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diff --git a/old/53667-0.txt b/old/53667-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7901d85..0000000 --- a/old/53667-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6710 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Song of Hugh Glass, by John Gneisenau Neihardt - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Song of Hugh Glass - -Author: John Gneisenau Neihardt - -Commentator: Julius T. House - -Release Date: December 4, 2016 [EBook #53667] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS *** - - - - -Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS - - -[Illustration] - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS - ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO - - MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED - LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE - - THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. - TORONTO - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS - - - BY - - JOHN G. NEIHARDT - - WITH NOTES - - BY - - JULIUS T. HOUSE - - HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AT THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, WAYNE, - NEBRASKA - - - New York - - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - - 1921 - - _All rights reserved_ - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1919, - - BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1915. - - - Norwood Press - J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. - Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TO SIGURD, SCARCELY THREE - - - When you are old enough to know - The joys of kite and boat and bow - And other suchlike splendid things - That boyhood’s rounded decade brings, - I shall not give you tropes and rhymes; - But, rising to those rousing times, - I shall ply well the craft I know - Of shaping kite and boat and bow, - For you shall teach me once again - The goodly art of being ten. - - Meanwhile, as on a rainy day - When ‘tis not possible to play, - The while you do your best to grow - I ply the other craft I know - And strive to build for you the mood - Of daring and of fortitude - With fitted word and shapen phrase, - Against those later wonder-days - When first you glimpse the world of men - Beyond the bleaker side of ten. - - - - - NOTE - - -The following narrative is based upon an episode taken from that much -neglected portion of our history, the era of the American Fur Trade. My -interest in that period may be said to have begun at the age of six -when, clinging to the forefinger of my father, I discovered the Missouri -River from a bluff top at Kansas City. It was flood time, and the -impression I received was deep and lasting. Even now I cannot think of -that stream without a thrill of awe and something of the reverence one -feels for mighty things. It was for me what the sea must have been to -the Greek boys of antiquity. And as those ancient boys must have been -eager to hear of perils nobly encountered on the deep and in the lands -adjacent, so was I eager to learn of the heroes who had travelled my -river as an imperial road. Nor was I disappointed in what I learned of -them; for they seemed to me in every way equal to the heroes of old. I -came to think of them with a sense of personal ownership, for any one of -many of them might have been my grandfather—and so a little of their -purple fell on me. As I grew older and came to possess more of my -inheritance, I began to see that what had enthralled me was, in fact, of -the stuff of sagas, a genuine epic cycle in the rough. Furthermore, I -realized that this raw material had been undergoing a process of -digestion in my consciousness, corresponding in a way to the process of -infinite repetition and fond elaboration which, as certain scholars tell -us, foreran the heroic narratives of old time. - -I decided that some day I would begin to tell these hero tales in verse; -and in 1908, as a preparation for what I had in mind, I descended the -Missouri in an open boat, and also ascended the Yellowstone for a -considerable distance. On the upper river the country was practically -unchanged; and for one familiar with what had taken place there, it was -no difficult feat of the imagination to revive the details of that -time—the men, the trails, the boats, the trading posts where veritable -satraps once ruled under the sway of the American Fur Company. - -The Hugh Glass episode is to be found in Chittenden’s “History of the -American Fur Trade” where it is quoted from its three printed sources: -the _Missouri Intelligencer_, Sage’s “Scenes in the Rocky Mountains,” -and Cooke’s “Scenes in the United States Army.” The present narrative -begins after that military fiasco known as the Leavenworth Campaign -against the Aricaras, which took place at the mouth of the Grand River -in what is now South Dakota. - - J. G. N. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I. GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 1 - - II. THE AWAKENING 26 - - III. THE CRAWL 37 - - IV. THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 94 - - V. JAMIE 109 - - - - - INTRODUCTION - - -If the average student of Western American History in our schools were -asked to recall those names which loom large for him during the four -decades from the purchase of the Louisiana Territory to the coming of -the settlers, he would doubtless think of Lewis and Clark, Lieutenant -Pike, Major Long, and General Frémont, with perhaps one or two others. -That is to say, the average student of Western History is familiar with -the names of official explorers; and but for their exploits, those forty -wonderful years would seem to him little more than a lapse of empty time -in a vast region waiting for the westering white man. - -It is true that the deeds of those above named were important. The -journey of Lewis and Clark from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia, -and back again, has immense significance in the story of our national -life, and it was truly a “magnificent adventure,” to use the phrase of -Emerson Hough. Pike holds and deserves a high place for his explorations -in the Southwest. Long’s contribution to the early knowledge of the West -was considerable; and Frémont’s expeditions served, at least, to awaken -the popular Eastern mind to the great possibilities of the -Trans-Missouri region. Frémont’s reputation, however, is out of all -proportion to his real accomplishment, for the trails he travelled were -well known to white men long before he ventured into the wilderness. In -this connection, Major Chittenden, one of the foremost authorities on -the subject, tells us that “there never has been a time until very -recently when the geography of the West was so thoroughly understood as -it was by the trader and trapper from 1830 to 1840.” - -When Lewis and Clark were descending the Missouri River in the summer of -1806 on their return from the mouth of the Columbia, they met bands of -traders pushing on toward the country from whence the explorers had just -come. These were the vanguard of the real history makers of the Early -West. It was such men as these who, during the next generation, as -Chittenden says, “first explored and established the routes of travel -which are now and always will be the avenues of commerce in that -region.” The period that followed the return of Lewis and Clark was one -of the most enthralling in the entire story of the human race, and yet -the very names of its principal heroes are practically unknown except to -specialists in Western History. The stories of their exploits have not -yet reached our schools, and are to be found, for the most part, hidden -away in the collections of state historical societies and in -contemporary journals and books of travel long since out of print. The -Mormon Emigration, the Mexican War, the Gold Rush to California, and the -Oregon Question filled the popular imagination during the early years of -the West, and thus an important phase of our national development was -overlooked and forgotten. - -Nevertheless, it remains true that the story of the West during the -first four decades of the nineteenth century is the story of the -wandering bands of trappers and traders who explored the wilderness in -search of furs from the British boundary to Mexico and from the Missouri -to the Pacific. History, as written in the past, has been too much a -chronological record of official governmental acts, too little an -intimate account of the lives of the people themselves. Doubtless, the -democratic spirit that now seems to be sweeping the world will, if it -continues to spread, revolutionize our whole conception of history, -bringing us to realize that the glory of the race is not the glory of a -chosen few, but that it radiates from the precious heroic stuff of -common human lives. And that view, I am proud to say, is quite in -keeping with our dearest national traditions. - -Now the fur trade on the Missouri River dates well back into the -eighteenth century, and at the time of the Revolutionary War, parties of -trappers had already ascended as far north as the Big Bend in the -present state of South Dakota. But it was not until after the return of -Lewis and Clark from the Northwest, and of Lieutenant Pike from the -Southwest, that the great era of the fur trade began. In 1807 the -Spanish trader, Manuel Lisa, ascended the Missouri and the Yellowstone -to the mouth of the Big Horn, where he erected a trading post. Returning -to St. Louis the next year, he became the leading spirit in the “St. -Louis Missouri Fur Company,” the troubled career of which, during the -succeeding fifteen years, was rich in the stuff of which epics are made. -Major Andrew Henry, who appears in “The Song of Hugh Glass” as leader of -the westbound expedition from the mouth of the Grand River, was a member -of that company, ascending the Missouri to the Three Forks in the summer -of 1809. Driven thence by the Blackfeet, he crossed the Great Divide and -built a post on what has since been called Henry’s fork of the Snake -River, thus being the first American trader to operate on the Pacific -side of the Rockies. - -In the spring of 1811, the Overland Astorians, under the command of W. -P. Hunt, left St. Louis, bound for the mouth of the Columbia where they -expected to join forces with a sea expedition that had set sail from New -York during the previous autumn for the long and hazardous voyage around -Cape Horn. This is the only widely known expedition in the whole history -of the Trans-Missouri fur trade, thanks to Washington Irving, whose -account of it is an American classic. - -During the War of 1812 the fur trade on the Missouri declined; and -though in the year 1819 five companies of some importance were operating -from St. Louis, none of these was doing a profitable business. The -revival of the trade, which ushered in the great epic period of our -national development, may be dated from March 20th, 1822, when the -following advertisement appeared in the _Missouri Republican_ of St. -Louis: - - To Enterprising Young Men: - - The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the - Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one, two or - three years. For particulars enquire of Major Andrew Henry, near the - lead mines in the County of Washington, who will ascend with and - command the party; or of the subscriber near St. Louis. - - (Signed) WILLIAM H. ASHLEY. - -Major Henry has already been mentioned as a veteran trader of the upper -country. Ashley, who was at that time General of the Missouri Militia -and Lieutenant Governor of the recently admitted state, was about to -make his first trip into the wilderness. - -Setting out in the spring of 1822, Major Henry, with his one hundred -“enterprising young men” (some of whom were young only in spirit), -ascended to the mouth of the Yellowstone. This was before the era of the -Missouri River steamboat, and the two keelboats, that bore the trading -stock and supplies of the party, were “cordelled,” that is to say, -pulled by tow-line. General Ashley accompanied the expedition, returning -to St. Louis in the fall. Early in the spring of 1823 he started north -again with a second band of one hundred men. Stopping to trade for -horses at the Ree villages near the mouth of the Grand, he was attacked -by that most treacherous of the Missouri River tribes, received a sound -drubbing, lost most of his horses, and was compelled to drop down stream -to await reënforcements. It was in this battle that old Hugh Glass -received his hip wound. - -Jedediah Smith, who was a member of the defeated party, and who had -fought with conspicuous bravery, volunteered to carry the news of -disaster to Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone. He was then but -twenty-four years old; yet during the next six years he was destined to -discover and explore the central and southwestern routes to the -Pacific—an achievement of equal importance with that of Lewis and Clark, -and performed under much greater difficulties. Immediately upon the -arrival of Smith at the mouth of the Yellowstone, Henry, with most of -his band, started south to the relief of Ashley. - -In the meanwhile, Ashley had apprised the Indian Agent and military -authorities at Fort Atkinson of his rough treatment; and Colonel -Leavenworth started north with 220 men, intent upon chastising the Rees -and making the Missouri River safe for American traders. The campaign -that followed, in which the Whites were aided by a band of Sioux, was in -some important respects a fiasco, as the opening lines of the poem -suggest. But that does not greatly matter here. - -What does matter, is the fact that the muster roll of the two parties of -Ashley and Henry, then united at the mouth of the Grand, contained -nearly all of the great names in the history of the West from the time -of Lewis and Clark to the coming of the settlers. Harrison Clifford -Dale, whose “Ashley-Smith Explorations to the Pacific” easily ranks him -as the supreme authority on this particular period, has the following to -say regarding the Ashley-Henry men: “The wanderings of this group during -the next ten or fifteen years cover the entire West.... It was the most -significant group of continental explorers ever brought together.” - -After the Leavenworth campaign against the Rees, Major Henry, with -eighty men, set out for the mouth of the Big Horn by way of the Grand -River valley. Hugh Glass acted as hunter for the westbound party, and it -is at this point that the following narrative begins. Old Glass was not -himself an explorer, yet his adventures serve to illustrate the heroic -temper of the men who explored the West, as well as the nature of the -difficulties they encountered. - -In building the epic cycle, of which “The Song of Hugh Glass” and “The -Song of Three Friends” are parts (each, however, being complete in -itself), I am concerned with the wanderings of that group of men who -were assembled for the last time at the mouth of the Grand. Long ago, -when I was younger than most of you who are now about to study the poem -here presented, I dreamed of making those men live again for the young -men and women of my country. The tremendous mood of heroism that was -developed in our American West during that period is properly a part of -your racial inheritance; and certainly no less important a part than the -memory of ancient heroes. Indeed, it can be shown that those -men—Kentuckians, Virginians, Pennsylvanians, Ohioans—were direct -descendants, in the epic line, of all the heroes of our Aryan race that -have been celebrated by the poets of the Past; descendants of Achilles -and Hector, of Æneas, of Roland, of Sigurd, and of the knights of -Arthur’s court. They went as torch-bearers in the van of our westering -civilization. Your Present is, in a great measure, a heritage from their -Past. - -And their blood is in your veins! - - JOHN G. NEIHARDT. - - - - - 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 jaggéd 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 to-night,” 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, a-stare - 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 good-byes - 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 belovéd 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, day-long 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 day-long 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— - World-wide 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 dæmon 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 stripéd 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, - Bread-root 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 æon 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 stripéd 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 bowlder. ‘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 eye-balls 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 a-stir - 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 - A-top 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 half-way 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 wingéd 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 bunch-grass 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 pigmy’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 to-night.” - - 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?” - - - - - NOTES - - - BY JULIUS T. HOUSE, PH.D. (Chicago) - - Head of the Department of English at the State Normal School, Wayne, - Nebraska - -[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE ROUTE OF HUGH GLASS IN HIS SEARCH FOR -JAMIE. THE “FIRST TRAIL,” RUNNING NORTHWARD FROM FORT KIOWA, TRACES THE -HERO’S WANDERINGS UP TO HIS ARRIVAL AT FORT ATKINSON (PAGE 112). THE -“SECOND TRAIL” INDICATES HUGH’S JOURNEY FROM THAT POINT TO HIS MEETING -WITH THE BOY AMONG THE PIEGANS. FORT ATKINSON WAS SITUATED ON THE WEST -BANK OF THE MISSOURI RIVER SIXTEEN MILES UP-STREAM FROM WHERE OMAHA NOW -STANDS.] - - - - - NOTES - - - GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR - - Before beginning the poem carefully read the Introduction. - - - PAGE 1 - -In the study of this poem it is necessary to learn the geography and -topography of the country. Define “topography.” Tell about Leavenworth -Campaign; Major Henry. - -The story of Hugh Glass is historical and may be found in the following -works: Chittenden’s History of the American Fur Trade, New York, 1902; -Sage’s Scenes in the Rocky Mountains, Boston, 1857; Ruxton’s Adventures -in Mexico, London, 1847; Howe’s Historical Collections of the Great -West, Cincinnati, 1857; Cooke’s Scenes and Adventures in the U. S. Army, -Philadelphia, 1857; The Missouri Intelligencer for June 18, 1825. -Accounts of the death of Hugh Glass, in 1832, are given in The Life and -Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, London, 1892, and in Maximilian’s -Travels, London, 1843. - -=2.= ‘Twas when the guns that blustered at the Ree - - Ree—Aricara or Rickaree Indians. Locate them in 1823. - - Where are they now? - -=3.= Had ceased to brag, and ten score martial clowns - - Why “clowns”? See Introduction. - -=6.= A withering blast the arid South still blew, - - What is “South”? Why capitalized? Did Homer and Vergil personify - the winds? - -=9.= Southward before the Great White Hunter’s face: - - Who is the Great White Hunter? What is the time of year? - -=13.= With eighty trappers up the dwindling Grand, - - Why “dwindling”? - -=14.= Bound through the weird, unfriending barren-land - - “Unfriending” whom? - -=15.= For where the Big Horn meets the Yellowstone; - - Locate the junction of the streams. - - - PAGE 2 - -=1.= Deep-chested, that his great heart might have play, - - Describe Hugh Glass. Hugh’s physical characteristics are drawn - in large lines. Compare this with the more elaborate - descriptions of persons in other books. Which is more effective? - -=2.= Gray-bearded, gray of eye and crowned with gray - - Our author’s descriptions leave much room for the play of the - reader’s imagination. Is this method effective with you? - -=4.= And, for the grudging habit of his tongue, - - “For”—by reason of. - -=8.= And hate in him was like a still, white hell, - - Why “white”? - -=9.= A thing of doom not lightly reconciled. - - What does “reconciled” modify? What is this figure called? - -=14.= Old Hugh stared long upon the pictured blaze, - - What were the pictures Hugh saw in the blaze? Would you like to - know more of Hugh’s past? Why does not the author tell us more - concerning it? - -=17.= The veil was rent, and briefly men discerned - - What “veil”? - -=19.= Beneath the still gray smoldering of him. - - What figure in “still gray smoldering”? Was Hugh a good fighter? - A man whose anger was to be feared? - - - PAGE 3 - -=2.= So, tardily, outflowered the wild blond strain - - Whence the “wild blond strain”? - -=4.= A Ganymedes haunted by a Goth - - Who was Ganymedes? The Goths? - -=5.= When the restive ghost was laid, - - What was the “restive ghost”? How old was Jamie? - -=17.= When Ashley stormed a bluff town of the Ree, - - Who was Ashley? See Introduction. - -=20.= Yet, hardly courage, but blind rage agrope - - What is courage? - -=23.= Tore off the gray mask, and the heart shone through. - - What was the “gray mask”? - -=24.= For, halting in a dry, flood-guttered draw, - - Define “draw” as here used. How does it differ from “ravine”? - from “gully”? - - - PAGE 4 - -=24.= As though spring-fire should waken out of snow. - - Explain the figure. - - - PAGE 5 - -=4.= So with their sons are women brought to bed, - - Of whom is Hugh thinking when he uses these words? - -=13.= Nor could these know what mocking ghost of Spring - - Express in other words the idea contained in “mocking ghost of - Spring.” - -=16.= So might a dawn-struck digit of the moon - - Explain the figure and interpret it in terms of Hugh’s feelings - for Jamie. - -=18.= And ache through all its craters to be green. - - What is the present condition of the surface of the moon? - -=21.= Pang dwelling in a puckered cicatrice - - Define “cicatrice.” Explain the figure. - -=23.= Yet very precious was the hurt thereof, - -=24.= Grievous to bear, too dear to cast away. - - These lines constitute a paradox. Define “paradox.” Explain the - meaning of the lines. Can pain be “precious”? - - - PAGE 6 - -What lines in this page forecast an approaching disaster? Can you recall -such forecasts in other pieces of literature? - -=10.= A phantom April over melting snow, - - Why “phantom” April? - -=11.= Deep in the North some new white wrath is brewed. - - Express the meaning of this line in other language. How does it - apply to the story? - -=16.= Tales jaggéd with the bleak unstudied word, - - Was the language of Hugh’s stories polished? Effective? Are men - natural story tellers? Answer from your own experience. - - What does the life of primitive man tell us with regard to the - matter? - -=17.= Stark saga-stuff. - - Define “saga.” What is meant by the words: “stark saga-stuff”? - -=19.= A mere pelt merchant, as it seemed to him; - - Define: pelt, epic, whist. Is “Hugh Glass” epic in material and - form? - - - PAGE 7 - -Which of these men loves the other more? In case of severe trial will -each be true to the other? Is either likely to be vengeful? unforgiving? -fickle? - -=3.= That myth that somehow had to be the truth, - - What is “that myth”? What feeling is expressed in “had to be the - truth”? - -=4.= Yet could not be convincing any more. - - Why could it not “be convincing any more”? - -=17.= And so with merry jest the old man went; - - Note in the passage the second forecast of disaster. - - - PAGE 8 - -=9.= The dusty progress of the cavalcade - -=10.= The journey of a snail flock to the moon; - - What feeling in Jamie is made clear in this figure? - -=11.= Until the shadow-weaving afternoon - - Explain the figure “shadow-weaving afternoon,” etc. - -=17.= Hoofbeats of ghostly steeds on every hill, - -=18.= Mysterious, muffled hoofs on every bluff! - -=19.= Spurred echo horses clattering up the rough, etc. - - Explain “hoofbeats of ghostly steeds,” “muffled hoofs,” “echo - horses.” - -=21.= The lagging air droned like the drowsy word - - Why “drowsy” word? The transfer of an epithet is called a - “trope,” from a Greek word meaning _to turn_. - - - PAGE 9 - -=1.= Lean galloper in a wind of splendid deeds, - - Note the vivid imagery and the effect of the broken meter. - -=4.= The horse stopped short—then Jamie was aware, etc. - - What gives the effect of loneliness in these lines? - - Note the effect of vast stretches of space in the use of the - names of heavenly bodies to denote the points of the compass. A - sense of the infinity of space arises often in the reader of - this poem. - - Any imaginative person feels this sense ever deepening upon him - on looking long at the prairies. - -=11.= Save for a welter of cawing crows, - - What is the effect of the cawing of the crows in the general - stillness? - - Note that the meter is intentionally changed. What effect? - -=13.= One faint star, set above the fading blush, etc. - - What is the effect of the mention of the star and its growing - from faint to clear? - -=16.= For answer, the horse neighed. - - What is the effect of the neighing of the horse? - -=17.= Some vague mistrust now made him half afraid, etc. - - Mistrust of what? Is disaster near? - - - PAGE 10 - -=1.= “Somewhere about the forks as like as not; - -=2.= And there’ll be hunks of fresh meat steaming hot, - -=3.= And fighting stories by a dying fire!” - - Why does Jamie talk to himself? - -=4.= The sunset reared a luminous phantom spire - -=5.= That, crumbling, sifted ashes down the sky. - - What is the effect of these two lines? - -=8.= And in the vast denial of the hush - -=9.= The champing of the snaffled horse seemed loud. - - What is the effect of these two lines? What is the “vast - denial”? - - Why mention “the champing of the horse”? Pages 9 and 10 are used - to induce in the reader a sense of extreme loneliness. - - Where is the climax? What devices have been employed for the - purpose? - -=17.= The laggard air was like a voice that sang, - - Why is the air now as a voice that sings rather than drowsy and - weird? - -=18.= And Jamie half believed he sniffed the tang - -=19.= Of woodsmoke and the smell of flesh a-roast; - - These lines indicate the lad’s eagerness. - - - PAGE 11 - -=2.= And in the whirlwind of a moment there, etc. - - Could Jamie perceive so much in so brief a time under such - circumstances? Does the picture in “huddled, broken thing” seem - realistic? - -=11.= A landscape stares with every circumstance etc. - - Jamie’s experience in the preceding lines is here explained. Did - you ever notice how plainly things stand out in a flare of - lightning? - -=14.= Then before his eyes, etc. - - Is this consistent with the part of Jamie in the fight with the - Rees? - -=22.= Heard the brush crash etc. - - Onomatopœia. Define “rubble.” - - - PAGE 12 - -=1.= A swift thought swept the mind of Jamie clear, etc. - - Is the change in Jamie from anger to coolness good psychology? - - Why? - -=8.= Swerved sharply streamward. Sliddering in the sand, - - Note onomatopœia. How did Jamie elude the bear? - -=17.= Like some vague shape of fury in a dream, - - Why did the sight of the bear seem thus to Jamie? - - - PAGE 13 - -=4.= Would think of such a “trick of getting game”! - - For a moment Jamie feels as if Hugh were still living and he can - now triumph in his skill. Was that natural in a boy? - -=6.= Like a dull blade thrust back into a wound. - - Memory of sorrow “like a dull blade,” etc. Is that true to life? - -=10.= Like some familiar face gone strange at last. - - Meaning of “gone strange at last”? - - In this and the next three pages note the sincerity and the - boyishness of Jamie’s affection and grief. It is necessary to - understand Jamie now that the reader may interpret his later - conduct. - - Define: eld, blear. - - - PAGE 14 - -=6.= Had wiped the pictured features from a slate! etc. - - Note two powerful similes in these lines. Do they convey - adequately the horror of the spectator? This “ruined face” of - Hugh’s has much in the remainder of the story. The lines are not - pleasant to read, but life is not always pleasant. Homer and - Shakespeare often wrote lines that shock by their naked truth. - -=15.= Still painted upon black that alien stare - - Why “alien stare”? - -=16.= To make the lad more terribly alone. - - Why “more terribly alone”? - -=21.= Pale vagrants from the legendry of death - - Pale vagrants, _i.e._ ghosts. - - Define: funereal, alien, legendry, potential. - - - PAGE 17 - -=6.= For, though the graybeard fought with sobbing breath, etc. - - A wrestling match in which death has a “strangling grip” on - Hugh. Note the vividness of physical imagery, “neck veins like a - purple thong tangled with knots.” What biblical allusion in - “break upon the hip”? - -=11.= There where the trail forked outward far and dim; - - What “trail forked outward”? - -=13.= His moan went treble like a song of pain, - - Does the voice become like a shrill song under such - circumstances? - -=20.= For dying is a game of solitaire, etc. - - A grim epigram. - - Define: treble, solitaire. - - - PAGE 18 - -The rest of this division of the poem develops the catastrophe of -cowardice and treachery. The elements of it are (1) Jamie’s youthfulness -and unsettled character, (2) Le Bon’s ability to play upon his weakness, -(3) the actual nearness of the Rees, (4) the apparently hopeless -condition of Hugh prolonged over several days. - -=12.= That mercenary motives prompted him. - - Do you believe the protestations of Jules that mercenary motives - do not prompt him? Does he “protest too much”? - -=16.= The Rickarees were scattered to the West: - - Why mention the Indians so early? - -=19.= Three days a southwest wind may blow - - A southwest wind on the plains is always warm, and seldom - carries rain. - - Explain the application. - - - PAGE 19 - -Why does Jules talk always as though the death of Hugh were certain? - -=10.= Unnumbered tales accordant with the case, - - Do you think Le Bon knew these tales? - -=18.= A bear’s hug—ugh!’ And Jamie winced etc. - - What was the effect on Jamie? - - Define: dialectic, colophon. - - - PAGE 20 - -=8.= So summoning a mood etc. - - How do Le Bon’s stories change as night comes on? Is his - psychology effective? Note the increase in the fears of Jamie. - -=11.= Of men outnumbered: and like him of old, etc. - - “Him of old”—Æneas in Æneid, Book II. - -=23.= Gray-souled, he wakened to a dawn of gray, - - “Gray-souled”—meaning? “A poet is known by his epithets.” - - Define: lugubriously, garrulous. - - - PAGE 21 - -=1.= And felt that something strong had gone away. - - What strong thing had gone away? - -=5.= Jules, snug and snoring in his blanket there, etc. - - Is it natural that the conscious living Jules should seem more - real to the boy than his unconscious friend? - -=6.= Just so, pain etc. - - Note the epigram. Is it a true one? - -=14.= But grappled with the angel. - - Jacob in Genesis. - -=18.= Many men May tower, etc. - - Would such a statement be peculiarly true of a boy like Jamie? - - Recall his conduct in the Ree fight. - -=24.= Nor might a fire be lit, - - Note the shrewdness of Jules in failing to light a fire. - - - PAGE 22 - -What shows that Jamie is at the breaking point? - -=4.= And with it lulled the fight, as on a field, etc. - - The crisis of the disease. - -=9.= It would soon be o’er, etc. - - Jules talks in sentimental vein. Sentimental people are very - often cruel. - -=17.= To dig a hole that might conceal a man; - - Would Jamie have resented the digging of a grave four days - earlier? - - Jules easily weeps. So do many insincere people. - - Define: beleaguered, mutability, immemorial, funerary. - - - PAGES 23–25 - -The last stage of Jamie’s breakdown. - -Had you any doubt that Jules would beget panic in Jamie? How much do you -blame Jamie? Why did Le Bon take Hugh’s gun, blanket, and knife? - - - THE AWAKENING - - - PAGE 26 - -Note that the last line of the first division of the poem rhymes with -the first line of the second division. Have you noticed that many times -the rhyming lines close one paragraph and open the next? The effect of -this device is to keep the mind of the reader in strain for what is to -follow. - -What is a couplet? Is the poem written in couplets? How is the cæsura -handled in this poem? Compare with Pope’s method in “Essay on Man.” - -=3.= But some globose immensity of blue - - Note epithets in this line. How comprehensive! - -=7.= So one late plunged into the lethal sleep, etc. - - The sensation of the awakening is likened to the possible - experience of one in death. The author is much interested in - such matters. - - Define “lethal.” What literary associations with this word? - -=12.= The quiet steep-arched splendor of the day. - - At what time of day did Hugh awake? - - - PAGE 27 - -=2.= But when he would obey, the hollow skies etc. - - Note the suddenness of the loss of consciousness as expressed in - the metaphor: “the hollow skies,” etc. - -=5.= Remote unto his horizontal gaze - -=6.= He saw the world’s end kindle to a blaze etc. - - At what time did Hugh re-awaken? - - What is the effect upon the reader of the expression “world’s - end” rather than “east”? - -=9.= Dawn found the darkling reaches of his mind, etc. - - A figure from archæology. Explain. - -=13.= Men school the dream to build the past anew - - What part of speech is “school”? - -=17.= Wherein men talked as ghosts above a grave. - - This is the second suggestion that Hugh was vaguely conscious of - what happened before his awakening. - - Define: shards, torsos, rubble, sag. - - - PAGE 28 - -=5.= Sickened with torture he lay huddled there. - - Note the vividness of such words as, “sickened,” “torture,” - “huddled,” which appeal both to muscular sense and to sight. - -=7.= Proportioned to the might that felt the chain. - - Explain. - -=10.= That vacancy about him like a wall, etc. - - The power of that which yields and yet restrains suggests the - sense of helplessness that came to Hugh. This feeling is often - brought out in the later portions of the poem. - -=20.= Grimly amused, he raised his head, etc. - - What was the effect of “the empty distance” and “the twitter of - a lonely bird” on Hugh? Why question whether there was something - wrong? - - Define: collusive, bleak. - - - PAGE 29 - -On this and the following page we have the stages by which Hugh learns -that he has been deserted. Note the steps: (1) Major Henry is prompt, -(2) many hoof prints of horses, (3) the grave known for a grave by its -shape, (4) ash heap and litter of a camp, (5) the trail. - -=8.= Of course the horse had bolted - - That is, run away. - -=17.= A grave—a grave, etc. - - Does Hugh really wonder if he has been dead and has arisen? - - For the third time it is stated that Hugh heard the talk of his - comrades while he was prostrate from the bear’s attack. - -=25.= Suspicion, like a little smoky lamp etc. - - Note simile. Is it effective? - - - PAGE 30 - -=1.= That daubs the murk but cannot fathom it, - - Hugh’s suspicions are vague as yet. - -=6.= The smoky glow flared wildly, - - What “smoky glow”? - -=10.= A gloom-devouring ecstasy of flame, - -=11.= A dazing conflagration of belief! - - Suspicion passes to certainty. Explain the whole figure from the - beginning. - -=12.= Plunged deeper than the seats of hate and grief, etc. - - Does nature sometimes seem to mock our moods? The older - literatures seem unconscious of this psychology. Note Bryant’s - “Death of the Flowers.” - - Define: daub, grotesque, ecstasy, apathetic, complacence, - connivance. - - - PAGE 31 - -=2.= His manifest betrayal by a friend - - Why does the desertion of Jamie make that of others seem - nothing? - -=13.= Yet not as they for whom tears fall like dew etc. - - Hugh’s tears are not shallow; they indicate a lasting sorrow. - - Those who weep easily, easily forget. - -=18.= He lay, a gray old ruin of a man, etc. - - Both physically and emotionally, a remarkable metaphor. - -=20.= And then at length, as from the long ago, etc. - - His suffering makes the time of friendship seem long ago. A song - may be both sweet and sad, as may also love. - -=25.= ... as in a foggy night - - - PAGE 32 - -=1.= The witchery of semilunar light, etc. - - A fine comparison of the spiritual to the material. - - Define: zany, retrospective. - -=6.= As under snow the dæmon of the Spring. - - “Dæmon,” spirit. - -=8.= Nor might treachery recall, etc. - - He had been loved, nothing could change that; he could go on - loving and nothing could change that either. This is the high - note in devotion. “If ye love them that love you, what thank - have ye?” - -=16.= Upon the vessel of a hope so great, etc. - - The lover is only the vessel of the great passion. - -=21.= Now, as before, collusive sky and plain etc. - - Sky and plain have conspired to take Hugh’s life, so it seems to - him. They represent distance that yields but still is - unconquered. This idea haunts the “Crawl.” - - - PAGE 33 - -=1.= For, after all, what thing do men desire, etc. - - Food and shelter are necessary to any life; all values rest upon - them. This idea is fundamental in modern thinking. - -=20.= Jamie was a thief! - - Why Jamie more than others? - - Define “gage.” - - - PAGE 34 - -=5.= And through his veins regenerating fire etc. - - Anger made him strong, while grief made him weak. Is that not - true to nature? - -=7.= Now once again he scanned the yellow plain, etc. - - Hugh projects his subjective condition on nature. This idea - occurs often in the poem. Is it a true conception? - -=14.= Alas for those who fondly place above, etc. - - A continuation of the philosophy found on page 32. Love is the - supreme thing, not the person who is loved. The way is itself - the goal. - -=19.= A bitter-sweet narcotic to the will, etc. - - Note how Hugh’s hate arouses his energies. For his purposes it - is stronger than love. - - Define: bellowsed, regenerating, lethargy, conspirant, merging, - vulnerable, narcotic. - - - PAGE 35 - -=11.= Leaning to the spring, etc. - - The final horror, his face, fixes Hugh’s hate to a steady, - burning purpose, seeming equal to his task. - - - PAGE 36 - -=5.= That waste to be surmounted as a wall, - -=6.= Sky-rims and yet more sky-rims steep to climb— - - In gazing across a vast space to the horizon, one seems to be - looking uphill. This is especially noticeable on the ocean. - -=7.= That simulacrum of enduring Time— - - One traveling long distances by his own power, and having no - means of measurement, conceives space not in miles, but in - duration of effort. - -=8.= The hundred empty miles ‘twixt him and where - - Why “empty” miles? - -=11.= One hairsbreadth farther from the earth and sky - - He was as remote from all things as it was possible to be, so - why not try! - - Define “simulacrum.” - - - THE CRAWL - - - PAGE 37 - -The Crawl is the most detailed account of physical suffering and -endurance extant in poetry. Note the large number of words that make -direct appeal to the sensations of thirst, weariness, chronic pain, -fever, delirium. Again the sense of loneliness, of betrayal, of a -conspiracy to destroy him appears everywhere in Hugh’s experience. The -monotony of the journey appears in its slowness, which is indicated in -many ways. - -Before describing the Crawl, Neihardt first found out what vegetable -growths would be found on the trail, the character of the soil, how the -streams would erode, etc. The poet is true to all nature, even natural -science. - -=3.= And through it ran the short trail to the goal. - - What was the “goal”? Ree villages lay nearly directly east. - -=4.= Thereon a grim turnpikeman waited toll: - - Who is the “grim turnpikeman”? - -=7.= Should make their foe the haunter of a tale. - - Hugh was killed on the Yellowstone by the Rees in 1832. - -=9.= The scoriac region of a hell burned black - - The bad lands of the Little Missouri, so made to appear by - spontaneous combustion of lignite deposits. - -=13.= Should bid for pity at the Big Horn’s mouth. - - Locate the Big Horn’s mouth, where Henry and his men spent the - winter of 1823–1824. - - - PAGE 38 - -=2.= Whereon the feeders of the Moreau head— - - Head waters of the Moreau. Locate the Moreau. - -=3.= Scarce more than deep-carved runes of vernal rain. - - The rune was a character in the ancient alphabet and ultimately - came to stand for poetry. Here the original meaning as a deep - cut is restored. - -=6.= Defiant clumps of thirst embittered grass, etc. - - Note how exactly the characteristics of an arid landscape are - set forth in such phrases as “thirst embittered grass,” “parched - earth,” “bared and fang-like roots,” “dwarf thickets,” “stunted - fruits.” The poet is shown by exactness, not inaccuracy. - -=15.= And made the scabrous gulch appear to shake - - The very sound of the word “scabrous” suggests dryness. - -=20.= And where the mottled shadow dripped as ink etc. - - The shadow of leaves on the yellow earth is black. The - description is absolutely accurate. “A poet is known by his - epithets.” - - - PAGE 39 - -=3.= Amid ironic heavens in the West— - - Why “ironic heavens”? - -=6.= A purpling panorama swept away. - - Why “purpling”? - -=7.= Scarce farther than a shout might carry - - How far had Hugh traveled in the day? - -=16.= Into the quiet house of no false friend. - - What “quiet house”? - -=17–20.= Alas for those who seek a journey’s end—etc. - - The philosophy of these lines is that the way is the important - thing, not the end. This is a part of Neihardt’s - life-philosophy. - -=21.= Now swoopingly the world of dream broke through - - Note that no two of Hugh’s dreams are alike. In this dream his - revenge is futile. Is that the nature of revenge, to defeat - itself? - - How many lines are taken to tell this dream? How much in little - space! - - - PAGE 40 - -=1.= Gazing far, etc. - - Another remarkable description of the sky and prairie and their - effect upon Hugh. - - Make a list of epithets descriptive of both sky and prairie as - you find them on pages 26–27–28–29–30–32–34–36–39. Epithets may - be adjectives or verbs or nouns. Such are “globose immensity,” - “smoky steep,” “serene antagonist,” “negativity of might.” - -=9.= Seemed that vast negativity of might; etc. - - In what sense is the might of distance negative? - - What was the “frustrate vision of the night”? - - What does the poet mean by saying it came “moonwise”? - - What is Hugh’s mood when he feels that the foe is “naught but - yielding air”? - -=13.= A vacancy to fill with his intent! - - What is the grammatical construction of “to fill”? - -=15.= Three-footed; and the vision goaded him. - - What vision “goaded him”? - -=24.= Served but to brew more venom for his hate, - - Why is hate spoken of as venomous? What has modern Physiology to - say of this? - -=25.= And nerved him to avail the most with least. - - What is meant by “avail the most with least”? - - - PAGE 41 - -=10.= Devoured the chance-flung manna of the plains - - “Manna”—what is the reference? - -=18.= The coulee deepened; yellow walls flung high, etc. - - Accurate description of arid conditions by their effect on Hugh. - - - PAGE 42 - -=6.= It had the acrid tang of broken trust - -=7.= The sweetish, tepid taste of feigning love! - - A projection of the subjective into the objective. - -=14.= Clear as a friend’s heart, ‘twas, and seeming cool— - - The same as above. - -=22.= And lo, the tang of that wide insolence - -=23.= Of sky and plain was acrid in the draught! - - Note again the attitude of nature, as Hugh sees it, in its “wide - insolence.” - -=25.= How like fine sentiment the mirrored sky etc. - - The cruelty of sentimentalism. Note on this page the steps by - which the sense of thirst is induced in the reader and the - corresponding disappointment increased; “dry as strewn bones - bleaching to a desert sky,” “grateful ooze,” “sucked the mud,” - “sweetish, tepid taste,” “taunted thirst,” “damp spots,” then - the description of the pool and the “famished horses.” Is not - the reader as thirsty as Hugh and nearly as keenly disappointed? - - - PAGE 43 - -=8.= Nor did he rise till, vague with stellar light, etc. - - Compare with Bryant’s “Forest Hymn.” - - At what line does Hugh fall asleep? At what line does he begin - to awake? How many days since “The Crawl” began? - -=17.= And Hugh lay gazing till the whole resolved etc. - - What is the difference between this dream and that of the - previous night? Why? Does Hugh still love Jamie? Would he kill - him in such a mood? How many lines in the dream? - - Define: specious, gulch, buttressing, Host, nave, architrave. - - - PAGE 44 - -Hugh has not yet reached the prairie on the divide between the Grand and -the Moreau, though he has journeyed two days. How far do you think he -has crawled? - -=3.= Loath to go, Hugh lay beside the pool and pondered fate, etc. - - Why is Hugh less eager to renew his journey than on the previous - morning? Do you suppose his dream had anything to do with the - matter? His weariness? - -=11.= Sustaining wrath returning with the toil. - - Why does wrath return? - -=23.= Of strength that had so very much to buy. - - What had his strength “to buy”? - - Define: efface, cauldron. - - - PAGE 45 - -=11.= Sleep out the glare. With groping hands for sight, - - Hugh sleeps on the afternoon of the third day of his journey. - - Explain “groping hands for sight.” - -=14.= Or sensed—the dusky mystery of plain. - - Why dusky mystery? Can you see a prairie by starlight? - -=15.= Gazing aloft, he found the capsized Wain - - “Capsized Wain,” Bear. What time of night? - -=16–17.= Thereto he set his back; - - What direction did he take? How much knowledge of the - constellations must have meant to primitive men! To sailors! To - hunters! Read Bryant’s “Hymn to the North Star.” - -=19.= The star-blanched summit of a lonely butte - -=20.= And thitherward he dragged his heavy limb. - - Note the butte used to guide the crawler. Could a plainsman see - a butte by starlight? Could a “tenderfoot”? - -=21.= It seemed naught moved, etc. - - The movement on a prairie and in the night seems objectless. - - It gives a supreme sense of monotony. Time stopped. We measure - time by events; no events, no time. - - Define: blanched, incipient. - - - PAGE 46 - -=4.= Sheer deep upon unfathomable deep, etc. - - A curious but vivid figure, expressing a sense of darkness and - uninterrupted silence. - -=8.= So lapsed the drowsy æon of the night— - - The monotony makes the hours seem a moment drawn out. - -=10.= And then, as quickened to somnambulance, etc. - - Note the steps of the dawning, and the suddenness of the coming - of day. The description is not only vivid but accurate. - -=20.= Scarce had he munched the hoarded roots, when came etc. - - Why the difference between this and previous dreams? - - Define “tensile.” - - - PAGE 47 - -=8.= It was the hour when cattle straggle home etc. - - A fine lyric. This is one of many memory pictures of Hugh’s - travels. Nothing in the poem tells directly of Hugh’s past. - - This silence suggests tragedy dimly illumined by the memory - pictures. Is Hugh an imaginative man? Enumerate the evening - sounds. Note the steps marking the transition from evening to - night. How many days has Hugh crawled? Hugh is known to have - been a Pennsylvanian of Scotch descent. - - Define “peripheries.” - - - PAGE 48 - -=1.= Blank as the face of fate. In listless mood etc. - - Fate is associated with the inevitable and unrevealed. “In - listless mood” etc.—the end of a day of feverish dreams finds - Hugh weakened and caring less to live. - -=3.= And met the night. The new moon, low and far, etc. - - Note the phase of the moon. - -=7.= The kiote voiced the universal lack. - - Hunger. - -=8.= As from a nether fire, the plain gave back - -=9.= The swelter of the noon-glare to the gloom. - - The heat of the prairie is often very noticeable after sunset. - -=12.= Why seek some further nowhere on the plain? - - What “nowhere”? - -=14.= So spoke some loose-lipped spirit of despair; - - Why “loose-lipped”? - -=15.= And still Hugh moved, volitionless—a weight, etc. - - Volitionless—The power of habit is compared to that of the moon - over the tides. - -=18.= Now when the night wore on in middle swoon, - -=21.= To breathe became an act of conscious will. - -=22.= The starry waste was ominously still. - -=24.= As through a tunnel in the atmosphere— - - Note the steps of the coming storm: _middle swoon_, a drowsy - night, stifling condition of the air, utter silence with sense - of impending disaster, _as through a tunnel_, etc. - - The description of the storm is exact to the minutest detail. It - is not interspersed with more or less sentimental comments as is - Byron’s description of the storm on the Alps (Childe Harold, - Canto III), yet it gains in power by its adherence to truth. - - - PAGE 49 - -=4.= An oily film seemed spread upon the sky - - Storm still approaching. “The oily film,” the gradual darkening - of the atmosphere. - -=9.= Upon hell’s burlesque sabbath for the lost, - - What could be more hopeless than “Sabbath in Hell”? - -=12.= Hugh chose not, yet he crawled; - - Habit keeps him moving. - -=13.= He felt the futile strife was nearly o’er. - - Hugh will die unless relief comes. - -=14.= And as he went, a muffled rumbling grew, - - Far away thunder, the next step in the approach of the storm. - -=16.= Somehow ‘twas coextensive with his thirst, - - Confusion of objective and subjective, a not uncommon experience - of extreme weakness. - - - PAGE 50 - -=12.= Star-hungry, ranged in regular array, etc. - - Note the use of constellations to indicate the vast expanse and - swift movement of the cloud; another illustration of the poet’s - power to see things in the large. Locate the constellations - named. - - Explain the figure, “star-hungry.” - -=19.= Deep in the further murk sheet-lightning flared. - - Sheet-lightning—covering the sky like a sheet, sometimes called - heat lightning—a common phenomenon in prairie storms. - -=24.= What turmoil now? Lo, ragged columns hurled, etc. - - Explain “ragged columns.” - - - PAGE 51 - -=2.= Along the solid rear a dull boom runs! - - Explain “solid rear.” - -=11.= Reveals the butte-top tall and lonely there - -=12.= Like some gray prophet contemplating doom. - - The second time the butte has been described. - -=16.= Ghosts of the ancient forest—or old rain, etc. - - Geology tells us that these plains were once covered with - forests. - -=19.= That e’er evolving, ne’er resolving sound - -=20.= Gropes in the stifling hollow of the night. - - Never fully developing. “Evolving,” “resolving”—technical - expressions in music. - - - PAGE 52 - -The rush of the rain, the constant flare of lightning, the sudden -cessation, as well as the slow and dread beginning, are characteristic -of storms in semi-arid countries. This poem reveals every phase of -nature on the prairies and none more vividly than the storm. - -Define: hurtling, wassail, sardonic, flaw, ravin, murk, cosmic, sodden. - - - PAGE 53 - -=3.= The butte soared, like a soul serene and white - -=4.= Because of the katharsis of the night. - - The butte appears again, this time as the symbol of a soul that - has struggled and triumphed. The principle of Katharsis, - purification, is a principle of the Greek drama as worked out by - Aristotle. To what degree is it a principle of life? - -=5.= All day Hugh fought with sleep and struggled on - - Which day? Why does Hugh no longer travel at night? - -=16.= Hope flared in Hugh, until the memory came - -=17.= Of him who robbed a sleeping friend and fled. - - Explain. - -=18.= Then hate and hunger merged; etc. - - Note again that Hugh finds Jamie’s treachery everywhere. It is - an obsession with him. - - Define “amethyst.” - - - PAGE 54 - -How many days has Hugh crawled? How far has he journeyed? - -=5.= Swooped by. The dream of crawling and the act etc. - - An appeal to the muscular sense. - - Such dreams bespeak extreme weariness. - -=8.= The butte, outstripped at eventide, now seemed etc. - - The butte now becomes the measure of a progress infinitely slow, - a source of discouragement. - -=13.= Whose hand-in-pocket saunter kept the pace. - - Why “hand-in-pocket”? - -=16.= What rest and plenty on the other side! - - Hugh must have encouragement. The break in the prairie, the - crest of the divide, furnishes that. Explain the psychology. How - far is the divide from the Grand? - -=20.= All day it seemed that distant Pisgah Height - - Why “Pisgah”? - - Define “lush.” - - - PAGE 55 - -Hugh is near to starvation. The adventure with the gopher goes from -waking reality to dream on the following night and to waking dream the -next day, revealing how sick Hugh had become. - -=10.= The battered gray face leered etc. - - Note that the vivid picture of the face of Hugh is secured by - the choice of a few meaningful words, battered, leered, slaver, - anticipating jaws. - -=13.= Evolving twilight hovered to a pause - - The twilight pause means what? - -=18.= Hugh jerked the yarn. It broke. - - Note the brevity of the climax, “It broke.” - -=19.= Down swooped the night, - - How many days of journeying? The dream is a nightmare while the - previous one was relatively peaceful. Why the difference? - - - PAGE 56 - -=3.= Woke hordes of laughers down the giddy yawn - - What “hordes of laughers”? - -=5.= Dream dawn, dream-noon, dream-twilight! - - Night and day are “telescoped” for Hugh by the monotony of - crawling either awake or in dreams and never getting anywhere. - -=17.= Dream-dawn, dream-noon, dream-night! And still obsessed - - Why the repetition? - -=18.= By that one dream more clamorous than the rest, - - What is the one dream? Why is it a dream? - - Define: gully, turbid, relict. - - - PAGE 57 - -=3.= Yet had the pleasant lie befriended him, - -=4.= And now the brutal fact had come to stare. - - What was the “pleasant lie”? The brutal fact? - -=7.= And nursed that deadly adder of the soul, - -=8.= Self-pity. Let the crows swoop down and feed, etc. - - Sentimentalism is soul-flabbiness. - -=15.= And lo, a finger-nail, etc. - - The accumulation of great results by infinitesimal accretions is - one of the everlasting surprises in life. - -=21.= So fare the wise on Pisgah. - - How do the wise use their Pisgahs? To enjoy or to inspire to - further effort? - - Define: facture, dwarfed, Titan, triumvirate. - - - PAGE 58 - -=2.= Some higher Hugh observed the baser part. - - What was the higher, what the baser part? - -=3.= So sits the artist throned above his art, etc. - - The hurt is nothing, the achievement is all. No man who is worth - anything but counts his work as more than all else. - -=5.= It seemed the wrinkled hills pressed in to stare, etc. - - The manifestations of nature become Hugh’s audience and he falls - into the throes of composition. Most of our thinking is in words - uttered to persons present, absent, or imagined. - -=11.= So wrought the old evangel of high daring, etc. - - The true philosophy of life, to be a “victor in the moment.” - -=23.= That day the wild geese flew - - What is the effect of their cries? Describe the appearance of - the sky. - - Define: recks, travail, evangel. - - - PAGE 59 - -Present, past and fancy are all mingled in Hugh’s experiences this day, -showing his weakened condition, and the feeling for Jamie obsesses him. - -=9.= Hate slept that day, - - Was it hate or an inversion of love? - -=18.= At last the buzzard beak no longer tore - - What “buzzard beak”? - - Define: lethargy, maudlin. - - - PAGE 60 - -=4.= And now serenely beautiful etc. - - These lines were suggested to the author by a picture, “The - Death of Absalom.” - -=6.= Thus vexed with doleful whims the crawler went etc. - - Hugh would have died at this time had he not drifted into the - rugged vale. - -=11.= Told how the gray-winged gale blew out the day. - - Why “gray-winged”? - -=20.= It seemed no wind had ever come that way, - -=21.= Nor sound dwelt there, nor echo found the place. - - How is utter quiet expressed! - - - PAGE 61 - -=7.= Returning hunger bade him rise; in vain - -=8.= He struggled with a fine-spun mesh of pain etc. - - An appeal to muscular sense. - -=16.= In that hip-wound he had for Jamie’s sake - - That “hip-wound” brings back the desire for revenge, a close - association of ideas. Have you had such experiences? - -=19.= Was turned again with every puckering twinge. - - “Puckering twinge,” another appeal to muscular sense. - -=20.= Far down the vale a narrow winding fringe etc. - - Having passed the divide Hugh slept at the head of a valley that - farther down becomes the bed of a little creek flowing into the - Moreau. - - Define: mesh, trammelled, puckering, betokened. - - - PAGE 62 - -=6.= These two, as comrades, struggled south together— - - Contrast the two “comrades,” each journeying to the many - fathomed peace, one consumed with “lust to kill,” the other - singing on the way. A bit of wise philosophy is suggested. - -=9.= And one went crooning of the moon-wooed vast; - - What is the “moon-wooed vast” and to what is it compared? - - - PAGE 63 - -=12.= All streams ran thin; and when he pressed a hand etc. - - Why did he do this? - -=20.= Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow, - - Another of many sunset pictures in the poem and no two are - alike. “Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow,” a prairie - sunset in one line. - -=24.= Hugh saw what seemed the tempest of a dream - - Why a “dream” tempest? - - Define: phasic, weather-breeding. - - - PAGE 64 - -=3.= A dust cloud deepened down the dwindling river; - -=4.= Upon the distant tree-tops ran a shiver etc. - - Note the pictures suggested in “dust cloud deepened,” “upon the - distant tree-tops ran a shiver,” “huddle thickets writhed,” - “green gloom gapes,” “mill and wrangle in a turbid flow.” - -=13.= Bound for the winter pastures of the Platte! - - The Platte was an especially fine bison country. - -=17.= The lopped moon weltered in the dust-bleared East. - - How long since Hugh began his journey? - -=18.= Sleep came and gave a Barmecidal feast. - - In the Arabian Nights one of the Barmecides, a wealthy family, - served a beggar a pretended feast on beautiful dishes that were - empty. - -=19.= About a merry flame were simmering etc. - - The appeal to the sense of hunger is powerful. Compare Vergil, - Æneid, Book I, 210–215. - -=21.= And tender tongues that never tasted snow, - - Why “never tasted snow”? - - - PAGE 65 - -=2.= So sounds a freshet when the banks are full etc. - - Note comparison of the movement of the herd to a swollen river - clogged by débris. - -=8.= Through which the wolves in doleful tenson tossed - - Tenson: among the troubadours a contest between two singers. - -=9.= From hill to hill the ancient hunger-song. - - Hunger is the oldest form of suffering, and prayer for food the - oldest prayer. - -=15.= With some gray beast that fought with icy fang. - - Why “icy” fang? “white world”? - - Define: eerie, myriads. - - - PAGE 66 - -=8.= The herd would pass and vanish in the night - - How long was the herd in passing? - - During this time, and for fifty years thereafter, bison herds - often covered the plains as far as the eye could see. In the - 60’s travellers on the old Oregon trail often journeyed through - one solid herd for as much as three days, and on either side the - prairie was filled to the horizon. - -=23.= So might a child assail the crowding sea! - - The comparison of the on-rushing herd to high sea tide, notable - in itself, is greatly strengthened by the comparison of Hugh to - a child assaulting the waters. Note the impulse of the defeated - to act in absurd ways. Note the epithet, “crowding.” - - - PAGE 67 - -=2.= Slept till the white of morning o’er the hill - -=3.= Was like a whisper groping in a hush. - - The comparison of light to sound, “the white of morning like a - whisper,” is unusual but true. - -=4.= The stream’s low trill seemed loud. - - Why seemed the low trill loud? - -=9.= Smacked of the autumn, and a heavy dew etc. - - What association of sensations brings the picture of the autumn - fields? - - Note how quickly the vision passed, an illustration of the - author’s power of concentration. Hugh was born in Pennsylvania. - What was his father’s business? How do you know from this and - other passages? See the lyrical passage on page 47. - -=15.= He brooded on the mockeries of Chance, - - On page 58 we saw Hugh in the act of literary composition; now - we see him a philosopher. This is a common fact among what we - call the “common” people. Note the grave-digger scene in Hamlet, - Act V. - - Define: smacked, hoar, frore. - - - PAGE 68 - -=1.= Revealed the havoc of the living flood, etc. - - Point out each word and statement that pictures the havoc - wrought in the valley by the herd. - -=9.= A food-devouring plethora of food - - Devouring what food? What plethora? - -=10.= Had come to make a starving solitude! - - What idea is modified by the word “starving”? - -=16.= That still the weak might perish. - - Express this idea in other terms. Note unusual use of the word - “still.” State the biological “law of evolution.” - -=24.= Within himself the oldest cause of war - - What is the “oldest cause of war”? The newest? - - Define: plethora, raucous, guerdon. - - - PAGE 69 - -=8.= He saw a bison carcass black with crows, etc. - - This picture is unique, cruel, almost revolting, but wonderfully - true. - -=18.= To die contending with a living foe, - -=19.= Than fight the yielding distance and the lack. - - To engage in a short struggle with a visible foe with a definite - end near and certain is far easier than to endure the long drawn - and indefinite. This is because man is primarily well equipped - for the immediate struggle of hunting and war, but is not gifted - by nature with power to endure. - - - PAGE 70 - -=5.= The wolf’s a coward, who, in goodly packs, etc. - - The wolf pack symbolizes the mob. The law of mob life is - cruelty, and cruelty is always cowardly. - -=10.= How some great beast that shambled like a bear - - Why “shambled like a bear”? - -=24.= Woe in the silken meshes of the friend, - -=25.= Weal in the might and menace of the foe. - - The friend often weakens his friend. The opposition of the enemy - develops his strength. - - Define: lacerated, vituperative, prodigious, frenzy, weal. - - - PAGE 71 - -=14.= When sleep is weirdest and a moment’s flight, - - Dreams often come just before waking. - -=20.= Hoof-smitten leagues consuming in a dust. - - What is the syntax of “leagues”? Explain the line. - -=23.= A corpse, yet heard the muffled parleying etc. - - Note how the idea that he was really dead haunts Hugh both - sleeping and waking. Find other places in the poem where this is - true. - - - PAGE 72 - -=3.= The babble flattened to a blur of gray— - - A comparison of sound to light. - -=15.= Could they be the Sioux? - - The Sioux had been allies in the Leavenworth Campaign, while the - Rees were enemies. Note page 1. - - Note on this page the vivid picture of the Indians riding in the - fog. - -=24.= The outflung feelers of a tribe a-stir - - Meaning of “feelers”? - - - PAGE 73 - -=8.= And wasna! - - Bison meat, shredded, dried, and mixed with bison tallow and - dried bullberries, the mixture being packed in bladders. - -=11.= But kinsman of the blood of daring men. - - Actual “blood brotherhood” between Indian and White was not - uncommon and bravery and loyalty were the basis of such - relation. - -=13.= O Friend-Betrayer at the Big Horn’s mouth, etc. - - Note how Hugh’s imagination rushes on to the killing of Jamie. - -=17.= From where a cloud of startled blackbirds rose - - What startles the blackbirds? - - Note on this page, and the next, various hints of the coming of - the Indians and how important the matter was to the starving - watcher from the bluff. - -=20.= Embroiled the parliament of feathered shrews? - - What are the “feathered shrews”? - -=22.= Flackering strepent; now a sooty shower, etc. - - “Flackering strepent”—fluttering and noisy, a fitting - description of the startled flock; onomatopœia. - - The entire picture of the blackbirds is notable. They are a - “boiling cloud,” “a sooty shower,” with big flakes and driven by - a squall, they are “cold black fire.” All these terms are - startling but exact. - - Define: parfleche, panniers, maize, parliament, shrews. - - - PAGE 74 - -=4.= What augury in orniscopic words - -=5.= Did yon swart sibyls on the morning scrawl? - - A rhetorical question to indicate the dread interest Hugh felt - in the question “Sioux or Ree?” - - Note the fancy that words are written on the sky. - -=13.= In their van - -=14.= Aloof and lonely rode a gnarled old man etc. - - “Gnarled” like a tree. A most vivid picture of Elk Tongue, a - famous Ree chief. - -=16.= Beneath his heavy years, yet haughtily - -=17.= He wore them like the purple of a king. - - His great age is like a royal robe. “Gray hairs are a crown of - glory.” - -=18.= Keen for a goal, as from the driving string etc. - - In how many and significant ways his face is described in these - lines: keen for a goal, like a flinty arrow-head, with a - brooding stare. Directions for a statue could scarcely be more - exact or more full of suggestion. - - Define: ruck, augury, orniscopic, swart, sibyl, attenuated, - gnarled, piebald. - - - PAGE 75 - -Read the entire description of the Indians at one sitting and get the -unified effect. - -=12.= Such foeman as no warrior ever slew. - - Hunger. - -=18.= And hurled them shivering back upon the beast. - - According to the Greek myth men were little better than beasts - until Prometheus brought fire to them from heaven in a reed. - - How nearly does the myth accord with truth? - -=21.= Hope fed them with a dream of buffalo etc. - - With primitive man feast and famine were often close together. - -=23.= Home with their Pawnee cousins on the Platte, - - Locate the Platte. The Rees and Pawnees speak the same tongue - with slight variations. - - Define “ravelled.” - - - PAGE 76 - -=2.= The rich-in-ponies rode, etc. - - The first scene in the moving picture shows the contrast of rich - and poor that existed even in the most primitive society. - -=3.= For much is light and little is a load etc. - - What is meant? The sentence is a paradox. - -=10.= Whining because the milk they got was thinned etc. - - The squaws with their crying babies are the material of the - second scene, followed by the striplings. - -=14.= How fair life is beyond the beckoning blue, etc. - - “Distance lends enchantment.” - -=15.= Cold-eyed the grandsires plodded, for they knew, etc. - - Note contrasting words: striplings, grandsires; strutted, - plodded. - - One group saw visions, the other was disillusioned. - -=17.= In what lone land. - - What is meant? - -=20.= Stooped to the fancied burden of the race; - - What is the “burden of the race”? - -=25.= The lean cayuses toiled. - - Cayuse, a broncho, originally one bred by the Cayuse Indians. - -=27.= To see a world flow by on either side, - - How does the world “flow by”? - - - PAGE 77 - -The dog was an ever present feature of Indian life. Note the author’s -familiarity with the dog. - -=12.= Yielded to the squaws’ - -=13.= Inverted mercy and a slow-won grave. - - “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.” Why? - - For the sake of the protection of the young. Indian fighters had - a special horror of falling into the hands of the squaws. - - Hate and love are opposite sides of the same shield. In - proportion as woman loves her children and the protectors of - them she hates anybody and anything that menaces them. - -=14.= Since Earth’s first mother scolded from a cave - - A true picture of social origins. - -=17.= To match the deadly venom brewed above - -=18.= The lean, blue, blinding heart-fires of her love. - - Note the witches’ cauldron that bubbles here and the fire that - burns below it. - -=20.= But thrice three seasons yet should swell the past, etc. - - Glass was killed by the Rees in 1832. - -=21.= So was it writ, ere Fate’s keen harriers etc. - - Why is Fate capitalized? - - Define: palimpsest, harriers. - - - PAGE 78 - -=3.= For that weird pass whereto the fleet are slow, - - The fleet are the young, but the old reach the “weird pass” - first. - -=16.= Scarce had he crossed the open flat, and won etc. - - On this page and the next we have the temptation of Hugh to kill - the squaw. (_a_) Do you feel that Hugh will kill her? (_b_) - Would he be justified in so doing? (_c_) Would you be satisfied - to have the hero of the story slay a weak old woman, though an - Indian? - - Whom does Hugh see sitting haloed like a saint? (page 79) - - What impression on Hugh does the whole adventure make? - - - PAGE 80 - -=3.= He reached a river. Leaning to a pool etc. - - Was the reaction against his own pity natural? - -=14.= That somehow some sly Jamie of a dream - -=15.= Had plundered him again; - - Again the obsession concerning Jamie. There seems a suggestion - of insanity in this. Is the pursuit of vengeance always insane? - -=18.= Now when the eve in many-shaded grays etc. - - Another prairie sunset. Note that every description of the - prairie is woven directly into the story. No two are alike. - -=21.= Hugh paused perplexed. Elusive, haunting, dim, etc. - - A comparison of pure sense to pure idea is unusual but true, for - ideas rest upon sense perception. - - Define: crone, fleered. - - - PAGE 81 - -=4.= It seemed the sweet - -=5.= Allure of home. - - Association by sense of smell—smoke, fire, home in the evening. - -=12.= Hearth-lit within, its windows were as eyes etc. - - The comparison of an old farmhouse to an old mother. Point out - pathos in each. - -=21.= A two-tongued herald wooing hope and fear, - - Meaning? Compare Æneid, Book I, 661. - - Select a lyric from this page. - - Define: troll, recrudescent. - - - PAGE 82 - -=2.= And reached a bluff’s top. In a smudge of red etc. - - Another sunset picture. Where were the “pools of gloom”? - - How comes the “mottled” effect? - -=10.= He lay upon the bare height, fagged, forlorn, - - Hugh is again near to collapse. - -=17.= Then with a start etc. - - How well the first stage of the finding and appropriation of - fire has been pictured as the effect of smell! Now comes the - second stage. The whole incident epitomizes in wonderful way the - meaning of fire to mankind. Note the beauty of the comparison of - the flame to a lily. - - Define: mottled, pluming. - - - PAGE 83 - -=4.= With pounding heart Hugh crawled along the height - - Why “with pounding heart”? - -=15.= Keen to possess once more the ancient gift. - - Of Prometheus to man. - - Define: doddering, burgeoning, tenuous. - - - PAGE 84 - -=1.= Arose, and made an altar of the place. - - Fire worship is as old as the race. Hugh is the priest, the East - Wind a religious novice who sings in the ceremonials, the night - is the temple, and in response to the worship, “Conjuries of - interwoven breath,” the fire god appears in the burning wood. - -=5.= The Wind became a chanting acolyte. - - Why have an East Wind? - -=10.= Once more the freightage of the fennel rod - - Prometheus used a fennel rod to bring fire to mortals. - -=11.= Dissolved the chilling pall of Jovian scorn. - - Jove despised men and refused them fire. - -=13.= The face apocalyptic, and the sword - -=14.= The glory of the many-symboled Lord - -=17.= Voiced with the sound of many waters, - - All this is from Revelations, Chapter I. - - Define: acolyte, epiphanic. - - - PAGE 85 - -=11.= Then set about to view an empty camp - -=12.= As once before, etc. - - See pages 29 and 30. - - - PAGE 86 - -=1.= Among the ash-heaps; and the lean dogs ran - -=2.= And barked about him, for the love of man etc. - - Some one has said that the dog was a candidate for humanity and - just missed it. - -=8.= For ‘tis the little gifts of grudging Chance, - -=9.= Well husbanded, make victors. - - This is a principle of economy often illustrated. - -=18.= Scarce more of marvel and the sense of might, etc. - - Tennyson makes poetry out of a miraculous sword, Neihardt out of - a man-made knife. One is romanticism, the other realism. - - Which is more poetic? - - - PAGE 87 - -=1.= Not having, but the measure of desire etc. - - “A man’s riches consist of what he can do without.” Socrates - taught this philosophy. - -=2.= Who gaining more, seek most, etc. - - Explain. - -=7.= That twain wherewith Time put the brute to school, - - Who was the “brute”? How “put to school”? - -=6.= What gage of mastery in fire and tool!— - - The control of fire was the first great step in civilization and - someone has said that the invention of the bow and arrow wrought - greater changes in human life than any other invention. By - enabling man to kill at a greater range it increased his supply - of meat and so made it possible to live in larger groups. - - - PAGE 88 - -Why didn’t Hugh roast the dog instead of boiling? Note details of -preparation. Hugh ate the entire dog. Two starved Indian hunters have -been known to eat the whole carcass of a deer at one sitting. - -=13.= Hugh slept. And then—as divers, mounting, sunder etc. - - A vivid expression of a common experience on waking from - especially profound sleep. - - Define: bulimic, gage. - - - PAGE 89 - -=3.= And was the friendlike fire a Jamie too? etc. - - The natural return of a monomania. - -=12.= The sting of that antiquity of pain - - After a long rest, his former suffering seemed ancient. - -=14.= That yielding victor, fleet in being slow - - Always more space to be conquered, hence slow and certain to win - over Hugh. - -=16.= So readily the tentacles of sense, etc. - - Thinkers are just beginning to realize something of the hypnotic - power of habit and custom in the individual and in society. The - loss of the accustomed may disintegrate the life. Our author - shows keen understanding when he likens the effect upon Hugh of - the loss of fire to that of the loss of a dear one by death. A - moment ago he was here, vital, real. Now he is gone. How strange - is the world without him! - - - PAGE 90 - -=7.= A yelping of the dogs among the bluffs, etc. - - The one sound in the desolate night, the yelping of the dogs, - starts a train of ideas. The power of abstraction has made man - able to survive where less intelligent forms have perished. - - Flint can be used to skin a dog, so can steel, the two smitten - together make fire, so Hugh found his “unlocked door to life.” - -=22.= Spilled on it from the smitten stone a shower - -=23.= Of ruddy seed; and saw the mystic flower - -=24.= That genders its own summer, bloom anew! - - Explain the metaphor. - - An absolutely new figure regarding fire. - - - PAGE 91 - -=10.= Set laggard singers snatching at the tune. - - What “laggard singers”? - -=13.= And, pitching voices to the timeless woe, - - Life fundamentally sad. - -=14.= Outwailed the lilting. So the Chorus sings etc. - - In the Greek theater the Chorus sang after the actor had spoken, - always taking an opposite tone. So Hugh’s joyous song is drowned - in the wailing of the dogs. - - - PAGE 92 - -=8.= He hobbled now along a withered rill etc. - - Note the quiet of the autumn spell over the secluded place, and - the onomatopœia indicating the falling of the plums and - whispering leaves; also the crying of the lonesome dog that - makes the stillness more intense and sad. - -=10.= A cyclopean portal yawning sheer. - - “Cyclopean portal,” Homer’s Odyssey. - -=25.= Above the sunset like a stygian boat, - - The boat of Charon on the Styx, the river of the underworld. - - - PAGE 93 - -=1.= The new moon bore the spectre of the old, - - Explain. - -=3.= The valley of the tortuous Cheyenne. - - Locate the Cheyenne. - -=4.= And ere the half moon sailed the night again, etc. - - How long since Hugh left the forks of the Grand? - -=17.= Grown Atlantean in the wrestler’s craft. - - Explain “Atlantean.” - - Read “The River and I,” Chapter I, by the same author, to get - his feeling for the Missouri. - - - THE RETURN OF THE GHOST - - - PAGE 94 - -=1.= Not long Hugh let the lust of vengeance gnaw - - Note that the first line of the division of the poem rhymes with - the last line of the former. How often does this happen in the - poem? This device keeps the mind on a stretch and so keeps - interest alive. The same device is often used by the author in - passing from one paragraph to the next. - -=5.= I can not rest; for I am but the ghost etc. - - The old obsession that he actually died by the Grand, though - here used less seriously than in other places. - -=12.= With such a blizzard of a face for me! - - The epithet reveals how Hugh’s gray “ruined face” impressed men. - -=13.= For he went grayer like a poplar tree, etc. - - The simile of the face of Glass in mentioning Jamie’s treachery - and the poplar tree shaken by the first wind of a storm is true - to nature, for a poplar turns the gray side of its leaves when - shaken. - - Define: fend, kenneled. - - - PAGE 95 - -=1.= From where the year’s last keelboat hove in view - - The keelboat, shaped with keel and hence so called, from forty - to sixty feet long, carrying as much as sixty tons and pulled by - fifteen to twenty-five men, was used on the Missouri and other - navigable rivers before the day of the steamboat. - -=10.= Until the tipsy Bourgeois bawled for Glass - - The head of a trading post in the fur trading period was called - Bourgeois, a French word meaning tradesman. - -=12.= The graybeard, sitting where the light was blear, etc. - - The whole account of Hugh’s telling of this great tragedy is of - the highest excellence. We already know that Hugh is a story - teller; we have seen him composing this very tale (page 58), and - we know how his imagination sometimes carries him beyond the - actual, as when he saw Jamie dead (page 60). The effect of his - face, with its changing expressions suiting all the moods - associated with love and betrayal, his chanting songlike tones, - is shown in the muscular responses of the listeners and their - shudders when the story ends. The supreme touch comes when Hugh - tells of the slaying of Jamie as if already done. - -=19.= And his the purpose that is art’s, etc. - - To centre attention on human experience at the crucial moment - and so render it immortal. - -=20.= Whereby men make a vintage of their hearts etc. - - Turn sorrow into beauty. Is there comfort in a sad story well - told? - - - PAGE 97 - -Select the lines on this page that convey a sense of monotony. - -=16.= Past where the tawny Titan gulps the cup - - Titan, the Missouri. - -=22.= And there old times came mightily on Hugh, etc. - - Do you believe Hugh capable now of killing Jamie? - -=24.= Some troubled glory of that wind-tossed hair - - Hugh’s memory of Jamie is sad, not bitter. - - Define: cutbank, wry, tawny. - - - PAGE 98 - -=2.= So haunted with the blue of Jamie’s eyes, etc. - - The blue is sad but not treacherous as once. - -=8.= Past where the Cannon Ball and Heart come in - - Locate the Cannon Ball and the Heart. - -=18.= The chaining of the Titan. Drift ice ran. - - The story of the freezing of the river is worth noting for its - vividness, its alliterations and onomatopœia. - -=19.= The wingéd hounds of Winter ceased to bay. - - What were the “wingéd hounds”? - - - PAGE 99 - -=5.= To wait the far-off Heraclean thaw, - - Heraclean—Hercules. What chained Titan did Hercules release? - -=12.= His purpose called him at the Big Horn’s mouth— - - Locate the Big Horn. What purpose? Who was there? - -=18.= And took the bare, foot-sounding solitude - - Why “foot-sounding”? - -=22.= He seemed indeed a fugitive from Death etc. - - Another reference to Hugh’s fancy that he had actually died. - - It gives added force to that fancy to make his frosted breath - suggest a shroud. - -=24.= Now the moon was young - - Note the phase of the moon for later reference. - - - PAGE 100 - -=6.= With Spring’s wild rage, the snow-born Titan girl, etc. - - The Yellowstone is larger at the junction than is the Missouri. - - Hence the Missouri is the Titan girl rushing into the arms of - her lover. But in the winter with snow covering the ice, “A - winding sheet was on the marriage bed.” Why “snow-born”? - -=15.= Gray void seemed suddenly astir with wings etc. - - Note onomatopœia in the lines indicating that snow begins to - fall. - - - PAGE 101 - -=1.= The bluffs loomed eerie, and the scanty trees - - Describe the appearance of the trees. - -=15.= The tumbling snowflakes sighing all around, - - What associations brought Hugh a dream of boyhood? - -=18.= The Southwind in the tousled apple trees - -=19.= And slumber flowing from their leafy gloom. - - These lines are an intentional “literary echoing” of one of the - most beautiful of the Sapphic fragments,—fragment 4 in Bergk’s - text. - - Define: penumbral, susurrant. - - - PAGE 102 - -The blizzard is a storm characteristic of the plains. It generally lasts -three days, is terribly cold, and the whirling snow is blinding. - -=4.= Black blindness grew white blindness - - Indicating the slight difference between night and day. - - Note in how few lines the poet pictures the passing of the day. - -=5.= All being now seemed narrowed to a span, etc. - - All else was shut from sight and to a degree from the mind. - - - PAGE 103 - -=7.= As with the waning day the great wind fell. - - The sudden cessation of the wind at the close of the third day - of the storm is characteristic, as is also the intense cold. - Forty degrees below zero is not unusual, often even fifty - degrees. - -=10.= When, heifer-horned, the maiden moon lies down - - A reference to the maiden Diana, goddess of the moon. - - How long was Hugh on this journey? - - - PAGE 104 - -=3.= Yon sprawling shadow, pied with candle-glow etc. - - Another of the gripping memory pictures. Can a man who dreams - such a waking dream kill another, even one who has betrayed him, - in cold blood? - -=21.= Or was this but the fretted wraith of Hugh etc. - - The feeling that he is a ghost comes to Hugh twice in this - incident of finding the fort. His long journey, his weakened - physical condition and his exhausted emotions combine to make - life seem unreal. - - - PAGE 105 - -=14.= Joy filled a hush twixt heart-beats like a bird; etc. - - Joy rather than anger comes first in his feeling about Jamie. - - That is significant. - - - PAGE 106 - -=7.= “My God! I saw the Old Man’s ghost out there!” - - Belief in ghosts was common among the trappers. - -=12–21.= “Hugh strove to shout,” etc. - - For the last time we see Hugh with the feeling that he is dead. - - - PAGE 108 - -Are you surprised that Hugh does not kill Le Bon? Would you excuse the -deed if he had? - - - JAMIE - - - PAGE 109 - -Locate the Country of the Crows (Absaroka), the Big Horn, the Powder, -Fort Atkinson. - - - PAGE 110 - -=16.= Now up the Powder, etc. - - Trace the journey on the map. - - Locate the Laramie. - - - PAGE 111 - -=2.= The Niobrara races for the morn— - - Locate the Niobrara. It is a very swift stream. Note the entire - description of the coming of spring on the prairie. It is a - lyric and includes a description of both late and early-coming - of spring. - -=3.= Here at length was born -Upon the southern slopes the baby spring, etc. - - A slow spring. - -=6.= Not such as when announced by thunder-claps etc. - - A description of a swiftly coming spring. - -=9.= Clad splendidly as never Sheba’s Queen, - - Sheba’s Queen—The Bible, 1st Kings. - -=15.= And no root dreamed what Triumph-over-Death - -=16.= Was nurtured now in some bleak Nazareth, etc. - - The coming of spring suggests the resurrection. - -=19.= And everywhere the Odic Presence dwelt. - - “Odic”: from “od,” an arbitrary scientific term signifying the - mysterious vital force in nature. - -=21.= And when they reached the valley of the Snake, - - Locate the Snake. - -=22.= The Niobrara’s ice began to break, - - The next step in the coming of spring. - - - PAGE 112 - -=4.= The geese went over, - - A sure sign that spring is almost come. - -=6.= The little river of Keyapaha - - Locate the Keyapaha. - -=10.= To where the headlong Niobrara etc. - - Locate the mouth of the Niobrara. A student in one of my classes - once wrote an interesting essay telling how her father’s farm - had been swept away by the rushing of the Niobrara into the - Missouri at the spring flood. At such times the smaller river - hurls the Missouri as much as a mile beyond its normal course. - -=13.= A giant staggered by a pigmy’s sling. - - What Bible story is here referred to? - -=18.= There all the vernal wonder-work was done: etc. - - From here on select the color words that give the picture of the - progress of spring. Another lyric. - - - PAGE 113 - -=14.= Of wizard-timber and of wonder-stuff etc. - - Are day dreams built of “wizard-timber and of wonder-stuff”? - - Note the alliteration. - - - PAGE 114 - -=1.= Into the North, a devil-ridden man. - - The first picture of Jamie since he deserted Hugh. Will it - arouse Hugh’s pity? - -=13.= Up the long watery stairway to the Horn, - - What is the “watery stairway to the Horn”? Horn—Big Horn River. - -=14.= And the year was shorn etc. - - How long is it since the story opened? - - Note the entire description of the coming of autumn. - -=19.= That withered in the endless martyrdom - - Why “martyrdom”? - -=20.= The scarlet quickened on the plum etc. - - Note the steps of the coming of autumn at the Heart, among the - Mandans, at the Yellowstone, the Powder. - - - PAGE 115 - -=1.= Was spattered with the blood of Summer slain. - - A remarkable figure. - -=8.= Aye, one who seemed to stare upon a ghost etc. - - A second picture of Jamie’s suffering. - -=14.= And to forgive and to forget were sweet: etc. - - There will be no murder; our interest now is that the men may - meet and in the manner of reconciliation. - -=15.= ‘Tis for its nurse etc. - - Explain. Is this not true? - -=20.= But at the crossing of the Rosebud’s mouth - - Locate the Rosebud. - - - PAGE 116 - -=3.= Alas, the journey back to yesterwhiles! etc. - - There is no going back to the old days. - -=13.= He came with those to where the Poplar joins etc. - - Locate the Poplar. - -=22.= From Mississippi to the Great Divide - - Locate the Great Divide. - - - PAGE 117 - -=5.= Upon Milk River valley, - - Locate Milk River. - -=7.= Above the Piegan lodges, - - Piegans—one of the principal divisions of the Blackfoot tribe of - Indians. Locate the Piegan village. - - - PAGE 118 - -=7.= Lest on the sunset trail slow feet should err. - - What is the “sunset trail”? - -=16.= You saw no Black Robe? - - Black Robe, priest, so-called by all Indians. - -=18.= “Heaped snow—sharp stars—a kiote on the rise.” - - The answer is true to the laconic Indian speech, but it is - beautiful. - - - PAGE 122 - -=2.= By their own weakness are the feeble sped; etc. - - Three paradoxes—“He that loseth his life shall find it.” - - - PAGE 123 - -The vision of Hugh as seen by Jamie corresponds to the description of -Hugh on pages 59 and 60. May we say that Jamie may indeed have seen -Hugh? The Society for Psychic Research records such phenomena. - -=15.= O, Father, I had paid too much for breath! - - For what will a man give his life? What higher values than life - are there? It is Satan who says in Job, “All that a man hath - will he give for his life.” - - Show that the principle of Katharsis is illustrated in this - poem. - - - Printed in the United States of America. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected typographical errors. - 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. - 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. - 4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Song of Hugh Glass, by John Gneisenau Neihardt - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS *** - -***** This file should be named 53667-0.txt or 53667-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/6/6/53667/ - -Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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