WE held a peace convention in Coyoteville last night,
A reg'lar Haygue Tribunal fer order, law, an' right,
Fer we'd about concluded that fightin' come too free
An' municipal conditions wasn't all they ought to be.
"Dad" Sykes had been to Denver an' Blake to Omaha,
An' they come back a-preachin' of the sights which they had saw,
How no one carried weepons an' folks was nice an' mild.
An', compared with them there cities, Coyoteville was wild.
In Coyoteville the habit of some gentlemen at nights,
If they felt in pleasant spirits, was to puncture out the lights.
Also, in questions dealin' with a social poker game
They was prone to draw their irons an' argue with the same.
All which, from "Dad" Sykes' view-point, an' likewise Mister Blake's,
Was morally pervertin' an' the biggest of mistakes,
Since Coyoteville's best people had begun a-takin' pride
In makin' her the model of the cattle-countryside.
Therefore, we held a meetin' in the Frou-Frou Dancin' Hall;
"Dad" Sykes he played first fiddle an' Blake was there to call—
I mean that Sykes persided an' Billy wrote it down
When motions was perpounded on how to run the town.
"Bat" Blarcum broached the idee, supported by a speech,
That the closin' of the thirst-joints was the only thing would reach,
Since liquor bred dissension which only blood could stop
As he knew from observation, though he "never touched a drop!"
Then Pierpont Robyn Stebbins arose an' begged to say.
That the road to civic virtue lay quite another way:
To punish weepon toters would be the proper feat—
Jest confiscate their weepons an' make 'em clean the street.
But Bobby Earl was doubtful of Pierpont Robyn's plan;
He thought that cleaning roadways would humiliate a man.
"Bat" Blarcum felt as Earl did, an' inferred that Stebbins' scheme
Was degenerate an' Eastern an' an iridescent dream.
Then Pierpont stood up coldly an' stated to the Chair
That Mister Earl's opinions would be weighty anywhere,
Therefore he meekly yielded, lest he be crushed indeed
By the most substantial leader of the law an' order creed.
Now Bobby weighed three hundred an' it somewhat nettled him
To be ridiculed in public there by Stebbins, who was slim,
But the Chairman wouldn't hear him till Pierpont's partner, Drew,
Had made some observations about "Bat" Blarcum, too.
Which last, he said he hated to cast aspersions 'round,
But he felt "Bat's" plan of action was very far from sound,
An' he questioned these reformers whose reform was brought about
Through a hate for rum engendered by the Keeley curin' route.
He finished; whereat Bobby raised objections an' was pained
At the style of Stebbins' language—an' Bobby was sustained.
Then Stebbins said the Chairman might be strong an' somethin' more,
But he dared not try sustainin' Mister Earl down on the floor!
By this time indications made it plain to persons there
That a spirit of contention was a-breedin' in the air,
Fer Drew jumped through a window as Blarcum slowly rose,
While Bobby Earl was aimin' fer Pierpont Stebbins' nose.
The other folks concluded it was gettin' time they went,
An' started fer the doorways by unanimous consent,
While the Chair came down on Stebbins regardless of the law,
An' Blake propelled the Minutes at Mister Blarcum's jaw.
There'll be a bunch of fun'rals in Coyoteville today;
Some well-known ex-reformers in the leadin' parts will play;
An' Coyoteville's considerin' this lesson o'er an' o'er,
That peace may have its battles as well, sometimes, as war.
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087m
FULL heir to the twist-bored yager gun with its half-inch slug, I stand;
His rest was the Forty-niner's arm, as mine is the sportsman's hand.
I am king of my day as he of his, from the swamp to the saw-backed spur,
And there's never a trail but has heard the hail of the ringing Winchester!
I've saved the leaguered wagon-train from the scalping-knife and stake;
I have held the lead through the blind stampede in the bison's dust-dimmed wake;
By the reeking dives of the placer camp I have killed for a careless jest,
And I've raped the loot from the stage-coach boot at the bandit's stern behest.
Away in the dusk of the Arctic night, where the frozen rivers flow
And the fringed aurora floods and fades on the endless fields of snow,
The hardy hunters trust my sights and my spinning bullet's speed
When they seek the lair of the great white bear or the haunt of the gray wolf's breed.
The steaming glades of the Amazon, where the crouching jaguar springs,
Have felt the breath of the whirring death my long-necked cartridge brings,
And the wind-whipped crests where the condor nests on the roof-ribs of the world
Have marked the thin, blue jet of smoke from my flashing muzzle hurled.
Oh, I am the mate of the deep-lunged men, stout son of a martial line,
From Uruguay to the Kootenay, from mangrove-reef to pine;
In the throbbing glare of the desert air, by the rocks where the rapids purr,
There is never a gun for fight or fun like the steel-blue Winchester!
OVER the lonely prairie
The autumn twilight dies;
Quick, fitful winds through the hollows pass
That moan and sigh in the long, dry grass,
And ever a kildee cries.
The hovering darkness gathers;
But what is the rose tint there,
That flushes the far horizon
Like a turbulent city's glare?
It gathers and grows and widens,
It swallows the southward sky
And the timid wind, like a hunted deer,
Makes pause to hearken, then leaps in fear
And wails as it hurries by.
The heavens glow red to the zenith
In the ominous, fevered light,
And the glimmering hilltops waver,
Sharp-drawn on the walls of night.
And now, as a wide-flung army,
Hurled hot on the foemen's spears,
With plumes of smoke on its tossing head,
With flaring banners and lances red,
The wavering flood appears.
It runs like a wolf in hunger,
It roars like a mountain storm,
And before it the fleeing creatures
Far over the prairie swarm.
Pigeon and grouse and plover,
The air is alive with wings,
And the firm ground shakes with the pounding feet
Of bellowing bison in mad retreat
And the panic of smaller things.
Behind them the flames speed onward
O'er level and slope and swale,
And the grass is melted to embers,
Whirled high on the parching gale.
As strong as the ocean's billows,
As fierce as the blizzard's breath,
Is aught in Nature that may withstand
The league-long sweep of this scorching brand
That clutters the plains with death?
Ahead is a waiting darkness,
A shadow athwart the glare,
And the wild things have turned them to it,
For they know there is safety there.
The river, at last, the river!
A haven where all may hide.
With toil-spent lungs and with straining feet
They reel from the smoke and the peeling heat
To plunge in its grateful tide.
While the tongue of the hungry demon
Licks out on the naked sand,
And slavers its baffled fury
And sinks, like a dying hand.
Over the lonely prairie
So wan, the white moonrise grows;
From out of the North a chill wind rides
That spins the ash on the black hillsides
And, fading, an ember glows.
The clustered diamonds of midnight
Flash keen in the purple deep,
The hollows and hills are empty;
The desolate prairies sleep.
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WHEN the hollow void of Chaos
By the sun's first flame was lit,
And morning kissed the new earth's leaden sky,
When the hand of God reached downward
To the ocean's utmost pit
And reared the ragged continents on high,
From the naked, dripping ranges
Of the Rocky's granite sweep,
In a pathway through the quaking mud-plains torn,
Surged a waste of briny waters,
Roaring backward to the deep,
And the great Missouri, king of floods, was born.
It was there when, dank and noisome,
On the primal beds of shale
The fern and cycad forests fringed its shore,
And its depths have heaved in whirlpools
To the thresh of fin and tail
As the monster sea-snakes closed in deadly war.
Foot by foot through crumbling valleys
It has fought the Glacial Drift
As from out the North the rock-fanged moraines spread,
Hurling seas of thunderous waters
Through the slowly strangling rift
Where the ice-floes ground and gritted in its bed.
Huge of limb and tusked like tree-trunks,
When the evening sun hung low
Slugged the mammoths down to gambol in its tide,
And 'twas there that, ringed and goaded
By the cave-men's spears and bows,
They fell in blinded agony and died.
So, for dim, uncounted aeons
Did the torrent sweep along,
Rolling centuries like pebbles in its sands,
And the prairies sprung and blossomed
And the bison herds grew strong,
And the red men camped and hunted through its lands.
Till there came at last a season
When a gaunt-limbed figure burst
Through the woods that lipped the current's whirling foam,
And the flint-lock that he shifted
As he stooped to quench his thirst
Told the wilderness the first white man was come!
He, the white man, the magician,
Searcher, soldier, settler, lord,
Heir to all the crusted cycles of the past!
What were endless, lagging eras
While earth's wealth was being stored
To the pageant of his power at the last?
Came new visions to the river;
Came the voyageur's swift canoe,
Gliding ghost-like to the silent, dipping oar;
And the blunt-bowed keel-boat harnessed
To its brawny, sweating crew,
As they trailed the long cordelle-rope up the shore.
Came the block-house of the fur-trade,
Where the trappers brought their spoil
From bison-range and log-laced beaver fall;
French and half-breed, Sioux and Yankee,
Flinging out a season's toil
For a week of drunken revelry and brawl.
Up the swinging, bluff-bound reaches
Where the lonely bittern boomed
Throbbed a dull, insistent whisper, growing strong,
As the steamboat, flame-winged herald
To an age forespent and doomed,
Waked the woodlands with its piston's pulsing song.
Reeling down the rain-washed gullies
To its fertile, grassy vales
The Missouri saw the weary ox-teams plod;
Saw the red scouts on the ridges,
Heard the shots and dying wails,
Knew the unmarked graves beneath the prairie sod.
It has watched the thin, gray dust-cloud
With the summer heat-haze blent,
And the glint below of swords and bridle-chains,
As some squad of blue-clad troopers,
Like a wolf-pack on the scent,
Trailed the fleeing travois' track across the plains.
It has seen the long-horned cattle
Take the bisons' pasture lands,
Seen the cornfields spread where once the wild grass stood,
Marked the railroad bind the prairies,
League by league, with iron bands,
Felt the dizzy bridge-span leap its own dark flood.
Till the cow-town's rutted roadways
Into asphalt pavements grew.
By wires webbed and busy markets walled,
And the steel-trussed office building
Reared its cornice to the blue
Where the shanties of the mining camp had sprawled.
Now the hissing, rock-jammed rapids
Where of yore the fish-hawks bred,
Hear the thirsty turbines mumble in the gorge,
Tearing twice ten thousand horse-power
From the prisoned waters' head
To drive the distant smelter, mill and forge.
Now lakes of water ripple
Where before the sands lay dry,
And beyond the concrete walls which hold them caged—
Run shimmering, silver channels
Through fields of wheat and rye
Where yesterday the searing sand-storm raged.
But splendid though the epic
Of the river's wondrous past
As Homer e'er could sing or Milton pen,
It will know its grandest numbers
In the ages yet uncast
When its worth shall yield full measure unto men.
In this storehouse of the Nations,
Where but thousands prosper now,
The homes of teeming millions soon shall be;
On this noble waste of waters,
Untouched by steamer's prow,
Shall roll a people's commerce toward, the sea.
Unto us and to our children
Will be dealt the untold gains
If, shaping Nature's promise into deeds,
We accept the willing service
Of this Titan of the plains
And compel its mighty muscles to our needs,
Till its flood runs deep and constant
To the Mississippi's tide,
And the wedded torrents down the South are hurled,
Pouring forth their fleets of plenty
O'er oceans far and wide
To bear our country's riches to the world.
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(Near the mouth of the Missouri River is a narrow tongue of land between that stream and the Mississippi over which the Sioux Indians, on their expeditions in early days, were accustomed to transport their goods and boats in order to avoid the long journey around the point by water. Hence the locality received its name, Portage des Sioux.)
ROUND by tawny, foam-lipp'd streams,
Portage des Sioux,
In thy name what romance dreams,
Portage des Sioux!
But thy trails, once deep and worn,
Now lie gulfed in rustling corn,
And thy forest depths are shorn,
Portage des Sioux.
Where are all the dusky feet,
Portage des Sioux,
Trod thy pathways like a street,
Portage des Sioux?
Nevermore thy vales shall know
Flash of spear and twang of bow,
Nor the evening camp-fire's glow,
Portage des Sioux.
Yet when summer moonlight falls,
Portage des Sioux,
On thy glades and forest walls,
Portage des Sioux,
Phantom figures seem to go
'Neath the branches bending low,
Moccasined and pacing slow,
Portage des Sioux.
And the hoot-owl's mournful rune,
Portage des Sioux,
Quavers toward the sailing moon,
Portage des Sioux,
While, where shore and river meet,
Sob the waves with pulsing feet
Like a tom-tom's dying beat,
Portage des Sioux.
Jake Dale, o' the "Lucky George"?
You must 'a' been raised in the East, my son,
If you never clapped ears to the yarn that's spun
Of Jakey Dale an' the race he won
In the year o' the big ice gorge.
Come March in the Spring o' '81,
An' the river broke at Pierre
An' come rantin' down on the clean rampage.
She marked 36 on the Yankton gauge,
Which I reckon you know is some of a stage,
An' she covered the bottoms here.
The "George" was hitched on the city bar
Close up by the railroad track.
When the row began we fixed her strong,
Rigged seven hawsers where two belong;
She'd 'a' taken an acre o' soil along
If she'd dragged in the grindin' pack.
But along one night the drift-ice stopped;
The flood run clear as June,
Fer the stuff had jammed in Hagin's Bend
An' choked the channel from end to end,
An' it fought an' screamed like a wild-cat, penned,
In the light o' the cold March moon.
Yeh see that p'int acrost the bar
With the riffle o' shoal below?
Well, that's where the widow o' old Buck Slack
Oncet had a claim an' a drift-wood shack.
Where she lived an' slaved with her young-un pack,
All which was some time ago.
Well, we on the "George" had tumbled out—
The roar o' the jam was wild—
When we heerd a cry through the shriekin' night,
An' there on the p'int, in the pale moonlight,
A-wavin' an' yellin' with all her might,
Stood Buck Slack's youngest child.
An' we knowed, without darin' to say the word,
They was tripped fer the Great Unknown,
Fer the gorge had slapped the current round
An' cut 'em off from the higher ground,
An' the hand that could save 'em from bein' drowned
Was the hand of God alone.
Then all at oncet we heerd a yell
An', down 'cross the willow bank,
A-layin' a course that was skeercely snug,
Came Jakey Dale with his whiskey jug,
As drunk as the mate of a log-raft tug,
An' a-swearin' somethin' rank.
"You rust-chawed fragments o' junk," sez he,
"Now what do you think you've found?
A-standin' 'round on this old bilge tank
Like a bunch o' frogs on a floatin' plank;
Be ye lookin' fer gold in yon cut-bank?"
An' then he heerd that sound.
As quick as the jump of a piston-rod
He was over the wheel-box guard,
An' before we could Agger on stoppin' him
He had slashed the falls from the long-boat's rim
An' was out past the slush o' the channel's brim,
A-pullin' quick an' hard.
He sidled his tub through that rippin' flume
While we stood on the "George" an' swore.
The boy was loony with raw-corn gin,
But he reckoned his course to the width of a pin,
Ran straight to the eddy an' clawed her in,
An' staggered himself ashore.
Now, stranger, I want to ask you, flat,
If a man with his head-piece right,
Would 'a' piled eight folks in that skiff's inside
Fer a half-mile pull through that mill-race tide
An' think to land safe at the end o' the ride?
Well, Jake Dale did, that night.
When he shoved her off from the gumbo p'int
She reeled like a sawyer snag,
Then the current caught her along the beam
An' she whirled around an' shot down stream
With the foam from her bow like a cloud o' steam,
As fast as a red-tail stag.
Good Lord, the fright in them children's cries!
It curdled a feller's blood,
Them river men ain't a prayerful race,
But that night more'n one sort o' hid his face
An' sent up a plea to the Throne o' Grace
To guide them through the flood.
An' then that gorge sent up a roar
That shook the solid ground;
The sort that splits yer ears in two
When a side-wheel packet drops a flue
An' blows six b'ilers amongst her crew,
An' cooks them that ain't drowned.
She was breakin' loose like an avalanche,
Slipped free on a mountain side.
Jake Dale turned 'round an' give one look
An' read the truth like a printed book,
Then bent to his oars till the keel-post shook,
An' pulled fer the "George's" side.
He jammed her bow through the buckin' tide
Till the painter floated free;
With blinded eyes an' drippin' skin
He fought fer the race he had set to win
Like a soldier fights, till the ice rolled in
An' ground against her lee.
But he'd got her up to ropin' range
An' we hauled her to the rail.
When he'd landed the last one, safe an' sound,
Jake follered, an' says, as he looked around,
"You fellers fetch out that jug you found,
I'm as dry as the Mormon Trail!"
Well, stranger, that there is the yarn o' Jake,
Jake Dale, o' the "Lucky George."
He wasn't no saint with a gilt-edged crown;
His language would shatter a church-steeple down;
He'd a thirst in his throat that nothin' could drown,
An' a fist like a blacksmith's forge.
But, all the same, he'd a Christian soul
If he hadn't the Christian creed,
An' a better heart, by a blame long shot,
Than some pious folks that brag a lot
On savin' their souls, but haven't got
No time fer their brother's need.
An' I reckon the Lord has found a place
In the Kingdom o' the Lamb
Fer the man that cast his own fears by
An' showed that he wasn't afeared to die
Fer the sake of a frightened baby's cry,
That night o' the big ice jam.