A Cycle of the West

Who now reads clear the roster of that band? Alas, Time scribbles with a careless hand And often pinchbeck doings from that pen Bite deep, where deeds and dooms of mighty men Are blotted out beneath a sordid scrawl!

One hundred strong they flocked to Ashley’s call That spring of eighteen hundred twenty-two; For tales of wealth, out-legending Peru, Came wind-blown from Missouri’s distant springs, And that old sireny of unknown things Bewitched them, and they could not linger more. They heard the song the sea winds sang the shore When earth was flat, and black ships dared the steep Where bloomed the purple perils of the deep In dragon-haunted gardens. They were young. Albeit some might feel the winter flung Upon their heads, ’twas less like autumn’s drift Than backward April’s unregarded sift On stout oaks thrilling with the sap again. And some had scarce attained the height of men, Their lips unroughed, and gleaming in their eyes The light of immemorial surprise That life still kept the spaciousness of old And, like the hoarded tales their grandsires told, Might still run bravely.

For a little span Their life-fires flared like torches in the van Of westward progress, ere the great wind ’woke To snuff them. Many vanished like a smoke The blue air drinks; and e’en of those who burned Down to the socket, scarce a tithe returned To share at last the ways of quiet men, Or see the hearth-reek drifting once again Across the roofs of old St. Louis town.

The boat crews, lolling in a semi-doze, Still watch the herd; nor do the gazers dream What drama nears a climax over stream, What others yonder may be watching too. Now looming large upon the lucent blue, The foremost ponies top the rim, and stare High-headed down the vacancies of air Beneath them; while the herders dawdle still And gather wool scarce halfway up the hill⁠— A slumbrous sight beheld by heavy eyes.

But hark! What murmuring of far-flung cries From yonder pocket in the folded rise That flanks the draw? The herders also hear And with a start glance upward to the rear. Their spurred mounts plunge! What do they see but dust Whipped skyward yonder in a freakish gust? What panic overtakes them? Look again! The rolling dust cloud vomits mounted men, A ruck of tossing heads and gaudy gears Beneath a bristling thicket of lean spears Slant in a gust of onset!

Over stream The boatmen stare dumbfounded. Like a dream In some vague region out of space and time Evolves the swiftly moving pantomime Before those loungers with ungirded loins; Till one among them shouts “Assinboines!” And swelling to a roar, the wild word runs Above a pell-mell scramble for the guns, Perceived as futile soon. Yet here and there A few young hotheads fusillade the air, And rage the more to know the deed absurd. Some only grind their teeth without a word; Some stand aghast, some grinningly inane, While some, like watch-dogs rabid at the chain, Growl curses, pacing at the river’s rim.

There was a woman.

What enchantment falls Upon that far off revel! How the din Of jangling voices, chaffering to win The lesser values, hushes at the words, As dies the dissonance of brawling birds Upon a calm before the storm is hurled! Lo, down the age-long reaches of the world What rose-breatht wind of ghostly music creeps!

And was she fair⁠—this woman? Legend keeps No answer; yet we know that she was young, If truly comes the tale by many a tongue That one of Red Hair’s party fathered her. What need to know her features as they were? Was she not lovely as her lover’s thought, And beautiful as that wild love she wrought Was fatal? Vessel of the world’s desire, Did she not glow with that mysterious fire That lights the hearth or burns the rooftree down? What face was hers who made the timeless town A baleful torch forever? Hers who wailed Upon the altar when the four winds failed At Aulis? What the image that looked up On Iseult from the contemplated cup Of everlasting thirst? What wondrous face Above the countless cradles of the race Makes sudden heaven for the blinking eyes? One face in truth!

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.

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