakened, at the silver’s clink, + 

In Jules Le Bon. + 

“He would not have them think + 

That mercenary motives prompted him. + 

But somehow just the grief of Little Jim + 

Was quite sufficient⁠—not to mention Hugh. + 

He weighed the risk. As everybody knew, + 

The Rickarees were scattered to the West: + 

The late campaign had stirred a hornet’s nest + 

To fill the land with stingers (which was so), + 

And yet⁠—” + 

Three days a southwest wind may blow + 

False April with no drop of dew at heart. + 

So Jules ran on, while, ready for the start, + 

The pawing horses nickered and the men, + 

Impatient in their saddles, yawned. And then, + 

With brief advice, a round of bluff goodbyes + 

And some few reassuring backward cries, + 

The troop rode up the valley with the day. + 

Intent upon his friend, with naught to say, + 

Sat Jamie; while Le Bon discussed at length + 

The reasonable limits of man’s strength⁠— + 

A self-conducted dialectic strife + 

That made absurd all argument for life + 

And granted but a fresh-dug hole for Hugh. + 

’Twas half like murder. Yet it seemed Jules knew + 

Unnumbered tales accordant with the case, + 

Each circumstantial as to time and place + 

And furnished with a death’s head colophon. + 

Vivaciously despondent, Jules ran on. + 

“Did he not share his judgment with the rest? + 

You see, ’twas some contusion of the chest + 

That did the trick⁠—heart, lungs and all that, mixed + 

In such a way they never could be fixed. + 

A bear’s hug⁠—ugh!” + 

And often Jamie winced + 

At some knife-thrust of reason that convinced + 

Yet left him sick with unrelinquished hope. + 

As one who in a darkened room might grope + 

For some belovèd face, with shuddering + 

Anticipation of a clammy thing; + 

So in the lad’s heart sorrow fumbled round + 

For some old joy to lean upon, and found + 

The stark, cold something Jamie knew was there. + 

Yet, womanlike, he stroked the hoary hair + 

Or bathed the face; while Jules found tales to tell⁠— + 

Lugubriously garrulous. + 

Night fell. + 

At sundown, daylong winds are like to veer; + 

So, summoning a mood of relished fear, + 

Le Bon remembered dire alarms by night⁠— + 

The swoop of savage hordes, the desperate fight + 

Of men outnumbered: and, like him of old, + 

In all that made Jules shudder as he told, + 

His the great part⁠—a man by field and flood + 

Fate-tossed. Upon the gloom he limned in blood + 

Their situation’s possibilities: + 

Two men against the fury of the Rees⁠— + 

A game in which two hundred men had failed! + 

He pointed out how little it availed + 

To run the risk for one as good as dead; + 

Yet, Jules Le Bon meant every word he said, + 

And had a scalp to lose, if need should be. + 

That night through Jamie’s dreaming swarmed the Ree. + 

Gray-souled, he wakened to a dawn of gray, + 

And felt that something strong had gone away, + 

Nor knew what thing. Some whisper of the will + 

Bade him rejoice that Hugh was living still; + 

But Hugh, the real, seemed somehow otherwhere. + 

Jules, snug and snoring in his blanket there, + 

Was half a life the nearer. Just so, pain + 

Is nearer than the peace we seek in vain, + 

And by its very sting compels belief. + 

Jules woke, and with a fine restraint of grief + 

Saw early dissolution. “One more night, + 

And then the poor old man would lose the fight⁠— + 

Ah, such a man!” + 

A day and night crept by, + 

And yet the stubborn fighter would not die, + 

But grappled with the angel. All the while, + 

With some conviction, but with more of guile, + 

Jules colonized the vacancy with Rees; + 

Till Jamie felt that looseness of the knees + 

That comes of oozing courage. Many men + 

May tower for a white-hot moment, when + 

The wild blood surges at a sudden shock; + 

But when, insistent as a ticking clock, + 

Blind peril haunts and whispers, fewer dare. + 

Dread hovered in the hushed and moony air + 

The long night through; nor might a fire be lit, + 

Lest some far-seeing foe take note of it. + 

And daylong Jamie scanned the blank sky rim + 

For hoof-flung dust clouds; till there woke in him + 

A childish anger⁠—dumb for ruth and shame⁠— + 

That Hugh so dallied. + 

But the fourth dawn came + 

And with it lulled the fight, as on a field + 

Where broken armies sleep but will not yield. + 

Or had one conquered? Was it Hugh or Death? + 

The old man breathed with faintly fluttering breath, + 

Nor did his body shudder as before. + 

Jules triumphed sadly. “It would soon be o’er; + 

So men grew quiet when they lost their grip + 

And did not care. At sundown he would slip + 

Into the deeper silence.” + 

Jamie wept, + 

Unwitting how a furtive gladness crept + 

Into his heart that gained a stronger beat. + 

So cities, long beleaguered, take defeat⁠— + 

Unto themselves half traitors. + 

Jules began + 

To dig a hole that might conceal a man; + 

And, as his sheath knife broke the stubborn sod, + 

He spoke in kindly vein of Life and God + 

And Mutability and Rectitude. + 

The immemorial funerary mood + 

Brought tears, mute tribute to the mother-dust; + 

And Jamie, seeing, felt each cutting thrust + 

Less like a stab into the flesh of Hugh. + 

The sun crept up and down the arc of blue + 

And through the air a chill of evening ran; + 

But, though the grave yawned, waiting for the man, + 

The man seemed scarce yet ready for the grave. + 

Now prompted by a coward or a knave + 

That lurked in him, Le Bon began to hear + 

Faint sounds that to the lad’s less cunning ear + 

Were silence; more like tremors of the ground + 

They were, Jules said, than any proper sound⁠— + 

Thus one detected horsemen miles away. + 

For many moments big with fate, he lay, + 

Ear pressed to earth; then rose and shook his head + 

As one perplexed. “There’s something wrong,” he said. + 

And⁠—as at daybreak whiten winter skies, + 

Agape and staring with a wild surmise⁠— + 

The lad’s face whitened at the other’s word. + 

Jules could not quite interpret what he heard; + 

A hundred horse might noise their whereabouts + 

In just that fashion; yet he had his doubts. + 

It could be bison moving, quite as well. + 

But if ’twere Rees⁠—there’d be a tale to tell + 

That two men he might name should never hear. + 

He reckoned scalps that Fall were selling dear, + 

In keeping with the limited supply. + 

Men, fit to live, were not afraid to die! + 

Then, in that caution suits not courage ill, + 

Jules saddled up and cantered to the hill, + 

A white dam set against the twilight stream; + 

And as a horseman riding in a dream + 

The lad beheld him; watched him clamber up + 

To where the dusk, as from a brimming cup, + 

Ran over; saw him pause against the gloom, + 

Portentous, huge⁠—a brooder upon doom. + 

What did he look upon? + 

Some moments passed; + 

Then suddenly it seemed as though a blast + 

Of wind, keen-cutting with the whips of sleet, + 

Smote horse and rider. Haunched on huddled feet, + 

The steed shrank from the ridge, then, rearing, wheeled + 

And took the rubbly incline fury-heeled. + 

Those days and nights, like seasons creeping slow, + 

Had told on Jamie. Better blow on blow + 

Of evil hap, with doom seen clear ahead, + 

Than that monotonous, abrasive dread, + 

Blind gnawer at the soul-thews of the blind. + 

Thin-worn, the last heart-string that held him kind; + 

Strung taut, the final tie that kept him true + 

Now snapped in Jamie, as he saw the two + 

So goaded by some terrifying sight. + 

Death riding with the vanguard of the Night, + 

Life dwindling yonder with the rear of Day! + 

What choice for one whom panic swept away + 

From moorings in the sanity of will? + 

Jules came and summed the vision of the hill + 

In one hoarse cry that left no word to say: + 

“Rees! Saddle up! We’ve got to get away!” + 

Small wit had Jamie left to ferret guile, + 

But fumblingly obeyed Le Bon; the while + 

Jules knelt beside the man who could not flee: + 

For big hearts lack not time for charity + 

However thick the blows of fate may fall. + 

Yet, in that Jules Le Bon was practical, + 

He could not quite ignore a hunting knife, + 

A flint, a gun, a blanket⁠—gear of life + 

Scarce suited to the customs of the dead! + 

And Hugh slept soundly in his ample bed, + 

Star-canopied and blanketed with night, + 

Unwitting how Venality and Fright + 

Made hot the westward trail of Henry’s men. + 

II + 

The Awakening + 

No one may say what time elapsed, or when + 

The slumberous shadow lifted over Hugh: + 

But some globose immensity of blue + 

Enfolded him at last, within whose light + 

He seemed to float, as some faint swimmer might, + 

A deep beneath and overhead a deep. + 

So one late plunged into the lethal sleep, + 

A spirit diver fighting for his breath, + 

Swoops through the many-fathomed glooms of death, + 

Emerging in a daylight strange and new. + 

Rousing a languid wonder, came on Hugh + 

The quiet, steep-arched splendor of the day. + 

Agrope for some dim memory, he lay + 

Upon his back, and watched a lucent fleece + 

Fade in the blue profundity of peace + 

As did the memory he sought in vain. + 

Then with a stirring of mysterious pain, + 

Old habit of the body bade him rise; + 

But when he would obey, the hollow skies + 

Broke as a bubble punctured, and went out. + 

Again he woke, and with a drowsy doubt, + 

Remote unto his horizontal gaze + 

He saw the world’s end kindle to a blaze + 

And up the smoky steep pale heralds run. + 

And when at length he knew it for the sun, + 

Dawn found the darkling reaches of his mind, + 

Where in the twilight he began to find + 

Strewn shards and torsos of familiar things. + 

As from the rubble in a place of kings + 

Men school the dream to build the past anew, + 

So out of dream and fragment builded Hugh, + 

And came upon the reason of his plight: + 

The bear’s attack⁠—the shot⁠—and then the night + 

Wherein men talked as ghosts above a grave. + 

Some consciousness of will the memory gave: + 

He would get up. The painful effort spent + 

Made the wide heavens billow as a tent + 

Wind-struck, the shaken prairie sag and roll. + 

Some moments with an effort at control + 

He swayed, half raised upon his arms, until + 

The dizzy cosmos righted, and was still. + 

Then would he stand erect and be again + 

The man he was: an overwhelming pain + 

Smote him to earth, and one unruly limb + 

Refused the weight and crumpled under him. + 

Sickened with torture he lay huddled there, + 

Gazing about him with a great despair + 

Proportioned to the might that felt the chain. + 

Far-flung as dawn, collusive sky and plain + 

Stared bleak denial back. + 

Why strive at all?⁠— + 

That vacancy about him like a wall, + 

Yielding as light, a granite scarp to climb! + 

Some little waiting on the creep of time, + 

Abandonment to circumstance; and then⁠— + 

Here flashed a sudden thought of Henry’s men + 

Into his mind and drove the gloom away. + 

They would be riding westward with the day! + 

How strange he had forgot! That battered leg + 

Or some scalp wound, had set his wits a-beg! + 

Was this Hugh Glass to whimper like a squaw? + 

Grimly amused, he raised his head and saw⁠— + 

The empty distance: listened long and heard⁠— + 

Naught but the twitter of a lonely bird + 

That emphasized the hush. + 

Was something wrong? + 

’Twas not the Major’s way to dally long, + 

And surely they had camped not far behind. + 

Now woke a query in his troubled mind⁠— + 

Where was his horse? Again came creeping back + 

The circumstances of the bear’s attack. + 

He had dismounted, thinking at the spring + 

To spend the night⁠—and then the grisly thing⁠— + 

Of course the horse had bolted; plain enough! + 

But why was all the soil about so rough + 

As though a herd of horses had been there? + 

The riddle vexed him till his vacant stare + 

Fell on a heap of earth beside a pit. + 

What did that mean? He wormed his way to it, + 

The newly wakened wonder dulling pain. + 

No paw of beast had scooped it⁠—that was plain. + 

’Twas squared; indeed, ’twas like a grave, he thought. + 

A grave⁠—a grave⁠—the mental echo wrought + 

Sick fancies! Who had risen from the dead? + 

Who, lying there, had heard above his head + 

The ghostly talkers deaf unto his shout? + 

Now searching all the region round about, + 

As though the answer were a lurking thing, + 

He saw along the margin of the spring + 

An ash-heap and the litter of a camp. + 

Suspicion, like a little smoky lamp + 

That daubs the murk but cannot fathom it, + 

Flung blear grotesques before his groping wit. + 

Had Rees been there? And he alive? Who then? + 

And were he dead, it might be Henry’s men! + 

How many suns had risen while he slept? + 

The smoky glow flared wildly, and he crept, + 

The dragged limb throbbing, till at length he found + 

The trail of many horses westward bound; + 

And in one breath the groping light became + 

A gloom-devouring ecstasy of flame, + 

A dazing conflagration of belief! + 

Plunged deeper than the seats of hate and grief, + 

He gazed about for aught that might deny + 

Such baseness: saw the non-committal sky, + 

The prairie apathetic in a shroud, + 

The bland complacence of a vagrant cloud⁠— + 

Worldwide connivance! Smilingly the sun + 

Approved a land wherein such deeds were done; + 

And careless breezes, like a troop of youth, + 

Unawed before the presence of such truth, + 

Went scampering amid the tousled brush. + 

Then bye and bye came on him with a rush + 

His weakness and the consciousness of pain, + 

While, with the chill insistence of a rain + 

That pelts the sodden wreck of Summer’s end, + 

His manifest betrayal by a friend + 

Beat in upon him. Jamie had been there; + 

And Jamie⁠—Jamie⁠—Jamie did not care! + 

What no man yet had witnessed, the wide sky + 

Looked down and saw; a light wind idling by + 

Heard what no ear of mortal yet had heard: + 

For he⁠—whose name was like a magic word + 

To conjure the remote heroic mood + 

Of valiant deed and splendid fortitude, + 

Wherever two that shared a fire might be⁠— + 

Gave way to grief and wept unmanfully. + 

Yet not as they for whom tears fall like dew + 

To green a frosted heart again, wept Hugh. + 

So thewed to strive, so engined to prevail + 

And make harsh fate the zany of a tale, + 

His own might shook and tore him. + 

For a span + 

He lay, a gray old ruin of a man + 

With all his years upon him like a snow. + 

And then at length, as from the long ago, + 

Remote beyond the other side of wrong, + 

The old love came like some remembered song + 

Whereof the strain is sweet, the burden sad. + 

A retrospective vision of the lad + 

Grew up in him, as in a foggy night + 

The witchery of semilunar light + 

Mysteriously quickens all the air. + 

Some memory of wind-blown golden hair, + 

The boyish laugh, the merry eyes of blue, + 

Wrought marvelously in the heart of Hugh, + 

As under snow the daemon of the Spring. + 

And momently it seemed a little thing + 

To suffer; nor might treachery recall + 

The miracle of being loved at all, + 

The privilege of loving to the end. + 

And thereupon a longing for his friend + 

Made life once more a struggle for a prize⁠— + 

To look again upon the merry eyes, + 

To see again the wind-blown golden hair. + 

Aye, one should lavish very tender care + 

Upon the vessel of a hope so great, + 

Lest it be shattered, and the precious freight, + 

As water on the arid waste, poured out. + 

Yet, though he longed to live, a subtle doubt + 

Still turned on him the weapon of his pain: + 

Now, as before, collusive sky and plain + 

Outstared his purpose for a puny thing. + 

Praying to live, he crawled back to the spring, + 

With something in his heart like gratitude + 

That by good luck his gun might furnish food, + 

His blanket, shelter, and his flint, a fire. + 

For, after all, what thing do men desire + 

To be or have, but these condition it? + 

These with a purpose and a little wit, + 

And howsoever smitten, one might rise, + 

Push back the curtain of the curving skies, + 

And come upon the living dream at last. + 

Exhausted, by the spring he lay and cast + 

Dull eyes about him. What did it portend? + 

Naught but the footprints of a fickle friend, + 

A yawning grave and ashes met his eyes! + 

Scarce feeling yet the shock of a surprise, + 

He searched about him for his flint and knife; + 

Knew vaguely that his seeking was for life, + 

And that the place was empty where he sought. + 

No food, no fire, no shelter! Dully wrought + 

The bleak negation in him, slowly crept + 

To where, despite the pain, his love had kept + 

A shrine for Jamie undefiled of doubt. + 

Then suddenly conviction, like a shout, + 

Aroused him. Jamie⁠—Jamie was a thief! + 

The very difficulty of belief + 

Was fuel for the simmering of rage; + 

That grew and grew, the more he strove to gage + 

The underlying motive of the deed. + 

Untempered youth might fail a friend in need; + 

But here had wrought some devil of the will, + 

Some heartless thing, too cowardly to kill, + 

That left to Nature what it dared not do! + 

So bellowsed, all the kindled soul of Hugh + 

Became a still white hell of brooding ire, + 

And through his veins regenerating fire + 

Ran, driving out the lethargy of pain. + 

Now once again he scanned the yellow plain, + 

Conspirant with the overbending skies; + 

And lo, the one was blue as Jamie’s eyes, + 

The other of the color of his hair⁠— + 

Twin hues of falseness merging to a stare, + 

As though such guilt, thus visibly immense, + 

Regarded its effect with insolence! + 

Alas for those who fondly place above + 

The act of loving, what they chance to love; + 

Who prize the goal more dearly than the way! + 

For time shall plunder them, and change betray, + 

And life shall find them vulnerable still. + 

A bitter-sweet narcotic to the will, + 

Hugh’s love increased the peril of his plight; + 

But anger broke the slumber of his might, + 

Quickened the heart and warmed the blood that ran + 

Defiance for the treachery of Man, + 

Defiance for the meaning of his pain, + 

Defiance for the distance of the plain + 

That seemed to gloat, “You can not master me.” + 

And for one burning moment he felt free + 

To rise and conquer in a wind of rage. + 

But as a tiger, conscious of the cage, + 

A-smoulder with a purpose, broods and waits, + 

So with the sullen patience that is hate’s + 

Hugh taught his wrath to bide expedience. + 

Now cognizant of every quickened sense, + 

Thirst came upon him. Leaning to the spring, + 

He stared with fascination on a thing + 

That rose from giddy deeps to share the draught⁠— + 

A face, it was, so tortured that it laughed, + 

A ghastly mask that Murder well might wear; + 

And while as one they drank together there, + 

It was as though the deed he meant to do + 

Took shape and came to kiss the lips of Hugh, + 

Lest that revenge might falter. Hunger woke; + 

And from the bush with leafage gray as smoke, + 

Wherein like flame the bullberries glinted red + 

(Scarce sweeter than the heart of him they fed), + 

Hugh feasted. + 

And the hours of waiting crept, + 

A-gloom, a-glow; and though he waked or slept, + 

The pondered purpose or a dream that wrought, + 

By night, the murder of his waking thought, + 

Sustained him till he felt his strength returned. + 

And then at length the longed-for morning burned + 

And beckoned down the vast way he should crawl⁠— + 

That waste to be surmounted as a wall, + 

Sky-rims and yet more sky-rims steep to climb⁠— + 

That simulacrum of enduring Time⁠— + 

The hundred empty miles ’twixt him and where + 

The stark Missouri ran! + 

Yet why not dare? + 

Despite the useless leg, he could not die + 

One hairsbreadth farther from the earth and sky, + 

Or more remote from kindness. + 

III + 

The Crawl + 

Straight away + 

Beneath the flare of dawn, the Ree land lay, + 

And through it ran the short trail to the goal. + 

Thereon a grim turnpikeman waited toll: + 

But ’twas so doomed that southering geese should flee + 

Nine times, ere yet the vengeance of the Ree + 

Should make their foe the haunter of a tale. + 

Midway to safety on the northern trail + 

The scoriac region of a hell burned black + 

Forbade the crawler. And for all his lack, + 

Hugh had no heart to journey with the suns: + 

No suppliant unto those faithless ones + 

Should bid for pity at the Big Horn’s mouth. + 

The greater odds for safety in the South + 

Allured him; so he felt the midday sun + 

Blaze down the coulee of a little run + 

That dwindled upward to the watershed + 

Whereon the feeders of the Moreau head⁠— + 

Scarce more than deep-carved runes of vernal rain. + 

The trailing leg was like a galling chain, + 

And bound him to a doubt that would not pass. + 

Defiant clumps of thirst-embittered grass + 

That bit parched earth with bared and fang-like roots; + 

Dwarf thickets, jealous for their stunted fruits, + 

Harsh-tempered by their disinheritance⁠— + 

These symbolized the enmity of Chance + 

For him who, with his fate unreconciled, + 

Equipped for travel as a weanling child, + 

Essayed the journey of a mighty man. + 

Like agitated oil the heat-waves ran + 

And made the scabrous gulch appear to shake + 

As some reflected landscape in a lake + 

Where laggard breezes move. A taunting reek + 

Rose from the grudging seepage of the creek, + 

Whereof Hugh drank and drank, and still would drink. + 

And where the mottled shadow dripped as ink + 

From scanty thickets on the yellow glare, + 

The crawler faltered with no heart to dare + 

Again the torture of that toil, until + 

The master-thought of vengeance ’woke the will + 

To goad him forth. And when the sun quiesced + 

Amid ironic heavens in the West⁠— + 

The region of false friends⁠—Hugh gained a rise + 

Whence to the fading cincture of the skies + 

A purpling panorama swept away. + 

Scarce farther than a shout might carry, lay + 

The place of his betrayal. He could see + 

The yellow blotch of earth where treachery + 

Had digged his grave. O futile wrath and toil! + 

Tucked in beneath yon coverlet of soil, + 

Turned back for him, how soundly had he slept! + 

Fool, fool! to struggle when he might have crept + 

So short a space, yet farther than the flight + 

Of swiftest dreaming through the longest night, + 

Into the quiet house of no false friend. + 

Alas for those who seek a journey’s end⁠— + 

They have it ever with them like a ghost: + 

Nor shall they find, who deem they seek it most, + 

But crave the end of human ends⁠—as Hugh. + 

Now swoopingly the world of dream broke through + 

The figured wall of sense. It seemed he ran + 

As wind above the creeping ways of man, + 

And came upon the place of his desire, + 

Where burned, far-luring as a beacon-fire, + 

The face of Jamie. But the vengeful stroke + 

Bit air. The darkness lifted like a smoke⁠— + 

And it was early morning. + 

Gazing far, + 

From where the West yet kept a pallid star + 

To thinner sky where dawn was wearing through, + 

Hugh shrank with dread, reluctant to renew + 

The war with that serene antagonist. + 

More fearsome than a smashing iron fist + 

Seemed that vast negativity of might; + 

Until the frustrate vision of the night + 

Came moonwise on the gloom of his despair. + 

And lo, the foe was naught but yielding air, + 

A vacancy to fill with his intent! + 

So from his spacious bed he ’rose and went + 

Three-footed; and the vision goaded him. + 

All morning southward to the bare sky rim + 

The rugged coulee zigzagged, mounting slow; + 

And ever as it ’rose, the lean creek’s flow + 

Dwindled and dwindled steadily, until + 

At last a scooped-out basin would not fill; + 

And thenceforth ’twas a way of mocking dust. + 

But, in that Hugh still kept the driving lust + 

For vengeance, this new circumstance of fate + 

Served but to brew more venom for his hate, + 

And nerved him to avail the most with least. + 

Ere noon the crawler chanced upon a feast + 

Of breadroot sunning in a favored draw. + 

A sentry gopher from his stronghold saw + 

Some three-legged beast, bear-like, yet not a bear, + 

With quite misguided fury digging where + 

No hapless brother gopher might be found. + 

And while, with stripèd nose above his mound, + 

The sentinel chirped shrilly to his clan + 

Scare-tales of that anomaly, the man + 

Devoured the chance-flung manna of the plains + 

That some vague reminiscence of old rains + 

Kept succulent, despite the burning drouth. + 

So with new vigor Hugh assailed the South, + 

His pockets laden with the precious roots + 

Against that coming traverse, where no fruits + 

Of herb or vine or shrub might brave the land + 

Spread rooflike ’twixt the Moreau and the Grand. + 

The coulee deepened; yellow walls flung high, + 

Sheer to the ragged strip of blinding sky, + 

Dazzled and sweltered in the glare of day. + 

Capricious draughts that woke and died away + 

Into the heavy drowse, were breatht as flame. + 

And midway down the afternoon, Hugh came + 

Upon a little patch of spongy ground. + 

His thirst became a rage. He gazed around, + 

Seeking a spring; but all about was dry + 

As strewn bones bleaching to a desert sky; + 

Nor did a clawed hole, bought with needed strength, + 

Return a grateful ooze. And when at length + 

Hugh sucked the mud, he spat it in disgust. + 

It had the acrid tang of broken trust, + 

The sweetish, tepid taste of feigning love! + 

Still hopeful of a spring somewhere above, + 

He crawled the faster for his taunted thirst. + 

More damp spots, no less grudging than the first, + 

Occurred with growing frequence on the way, + 

Until amid the purple wane of day + 

The crawler came upon a little pool! + 

Clear as a friend’s heart, ’twas, and seeming cool⁠— + 

A crystal bowl whence skyey deeps looked up. + 

So might a god set down his drinking cup + 

Charged with a distillation of haut skies. + 

As famished horses, thrusting to the eyes + 

Parched muzzles, take a long-sought water-hole, + 

Hugh plunged his head into the brimming bowl + 

As though to share the joy with every sense. + 

And lo, the tang of that wide insolence + 

Of sky and plain was acrid in the draught! + 

How ripplingly the lying water laughed! + 

How like fine sentiment the mirrored sky + 

Won credence for a sink of alkali! + 

So with false friends. And yet, as may accrue + 

From specious love some profit of the true, + 

One gift of kindness had the tainted sink. + 

Stripped of his clothes, Hugh let his body drink + 

At every thirsting pore. Through trunk and limb + 

The elemental blessing solaced him; + 

Nor did he rise till, vague with stellar light, + 

The lone gulch, buttressing an arch of night, + 

Was like a temple to the Holy Ghost. + 

As priests in slow procession with the Host, + 

A gusty breeze intoned⁠—now low, now loud, + 

And now, as to the murmur of a crowd, + 

Yielding the dim-torched wonder of the nave. + 

Aloft along the dusky architrave + 

The wander-tale of drifting stars evolved; + 

And Hugh lay gazing till the whole resolved + 

Into a haze. + 

It seemed that Little Jim + 

Had come to share a merry fire with him, + 

And there had been no trouble ’twixt the two. + 

And Jamie listened eagerly while Hugh + 

Essayed a tangled tale of bears and men, + 

Breadroot and stars. But ever now and then + 

The shifting smoke-cloud dimmed the golden hair, + 

The leal blue eyes; until with sudden flare + 

The flame effaced them utterly⁠—and lo, + 

The gulch bank-full with morning! + 

Loath to go, + 

Hugh lay beside the pool and pondered fate. + 

He saw his age-long pilgrimage of hate + 

Stretch out⁠—a fool’s trail; and it made him cringe; + 

For still amid the nightly vision’s fringe + 

His dull wit strayed, companioned with regret. + 

But when the sun, a tilted cauldron set + 

Upon the gulch rim, poured a blaze of day, + 

He rose and bathed again, and went his way, + 

Sustaining wrath returning with the toil. + 

At noon the gulch walls, hewn in lighter soil, + 

Fell back; and coulees dense with shrub and vine + 

Climbed zigzag to the sharp horizon line, + 

Whence one might choose the pilotage of crows. + 

He labored upward through the noonday doze. + 

Of breathless shade, where plums were turning red + 

In tangled bowers, and grapevines overhead + 

Purpled with fruit to taunt the crawler’s thirst. + 

With little effort Hugh attained the first; + 

The latter bargained sharply ere they sold + 

Their luscious clusters for the hoarded gold + 

Of strength that had so very much to buy. + 

Now, having feasted, it was sweet to lie + 

Beneath a sun-proof canopy; and sleep + 

Came swiftly. + 

Hugh awakened to some deep + 

Star-snuffing well of night. Awhile he lay + 

And wondered what had happened to the day + 

And where he was and what were best to do. + 

But when, fog-like, the drowse dispersed, he knew + 

How from the rim above the plain stretched far + 

To where the evening and the morning are, + 

And that ’twere better he should crawl by night, + 

Sleep out the glare. With groping hands for sight, + 

Skyward along the broken steep he crawled, + 

And saw at length, immense and purple-walled⁠— + 

Or sensed⁠—the dusky mystery of plain. + 

Gazing aloft, he found the capsized Wain + 

In mid-plunge down the polar steep. Thereto + 

He set his back; and far ahead there grew, + 

As some pale blossom from a darkling root, + 

The star-blanched summit of a lonely butte, + 

And thitherward he dragged his heavy limb. + 

It seemed naught moved. Time hovered over him, + 

An instant of incipient endeavor. + 

’Twas ever thus, and should be thus forever⁠— + 

This groping for the same armful of space, + 

An insubstantial essence of one place, + 

Extentless on a weird frontier of sleep. + 

Sheer deep upon unfathomable deep + 

The flood of dusk bore down without a sound, + 

As ocean on the spirits of the drowned + 

Awakened headlong leagues beneath the light. + 

So lapsed the drowsy aeon of the night⁠— + 

A strangely tensile moment in a trance. + 

And then, as quickened to somnambulance, + 

The heavens, imperceptibly in motion, + 

Were altered as the upward deeps of ocean + 

Diluted with a seepage of the moon. + 

The butte-top, late a gossamer balloon + 

In mid-air tethered hovering, grew down + 

And rooted in a blear expanse of brown, + 

That, lifting slowly with the ebb of night, + 

Took on the harsh solidity of light⁠— + 

And day was on the prairie like a flame. + 

Scarce had he munched the hoarded roots, when came + 

A vertigo of slumber. Snatchy dreams + 

Of sick pools, inaccessible cool streams, + 

Lured on through giddy vacancies of heat + 

In swooping flights; now hills of roasting meat + 

Made savory the oven of the world, + 

Yet kept remote peripheries and whirled + 

About a burning center that was Hugh. + 

Then all were gone, save one, and it turned blue + 

And was a heap of cool and luscious fruit, + 

Until at length he knew it for the butte + 

Now mantled with a weaving of the gloam. + 

It was the hour when cattle straggle home. + 

Across the clearing in a hush of sleep + 

They saunter, lowing; loiter belly-deep + 

Amid the lush grass by the meadow stream. + 

How like the sound of water in a dream + 

The intermittent tinkle of yon bell. + 

A windlass creaks contentment from a well, + 

And cool deeps gurgle as the bucket sinks. + 

Now blowing at the trough the plow-team drinks; + 

The shaken harness rattles. Sleepy quails + 

Call far. The warm milk hisses in the pails + 

There in the dusky barn-lot. Crickets cry. + 

The meadow twinkles with the glowing fly. + 

One hears the horses munching at their oats. + 

The green grows black. A veil of slumber floats + 

Across the haunts of home-enamored men. + 

Some freak of memory brought back again + 

The boyhood world of sight and scent and sound: + 

It perished, and the prairie ringed him round, + 

Blank as the face of fate. In listless mood + 

Hugh set his face against the solitude + 

And met the night. The new moon, low and far, + 

A frail cup tilted, nor the high-swung star, + 

It seemed, might glint on any stream or spring + 

Or touch with silver any toothsome thing. + 

The kiote voiced the universal lack. + 

As from a nether fire, the plain gave back + 

The swelter of the noon-glare to the gloom. + 

In the hot hush Hugh heard his temples boom. + 

Thirst tortured. Motion was a languid pain. + 

Why seek some further nowhere on the plain? + 

Here might the kiotes feast as well as there. + 

So spoke some loose-lipped spirit of despair; + 

And still Hugh moved, volitionless⁠—a weight + 

Submissive to that now unconscious hate, + 

As darkling water to the hidden moon. + 

Now when the night wore on in middle swoon, + 

The crawler, roused from stupor, was aware + 

Of some strange alteration in the air. + 

To breathe became an act of conscious will. + 

The starry waste was ominously still. + 

The far-off kiote’s yelp came sharp and clear + 

As through a tunnel in the atmosphere⁠— + 

A ponderable, resonating mass. + 

The limp leg dragging on the sun-dried grass + 

Produced a sound unnaturally loud. + 

Crouched, panting, Hugh looked up but saw no cloud. + 

An oily film seemed spread upon the sky + 

Now dully staring as the open eye + 

Of one in fever. Gasping, choked with thirst, + 

A childish rage assailed Hugh, and he cursed: + 

’Twas like a broken spirit’s outcry, tossed + 

Upon hell’s burlesque sabbath for the lost, + 

And briefly space seemed crowded with the voice. + 

To wait and die, to move and die⁠—what choice? + 

Hugh chose not, yet he crawled; though more and more + 

He felt the futile strife was nearly o’er. + 

And as he went, a muffled rumbling grew, + 

More felt than heard; for long it puzzled Hugh. + 

Somehow ’twas coextensive with his thirst, + 

Yet boundless; swollen blood-veins ere they burst + 

Might give such warning, so he thought. And still + 

The drone seemed heaping up a phonic hill + 

That towered in a listening profound. + 

Then suddenly a mountain peak of sound + 

Came toppling to a heaven-jolting fall! + 

The prairie shuddered, and a raucous drawl + 

Ran far and perished in the outer deep. + 

As one too roughly shaken out of sleep, + 

Hugh stared bewildered. Still the face of night + 

Remained the same, save where upon his right + 

The moon had vanished ’neath the prairie rim. + 

Then suddenly the meaning came to him. + 

He turned and saw athwart the northwest sky, + 

Like some black eyelid shutting on an eye, + 

A coming night to which the night was day! + 

Star-hungry, ranged in regular array, + 

The lifting mass assailed the Dragon’s lair, + 

Submerged the region of the hounded Bear, + 

Out-topped the tall Ox-Driver and the Pole. + 

And all the while there came a low-toned roll, + 

Less sound in air than tremor in the earth, + 

From where, like flame upon a windy hearth, + 

Deep in the further murk sheet-lightning flared. + 

And still the southern arc of heaven stared, + 

A half-shut eye, near blind with fever rheum; + 

And still the plain lay tranquil as a tomb + 

Wherein the dead reck not a menaced world. + 

What turmoil now? Lo, ragged columns hurled + 

Pell-mell up stellar slopes! Swift blue fires leap + 

Above the wild assailants of the steep! + 

Along the solid rear a dull boom runs! + 

So light horse squadrons charge beneath the guns. + 

Now once again the night is deathly still. + 

What ghastly peace upon the zenith hill, + 

No longer starry? Not a sound is heard. + 

So poised the hush, it seems a whispered word + 

Might loose all noises in an avalanche. + 

Only the black mass moves, and far glooms blanch + 

With fitful flashes. The capricious flare + 

Reveals the butte-top tall and lonely there + 

Like some gray prophet contemplating doom. + 

But hark! What spirits whisper in the gloom? + 

What sibilation of conspiracies + 

Ruffles the hush⁠—or murmuring of trees, + 

Ghosts of the ancient forest⁠—or old rain, + 

In some hallucination of the plain, + 

A frustrate phantom mourning? All around, + 

That e’er evolving, ne’er resolving sound + 

Gropes in the stifling hollow of the night. + 

Then⁠—once⁠—twice⁠—thrice⁠—a blade of blinding light + 

Ripped up the heavens, and the deluge came⁠— + 

A burst of wind and water, noise and flame + 

That hurled the watcher flat upon the ground. + 

A moment past Hugh famished; now, half drowned, + 

He gasped for breath amid the hurtling drench. + 

So might a testy god, long sought to quench + 

A puny thirst, pour wassail, hurling after + 

The crashing bowl with wild sardonic laughter + 

To see man wrestle with his answered prayer! + 

Prone to the roaring flaw and ceaseless flare, + 

The man drank deeply with the drinking grass; + 

Until it seemed the storm would never pass + 

But ravin down the painted murk for aye. + 

When had what dreamer seen a glaring day + 

And leagues of prairie pantingly aquiver? + 

Flame, flood, wind, noise and darkness were a river + 

Tearing a cosmic channel to no sea. + 

The tortured night wore on; then suddenly + 

Peace fell. Remotely the retreating Wrath + 

Trailed dull, reluctant thunders in its path, + 

And up along a broken stair of cloud + 

The Dawn came creeping whitely. Like a shroud + 

Gray vapors clung along the sodden plain. + 

Up rose the sun to wipe the final stain + 

Of fury from the sky and drink the mist. + 

Against a flawless arch of amethyst + 

The butte soared, like a soul serene and white + 

Because of the katharsis of the night. + 

All day Hugh fought with sleep and struggled on + 

Southeastward; for the heavy heat was gone + 

Despite the naked sun. The blank Northwest + 

Breathed coolly; and the crawler thought it best + 

To move while yet each little break and hollow + 

And shallow basin of the bison-wallow + 

Begrudged the earth and air its dwindling store. + 

But now that thirst was conquered, more and more + 

He felt the gnaw of hunger like a rage. + 

And once, from dozing in a clump of sage, + 

A lone jackrabbit bounded. As a flame + 

Hope flared in Hugh, until the memory came + 

Of him who robbed a sleeping friend and fled. + 

Then hate and hunger merged; the man saw red, + 

And momently the hare and Little Jim + 

Were one blurred mark for murder unto him⁠— + 

Elusive, taunting, sweet to clutch and tear. + 

The rabbit paused to scan the crippled bear + 

That ground its teeth as though it chewed a root. + 

But when, in witless rage, Hugh drew his boot + 

And hurled it with a curse, the hare loped off, + 

Its critic ears turned back, as though to scoff + 

At silly brutes that threw their legs away. + 

Night like a shadow on enduring day + 

Swooped by. The dream of crawling and the act + 

Were phases of one everlasting fact: + 

Hugh woke, and he was doing what he dreamed. + 

The butte, outstripped at eventide, now seemed + 

Intent to follow. Ever now and then + 

The crawler paused to calculate again + 

What dear-bought yawn of distance dwarfed the hill. + 

Close in the rear it soared, a Titan still, + 

Whose hand-in-pocket saunter kept the pace. + 

Distinct along the southern rim of space + 

A low ridge lay, the crest of the divide. + 

What rest and plenty on the other side! + 

Through what lush valleys ran what crystal brooks! + 

And there in virgin meadows wayside nooks + 

With leaf and purple cluster dulled the light! + 

All day it seemed that distant Pisgah Height + 

Retreated, and the tall butte dogged the rear. + 

At eve a stripèd gopher chirping near + 

Gave Hugh an inspiration. Now, at least, + 

No thieving friend should rob him of a feast. + 

His great idea stirred him as a shout. + 

Off came a boot, a sock was ravelled out. + 

The coarse yarn, fashioned to a running snare, + 

He placed about the gopher’s hole with care, + 

And then withdrew to hold the yarn and wait. + 

The night-bound moments, ponderous with fate, + 

Crept slowly by. The battered gray face leered + 

In expectation. Down the grizzled beard + 

Ran slaver from anticipating jaws. + 

Evolving twilight hovered to a pause. + 

The light wind fell. Again and yet again + 

The man devoured his fancied prey: and then + 

Within the noose a timid snout was thrust. + 

His hand unsteadied with the hunger lust, + 

Hugh jerked the yarn. It broke. + 

Down swooped the night, + 

A shadow of despair. Bleak height on height, + 

It seemed, a sheer abyss enclosed him round. + 

Clutching a strand of yarn, he heard the sound + 

Of some infernal turmoil under him. + 

Grimly he strove to reach the ragged rim + 

That snared a star, until the skyey space + 

Was darkened with a roof of Jamie’s face, + 

And then the yarn was broken, and he fell. + 

A-tumble like a stricken bat, his yell + 

Woke hordes of laughers down the giddy yawn + 

Of that black pit⁠—and suddenly ’twas dawn. + 

Dream-dawn, dream-noon, dream-twilight! Yet, possest + 

By one stern dream more clamorous than the rest, + 

Hugh headed for a gap that notched the hills, + 

Wherethrough a luring murmur of cool rills, + 

A haunting smell of verdure seemed to creep. + 

By fits the wild adventure of his sleep + 

Became the cause of all his waking care, + 

And he complained unto the empty air + 

How Jamie broke the yarn. + 

The sun and breeze + 

Had drunk all shallow basins to the lees, + 

But now and then some gully, choked with mud, + 

Retained a turbid relict of the flood. + 

Dream-dawn, dream-noon, dream-night! And still obsessed + 

By that one dream more clamorous than the rest, + 

Hugh struggled for the crest of the divide. + 

And when at length he saw the other side, + 

’Twas but a rumpled waste of yellow hills! + 

The deep-sunk, wiser self had known the rills + 

And nooks to be the facture of a whim; + 

Yet had the pleasant lie befriended him, + 

And now the brutal fact had come to stare. + 

Succumbing to a languorous despair, + 

He mourned his fate with childish uncontrol + 

And nursed that deadly adder of the soul, + 

Self-pity. Let the crows swoop down and feed, + 

Aye, batten on a thing that died of need, + 

A poor old wretch betrayed of God and Man! + 

So peevishly his broken musing ran, + 

Till, glutted with the luxury of woe, + 

He turned to see the butte, that he might know + 

How little all his striving could avail + 

Against ill-luck. And lo, a finger-nail, + 

At arm-length held, could blot it out of space! + 

A goading purpose and a creeping pace + 

Had dwarfed the Titan in a haze of blue! + 

And suddenly new power came to Hugh + 

With gazing on his masterpiece of will. + 

So fare the wise on Pisgah. + 

Down the hill, + 

Unto the higher vision consecrate, + 

Now sallied forth the new triumvirate⁠— + 

A Weariness, a Hunger and a Glory⁠— + 

Against tyrannic Chance. As in a story + 

Some higher Hugh observed the baser part. + 

So sits the artist throned above his art, + 

Nor recks the travail so the end be fair. + 

It seemed the wrinkled hills pressed in to stare, + 

The arch of heaven was an eye a-gaze. + 

And as Hugh went, he fashioned many a phrase + 

For use when, by some friendly ember-light, + 

His tale of things endured should speed the night + 

And all this gloom grow golden in the sharing. + 

So wrought the old evangel of high daring, + 

The duty and the beauty of endeavor, + 

The privilege of going on forever, + 

A victor in the moment. + 

Ah, but when + 

The night slipped by and morning came again, + 

The sky and hill were only sky and hill + 

And crawling but an agony of will. + 

So once again the old triumvirate, + 

A buzzard Hunger and a viper Hate + 

Together with the baser part of Hugh, + 

Went visionless. + 

That day the wild geese flew, + 

Vague in a gray profundity of sky; + 

And on into the night their muffled cry + 

Haunted the moonlight like a far farewell. + 

It made Hugh homesick, though he could not tell + 

For what he yearned; and in his fitful sleeping + 

The cry became the sound of Jamie weeping, + 

Immeasurably distant. + 

Morning broke, + 

Blear, chilly, through a fog that drove as smoke + 

Before the booming Northwest. Sweet and sad + 

Came creeping back old visions of the lad⁠— + 

Some trick of speech, some merry little lilt, + 

The brooding blue of eyes too clear for guilt, + 

The wind-blown golden hair. Hate slept that day, + 

And half of Hugh was half a life away, + 

A wandering spirit wistful of the past; + 

And half went drifting with the autumn blast + 

That mourned among the melancholy hills; + 

For something of the lethargy that kills + 

Came creeping close upon the ebb of hate. + 

Only the raw wind, like the lash of Fate, + 

Could have availed to move him any more. + 

At last the buzzard beak no longer tore + 

His vitals, and he ceased to think of food. + 

The fighter slumbered, and a maudlin mood + 

Foretold the dissolution of the man. + 

He sobbed, and down his beard the big tears ran. + 

And now the scene is changed; the bleak wind’s cry + 

Becomes a flight of bullets snarling by + 

From where on yonder summit skulk the Rees. + 

Against the sky, in silhouette, he sees + 

The headstrong Jamie in the leaden rain. + 

And now serenely beautiful and slain + 

The dear lad lies within a gusty tent. + 

Thus vexed with doleful whims the crawler went + 

Adrift before the wind, nor saw the trail; + 

Till close on night he knew a rugged vale + 

Had closed about him; and a hush was there, + 

Though still a moaning in the upper air + 

Told how the gray-winged gale blew out the day. + 

Beneath a clump of brush he swooned away + 

Into an icy void; and waking numb, + 

It seemed the still white dawn of death had come + 

On this, some cradle-valley of the soul. + 

He saw a dim, enchanted hollow roll + 

Beneath him, and the brush thereof was fleece; + 

And, like the body of the perfect peace + 

That thralled the whole, abode the break of day. + 

It seemed no wind had ever come that way, + 

Nor sound dwelt there, nor echo found the place. + 

And Hugh lay lapped in wonderment a space, + 

Vexed with a snarl whereof the ends were lost, + 

Till, shivering, he wondered if a frost + 

Had fallen with the dying of the blast. + 

So, vaguely troubled, listlessly he cast + 

A gaze about him: lo, above his head + 

The gray-green curtain of his chilly bed + 

Was broidered thick with plums! Or so it seemed, + 

For he was half persuaded that he dreamed; + 

And with a steady stare he strove to keep + 

That treasure for the other side of sleep. + 

Returning hunger bade him rise; in vain + 

He struggled with a fine-spun mesh of pain + 

That trammelled him, until a yellow stream + 

Of day flowed down the white vale of a dream + 

And left it disenchanted in the glare. + 

Then, warmed and soothed, Hugh rose and feasted there, + 

And thought once more of reaching the Moreau. + 

To southward with a painful pace and slow + 

He went stiff-jointed; and a gnawing ache + 

In that hip-wound he had for Jamie’s sake + 

Oft made him groan⁠—nor wrought a tender mood: + 

The rankling weapon of ingratitude + 

Was turned again with every puckering twinge. + 

Far down the vale a narrow winding fringe + 

Of wilted green betokened how a spring + 

There sent a little rill meandering; + 

And Hugh was greatly heartened, for he knew + 

What fruits and herbs might flourish in the slough, + 

And thirst, henceforth, should torture not again. + 

So day on day, despite the crawler’s pain, + 

All in the windless, golden autumn weather, + 

These two, as comrades, struggled south together⁠— + 

The homeless graybeard and the homing rill: + 

And one was sullen with the lust to kill, + 

And one went crooning of the moon-wooed vast; + 

For each the many-fathomed peace at last, + 

But oh the boon of singing on the way! + 

So came these in the golden fall of day + 

Unto a sudden turn in the ravine, + 

Wherefrom Hugh saw a flat of cluttered green + 

Beneath the further bluffs of the Moreau. + 

With sinking heart he paused and gazed below + 

Upon the goal of so much toil and pain. + 

Yon green had seemed a paradise to gain + 

The while he thirsted where the lonely butte + 

Looked far and saw no toothsome herb or fruit + 

In all that yellow barren dim with heat. + 

But now the wasting body cried for meat, + 

And sickness was upon him. Game should pass, + 

Nor deign to fear the mighty hunter Glass, + 

But curiously sniffing, pause to stare. + 

Now while thus musing, Hugh became aware + 

Of some low murmur, phasic and profound, + 

Scarce risen o’er the border line of sound. + 

It might have been the coursing of his blood, + 

Or thunder heard remotely, or a flood + 

Flung down a wooded valley far away. + 

Yet that had been no weather-breeding day; + 

’Twould frost that night; amid the thirsty land + 

All streams ran thin; and when he pressed a hand + 

On either ear, the world seemed very still. + 

The deep-worn channel of the little rill + 

Here fell away to eastward, rising, rough + 

With old rain-furrows, to a lofty bluff + 

That faced the river with a yellow wall. + 

Thereto, perplexed, Hugh set about to crawl, + 

Nor reached the summit till the sun was low. + 

Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow, + 

The still land told not whence the murmur grew; + 

But where the green strip melted into blue + 

Far down the winding valley of the stream, + 

Hugh saw what seemed the tempest of a dream + 

At mimic havoc in the timber-glooms. + 

As from the sweeping of gigantic brooms, + 

A dust cloud deepened down the dwindling river; + 

Upon the distant tree-tops ran a shiver + 

And huddled thickets writhed as in a gale. + 

On creeps the windless tempest up the vale, + 

The while the murmur deepens to a roar, + 

As with the wider yawning of a door. + 

And now the agitated green gloom gapes + 

To belch a flood of countless dusky shapes + 

That mill and wrangle in a turbid flow⁠— + 

Migrating myriads of the buffalo + 

Bound for the winter pastures of the Platte! + 

Exhausted, faint with need of meat, Hugh sat + 

And watched the mounting of the living flood. + 

Down came the night, and like a blot of blood + 

The lopped moon weltered in the dust-bleared East. + 

Sleep came and gave a Barmecidal feast. + 

About a merry flame were simmering + 

Sweet haunches of the calving of the Spring, + 

And tender tongues that never tasted snow, + 

And marrow bones that yielded to a blow + 

Such treasure! Hugh awoke with gnashing teeth, + 

And heard the mooing drone of cows beneath, + 

The roll of hoofs, the challenge of the bull. + 

So sounds a freshet when the banks are full + 

And bursting brush-jams bellow to the croon + 

Of water through green leaves. The ragged moon + 

Now drenched the valley in an eerie rain: + 

Below, the semblance of a hurricane; + 

Above, the perfect calm of brooding frost, + 

Through which the wolves in doleful tenson tossed + 

From hill to hill the ancient hunger-song. + 

In broken sleep Hugh rolled the chill night long, + 

Half conscious of the flowing flesh below. + 

And now he trailed a bison in the snow + 

That deepened till he could not lift his feet. + 

Again, he battled for a chunk of meat + 

With some gray beast that fought with icy fang. + 

And when he woke, the wolves no longer sang; + 

White dawn athwart a white world smote the hill, + 

And thunder rolled along the valley still. + 

Morn, wiping up the frost as with a sponge, + 

Day on the steep and down the nightward plunge, + 

And Twilight saw the myriads moving on. + 

Dust to the westward where the van had gone, + 

And dust and muffled thunder in the east! + 

Hugh starved while gazing on a Titan feast. + 

The tons of beef, that eddied there and swirled, + 

Had stilled the crying hungers of the world, + 

Yet not one little morsel was for him. + 

The red sun, pausing on the dusty rim, + 

Induced a panic aspect of his plight: + 

The herd would pass and vanish in the night + 

And be another dream to cling and flout. + 

Now scanning all the summit round about, + 

Amid the rubble of the ancient drift + 

He saw a boulder. ’Twas too big to lift, + 

Yet he might roll it. Painfully and slow + 

He worked it to the edge, then let it go + 

And breathlessly expectant watched it fall. + 

It hurtled down the leaning yellow wall, + 

And bounding from a brushy ledge’s brow, + 

It barely grazed the buttocks of a cow + 

And made a moment’s eddy where it struck. + 

In peevish wrath Hugh cursed his evil luck, + 

And seizing rubble, gave his fury vent + 

By pelting bison till his strength was spent: + 

So might a child assail the crowding sea! + 

Then, sick at heart and musing bitterly, + 

He shambled down the steep way to the creek, + 

And having stayed the tearing buzzard beak + 

With breadroot and the waters of the rill, + 

Slept till the white of morning o’er the hill + 

Was like a whisper groping in a hush. + 

The stream’s low trill seemed loud. The tumbled brush + 

And rumpled tree-tops in the flat below, + 

Upon a fog that clung like spectral snow, + 

Lay motionless; nor any sound was there. + 

No frost had fallen, but the crystal air + 

Smacked of the autumn, and a heavy dew + 

Lay hoar upon the grass. There came on Hugh + 

A picture, vivid in the moment’s thrill, + 

Of martialed corn-shocks marching up a hill + 

And spiked fields dotted with the pumpkin’s gold. + 

It vanished; and, a-shiver with the cold, + 

He brooded on the mockeries of Chance, + 

The shrewd malignity of Circumstance + 

That either gave too little or too much. + 

Yet, with the fragment of a hope for crutch, + 

His spirit rallied, and he rose to go, + 

Though each stiff joint resisted as a foe + 

And that old hip-wound battled with his will. + 

So down along the channel of the rill + 

Unto the vale below he fought his way. + 

The frore fog, rifting in the risen day, + 

Revealed the havoc of the living flood⁠— + 

The river shallows beaten into mud, + 

The slender saplings shattered in the crush, + 

All lower leafage stripped, the tousled brush + 

Despoiled of fruitage, winter-thin, aghast. + 

And where the avalanche of hoofs had passed + 

It seemed nor herb nor grass had ever been. + 

And this the hard-won paradise, wherein + 

A food-devouring plethora of food + 

Had come to make a starving solitude! + 

Yet hope and courage mounted with the sun. + 

Surely, Hugh thought, some ill-begotten one + 

Of all that striving mass had lost the strife + 

And perished in the headlong stream of life⁠— + 

A feast to fill the bellies of the strong, + 

That still the weak might perish. All day long + 

He struggled down the stricken vale, nor saw + 

What thing he sought. But when the twilight awe + 

Was creeping in, beyond a bend arose + 

A din as though the kiotes and the crows + 

Fought there with shrill and raucous battle cries. + 

Small need had Hugh to ponder and surmise + 

What guerdon beak and fang contended for. + 

Within himself the oldest cause of war + 

Brought forth upon the instant fang and beak. + 

He too would fight! Nor had he far to seek + 

Amid the driftwood strewn about the sand + 

For weapons suited to a brawny hand + 

With such a purpose. Armed with club and stone + 

He forged ahead into the battle zone, + 

And from a screening thicket spied his foes. + 

He saw a bison carcass black with crows, + 

And over it a welter of black wings, + 

And round about, a press of tawny rings + 

That, like a muddy current churned to foam + 

Upon a snag, flashed whitely in the gloam + 

With naked teeth; while close about the prize + 

Red beaks and muzzles bloody to the eyes + 

Betrayed how worth a struggle was the feast. + 

Then came on Hugh the fury of the beast⁠— + 

To eat or to be eaten! Better so + 

To die contending with a living foe, + 

Than fight the yielding distance and the lack. + 

Masked by the brush he opened the attack, + 

And ever where a stone or club fell true, + 

About the stricken one an uproar grew + 

And brute tore brute, forgetful of the prey, + 

Until the whole pack tumbled in the fray + 

With bleeding flanks and lacerated throats. + 

Then, as the leader of a host who notes + 

The cannon-wrought confusion of the foe, + 

Hugh seized the moment for a daring blow. + 

The wolf’s a coward, who, in goodly packs, + 

May counterfeit the courage that he lacks + 

And with a craven’s fury crush the bold. + 

But when the disunited mass that rolled + 

In suicidal strife, became aware + 

How some great beast that shambled like a bear + 

Bore down with roaring challenge, fell a hush + 

Upon the pack, some slinking to the brush + 

With tails a-droop; while some that whined in pain + 

Writhed off on reddened trails. With bristled mane + 

Before the flying stones a bolder few + 

Snarled menace at the foe as they withdrew + 

To fill the outer dusk with clamorings. + 

Aloft upon a moaning wind of wings + 

The crows with harsh, vituperative cries + 

Now saw a gray wolf of prodigious size + 

Devouring with the frenzy of the starved. + 

Thus fell to Hugh a bison killed and carved; + 

And so Fate’s whims mysteriously trend⁠— + 

Woe in the silken meshes of the friend, + 

Weal in the might and menace of the foe. + 

But with the fading of the afterglow + 

The routed wolves found courage to return: + 

Amid the brush Hugh saw their eyeballs burn; + 

And well he knew how futile stick and stone + 

Should prove by night to keep them from their own. + 

Better is less with safety, than enough + 

With ruin. He retreated to a bluff, + 

And scarce had reached it when the pack swooped in + 

Upon the carcass. + 

All night long, the din + 

Of wrangling wolves assailed the starry air, + 

While high above them in a brushy lair + 

Hugh dreamed of gnawing at the bloody feast. + 

Along about the blanching of the east, + 

When sleep is weirdest and a moment’s flight, + 

Remembered coextensive with the night, + 

May teem with hapful years; as light in smoke, + 

Upon the jumble of Hugh’s dreaming broke + 

A buzz of human voices. Once again + 

He rode the westward trail with Henry’s men⁠— + 

Hoof-smitten leagues consuming in a dust. + 

And now the nightmare of that broken trust + 

Was on him, and he lay beside the spring, + 

A corpse, yet heard the muffled parleying + 

Above him of the looters of the dead: + 

But when he might have riddled what they said, + 

The babble flattened to a blur of gray⁠— + 

And lo, upon a bleak frontier of day, + 

The spent moon staring down! A little space + 

Hugh scrutinized the featureless white face, + 

As though ’twould speak. But when again the sound + 

Grew up, and seemed to come from under ground, + 

He cast the drowse, and peering down the slope, + 

Beheld what set at grapple fear and hope⁠— + 

Three Indian horsemen riding at a jog! + 

Their ponies, wading belly-deep in fog, + 

That clung along the valley, seemed to swim, + 

And through a thinner vapor moving dim, + 

The men were ghost-like. + 

Could they be the Sioux? + 

Almost the wish became belief in Hugh. + 

Or were they Rees? As readily the doubt + 

Withheld him from the hazard of a shout. + 

And while he followed them with baffled gaze, + 

Grown large and vague, dissolving in the haze, + 

They vanished westward. + 

Knowing well the wont + 

Of Indians moving on the bison-hunt, + 

Forthwith Hugh guessed the early riders were + 

The outflung feelers of a tribe astir + 

Like some huge cat gone mousing. So he lay + 

Concealed, impatient with the sleepy day + 

That dawdled in the dawning. Would it bring + 

Good luck or ill? His eager questioning, + 

As crawling fog, took on a golden hue + 

From sunrise. He was waiting for the Sioux, + 

Their parfleche panniers fat with sun-dried maize + 

And wasna! From the mint of evil days + 

He would coin tales and be no begging guest + 

About the tribal feast-fires burning west, + 

But kinsman of the blood of daring men. + 

And when the crawler stood erect again⁠— + 

O Friend-Betrayer at the Big Horn’s mouth, + 

Beware of someone riding from the South + 

To do the deed that he had lived to do! + 

Now when the sun stood hour-high in the blue, + 

From where a cloud of startled blackbirds rose + 

Down stream, a panic tumult broke the doze + 

Of windless morning. What unwelcome news + 

Embroiled the parliament of feathered shrews? + 

A boiling cloud against the sun they lower, + 

Flackering strepent; now a sooty shower, + 

Big-flaked, squall-driven westward, down they flutter + 

To set a clump of cottonwoods a-sputter + 

With cold black fire! And once again, some shock + 

Of sight or sound flings panic in the flock⁠— + 

Gray boughs exploding in a ruck of birds! + 

What augury in orniscopic words + 

Did yon swart sibyls on the morning scrawl? + 

Now broke abruptly through the clacking brawl + 

A camp-dog’s barking and a pony’s neigh; + 

Whereat a running nicker fled away, + 

Attenuating to a rearward hush; + 

And lo! in hailing distance ’round the brush + 

That fringed a jutting bluff’s base like a beard + 

Upon a stubborn chin out-thrust, appeared + 

A band of mounted warriors! In their van + 

Aloof and lonely rode a gnarled old man + 

Upon a piebald stallion. Stooped was he + 

Beneath his heavy years, yet haughtily + 

He wore them like the purple of a king. + 

Keen for a goal, as from the driving string + 

A barbed and feathered arrow truly sped, + 

His face was like a flinty arrow-head, + 

And brooded westward in a steady stare. + 

There was a sift of winter in his hair, + 

The bleakness of brown winter in his look. + 

Hugh saw, and huddled closer in his nook. + 

Fled the bright dreams of safety, feast and rest + 

Before that keen, cold brooder on the West, + 

As gaudy leaves before the blizzard flee. + 

’Twas Elk Tongue, fighting chieftain of the Ree, + 

With all his people at his pony’s tail⁠— + 

Full two-score lodges emptied on the trail + 

Of hunger! + 

On they came in ravelled rank, + 

And many a haggard eye and hollow flank + 

Made plain how close and pitilessly pressed + 

The enemy that drove them to the West⁠— + 

Such foeman as no warrior ever slew. + 

A tale of cornfields plundered by the Sioux + 

Their sagging panniers told. Yet rich enough + 

They seemed to him who watched them from the bluff; + 

Yea, pampered nigh the limit of desire! + 

No friend had filched from them the boon of fire + 

And hurled them shivering back upon the beast. + 

Erect they went, full-armed to strive, at least; + 

And nightly in a cozy ember-glow + 

Hope fed them with a dream of buffalo + 

Soon to be overtaken. After that, + 

Home with their Pawnee cousins on the Platte, + 

Much meat and merry-making till the Spring. + 

On dragged the rabble like a fraying string + 

Too tautly drawn. The rich-in-ponies rode, + 

For much is light and little is a load + 

Among all heathen with no Christ to save! + 

Gray seekers for the yet begrudging grave, + 

Bent with the hoeing of forgotten maize, + 

Wood-hewers, water-bearers all their days, + 

Toiled ’neath the life-long hoarding of their packs. + 

And nursing squaws, their babies at their backs + 

Whining because the milk they got was thinned + 

In dugs of famine, strove as with a wind. + 

Invincibly equipped with their first bows + 

The striplings strutted, knowing, as youth knows, + 

How fair life is beyond the beckoning blue. + 

Cold-eyed the grandsires plodded, for they knew, + 

As frosted heads may know, how all trails merge + 

In what lone land. Raw maidens on the verge + 

Of some half-guessed-at mystery of life, + 

In wistful emulation of the wife + 

Stooped to the fancied burden of the race; + 

Nor read upon the withered granddam’s face + 

The scrawled tale of that burden and its woe. + 

Slant to the sagging poles of the travaux, + 

Numb to the squaw’s harsh railing and the goad, + 

The lean cayuses toiled. And children rode + 

Atop the household plunder, wonder-eyed + 

To see a world flow by on either side, + 

From blue air sprung to vanish in blue air, + 

A river of enchantments. + 

Here and there + 

The camp-curs loped upon a vexing quest + 

Where countless hoofs had left a palimpsest, + 

A taunting snarl of broken scents. And now + 

They sniff the clean bones of the bison cow, + 

Howl to the skies; and now with manes a-rough + 

They nose the man-smell leading to the bluff; + 

Pause puzzled at the base and sweep the height + 

With questioning yelps. Aloft, crouched low in fright, + 

Already Hugh can hear the braves’ guffaws + 

At their scorned foeman yielded to the squaws’ + 

Inverted mercy and a slow-won grave. + 

Since Earth’s first mother scolded from a cave + 

And that dear riddle of her love began, + 

No man has wrought a weapon against man + 

To match the deadly venom brewed above + 

The lean, blue, blinding heart-fires of her love. + 

Well might the hunted hunter shrink aghast! + 

But thrice three seasons yet should swell the past, + 

So was it writ, ere Fate’s keen harriers + 

Should run Hugh Glass to earth. + 

The hungry curs + 

Took up again the tangled scent of food. + 

Still flowed the rabble through the solitude⁠— + 

A thinning stream now of the halt, the weak + 

And all who had not very far to seek + 

For that weird pass whereto the fleet are slow, + 

And out of it keen winds and numbing blow, + 

Shrill with the fleeing voices of the dead. + 

Slowly the scattered stragglers, making head + 

Against their weariness as up a steep, + 

Fled westward; and the morning lay asleep + 

Upon the valley fallen wondrous still. + 

Hugh kept his nook, nor ventured forth, until + 

The high day toppled to the blue descent, + 

When thirst became a master, and he went + 

With painful scrambling down the broken scarp, + 

Lured by the stream, that like a smitten harp + 

Rippled a muted music to the sun. + 

Scarce had he crossed the open flat, and won + 

The halfway fringe of willows, when he saw, + 

Slow plodding up the trail, a tottering squaw + 

Whose years made big the little pack she bore. + 

Crouched in the brush Hugh watched her. More and more + 

The little burden tempted him. Why not? + 

A thin cry throttled in that lonely spot + 

Could bring no succor. None should ever know, + 

Save him, the feasted kiote and the crow, + 

Why one poor crone found not the midnight fire. + 

Nor would the vanguard, quick with young desire, + 

Devouring distance westward like a flame, + 

Regret this ash dropped rearward. + 

On she came, + 

Slow-footed, staring blankly on the sand⁠— + 

So close now that it needed but a hand + 

Out-thrust to overthrow her; aye, to win + 

That priceless spoil, a little tent of skin, + 

A flint and steel, a kettle and a knife! + 

What did the dying with the means of life, + 

That thus the fit-to-live should suffer lack? + 

Poised for the lunge, what whimsy held him back? + 

Why did he gaze upon the passing prize, + 

Nor seize it? Did some gust of ghostly cries + 

Awaken round her⁠—whisperings of Eld, + 

Wraith-voices of the babies she had held⁠— + 

To plead for pity on her graveward days? + 

Far down a moment’s cleavage in the haze + 

Of backward years Hugh saw her now⁠—nor saw + 

The little burden and the feeble squaw, + 

But someone sitting haloed like a saint + 

Beside a hearth long cold. The dream grew faint; + 

And when he looked again, the crone was gone + 

Beyond a clump of willow. + 

Crawling on, + 

He reached the river. Leaning to a pool + 

Calm in its cup of sand, he saw⁠—a fool! + 

A wild, wry mask of mirth, a-grin, yet grim, + 

Rose there to claim identity with him + 

And ridicule his folly. Pity? Faugh! + 

Who pitied this, that it should spare a squaw + 

Spent in the spawning of a scorpion brood? + 

He drank and hastened down the solitude, + 

Fleeing that thing which fleered him, and was Hugh. + 

And as he went his self-accusing grew + 

And with it, anger; till it came to seem + 

That somehow some sly Jamie of a dream + 

Had plundered him again; and he was strong + 

With lust of vengeance and the sting of wrong, + 

So that he travelled faster than for days. + 

Now when the eve in many-shaded grays + 

Wove the day’s shroud, and through the lower lands + 

Lean fog-arms groped with chilling spirit hands, + 

Hugh paused perplexed. Elusive, haunting, dim, + 

As though some memory that stirred in him, + 

Invasive of the real, outgrew the dream, + 

There came upon the breeze that stole up stream + 

A whiff of woodsmoke. + 

’Twixt a beat and beat + 

Of Hugh’s deluded heart, it seemed the sweet + 

Allure of home.⁠—A brief way, and one came + 

Upon the clearing where the sumach flame + 

Ran round the forest-fringe; and just beyond + 

One saw the slough grass nodding in the pond + 

Unto the sleepy troll the bullfrogs sung. + 

And then one saw the place where one was young⁠— + 

The log-house sitting on a stumpy rise. + 

Hearth-lit within, its windows were as eyes + 

That love much and are faded with old tears. + 

It seemed regretful of a life’s arrears, + 

Yet patient, with a self-denying poise, + 

Like some old mother for her bearded boys + 

Waiting sweet-hearted and a little sad.⁠— + 

So briefly dreamed a recrudescent lad + 

Beneath gray hairs, and fled. + 

Through chill and damp + 

Still groped the odor, hinting at a camp, + 

A two-tongued herald wooing hope and fear. + 

Was hospitality or danger near? + 

A Sioux war-party hot upon the trail, + 

Or laggard Rees? Hugh crawled across the vale, + 

Toiled up along a zigzag gully’s bed + 

And reached a bluff’s top. In a smudge of red + 

The West burned low. Hill summits, yet alight, + 

And pools of gloom anticipating night + 

Mottled the landscape to the dull blue rim. + 

What freak of fancy had imposed on him? + 

Could one smell home-smoke fifty years away? + 

He saw no fire; no pluming spire of gray + 

Rose in the dimming air to woo or warn. + 

He lay upon the bare height, fagged, forlorn, + 

And old times came upon him with the creep + 

Of subtle drugs that put the will to sleep + 

And wreak doom to the soothing of a dream. + 

So listlessly he scanned the sombrous stream, + 

Scarce seeing what he scanned. The dark increased; + 

A chill wind wakened from the frowning east + 

And soughed along the vale. + 

Then with a start + 

He saw what broke the torpor of his heart + 

And set the wild blood free. From where he lay + 

An easy point-blank rifle-shot away, + 

Appeared a mystic germinating spark + 

That in some secret garden of the dark + 

Upreared a frail, blue, nodding stem, whereon + 

A ruddy lily flourished⁠—and was gone! + 

What miracle was this? Again it grew, + 

The scarlet blossom on the stem of blue, + 

And withered back again into the night. + 

With pounding heart Hugh crawled along the height + 

And reached a point of vantage whence, below, + 

He saw capricious witch-lights dim and glow + 

Like far-spent embers quickened in a breeze. + 

’Twas surely not a camp of laggard Rees, + 

Nor yet of Siouan warriors hot in chase. + 

Dusk and a quiet bivouacked in that place. + 

A doddering vagrant with numb hands, the Wind + 

Fumbled the dying ashes there, and whined. + 

It was the day-old camp-ground of the foe! + 

Glad-hearted now, Hugh gained the vale below, + 

Keen to possess once more the ancient gift. + 

Nearing the glow, he saw vague shadows lift + 

Out of the painted gloom of smouldering logs⁠— + 

Distorted bulks that bristled, and were dogs + 

Snarling at this invasion of their lair. + 

Hugh charged upon them, growling like a bear, + 

And sent them whining. + 

Now again to view + 

The burgeoning of scarlet, gold and blue, + 

The immemorial miracle of fire! + 

From heaped-up twigs a tenuous smoky spire + 

Arose, and made an altar of the place. + 

The spark-glow, faint upon the grizzled face, + 

Transformed the kneeling outcast to a priest; + 

And, native of the light-begetting East, + 

The Wind became a chanting acolyte. + 

These two, entempled in the vaulted night, + 

Breathed conjuries of interwoven breath. + 

Then, hark!⁠—the snapping of the chains of Death! + 

From dead wood, lo!⁠—the epiphanic god! + 

Once more the freightage of the fennel rod + 

Dissolved the chilling pall of Jovian scorn. + 

The wonder of the resurrection morn, + 

The face apocalyptic and the sword, + 

The glory of the many-symboled Lord, + 

Hugh, lifting up his eyes about him, saw! + 

And something in him like a vernal thaw, + 

Voiced with the sound of many waters, ran + 

And quickened to the laughter of a man. + 

Light-heartedly he fed the singing flame + 

And took its blessing: till a soft sleep came + 

With dreaming that was like a pleasant tale. + 

The far white dawn was peering up the vale + 

When he awoke to indolent content. + 

A few shorn stars in pale astonishment + 

Were huddled westward; and the fire was low. + 

Three scrawny camp-curs, mustered in a row + 

Beyond the heap of embers, heads askew, + 

Ears pricked to question what the man might do, + 

Sat wistfully regardant. He arose; + 

And they, grown canny in a school of blows, + 

Skulked to a safer distance, there to raise + 

A dolorous chanting of the evil days, + 

Their gray breath like the body of a prayer. + 

Hugh nursed the sullen embers to a flare, + 

Then set about to view an empty camp + 

As once before; but now no smoky lamp + 

Of blear suspicion searched a gloom of fraud + 

Wherein a smirking Friendship, like a bawd, + 

Embraced a coward Safety; now no grief, + 

’Twixt hideous revelation and belief, + 

Made womanish the man; but glad to strive, + 

With hope to nerve him and a will to drive, + 

He knew that he could finish in the race. + 

The staring impassivity of space + 

No longer mocked; the dreadful skyward climb, + 

Where distance seemed identical with time, + 

Was past now; and that mystic something, luck, + 

Without which worth may flounder in the ruck, + 

Had turned to him again. + 

So flamelike soared + 

Rekindled hope in him as he explored + 

Among the ash-heaps; and the lean dogs ran + 

And barked about him, for the love of man + 

Wistful, yet fearing. Surely he could find + 

Some trifle in the hurry left behind⁠— + 

Or haply hidden in the trampled sand⁠— + 

That to the cunning of a needy hand + 

Should prove the master-key of circumstance: + 

For ’tis the little gifts of grudging Chance, + 

Well husbanded, make victors. + 

Long he sought + 

Without avail; and, crawling back, he thought + 

Of how the dogs were growing less afraid, + 

And how one might be skinned without a blade. + 

A flake of flint might do it: he would try. + 

And then he saw⁠—or did the servile eye + 

Trick out a mental image like the real? + 

He saw a glimmering of whetted steel + 

Beside a heap now washed with morning light! + 

Scarce more of marvel and the sense of might + 

Moved Arthur when he reached a hand to take + 

The fay-wrought brand emerging from the lake, + 

Whereby a kingdom should be lopped of strife, + 

Than Hugh now, pouncing on a trader’s knife + 

Worn hollow in the use of bounteous days! + 

And now behold a rich man by the blaze + 

Of his own hearth⁠—a lord of steel and fire! + 

Not having, but the measure of desire + 

Determines wealth. Who gaining more, seek most, + 

Are ever the pursuers of a ghost + 

And lend their fleetness to the fugitive. + 

For Hugh, long goaded by the wish to live, + 

What gage of mastery in fire and tool!⁠— + 

That twain wherewith Time put the brute to school, + 

Evolving Man, the maker and the seer. + 

’Twixt urging hunger and restraining fear + 

The gaunt dogs hovered round the man; while he + 

Cajoled them in the language of the Ree + 

And simulated feeding them with sand, + 

Until the boldest dared to sniff his hand, + 

Bare-fanged and with conciliative whine. + 

Through bristled mane the quick blade bit the spine + 

Below the skull; and as a flame-struck thing + 

The body humped and shuddered, withering; + 

The lank limbs huddled, wilted. + 

Now to skin + 

The carcass, dig a hole, arrange therein + 

And fix the pelt with stakes, the flesh-side up. + 

This done, he shaped the bladder to a cup + 

On willow withes, and filled the rawhide pot + 

With water from the river⁠—made it hot + 

With roasted stones, and set the meat a-boil. + 

Those days of famine and prodigious toil + 

Had wrought bulimic cravings in the man, + 

And scarce the cooking of the flesh outran + 

The eating of it. As a fed flame towers + 

According to the fuel it devours, + 

His hunger with indulgence grew, nor ceased + 

Until the kettle, empty of the feast, + 

Went dim, the sky and valley, merging, swirled + 

In subtle smoke that smothered out the world. + 

Hugh slept. + 

And then⁠—as divers, mounting, sunder + 

A murmuring murk to blink in sudden wonder + 

Upon a dazzling upper deep of blue⁠— + 

He rose again to consciousness, and knew + 

The low sun beating slantly on his face. + 

Now indolently gazing round the place, + 

He noted how the curs had revelled there⁠— + 

The bones and entrails gone; some scattered hair + 

Alone remaining of the pot of hide. + 

How strange he had not heard them at his side! + 

And granting but one afternoon had passed, + 

What could have made the fire burn out so fast? + 

Had daylight waned, night fallen, morning crept, + 

Noon blazed, a new day dwindled while he slept? + 

And was the friendlike fire a Jamie too? + 

Across the twilit consciousness of Hugh + 

The old obsession like a wounded bird + 

Fluttered. + 

He got upon his knees and stirred + 

The feathery ash; but not a spark was there. + 

Already with the failing sun the air + 

Went keen, betokening a frosty night. + 

Hugh winced with something like the clutch of fright. + 

How could he bear the torture, how sustain + 

The sting of that antiquity of pain + 

Rolled back upon him⁠—face again the foe, + 

That yielding victor, fleet in being slow, + 

That huge, impersonal malevolence? + 

So readily the tentacles of sense + 

Root in the larger standard of desire, + 

That Hugh fell farther in the loss of fire + 

Than in the finding of it he arose. + 

And suddenly the place grew strange, as grows + 

A friend’s house, when the friend is on his bier, + 

And all that was familiar there and dear + 

Puts on a blank, inhospitable look. + 

Hugh set his face against the east, and took + 

That dreariest of ways, the trail of flight. + 

He would outcrawl the shadow of the night + 

And have the day to blanket him in sleep. + 

But as he went to meet the gloom a-creep, + 

Bemused with life’s irrational rebuffs, + 

A yelping of the dogs among the bluffs + 

Rose, hunger-whetted, stabbing; rent the pall + 

Of evening silence; blunted to a drawl + 

Amid the arid waterways, and died. + 

And as the echo to the sound replied, + 

So in the troubled mind of Hugh was wrought + 

A reminiscent cry of thought to thought + 

That, groping, found an unlocked door to life: + 

The dogs⁠—keen flint to skin one⁠—then the knife + 

Discovered. Why, that made a flint and steel! + 

No further with the subtle foe at heel + 

He fled; for all about him in the rock, + 

To waken when the needy hand might knock, + 

A savior slept! He found a flake of flint, + 

Scraped from his shirt a little wad of lint, + 

Spilled on it from the smitten stone a shower + 

Of ruddy seed; and saw the mystic flower + 

That genders its own summer, bloom anew! + 

And so capricious luck came back to Hugh; + 

And he was happier than he had been + 

Since Jamie to that unforgiven sin + 

Had yielded, ages back upon the Grand. + 

Now he would turn the cunning of his hand + 

To carving crutches, that he might arise, + 

Be manlike, lift more rapidly the skies + 

That crouched between his purpose and the mark. + 

The warm glow housed him from the frosty dark, + 

And there he wrought in very joyous mood + 

And sang by fits⁠—whereat the solitude + 

Set laggard singers snatching at the tune. + 

The gaunter for their hunt, the dogs came soon + 

To haunt the shaken fringes of the glow, + 

And, pitching voices to the timeless woe, + 

Outwailed the lilting. So the Chorus sings + 

Of terror, pity and the tears of things + 

When most the doomed protagonist is gay. + 

The stars swarmed over, and the front of day + 

Whitened above a white world, and the sun + 

Rose on a sleeper with a task well done, + 

Nor roused him till its burning topped the blue. + 

When Hugh awoke, there woke a younger Hugh, + 

Now half a stranger; and ’twas good to feel + 

With ebbing sleep the old green vigor steal, + 

Thrilling, along his muscles and his veins, + 

As in a lull of winter-cleansing rains + 

The gray bough quickens to the sap a-creep. + 

It chanced the dogs lay near him, sound asleep, + 

Curled nose to buttock in the noonday glow. + 

He killed the larger with a well-aimed blow, + 

Skinned, dressed and set it roasting on a spit; + 

And when ’twas cooked, ate sparingly of it, + 

For need might yet make little seem a feast. + 

Fording the river shallows, south by east + 

He hobbled now along a withered rill + 

That issued where old floods had gashed the hill⁠— + 

A cyclopean portal yawning sheer. + 

No storm of countless hoofs had entered here: + 

It seemed a place where nothing ever comes + 

But change of season. He could hear the plums + 

Plash in the frosted thicket, over-lush; + 

While, like a spirit lisping in the hush, + 

The crisp leaves whispered round him as they fell. + 

And ever now and then the autumn spell + 

Was broken by an ululating cry + 

From where far back with muzzle to the sky + 

The lone dog followed, mourning. Darkness came; + 

And huddled up beside a cozy flame, + 

Hugh’s sleep was but a momentary flight + 

Across a little shadow into light. + 

So day on day he toiled: and when, afloat + 

Above the sunset like a stygian boat, + 

The new moon bore the spectre of the old, + 

He saw⁠—a dwindling strip of blue outrolled⁠— + 

The valley of the tortuous Cheyenne. + 

And ere the half moon sailed the night again, + 

Those far lone leagues had sloughed their garb of blue, + 

And dwindled, dwindled, dwindled after Hugh, + 

Until he saw that Titan of the plains, + 

The sinewy Missouri. Dearth of rains + 

Had made the Giant gaunt as he who saw. + 

This loud Chain-Smasher of a late March thaw + 

Seemed never to have bellowed at his banks; + 

And yet, with staring ribs and hollow flanks, + 

The urge of an indomitable will + 

Proclaimed him of the breed of giants still; + 

And where the current ran a boiling track, + 

’Twas like the muscles of a mighty back + 

Grown Atlantean in the wrestler’s craft. + 

Hugh set to work and built a little raft + 

Of driftwood bound with grapevines. So it fell + 

That one with an amazing tale to tell + 

Came drifting to the gates of Kiowa. + 

IV + 

The Return of the Ghost + 

Not long Hugh let the lust of vengeance gnaw + 

Upon him idling; though the tale he told + 

And what report proclaimed him, were as gold + 

To buy a winter’s comfort at the Post. + 

“I can not rest; for I am but the ghost + 

Of someone murdered by a friend,” he said, + 

“So long as yonder traitor thinks me dead, + 

Aye, buried in the bellies of the crows + 

And kiotes!” + 

Whereupon said one of those + 

Who heard him, noting how the old man shook + 

As with a chill: “God fend that one should look + 

With such a blizzard of a face for me!” + 

For he went grayer like a poplar tree + 

That shivers, ruffling to the first faint breath + 

Of storm, while yet the world is still as death + 

Save where, far off, the kenneled thunders bay. + 

So brooding, he grew stronger day by day, + 

Until at last he laid the crutches by. + 

And then one evening came a rousing cry + 

From where the year’s last keelboat hove in view + 

Around the bend, its swarthy, sweating crew + 

Slant to the shouldered line. + 

Men sang that night + 

In Kiowa, and by the ruddy light + 

Of leaping fires amid the wooden walls + 

The cups went round; and there were merry brawls + 

Of bearded lads no older for the beard; + 

And laughing stories vied with tales of weird + 

By stream and prairie trail and mountain pass, + 

Until the tipsy Bourgeois bawled for Glass + 

To “shame these with a man’s tale fit to hear.” + 

The graybeard, sitting where the light was blear, + 

With little heart for revelry, began + 

His story, told as of another man + 

Who, loving late, loved much and was betrayed. + 

He spoke unwitting how his passion played + 

Upon them, how their eyes grew soft or hard + 

With what he told; yet something of the bard + 

He seemed, and his the purpose that is art’s, + 

Whereby men make a vintage of their hearts + 

And with the wine of beauty deaden pain. + 

Low-toned, insistent as October rain, + 

His voice beat on; and now and then would flit + 

Across the melancholy gray of it + 

A glimmer of cold fire that, like the flare + 

Of soundless lightning, showed a world made bare, + 

Green Summer slain and all its leafage stripped. + 

And bronze jaws tightened, brawny hands were gripped, + 

As though each hearer had a fickle friend. + 

But when the old man might have made an end, + 

Rounding the story to a peaceful close + 

At Kiowa, songlike his voice arose, + 

The grinning gray mask lifted and the eyes + 

Burned as a bard’s who sees and prophesies, + 

Conning the future as a time long gone. + 

Swaying to rhythm the dizzy tale plunged on + 

Even to the cutting of the traitor’s throat, + 

And ceased⁠—as though a bloody strangling smote + 

The voice of that gray chanter, drunk with doom. + 

And there was shuddering in the blue-smeared gloom + 

Of fallen fires. It seemed the deed was done + 

Before their eyes who heard. + 

The morrow’s sun, + 

Low over leagues of frost-enchanted plain, + 

Saw Glass upon his pilgrimage again, + 

Northbound as hunter for the keelboat’s crew. + 

And many times the wide autumnal blue + 

Burned out and darkened to a deep of stars; + 

And still they toiled among the snags and bars⁠— + 

Those lean up-stream men, straining at the rope, + 

Lashed by the doubt and strengthened by the hope + 

Of backward winter⁠—engines wrought of bone + 

And muscle, panting for the Yellowstone, + 

Bend after bend and yet more bends away. + 

Now was the river like a sandy bay + 

At ebb-tide, and the far-off cutbank’s boom + 

Mocked them in shallows; now ’twas like a flume + 

With which the toilers, barely creeping, strove. + 

And bend by bend the selfsame poplar grove, + 

Set on the selfsame headland, so it seemed, + 

Confronted them, as though they merely dreamed + 

Of passing one drear point. + 

So on and up + 

Past where the tawny Titan gulps the cup + 

Of Cheyenne waters, past the Moreau’s mouth; + 

And still wry league and stubborn league fell south, + 

Becoming haze and weary memory. + 

Then past the empty lodges of the Ree + 

That gaped at cornfields plundered by the Sioux; + 

And there old times came mightily on Hugh, + 

For much of him was born and buried there. + 

Some troubled glory of that wind-tossed hair + 

Was on the trampled corn; the lonely skies, + 

So haunted with the blue of Jamie’s eyes, + 

Seemed taunting him; and through the frosted wood + 

Along the flat, where once their tent had stood, + 

A chill wind sorrowed, and the blackbirds’ brawl + 

Amid the funeral torches of the Fall + 

Ran raucously, a desecrating din. + 

Past where the Cannon Ball and Heart come in + 

They labored. Now the Northwest ’woke at last. + 

The gaunt bluffs bellowed back the trumpet blast + 

Of charging winds that made the sandbars smoke. + 

To breathe now was to gulp fine sand, and choke: + 

The stinging air was sibilant with whips. + 

Leaning the more and with the firmer grips, + 

Still northward the embattled toilers pressed + 

To where the river yaws into the west. + 

There stood the Mandan village. + 

Now began + 

The chaining of the Titan. Drift-ice ran. + 

The wingèd hounds of Winter ceased to bay. + 

The stupor of a doom completed lay + 

Upon the world. The biting darkness fell. + 

Out in the night, resounding as a well, + 

They heard the deck-planks popping in a vise + 

Of frost; all night the smithies of the ice + 

Reëchoed with the griding jar and clink + 

Of ghostly hammers welding link to link: + 

And morning found the world without a sound. + 

There lay the stubborn Prairie Titan bound, + 

To wait the far-off Heraclean thaw, + 

Though still in silent rage he strove to gnaw + 

The ragged shackles knitting at his breast. + 

And so the boatman won a winter’s rest + 

Among the Mandan traders: but for Hugh + 

There yet remained a weary work to do. + 

Across the naked country west by south + 

His purpose called him at the Big Horn’s mouth⁠— + 

Three hundred miles of winging for the crow; + 

But by the river trail that he must go + 

’Twas seven hundred winding miles at least. + 

So now he turned his back upon the feast, + 

Snug ease, the pleasant tale, the merry mood, + 

And took the bare, foot-sounding solitude + 

Northwestward. Long they watched him from the Post, + 

Skied on a bluff-rim, fading like a ghost + 

At gray cock-crow; and hooded in his breath, + 

He seemed indeed a fugitive from Death + 

On whom some tatter of the shroud still clung. + 

Blank space engulfed him. + 

Now the moon was young + 

When he set forth; and day by day he strode, + 

His scarce healed wounds upon him like a load; + 

And dusk by dusk his fire out-flared the moon + 

That waxed until it wrought a spectral noon + 

At nightfall. Then he came to where, awhirl + 

With Spring’s wild rage, the snow-born Titan girl, + 

A skyey wonder on her virgin face, + 

Receives the virile Yellowstone’s embrace + 

And bears the lusty Seeker for the Sea. + 

A bleak, horizon-wide serenity + 

Clung round the valley where the twain lay dead. + 

A winding sheet was on the marriage bed. + 

’Twas warmer now; the sky grew overcast; + 

And as Hugh strode southwestward, all the vast + 

Gray void seemed suddenly astir with wings + 

And multitudinary whisperings⁠— + 

The muffled sibilance of tumbling snow. + 

It seemed no more might living waters flow, + 

Moon gleam, star glint, dawn smoulder through, bird sing, + 

Or ever any fair familiar thing + 

Be so again. The outworn winds were furled. + 

Weird weavers of the twilight of a world + 

Wrought, thread on kissing thread, the web of doom. + 

Grown insubstantial in the knitted gloom, + 

The bluffs loomed eerie, and the scanty trees + 

Were dwindled to remote dream-traceries + 

That never might be green or shield a nest. + 

All day with swinging stride Hugh forged southwest + 

Along the Yellowstone’s smooth-paven stream, + 

A dream-shape moving in a troubled dream; + 

And all day long the whispering weavers wove. + 

And close on dark he came to where a grove + 

Of cottonwoods rose tall and shadow-thin + 

Against the northern bluffs. He camped therein + 

And with cut boughs made shelter as he might. + 

Close pressed the blackness of the snow-choked night + 

About him, and his fire of plum wood purred. + 

Athwart a soft penumbral drowse he heard + 

The tumbling snowflakes sighing all around, + 

Till sleep transformed it to a Summer sound + 

Of boyish memory⁠—susurrant bees, + 

The Southwind in the tousled apple trees + 

And slumber flowing from their leafy gloom. + 

He wakened to the cottonwoods’ deep boom. + 

Black fury was the world. The northwest’s roar, + 

As of a surf upon a shipwreck shore, + 

Plunged high above him from the sheer bluff’s verge; + 

And, like the backward sucking of the surge, + 

Far fled the sobbing of the wild snow-spray. + 

Black blindness grew white blindness⁠—and ’twas day. + 

All being now seemed narrowed to a span + 

That held a sputtering wood fire and a man; + 

Beyond was tumult and a whirling maze. + 

The trees were but a roaring in a haze; + 

The sheer bluff-wall that took the blizzard’s charge + 

Was thunder flung along the hidden marge + 

Of chaos, stridden by the ghost of light. + 

White blindness grew black blindness⁠—and ’twas night + 

Wherethrough nor moon nor any star might grope. + 

Two days since, Hugh had killed an antelope + 

And what remained sufficed the time of storm. + 

The snow banked round his shelter kept him warm + 

And there was wood to burn for many a day. + 

The third dawn, oozing through a smudge of gray, + 

Awoke him. It was growing colder fast. + 

Still from the bluff high over boomed the blast, + 

But now it took the void with numbing wings. + 

By noon the woven mystery of things + 

Frayed raggedly, and through a sudden rift + 

At length Hugh saw the beetling bluff-wall lift + 

A sturdy shoulder to the flying rack. + 

Slowly the sense of distances came back + 

As with the waning day the great wind fell. + 

The pale sun set upon a frozen hell. + 

The wolves howled. + 

Hugh had left the Mandan town + 

When, heifer-horned, the maiden moon lies down + 

Beside the sea of evening. Now she rose + 

Scar-faced and staring blankly on the snows + 

While yet the twilight tarried in the west; + 

And more and more she came a tardy guest + 

As Hugh pushed onward through the frozen waste + 

Until she stole on midnight shadow-faced, + 

A haggard spectre; then no more appeared. + 

’Twas on that time the man of hoary beard + 

Paused in the early twilight, looming lone + 

Upon a bluff-rim of the Yellowstone, + 

And peered across the white stream to the south + 

Where in the flatland at the Big Horn’s mouth + 

The new fort stood that Henry’s men had built. + 

What perfect peace for such a nest of guilt! + 

What satisfied immunity from woe! + 

Yon sprawling shadow, pied with candle-glow + 

And plumed with sparkling woodsmoke, might have been + 

A homestead with the children gathered in + 

To share its bounty through the holidays. + 

Hugh saw their faces round the gay hearth-blaze: + 

The hale old father in a mood for yarns + 

Or boastful of the plenty of his barns, + 

Fruitage of honest toil and grateful lands; + 

And, half a stranger to her folded hands, + 

The mother with October in her hair + 

And August in her face. One moment there + 

Hugh saw it. Then the monstrous brutal fact + 

Wiped out the dream and goaded him to act, + 

Though now to act seemed strangely like a dream. + 

Descending from the bluff, he crossed the stream, + 

The dry snow fifing to his eager stride. + 

Reaching the fort stockade, he paused to bide + 

The passing of a whimsy. Was it true? + 

Or was this but the fretted wraith of Hugh + 

Whose flesh had fed the kiotes long ago? + 

Still through a chink he saw the candle-glow, + 

So like an eye that brazened out a wrong. + 

And now there came a flight of muffled song, + 

The rhythmic thudding of a booted heel + 

That timed a squeaking fiddle to a reel! + 

How swiftly men forget! The spawning Earth + 

Is fat with graves; and what is one man worth + 

That fiddles should be muted at his fall? + 

He should have died and did not⁠—that was all. + 

Well, let the living jig it! He would turn + 

Back to the night, the spacious unconcern + 

Of wilderness that never played the friend. + 

Now came the song and fiddling to an end, + 

And someone laughed within. The old man winced, + 

Listened with bated breath, and was convinced + 

’Twas Jamie laughing! Once again he heard. + 

Joy filled a hush ’twixt heart-beats like a bird; + 

Then like a famished cat his lurking hate + 

Pounced crushingly. + 

He found the outer gate, + 

Beat on it with his shoulder, raised a cry. + 

No doubt ’twas deemed a fitful wind went by; + 

None stirred. But when he did not cease to shout, + 

A door creaked open and a man came out + 

Amid the spilling candle-glimmer, raised + 

The wicket in the outer gate and gazed + 

One moment on a face as white as death, + 

Because the beard was thick with frosted breath + 

Made mystic by the stars. Then came a gasp, + 

The clatter of the falling wicket’s hasp, + 

The crunch of panic feet along the snow; + 

And someone stammered huskily and low: + 

“My God! I saw the Old Man’s ghost out there!” + 

’Twas spoken as one speaks who feels his hair + 

Prickle the scalp. And then another said⁠— + 

It seemed like Henry’s voice⁠—“The dead are dead: + 

What talk is this, Le Bon? You saw him die! + 

Who’s there?” + 

Hugh strove to shout, to give the lie + 

To those within; but could not fetch a sound. + 

Just so he dreamed of lying under ground + 

Beside the Grand and hearing overhead + 

The talk of men. Or was he really dead, + 

And all this but a maggot in the brain? + 

Then suddenly the clatter of a chain + 

Aroused him, and he saw the portal yawn + 

And saw a bright rectangled patch of dawn + 

As through a grave’s mouth⁠—no, ’twas candlelight + 

Poured through the open doorway on the night; + 

And those were men before him, bulking black + 

Against the glow. + 

Reality flashed back; + 

He strode ahead and entered at the door. + 

A falling fiddle jangled on the floor + 

And left a deathly silence. On his bench + 

The fiddler shrank. A row of eyes, a-blench + 

With terror, ran about the naked hall. + 

And there was one who huddled by the wall + 

And hid his face and shivered. + 

For a spell + 

That silence clung; and then the old man: “Well, + 

Is this the sort of welcome that I get? + 

’Twas not my time to feed the kiotes yet! + 

Put on the pot and stew a chunk of meat + 

And you shall see how much a ghost can eat! + 

I’ve journeyed far if what I hear be true!” + 

Now in that none might doubt the voice of Hugh, + 

Nor yet the face, however it might seem + 

A blurred reflection in a flowing stream, + 

A buzz of wonder broke the trance of dread. + 

“Good God!” the Major gasped; “We thought you dead! + 

Two men have testified they saw you die!” + 

“If they speak truth,” Hugh answered, “then I lie + 

Both here and by the Grand. If I be right, + 

Then two lie here and shall lie from this night. + 

Which are they?” + 

Henry answered: “Yon is one.” + 

The old man set the trigger of his gun + 

And gazed on Jules who cowered by the wall. + 

Eyes blinked, expectant of the hammer’s fall; + 

Ears strained, anticipative of the roar. + 

But Hugh walked leisurely across the floor + 

And kicked the croucher, saying: “Come, get up + 

And wag your tail! I couldn’t kill a pup!” + 

Then turning round: “I had a faithful friend; + 

No doubt he too was with me to the end! + 

Where’s Jamie?” + 

“Started out before the snows + 

For Atkinson.” + 

V + 

Jamie + 

The Country of the Crows, + 

Through which the Big Horn and the Rosebud run, + 

Sees over mountain peaks the setting sun; + 

And southward from the Yellowstone flung wide, + 

It broadens ever to the morning side + 

And has the Powder on its vague frontier. + 

About the subtle changing of the year, + 

Ere even favored valleys felt the stir + 

Of Spring, and yet expectancy of her + 

Was like a pleasant rumor all repeat + 

Yet none may prove, the sound of horses’ feet + 

Went eastward through the silence of that land. + 

For then it was there rode a little band + 

Of trappers out of Henry’s Post, to bear + 

Dispatches down to Atkinson, and there + 

To furnish out a keelboat for the Horn. + 

And four went lightly, but the fifth seemed worn + 

As with a heavy heart; for that was he + 

Who should have died but did not. + 

Silently + 

He heard the careless parley of his men, + 

And thought of how the Spring should come again, + 

That garish strumpet with her world-old lure, + 

To waken hope where nothing may endure, + 

To quicken love where loving is betrayed. + 

Yet now and then some dream of Jamie made + 

Slow music in him for a little while; + 

And they who rode beside him saw a smile + 

Glimmer upon that ruined face of gray, + 

As on a winter fog the groping day + 

Pours glory through a momentary rift. + 

Yet never did the gloom that bound him, lift; + 

He seemed as one who feeds upon his heart + 

And finds, despite the bitter and the smart, + 

A little sweetness and is glad for that. + 

Now up the Powder, striking for the Platte + 

Across the bleak divide the horsemen went; + 

Attained that river where its course is bent + 

From north to east: and spurring on apace + 

Along the wintry valley, reached the place + 

Where from the west flows in the Laramie. + 

Thence, fearing to encounter with the Ree, + 

They headed eastward through the barren land + 

To where, fleet-footed down a track of sand, + 

The Niobrara races for the morn⁠— + 

A gaunt-loined runner. + 

Here at length was born + 

Upon the southern slopes the baby Spring, + 

A timid, fretful, ill-begotten thing, + 

A-suckle at the Winter’s withered paps: + 

Not such as when announced by thunder-claps + 

And ringed with swords of lightning, she would ride, + 

The haughty victrix and the mystic bride, + 

Clad splendidly as never Sheba’s Queen, + 

Before her marching multitudes of green + 

In many-bannered triumph! Grudging, slow, + 

Amid the fraying fringes of the snow + 

The bunchgrass sprouted; and the air was chill. + 

Along the northern slopes ’twas winter still, + 

And no root dreamed what Triumph-over-Death + 

Was nurtured now in some bleak Nazareth + 

Beyond the crest to sunward. + 

On they spurred + 

Through vacancies that waited for the bird, + 

And everywhere the Odic Presence dwelt. + 

The Southwest blew, the snow began to melt; + 

And when they reached the valley of the Snake, + 

The Niobrara’s ice began to break, + 

And all night long and all day long it made + 

A sound as of a random cannonade + 

With rifles snarling down a skirmish line. + 

The geese went over. Every tree and vine + 

Was dotted thick with leaf-buds when they saw + 

The little river of Keyapaha + 

Grown mighty for the moment. Then they came, + 

One evening when all thickets were aflame + 

With pale green witch-fires and the windflowers blew, + 

To where the headlong Niobrara threw + 

His speed against the swoln Missouri’s flank + 

And hurled him roaring to the further bank⁠— + 

A giant staggered by a pygmy’s sling. + 

Thence, plunging ever deeper into Spring, + 

Across the greening prairie east by south + 

They rode, and, just above the Platte’s wide mouth, + 

Came, weary with the trail, to Atkinson. + 

There all the vernal wonder-work was done: + 

No care-free heart might find aught lacking there. + 

The dove’s call wandered in the drowsy air; + 

A love-dream brooded in the lucent haze. + 

Priapic revellers, the shrieking jays + 

Held mystic worship in the secret shade. + 

Woodpeckers briskly plied their noisy trade + 

Along the tree-boles, and their scarlet hoods + 

Flashed flamelike in the smoky cottonwoods. + 

What lacked? Not sweetness in the sun-lulled breeze; + 

The plum bloom murmurous with bumblebees + 

Was drifted deep in every draw and slough. + 

Not color; witcheries of gold and blue + 

The dandelion and the violet + 

Wove in the green. Might not the sad forget, + 

The happy here have nothing more to seek? + 

Lo, yonder by that pleasant little creek, + 

How one might loll upon the grass and fish + 

And build the temple of one’s wildest wish + 

’Twixt nibbles! Surely there was quite enough + 

Of wizard-timber and of wonder-stuff + 

To rear it nobly to the blue-domed roof! + 

Yet there was one whose spirit stood aloof + 

From all this joyousness⁠—a gray old man, + 

No nearer now than when the quest began + 

To what he sought on that long winter trail. + 

Aye, Jamie had been there; but when the tale + 

That roving trappers brought from Kiowa + 

Was told to him, he seemed as one who saw + 

A ghost, and could but stare on it, they said: + 

Until one day he mounted horse and fled + 

Into the North, a devil-ridden man. + 

“I’ve got to go and find him if I can,” + 

Was all he said for days before he left. + 

And what of Hugh? So long of love bereft, + 

So long sustained and driven by his hate, + 

A touch of ruth now made him desolate. + 

No longer eager to avenge the wrong, + 

With not enough of pity to be strong + 

And just enough of love to choke and sting, + 

A gray old hulk amid the surge of Spring + 

He floundered on a lee-shore of the heart. + 

But when the boat was ready for the start + 

Up the long watery stairway to the Horn, + 

Hugh joined the party. And the year was shorn + 

Of blooming girlhood as they forged amain + 

Into the North; the late green-mantled plain + 

Grew sallow; and the ruthless golden shower + 

Of Summer wrought in lust upon the flower + 

That withered in the endless martyrdom + 

To seed. The scarlet quickened on the plum + 

About the Heart’s mouth when they came thereto; + 

Among the Mandans grapes were turning blue, + 

And they were purple at the Yellowstone. + 

A frosted scrub-oak, standing out alone + 

Upon a barren bluff top, gazing far + 

Above the crossing at the Powder’s bar, + 

Was spattered with the blood of Summer slain. + 

So it was Autumn in the world again, + 

And all those months of toil had yielded nought + 

To Hugh. (How often is the seeker sought + 

By what he seeks⁠—a blind, heart-breaking game!) + 

For always had the answer been the same + 

From roving trapper and at trading post: + 

Aye, one who seemed to stare upon a ghost + 

And followed willy-nilly where it led, + 

Had gone that way in search of Hugh, they said⁠— + 

A haggard, blue-eyed, yellow-headed chap. + 

And often had the old man thought, “Mayhap + 

He’ll be at Henry’s Post and we shall meet; + 

And to forgive and to forget were sweet: + 

’Tis for its nurse that Vengeance whets the tooth! + 

And oh the golden time of Jamie’s youth, + 

That it should darken for a graybeard’s whim!” + 

So Hugh had brooded, till there came on him + 

The pity of a slow rain after drouth. + 

But at the crossing of the Rosebud’s mouth + 

A shadow fell upon his growing dream. + 

A band of Henry’s traders, bound down stream, + 

Who paused to traffic in the latest word⁠— + 

Down-river news for matters seen and heard + 

In higher waters⁠—had not met the lad, + 

Not yet encountered anyone who had. + 

Alas, the journey back to yesterwhiles! + 

How tangled are the trails! The stubborn miles, + 

How wearily they stretch! And if one win + 

The long way back in search of what has been, + 

Shall he find aught that is not strange and new? + 

Thus wrought the melancholy news in Hugh, + 

As he turned back with those who brought the news; + 

For more and more he dreaded now to lose + 

What doubtful seeking rendered doubly dear. + 

And in the time when keen winds stripped the year + 

He came with those to where the Poplar joins + 

The greater river. There Assinoboines, + 

Rich from the Summer’s hunting, had come down + 

And flung along the flat their ragged town, + 

That traders might bring goods and winter there. + 

So leave the heartsick graybeard. Otherwhere + 

The final curtain rises on the play. + 

’Tis dead of Winter now. For day on day + 

The blizzard wind has thundered, sweeping wide + 

From Mississippi to the Great Divide + 

Out of the North beyond Saskatchewan. + 

Brief evening glimmers like an inverse dawn + 

After a long white night. The tempest dies; + 

The snow-haze lifts. Now let the curtain rise + 

Upon Milk River valley, and reveal + 

The stars like broken glass on frosted steel + 

Above the Piegan lodges, huddled deep + 

In snowdrifts, like a freezing flock of sheep. + 

A crystal weight the dread cold crushes down + 

And no one moves about the little town + 

That seems to grovel as a thing that fears. + 

But see! a lodge-flap swings; a squaw appears, + 

Hunched with the sudden cold. Her footsteps creak + 

Shrill in the hush. She stares upon the bleak, + 

White skyline for a moment, then goes in. + 

We follow her, push back the flap of skin, + 

Enter the lodge, inhale the smoke-tanged air + 

And blink upon the little faggot-flare + 

That blossoms in the center of the room. + 

Unsteady shadows haunt the outer gloom + 

Wherein the walls are guessed at. Upward, far, + 

The smoke-vent now and then reveals a star + 

As in a well. The ancient squaw, a-stoop, + 

Her face light-stricken, stirs a pot of soup + 

That simmers with a pleasant smell and sound. + 

A gnarled old man, cross-legged upon the ground, + 

Sits brooding near. He feeds the flame with sticks; + 

It brightens. Lo, a leaden crucifix + 

Upon the wall! These heathen eyes, though dim, + 

Have seen the white man’s God and cling to Him, + 

Lest on the sunset trail slow feet should err. + 

But look again. From yonder bed of fur + 

Beside the wall a white man strives to rise. + 

He lifts his head, with yearning sightless eyes + 

Gropes for the light. A mass of golden hair + 

Falls round the face that sickness and despair + 

Somehow make old, albeit he is young. + 

His weak voice, stumbling to the mongrel tongue + 

Of traders, flings a question to the squaw: + 

“You saw no Black Robe? Tell me what you saw!” + 

And she, brief-spoken as her race, replies: + 

“Heaped snow⁠—sharp stars⁠—a kiote on the rise.” + 

The blind youth huddles moaning in the furs. + 

The firewood spits and pops, the boiled pot purrs + 

And sputters. On this little isle of sound + 

The sea of winter silence presses round⁠— + 

One feels it like a menace. + 

Now the crone + 

Dips out a cup of soup, and having blown + 

Upon it, takes it to the sick man there + 

And bids him eat. With wild, unseeing stare + 

He turns upon her: “Why are they so long? + 

I can not eat! I’ve done a mighty wrong; + 

It chokes me! Oh no, no, I must not die + 

Until the Black Robe comes!” His feeble cry + 

Sinks to a whisper. “Tell me, did they go⁠— + 

Your kinsmen?” + 

“They went south before the snow.” + 

“And will they tell the Black Robe?” + 

“They will tell.” + 

The crackling of the faggots for a spell + 

Seems very loud. Again the sick man moans + 

And, struggling with the weakness in his bones, + 

Would gain his feet, but can not. “Go again, + 

And tell me that you see the bulks of men + 

Dim in the distance there.” + 

The squaw obeys; + 

Returns anon to crouch beside the blaze, + 

Numb-fingered and a-shudder from the night. + 

The vacant eyes that hunger for the light + 

Are turned upon her: “Tell me what you saw! + 

Or maybe snowshoes sounded up the draw. + 

Quick, tell me what you saw and heard out there!” + 

“Heaped snow⁠—sharp stars⁠—big stillness everywhere.” + 

One clutching at thin ice with numbing grip + 

Cries while he hopes; but when his fingers slip, + 

He takes the final plunge without a sound. + 

So sinks the youth now, hopeless. All around + 

The winter silence presses in; the walls + 

Grow vague and vanish in the gloom that crawls + 

Close to the failing fire. + 

The Piegans sleep. + 

Night hovers midway down the morning steep. + 

The sick man drowses. Nervously he starts + 

And listens; hears no sound except his heart’s + 

And that weird murmur brooding stillness makes. + 

But stealthily upon the quiet breaks⁠— + 

Vague as the coursing of the hearer’s blood⁠— + 

A muffled, rhythmic beating, thud on thud, + 

That, growing nearer, deepens to a crunch. + 

So, hungry for the distance, snowshoes munch + 

The crusted leagues of Winter, stride by stride. + 

A camp-dog barks; the hollow world outside + 

Brims with the running howl of many curs. + 

Now wide-awake, half risen in the furs, + 

The youth can hear low voices and the creak + 

Of snowshoes near the lodge. His thin, wild shriek + 

Startles the old folk from their slumberings: + 

“He comes! The Black Robe!” + 

Now the door-flap swings, + 

And briefly one who splutters Piegan, bars + 

The way, then enters. Now the patch of stars + 

Is darkened with a greater bulk that bends + 

Beneath the lintel. “Peace be with you, friends! + 

And peace with him herein who suffers pain!” + 

So speaks the second comer of the twain⁠— + 

A white man by his voice. And he who lies + 

Beside the wall, with empty, groping eyes + 

Turned to the speaker: “There can be no peace + 

For me, good Father, till this gnawing cease⁠— + 

The gnawing of a great wrong I have done.” + 

The big man leans above the youth: “My son⁠—” + 

(Grown husky with the word, the deep voice breaks, + 

And for a little spell the whole man shakes + 

As with the clinging cold) “⁠—have faith and hope! + 

’Tis often nearest dawn when most we grope. + 

Does not the Good Book say, Who seek shall find?” + 

“But, Father, I am broken now and blind, + 

And I have sought, and I have lost the way.” + 

To which the stranger: “What would Jesus say? + 

Hark! In the silence of the heart ’tis said⁠— + 

By their own weakness are the feeble sped; + 

The humblest feet are surest for the goal; + 

The blind shall see the City of the Soul. + 

Lay down your burden at His feet tonight.” + 

Now while the fire, replenished, bathes in light + 

The young face scrawled with suffering and care, + 

Flinging ironic glories on the hair + 

And glinting on dull eyes that once flashed blue, + 

The sick one tells the story of old Hugh + 

To him whose face, averted from the glow, + 

Still lurks in gloom. The winds of battle blow + 

Once more along the steep. Again one sees + 

The rescue from the fury of the Rees, + 

The graybeard’s fondness for the gay lad; then + 

The westward march with Major Henry’s men + 

With all that happened there upon the Grand. + 

“And so we hit the trail of Henry’s band,” + 

The youth continues; “for we feared to die: + 

And dread of shame was ready with the lie + 

We carried to our comrades. Hugh was dead + 

And buried there beside the Grand, we said. + 

Could any doubt that what we said was true? + 

They even praised our courage! But I knew! + 

The nights were hell because I heard his cries + 

And saw the crows a-pecking at his eyes, + 

The kiotes tearing at him. O my God! + 

I tried and tried to think him under sod; + 

But every time I slept it was the same. + 

And then one night⁠—I lay awake⁠—he came! + 

I say he came⁠—I know I hadn’t slept! + 

Amid a light like rainy dawn, he crept + 

Out of the dark upon his hands and knees. + 

The wound he got that day among the Rees + 

Was like red fire. A snarl of bloody hair + 

Hung round the eyes that had a pleading stare, + 

And down the ruined face and gory beard + 

Big tear-drops rolled. He went as he appeared, + 

Trailing a fog of light that died away. + 

And I grew old before I saw the day. + 

O Father, I had paid too much for breath! + 

The Devil traffics in the fear of death, + 

And may God pity anyone who buys + 

What I have bought with treachery and lies⁠— + 

This rat-like gnawing in my breast! + 

“I knew + 

I couldn’t rest until I buried Hugh; + 

And so I told the Major I would go + 

To Atkinson with letters, ere the snow + 

Had choked the trails. Jules wouldn’t come along; + 

He didn’t seem to realize the wrong; + 

He called me foolish, couldn’t understand. + 

I rode alone⁠—not south, but to the Grand. + 

Daylong my horse beat thunder from the sod, + 

Accusing me; and all my prayers to God + 

Seemed flung in vain at bolted gates of brass. + 

And in the night the wind among the grass + 

Hissed endlessly the story of my shame. + 

“I do not know how long I rode: I came + 

Upon the Grand at last, and found the place, + 

And it was empty. Not a sign or trace + 

Was left to show what end had come to Hugh. + 

And oh that grave! It gaped upon the blue, + 

A death-wound pleading dumbly for the slain. + 

I filled it up and fled across the plain, + 

And somehow came to Atkinson at last. + 

And there I heard the living Hugh had passed + 

Along the river northward in the Fall! + 

O Father, he had found the strength to crawl + 

That long, heart-breaking distance back to life, + 

Though Jules had taken blanket, steel and knife, + 

And I, his trusted comrade, had his gun! + 

“They said I’d better stay at Atkinson, + 

Because old Hugh was surely hunting me, + 

White-hot to kill. I did not want to flee + 

Or hide from him. I even wished to die, + 

If so this aching cancer of a lie + 

Might be torn out forever. So I went, + 

As eager as the homesick homeward bent, + 

In search of him and peace. + 

But I was cursed. + 

For even when his stolen rifle burst + 

And spewed upon me this eternal night, + 

I might not die as any other might; + 

But God so willed that friendly Piegans came + 

To spare me yet a little unto shame. + 

O Father, is there any hope for me?” + 

“Great hope indeed, my son!” so huskily + 

The other answers. “I recall a case + 

Like yours⁠—no matter what the time and place⁠— + 

’Twas somewhat like the story that you tell; + 

Each seeking and each sought, and both in hell; + 

But in the tale I mind, they met at last.” + 

The youth sits up, white-faced and breathing fast: + 

“They met, you say? What happened? Quick! Oh quick!” + 

“The old man found the dear lad blind and sick + 

And both forgave⁠—’twas easy to forgive⁠— + 

For oh we have so short a time to live⁠—” + 

Whereat the youth: “Who’s here? The Black Robe’s gone! + 

Whose voice is this?” + 

The gray of winter dawn + 

Now creeping round the door-flap, lights the place + 

And shows thin fingers groping for a face + 

Deep-scarred and hoary with the frost of years + 

Whereover runs a new springtide of tears. + 

“O Jamie, Jamie, Jamie⁠—I am Hugh! + 

There was no Black Robe yonder⁠—Will I do?” + 