Kept silence. And the bold one, speaking then
To those about him, said: “You see today
The one whom all the warriors would obey,
Whatever he might wish. His heart is faint.
He has not even found the strength to paint
His face, you see!” The Flame of Many Roofs
Still smouldered there. The Midnight Wind of Hoofs
Kept mute. “Our brothers, the Arapahoes,”
Another said, “will tell of Roman Nose;
Their squaws will scorn him; and the Sioux will say
‘He was not like the men we were that day
When all the soldiers died by Peno ford!’ ”
They saw him wince, as though the words had gored
His vitals. Then he spoke. His voice was low.
“My medicine is broken. Long ago
One made a bonnet for a mighty man,
My father’s father; and the good gift ran
From sire to son, and we were men of might.
For he who wore the bonnet in a fight
Could look on Death, and Death would fear him much,
So long as he should let no metal touch
The food he ate. But I have been a fool.
A woman lifted with an iron tool
The bread I ate this morning. What you say
Is good to hear.”
He cast his robe away,
Got up and took the bonnet from its case
And donned it; put the death-paint on his face
And mounted, saying “Now I go to die!”
Thereat he lifted up a bull-lunged cry
That clamored far among the hills around;
And dying men took courage at the sound
And muttered “He is coming.”
Now it fell
That those upon the island heard a yell
And looked about to see from whence it grew.
They saw a war-horse hurtled from the blue,
A big-boned chestnut, clean and long of limb,
That did not dwarf the warrior striding him,
So big the man was. Naked as the day
The neighbors sought his mother’s lodge to say
“This child shall be a trouble to his foes”
(Save for a gorgeous bonnet), Roman Nose
Came singing on the run. And as he came
Mad hundreds hailed him, booming like a flame
That rages over slough grass, pony tall.
They formed behind him in a solid wall
And halted at a lifting of his hand.
The troopers heard him bellow some command.
They saw him wheel and wave his rifle high;
And distant hills were peopled with the cry
He flung at Death, that mighty men of old,
Long dead, might hear the coming of the bold
And know the land still nursed the ancient breed.
Then, followed by a thundering stampede,
He charged the island where the rifles brawled.
And some who galloped nearest him recalled
In after days, what some may choose to doubt,
How suddenly the hubbuboo went out
In silence, and a wild white brilliance broke
About him, and the cloud of battle smoke
Was thronged with faces not of living men.
Then terribly the battle roared again.
And those who tell it saw him reel and sag
Against the stallion, like an empty bag,
Then slip beneath the mill of pony hoofs.
So Roman Nose, the Flame of Many Roofs,
Flared out. And round the island swept the foe—
Wrath-howling breakers with an undertow
Of pain that wailed and murmuring dismay.
Now Beecher, with the limp he got that day
At Gettysburg, rose feebly from his place,
Unearthly moon-dawn breaking on his face,
And staggered over to the Colonel’s pit.
Half crawling and half falling into it,
“I think I have a fatal wound,” he said;
And from his mouth the hard words bubbled red
In witness of the sort of hurt he had.
“No, Beecher, no! It cannot be so bad!”
The other begged, though certain of the end;
For even then the features of the friend
Were getting queer. “Yes, Sandy, yes—goodnight,”
The stricken muttered. Whereupon the fight
No longer roared for him; but one who grieved
And fought thereby could hear the rent chest heaved
With struggling breath that couldn’t leave the man.
And by and by the whirling host began
To scatter, most withdrawing out of range.
Astonished at the suddenness of change
From dawn to noon, the troopers saw the sun.
To eastward yonder women had begun
To glean the fallen, wailing as they piled
The broken loves of mother, maid and child
On pony-drags; remembering their wont
Of heaping thus the harvest of the hunt
To fill the kettles these had sat around.
Forsyth now strove to view the battleground,
But could not for the tortured hip and limb;
And so they passed a blanket under him
And four men heaved the corners; then he saw.
“Well, Grover, have they other cards to draw,
Or have they played the pack?” he asked a scout.
And that one took a plug of chewing out
And gnawed awhile, then spat and said: “Dunno;
I’ve fit with Injuns thirty year or so
And never see the like of this till now.
We made a lot of good ones anyhow,
Whatever else—.”
Just then it came to pass
Some rifles, hidden yonder in the grass,
Took up the sentence with a snarling rip
That made men duck. One let his corner slip.
The Colonel tumbled, and the splintered shin
Went crooked, and the bone broke through the skin;
But what he said his angel didn’t write.
’Twas plain the foe had wearied of the fight,
Though scores of wary warriors kept the field
And circled, watching for a head revealed
Above the slaughtered horses. Afternoon
Waned slowly, and a wind began to croon—
Like memory. The sapling cottonwood
Responded with a voice of widowhood.
The melancholy heavens wove a pall.
Night hid the valley. Rain began to fall.
How good is rain when from a sunlit scarp
Of heaven falls a silver titan’s harp
For winds to play on, and the new green swirls
Beneath the dancing feet of April girls,
And thunder-claps applaud the meadow lark!
How dear to be remembered—rainy dark
When Youth and Wonder snuggle safe abed
And hear creation bustling overhead
With fitful hushes when the eave drip-drops
And everything about the whole house stops
To hear what now the buds and grass may think!
Night swept the island with a brush of ink.
They heard the endless drizzle sigh and pass
And whisper to the bushes and the grass,
Sh—sh—for men were dying in the rain;
And there was that low singing that is pain,
And curses muttered lest a stout heart break.
As one who lies with fever half awake
And sets the vague real shepherding a drove
Of errant dreams, the broken Colonel strove
For order in the nightmare. Willing hands
With knife and plate fell digging in the sands
And throwing out a deep surrounding trench.
Graves, yawning briefly in
