The people listened; for he had a way
That seemed to mean much more than he could say
And over all the village cast a spell.
At length some warrior uttered in a yell
The common hate. ’Twas like the lean blue flash
That stabs a sultry hush before the crash
Of heaven-rending thunder and the loud
Assault of winds. Then fury took the crowd
And set it howling with the lust to slay.
The councillors were heard no more that day;
And from the moony hill tops all night long
The wolves gave answer to the battle-song,
And saw their valley hunting-grounds aflare
With roaring fires, and frenzied shadows there
That leaped and sang as wolves do, yet were men.
IV
Fort Phil Kearney
Long since the column, pushing north again
With Carrington, had left the little post
On Laramie; unwitting how the ghost
Of many a trooper, lusty yet and gay,
Disconsolately drifting back that way,
Should fill unseen the gaps of shattered ranks.
Scarce moved to know what shadows dogged their flanks,
Till all the winds that blew were talking spies
And draws had ears and every hilltop, eyes,
And silence, tongues, the seven hundred went.
How brazenly their insolent intent
Was flaunted! Even wolves might understand
These men were going forth to wed the land
And spawn their breed therein. Behold their squaws!
Could such defend the Great White Father’s laws?
So weak they were their warriors hewed the wood,
Nor did they tend the pots, as women should,
Nor fill them.
Powder River caught the word
Of how they swam their long-horned cattle herd
At Bridger’s Ferry. Big Horn and the Tongue
Beheld through nearer eyes the long line flung
Up Sage Creek valley; heard through distant ears
The cracking lashes of the muleteers
The day the sandy trail grew steep and bleak.
The Rosebud saw them crossing Lightning Creek,
Whence, southward, cone outsoaring dizzy cone,
Until the last gleamed splendidly alone,
They viewed the peak of Laramie. When, high
Between the head of North Fork and the Dry
They lifted Cloud Peak scintillant with snows,
The Cheyenne hunters and Arapahoes,
Far-flung as where the Wind becomes the Horn,
Discussed their progress. Spirits of the morn,
That watched them break the nightly camp and leave,
Outwinged the crane to gossip with the eve
In distant camps. Beyond the Lodge Pole’s mouth
Relentless Red Cloud, poring on the south,
Could see them where the upper Powder ran
Past Reno Post, and counted to a man
The soldiers left there. Tattlings of the noon
Were bruited by the glimmer of the moon
In lands remote; till, pushing northward yet
Past Crazy Woman’s Fork and Lake DeSmedt,
They reached the Big and Little Piney Creeks.
Some such a land the famished hunter seeks
In fever-dreams of coolness. All day long
The snow-born waters hummed a little song
To virgin meadows, till the sun went under;
Then tardy freshets in a swoon of thunder,
That deepened with the dark, went rushing by,
As ’twere the Night herself sang lullaby
Till morning. Cottonwoods and evergreens
Made music out of what the silence means
In timeless solitudes. And over all,
White towers dizzy on a floating wall
Of stainless white, the Big Horn Mountains rose.
Absoraka, the Country of the Crows,
A land men well might fight for!
Here they camped,
Rejoicing, man and beast. The work-mule champed
The forage of the elk, and rolled to sate
His lust for greenness. Like a voice of fate,
Foretelling ruthless years, his blatant bray
With horns of woe and trumpets of dismay
Crowded the hills. The milk cow and the steer
In pastures of the bison and the deer
Lowed softly. And the trail-worn troopers went
About their duties, whistling, well content
To share this earthly paradise of game.
But scarcely were the tents up, when there came—
Was it a sign? One moment it was noon,
A golden peace hypnotic with the tune
Of bugs among the grasses; and the next,
The spacious splendor of the world was vexed
With twilight that estranged familiar things.
A moaning sound, as of enormous wings
Flung wide to bear some swooping bat of death,
Awakened. Hills and valleys held their breath
To hear that sound. A nervous troop-horse neighed
Shrill in the calm. Instinctively afraid,
The cattle bellowed and forgot to graze;
And raucous mules deplored the idle day’s
Untimely end. Then presently there fell
What seemed a burlesque blizzard out of hell—
A snow of locusts—tawny flakes at strife,
That, driven by a gust of rabid life,
Smothered the windless noon! The lush grass bent,
Devoured in bending. Wagon-top and tent
Sagged with the drift of brown corrosive snow.
Innumerable hungers shrilled below;
A humming fog of hungers hid the sky,
Until a cool breath, falling from the high
White ramparts, came to cleanse the stricken world.
Then suddenly the loud rack lifted, swirled
To eastward; and the golden light returned.
Now day by day the prairie people learned
What wonders happened where the Pineys flowed;
How many wagons rutted out a road
To where the pines stood tallest to be slain;
What medicine the White Man’s hand and brain
Had conjured; how they harnessed up a fog
That sent a round knife screaming through a log
From end to end; how many adzes hewed;
And how the desecrated solitude
Beheld upon a level creek-side knoll
The rise of fitted bole on shaven bole,
Until a great fort brazened out the sun.
And while that builded insolence was done,
Far prairies saw the boasting banner flung
Above it, like a hissing adder’s tongue,
To menace every ancientry of good.
Long since and oft the workers in the wood
Had felt the presence of a foe concealed.
The drone of mowers in the haying-field
Was silenced often by the rifle’s crack,
The arrow’s whirr; and often, forging back
With lash and oath along the logging road,
The scared mule-whacker fought behind his load,
His team a kicking tangle. Oft by night
Some hill top wagged a sudden beard of light,
Immediately shorn; and dark hills saw
To glimmer sentient. Hours of drowsy awe
Near dawn had heard the raided cattle bawl,
Afraid of alien herdsmen; bugles call
To horse; the roaring sally; fleeing cries.
And oft by day upon a distant rise
Some naked rider loomed against the glare
With hand at brow to shade a searching stare,
Then like a dream dissolved in empty sky.
So men and fate had labored through July
To make a story. August browned the plain;
And ever Fort Phil Kearney grew amain
With sweat of toil and blood of petty fights.
September brought the tingling silver nights
And men worked faster, thinking of the snows.
Aye, more than storm they dreaded. Friendly Crows
Had told wild tales. Had they not
