The haughty nose lay crushed amid the beard,
Thick with slow ooze, whence like a devil leered
The battered mouth convulsed into a grin.
Nor did the darkness cover, for therein
Some torch, unsnuffed, with blear funereal flare,
Still painted upon black that alien stare
To make the lad more terribly alone.
Then in the gloom there rose a broken moan,
Quick stifled; and it seemed that something stirred
About the body. Doubting that he heard,
The lad felt, with a panic catch of breath,
Pale vagrants from the legendry of death
Potential in the shadows there. But when
The motion and the moaning came again,
Hope, like a shower at daybreak, cleansed the dark,
And in the lad’s heart something like a lark
Sang morning. Bending low, he crooned: “Hugh, Hugh,
It’s Jamie—don’t you know?—I’m here with you.”
As one who in a nightmare strives to tell—
Shouting across the gap of some dim hell—
What things assail him; so it seemed Hugh heard,
And flung some unintelligible word
Athwart the muffling distance of his swoon.
Now kindled by the yet unrisen moon,
The East went pale; and like a naked thing
A little wind ran vexed and shivering
Along the dusk, till Jamie shivered too
And worried lest ’twere bitter cold where Hugh
Hung clutching at the bleak, raw edge of life.
So Jamie rose, and with his hunting-knife
Split wood and built a fire. Nor did he fear
The staring face now, for he found it dear
With the warm presence of a friend returned.
The fire made cozy chatter as it burned,
And reared a tent of light in that lone place.
Then Jamie set about to bathe the face
With water from the spring, oft crooning low,
“It’s Jamie here beside you—don’t you know?”
Yet came no answer save the labored breath
Of one who wrestled mightily with Death
Where watched no referee to call the foul.
The moon now cleared the world’s end, and the owl
Gave voice unto the wizardry of light;
While in some dim-lit chancel of the night,
Snouts to the goddess, wolfish corybants
Intoned their wild antiphonary chants—
The oldest, saddest worship in the world.
And Jamie watched until the firelight swirled
Softly about him. Sound and glimmer merged
To make an eerie void, through which he urged
With frantic spur some whirlwind of a steed
That made the way as glass beneath his speed,
Yet scarce kept pace with something dear that fled
On, ever on—just half a dream ahead:
Until it seemed, by some vague shape dismayed,
He cried aloud for Hugh, and the steed neighed—
A neigh that was a burst of light, not sound.
And Jamie, sprawling on the dewy ground,
Knew that his horse was sniffing at his hair,
While, mumbling through the early morning air,
There came a roll of many hoofs—and then
He saw the swinging troop of Henry’s men
A-canter up the valley with the sun.
Of all Hugh’s comrades crowding round, not one
But would have given heavy odds on Death;
For, though the graybeard fought with sobbing breath,
No man, it seemed, might break upon the hip
So stern a wrestler with the strangling grip
That made the neck veins like a purple thong
Tangled with knots. Nor might Hugh tarry long
There where the trail forked outward far and dim;
Or so it seemed. And when they lifted him,
His moan went treble like a song of pain,
He was so tortured. Surely it were vain
To hope he might endure the toilsome ride
Across the barrens. Better let him bide
There on the grassy couch beside the spring.
And, furthermore, it seemed a foolish thing
That eighty men should wait the issue there;
For dying is a game of solitaire
And all men play the losing hand alone.
But when at noon he had not ceased to moan,
And fought still like the strong man he had been,
There grew a vague mistrust that he might win,
And all this be a tale for wondering ears.
So Major Henry called for volunteers,
Two men among the eighty who would stay
To wait on Glass and keep the wolves away
Until he did whatever he should do.
All quite agreed ’twas bitter bread for Hugh,
Yet none, save Jamie, felt in duty bound
To run the risk—until the hat went round,
And pity wakened, at the silver’s clink,
In Jules Le Bon.
“He would not have them think
That mercenary motives prompted him.
But somehow just the grief of Little Jim
Was quite sufficient—not to mention Hugh.
He weighed the risk. As everybody knew,
The Rickarees were scattered to the West:
The late campaign had stirred a hornet’s nest
To fill the land with stingers (which was so),
And yet—” Three days a southwest wind may blow
False April with no drop of dew at heart.
So Jules ran on, while, ready for the start,
The pawing horses nickered and the men,
Impatient in their saddles, yawned. And then,
With brief advice, a round of bluff goodbyes
And some few reassuring backward cries,
The troop rode up the valley with the day.
Intent upon his friend, with naught to say,
Sat Jamie; while Le Bon discussed at length
The reasonable limits of man’s strength—
A self-conducted dialectic strife
That made absurd all argument for life
And granted but a fresh-dug hole for Hugh.
’Twas half like murder. Yet it seemed Jules knew
Unnumbered tales accordant with the case,
Each circumstantial as to time and place
And furnished with a death’s head colophon.
Vivaciously despondent, Jules ran on.
“Did he not share his judgment with the rest?
You see, ’twas some contusion of the chest
That did the trick—heart, lungs and all that, mixed
In such a way they never could be fixed.
A bear’s hug—ugh!” And often Jamie winced
At some knife-thrust of reason that convinced
Yet left him sick with unrelinquished hope.
As one who in a darkened room might grope
For some belovèd face, with shuddering
Anticipation of a clammy thing;
So in the lad’s heart sorrow fumbled round
For some old joy to lean upon, and found
The stark, cold something Jamie knew was there.
Yet, womanlike, he stroked the hoary hair
Or bathed the face; while Jules found tales to tell—
Lugubriously garrulous. Night fell.
At sundown, daylong winds are like to veer;
So, summoning a mood of relished fear,
Le Bon remembered dire alarms by night—
The swoop of savage hordes, the desperate fight
Of men outnumbered: and, like him of old,
In all that made Jules shudder as he told,
His the great part—a man by field and flood
Fate-tossed. Upon the gloom he limned in blood
Their situation’s possibilities:
Two men against the fury of the Rees—
A game in which two hundred men had failed!
He pointed
