VII + 

The Third Rider + 

It seemed the end, and yet ’twas not the end. + 

A day that wind of horror and surprise + 

Blew high; and then, as when the tempest dies + 

And only aspens prattle, as they will, + 

Though pines win silence and the oaks are still, + 

By furtive twos and threes the talk survived. + 

To some it seemed that men were longer lived + 

Who quarreled not over women. Others guessed + 

That love was bad for marksmanship at best⁠— + 

The nerves, you know! Still others pointed out + 

Why Mike should have the benefit of doubt; + 

For every man, who knew a rifle, knew + 

That there were days you’d split a reed in two, + 

Off-hand at fifty paces; then, one day, + 

Why, somehow, damn your eyes, you’d blaze away + 

And miss a bull! No doubt regarding that! + 

“But,” one replied, “ ’tis what you’re aiming at, + 

Not what you hit, determines skill, you know!”⁠— + 

An abstract observation, apropos + 

Of nothing in particular, but made + 

As just a contribution to the trade + 

Of gunnery! And others would recall + 

The center of that silence in the hall + 

The night one lay there waiting, splendid, still, + 

And nothing left to wait for. Poor old Bill! + 

There went a man, by God! Who knew his like⁠— + 

So meek in might? And some remembered Mike⁠— + 

The hearth-lit room⁠—the way he came to look + 

Upon that face⁠—and how his shoulders shook + 

With sobbing as he moaned: “My friend! My friend!” + 

It seemed the end, and yet ’twas not the end, + 

Though men cared less to know what cunning gnome + 

Or eyeless thing of doom had ridden home + 

The deadly slug. And then there came a day + 

When Major Henry had a word to say + 

That seemed, at last, to lay the ghost to rest. + 

He meant to seek the River of the West + 

Beyond the range, immensely rich in furs, + 

And for the wiving prows of voyageurs + 

A virgin yearning. Yonder one might glide + 

A thousand miles to sunset, where the tide + 

Is tempered with an endless dream of May! + 

So much and more the Major had to say⁠— + 

Words big with magic for the young men’s ears. + 

And finally he called for volunteers⁠— + 

Two men to hasten to the Moreau’s mouth, + 

Meet Ashley’s party coming from the south + 

And bid them buy more horses at the Grand + 

Among the Rees. Then, pushing through the band, + 

Mike Fink stood forth, and after him, Talbeau. + 

Now Henry thought ’twere wiser they should go + 

By land, although the river trail, he knew, + 

Were better. But a wind of rumor blew + 

Up stream. About the region of the Knife, + 

It seemed, the Grovans tarried, nursing strife + 

Because the Whites were favoring their foes + 

With trade for guns; and, looking on their bows, + 

The Grovans hated. So the rumor said. + 

And thus it came to pass the new trail led + 

About six days by pony to the south; + 

Thence eastward, five should find the Moreau’s mouth + 

And Ashley toiling up among the bars. + 

The still white wind was blowing out the stars + 

When yawning trappers saw the two men row + 

Across the river with their mounts in tow⁠— + 

A red roan stallion and a buckskin mare. + 

And now the ponies gain the far bank there + 

And flounder up and shake themselves like dogs. + 

And now the riders mount and breast the fogs + 

Flung down as wool upon the flat. They dip + 

And rise and float, submerging to the hip, + 

Turn slowly into shadow men, and fade. + 

And some have said that when the ponies neighed, + 

’Twas like a strangled shriek; and far ahead + 

Some ghostly pony, ridden by the dead, + 

Called onward like a bugle singing doom. + 

And when the valley floor, as with a broom, + 

Was swept by dawn, men saw the empty land. + 

Not now the Song shall tell of Henry’s band + 

Ascending to the Falls, nor how they crossed + 

The Blackfoot trail, nor how they fought and lost, + 

Thrown back upon the Yellowstone to wait + 

In vain for Ashley’s hundred. Yonder, Fate + 

Led southward through the fog, and thither goes + 

The prescient Song. + 

The April sun arose + 

And fell; and all day long the riders faced + 

A rolling, treeless, melancholy waste + 

Of yellow grass; for ’twas a rainless time, + 

Nor had the baby green begun to climb + 

The steep-kneed hills, but kept the nursing draws. + 

And knee to knee they rode with scarce a pause, + 

Save when the ponies drank; and scarce a word, + 

As though the haunting silence of a third, + 

Who rode between them, shackled either tongue. + 

And when along the sloughs the twilight flung + 

Blue haze, and made the hills seem doubly bleak, + 

They camped beside a songless little creek + 

That crawled among the clumps of stunted plum + 

Just coming into bud. And both sat dumb + 

Beside a mewing fire, until the west + 

Was darkened and the shadows leaped and pressed + 

About their little ring of feeble light. + 

Then, moved by some vague menace in the night, + 

Fink forced a laugh that wasn’t glad at all, + 

And joked about a certain saddle gall + 

That troubled him⁠—a Rabelaisian quip + 

That in the good old days had served to strip + 

The drooping humor from the dourest jowl. + 

He heard the laughter of the prairie owl, + 

A goblin jeering. Gazing at the flame, + 

Talbeau seemed not to hear. But when there came + 

A cry of kiotes, peering all about + 

He said: “You don’t suppose they’ll dig him out? + 

I carried heavy stones till break of day. + 

You don’t suppose they’ll come and paw away + 

The heavy stones I packed, and pester Bill?” + 

“Huh uh,” Fink grunted; but the evening chill + 

Seemed doubled on a sudden; so he sought + 

His blanket, wrapped it closely, thought and thought + 

Till drowsy nonsense tumbled through his skull. + 

Now at that time of night when comes a lull + 

On stormy life; when even sorrow sleeps, + 

And sentinels upon the stellar steeps + 

Sight morning, though the world is blind and dumb, + 

Fink wakened at a whisper: “Mike! He’s come! + 

Look! Look!” And Mike sat up and blinked and saw. + 

It didn’t walk⁠—it burned along the draw⁠— + 

Tall, radiantly white! It wasn’t dead⁠— + 

It smiled⁠—it had a tin cup on its head⁠— + 

Eh?⁠—Gone! + 

Fink stirred the embers to a flare. + 

What dream was this? The world seemed unaware + 

That anything at all had come to pass. + 

Contentedly the ponies nipped the grass + 

There in the darkness; and the night was still. + 

They slept no more, but nursed the fire until + 

The morning broke; then ate and rode away. + 

They weren’t any merrier that day. + 

And each spoke little, save when Fink would swear + 

And smirch the virtue of the buckskin mare + 

For picking quarrels with the roan he rode. + 

(Did not the Northwind nag her like a goad, + 

And was there any other horse to blame?) + 

The worried day dragged on and twilight came⁠— + 

A dusty gray. They climbed a hill to seek + 

Some purple fringe of brush that marked a creek. + 

The prairie seemed an endless yellow blur: + 

Nor might they choose but tarry where they were + 

And pass the cheerless night as best they could, + 

For they had seen no water-hole or wood + 

Since when the sun was halfway down the sky; + 

And there would be no stars to travel by, + 

So thick a veil of dust the great wind wove. + 

They staked their ponies in a leeward cove, + 

And, rolling in their blankets, swooned away. + 

Talbeau awoke and stared. ’Twas breaking day! + 

So soon? It seemed he scarce had slept a wink! + 

He’d have another snooze, for surely Fink + 

Seemed far from waking, sprawled upon the ground, + 

His loose mouth gaping skyward with a sound + 

As of a bucksaw grumbling through a knot. + 

Talbeau dropped back and dreamed the sun was hot + 

Upon his face. He tried but failed to stir; + 

Whereat he knew that he was Carpenter + 

And hot-breatht wolves were sniffing round his head! + 

He wasn’t dead! He really wasn’t dead! + 

Would no one come, would no one drive them off? + 

His cry for help was nothing but a cough, + 

For something choked him. Then a shrill long scream + 

Cut knife-like through the shackles of his dream, + 

And once again he saw the lurid flare + 

Of morning on the hills. + 

What ailed the mare? + 

She strained her tether, neighing. And the roan? + 

He squatted, trembling, with his head upthrown, + 

And lashed his tail and snorted at the blast. + 

Perhaps some prowling grizzly wandered past. + 

Talbeau sat up. What stifling air! How warm! + 

What sound was that? Perhaps a thunder storm + 

Was working up. He coughed; and then it broke + 

Upon him how the air was sharp with smoke; + 

And, leaping up, he turned and looked and knew + 

What birdless dawn, unhallowed by the dew, + 

Came raging from the northwest! Half the earth + 

And half the heavens were a burning hearth + 

Fed fat with grass inflammable as tow! + 

He shook Fink, yelling: “Mike, we’ve got to go! + 

All hell’s broke loose!” + 

They cinched the saddles on + 

With hands that fumbled; mounted and were gone, + 

Like rabbits fleeing from a kiote pack. + 

They crossed the valley, topped a rise, looked back, + 

Nor dared to gaze. The firm, familiar world, + 

It seemed, was melting down, and Chaos swirled + 

Once more across the transient realms of form + 

To scatter in the primal atom-storm + 

The earth’s rich dust and potency of dreams. + 

Infernal geysers gushed, and sudden streams + 

Of rainbow flux went roaring up the skies + 

Through ghastly travesties of Paradise, + 

Where, drowsy in a tropic summertide, + 

Strange gaudy flowers bloomed and aged and died⁠— + 

Whole seasons in a moment. Bloody rain, + 

Blown slant like April silver, spewed the plain + 

To mock the fallow sod; and where it fell + 

Anemones and violets of hell + 

Foreran the fatal summer. + 

Spurs bit deep. + 

Now down the hill where shadow-haunted sleep + 

Fell from the broken wind’s narcotic breath, + 

The ponies plunged. A sheltered draw, where death + 

Seemed brooding in the silence, heard them pass. + 

A hollow, deep with tangled jointed grass, + 

Snatched at the frantic hoofs. Now up a slope + 

They clambered, blowing, at a stumbling lope + 

And, reined upon the summit, wheeled to stare. + 

The stallion snorted, and the rearing mare + 

Screamed at the sight and bolted down the wind. + 

The writhing Terror, scarce a mile behind, + 

Appeared to gain; while far to left and right + 

Its flanks seemed bending in upon the night⁠— + 

A ten-league python closing on its prey. + 

No guiding hand was needed for the way; + 

Blind speed was all. So little Nature heeds + 

The fate of men, these blew as tumbleweeds + 

Before that dwarfing, elemental rage. + 

A gray wolf bounded from a clump of sage; + 

A rabbit left its bunchgrass nest and ran + 

Beside its foe; and neither dreaded Man, + 

The deadliest of all earth’s preying things. + 

A passing knoll exploded into wings, + 

And prairie owls, befuddled by the light, + 

Went tumbling up like patches of the night + 

The burning tempest tattered. + 

Leaning low, + 

The gasping riders let the ponies go, + 

The little buckskin leading, while the roan + 

Strove hard a-flank, afraid to be alone + 

And nickering at whiles. And he who led, + 

By brief hypnotic lapses comforted, + 

Recalled the broad Ohio, heard the horns + 

The way they used to sing those summer morns + 

When he and Mike and⁠—. There the dream went wrong + 

And through his head went running, like a song + 

That sings itself: “He tried so hard to come + 

And warn us; but the grave had made him dumb, + 

And ’twas to show he loved us that he smiled.” + 

And of the other terror made a child + 

Whom often, for a panic moment’s span, + 

Projections from the conscience of the man + 

Pursued with glaring eyes and claws of flame. + 

For this the dead arose, for this he came⁠— + 

That grin upon his face! + 

A blinding gloom + 

Crushed down; then, followed by a rolling boom, + 

There broke a scarlet hurricane of light + 

That swept the farthest reaches of the night + 

Where unsuspected hills leaped up aghast. + 

Already through the hollow they had passed + 

So recently, the hounding Terror sped! + 

And now the wind grew hotter. Overhead + 

Inverted seas of color rolled and broke, + 

And from the combers of the litten smoke + 

A stinging spindrift showered. + 

On they went, + 

Unconscious of duration or extent, + 

Of everything but that from which they fled. + 

Now, sloping to an ancient river bed, + 

The prairie flattened. Plunging downward there, + 

The riders suddenly became aware + 

How surged, beneath, a mighty shadow-stream⁠— + 

As though the dying Prairie dreamed a dream + 

Of yesterage when all her valleys flowed + 

With Amazons, and monster life abode + 

Upon her breast and quickened in her womb. + 

And from that rushing in the flame-smeared gloom + 

Unnumbered outcries blended in a roar. + 

The headlong ponies struck the sounding shore + 

And reared upon their haunches. Far and near, + 

The valley was a-flood with elk and deer + 

And buffalo and wolves and antelope + 

And whatsoever creature slough and slope + 

Along the path of terror had to give. + 

Torrential with the common will to live, + 

The river of unnumbered egos swept + 

The ponies with it. But the buckskin kept + 

The margin where the rabble frayed and thinned + 

And, breathing with the wheeze of broken wind, + 

The stallion clung to her. + 

It came to pass + 

The valley yawned upon a sea of grass + 

That seemed to heave, as waves of gloom and glare + 

Ran over it; and, rising here and there, + 

Tall buttes made islands in the living tide + 

That roared about them. Still with swinging stride + 

And rhythmic breath the little buckskin ran + 

Among the herd, that opened like a fan + 

And scattered. But the roan was losing ground. + 

His breathing gave a gurgling, hollow sound, + 

As though his life were gushing from his throat. + 

His whole frame quivered like a scuttled boat + 

That slowly sinks; nor did he seem to feel + 

Upon his flank the biting of the steel + 

That made him bleed. Fink cut the rifle-boot + 

And saddle-bags away, to give the brute + 

Less burden. + 

Now it happened, as they neared + 

A lofty butte whose summit glimmered weird + 

Beneath the lurid boiling of the sky, + 

Talbeau was startled by a frantic cry + 

Behind him; noted that he rode alone, + 

And, turning in the saddle, saw the roan + 

Go stumbling down and wither to a heap. + 

And momently, between a leap and leap, + 

The love of self was mighty in the man; + 

For now the Terror left the hills and ran + 

With giant strides along the grassy plains. + 

Dear Yesterdays fought wildly for the reins, + 

Tomorrows for the spur. And then the mare + 

Heeled to the sawing bit and pawed the air + 

And halted, prancing. + 

Once again Talbeau + 

Looked back to where the sparks were blown as snow + 

Before that blizzard blast of scorching light, + 

And saw Fink running down the painted night + 

Like some lost spirit fleeing from the Wrath. + 

One horse⁠—and who should ride it? All he hath + 

A man will give for life! But shall he give + 

For living that which makes it good to live⁠— + 

The consciousness of fellowship and trust? + 

Let fools so prize a pinch of throbbing dust! + 

Now Fink should ride, and let the rest be hid. + 

He bounded from the mare; but, as he did, + 

The panic-stricken pony wheeled about, + 

Won freedom with a lunge, and joined the rout + 

Of fleeing shadows. + 

Well, ’twas over now⁠— + 

Perhaps it didn’t matter anyhow⁠— + 

They’d go together now and hunt for Bill! + 

And momently the world seemed very still + 

About Talbeau. Then Fink was at his side, + 

Blank horror in his face. “Come on!” he cried; + 

“The butte! We’ll climb the butte!” And once again + 

Talbeau knew fear. + 

Now, gripping hands, the men + 

Scuttled and dodged athwart the scattered flight + 

Of shapes that drifted in the flood of light, + 

A living flotsam; reached the bare butte’s base, + 

Went scrambling up its leaning leeward face + 

To where the slope grew sheer, and huddled there. + 

And hotter, hotter, hotter grew the air, + 

Until their temples sang a fever tune. + 

The April night became an August noon. + 

Then, near to swooning in a blast of heat, + 

They heard the burning breakers boom and beat + 

About their lofty island, as they lay, + 

Their gaping mouths pressed hard against the clay, + 

And fought for every breath. Nor could they tell + 

How long upon a blistered scarp in hell + 

They gasped and clung. But suddenly at last⁠— + 

An age in passing, and a moment, passed⁠— + 

The torture ended, and the cool air came; + 

And, looking out, they saw the long slant flame + 

Devour the night to leeward. + 

By and by + 

Drab light came seeping through the sullen sky. + 

They waited there until the morning broke, + 

And, like a misty moon amid the smoke, + 

The sun came stealing up. + 

They found a place + 

Where rain had scarred the butte wall’s western face + 

With many runnels; clambered upward there⁠— + 

And viewed a panorama of despair. + 

The wind had died, and not a sound arose + 

Above those blackened leagues; for even crows + 

(The solitude embodied in a bird) + 

Had fled that desolation. Nothing stirred, + 

Save here and there a thin gray column grew + 

From where some draw still smouldered. And they knew + 

How universal quiet may appal + 

As violence, and, even as a wall, + 

Sheer vacancy confine. + 

No horse, no gun! + 

Nay, worse; no hint of water hole or run + 

In all the flat or back among the hills! + 

Mere hunger is a goad that, ere it kills, + 

May drive the lean far down the hardest road: + 

But thirst is both a snaffle and a load; + 

It gripped them now. When Mike made bold to speak, + 

His tongue was like a stranger to his cheek. + 

“Shure, b’y,” he croaked; “ ’tis Sunday morn in hell!” + 

The sound seemed profanation; on it fell + 

The vast, rebuking silence. + 

Long they gazed + 

About them, standing silent and amazed + 

Upon the summit. West and north and east + 

They saw too far. But mystery, at least, + 

Was in the south, where still the smoke concealed + 

The landscape. Vistas of the unrevealed + 

Invited Hope to stray there as it please. + 

And presently there came a little breeze + 

Out of the dawn. As of a crowd that waits + 

Some imminent revealment of the Fates + 

That toil behind the scenes, a murmur ’woke + 

Amid the hollow hush. And now the smoke + 

Mysteriously stirs, begins to flow, + 

And giant shadow bulks that loom below + 

Seem crowding dawnward. One by one they lift + 

Above the reek, and trail the ragged drift + 

About their flanks. A melancholy scene! + 

Gray buttes and giddy gulfs that yawn between⁠— + 

A Titan’s labyrinth! But see afar + 

Where yonder canyon like a purple scar + 

Cuts zigzag through the waste! Is that a gleam + 

Of water in its deeps? + 

A stream! A stream! + 

Now scrambling down the runnels of the rain, + 

They struck across the devastated plain + 

Where losers of the night’s mad race were strewn + 

To wait the wolves and crows. + 

Mid-afternoon + 

Beheld them stripping at the river’s bank. + 

They wallowed in the turbid stream and drank + 

Delicious beakers in the liquid mud; + 

Nor drank alone, for here the burning flood + 

Had flung its panting driftage in the dark. + 

The valley teemed with life, as though some Ark + 

That rode the deluge, spewed its cargo here: + 

Elk, antelope, wolves, bison, rabbits, deer, + 

Owls, crows⁠—the greatest mingled with the least. + 

And when the men had drunk, they had a feast + 

Of liver, bolted dripping from a cow + 

Dead at the water’s lip. + 

Blue shadow now + 

Was mounting slowly up the canyon steep; + 

So, seeking for a better place to sleep, + 

They wandered down the margin of the stream. + 

’Twas scarce more real than walking in a dream + 

Of lonely craters in a lunar land + 

That never thrilled with roots. On either hand + 

The dwarfing summits soared, grotesque, austere, + 

And jagged fissures, sentinelled with fear, + 

Led back to mysteries of purple gloom. + 

They came to where a coulee, like a flume, + 

Rose steeply to the prairie. Thither hurled, + 

A roaring freshet of the herd had swirled, + 

Cascading to the river bed; and there, + 

Among the trampelled carcasses, the mare + 

Lay bloated near the water. She had run + 

With saddle, panniers, powder-horn and gun + 

Against the wind-thewed fillies of the fire, + 

And won the heat, to perish at the wire⁠— + 

A plucky little brute! + 