Classic Poem

They made a camp
Well up above the crawling valley damp,
And where no prowling beast might chance to come.
There was no fuel; but a flask of rum,
Thanks to the buckskin; dulled the evening chill.
And both grew mellow. Memories of Bill
And other nights possessed the little man;
And on and on his reminiscence ran,
As 'twere the babble of a brook of tears
Gone groping for the ocean of dead years
Too far away to reach. And by and by
The low voice sharpened to an anguished cry:
" O Mike! I said you couldn't miss the cup! "

Then something snapped in Fink and, leaping up,
He seized Talbeau and shook him as a rat
Is shaken by a dog. " Enough of that! "
He yelled; " And, 'faith, I'll sind ye afther Bill
Fer wan more wurrd! Ye fool! I mint to kill!
And, moind me now, ye'd better howld yer lip! "

Talbeau felt murder shudder in the grip
That choked and shook and flung him. Faint and dazed,
He sprawled upon the ground. And anger blazed
Within him, like the leaping Northern Light
That gives no heat. He wished to rise and fight,
But could not for the horror of it all.
Wild voices thronged the further canyon wall
As Fink raved on; and every word he said
Was like a mutilation of the dead
By some demonic mob.

And when at length
He heard Mike snoring yonder, still the strength
To rise and kill came not upon Talbeau.
So many moments of the Long Ago
Came pleading; and the gentle might thereof
United with the habit of old love
To weave a spell about the sleeping man.
Then drowsily the pondered facts began
To merge and group, as running colors will.
In new and vaguer patterns. Mike and Bill
Were bickering again. And someone said:
" Let's flip a copper; if it's tails, he's dead;
If heads, he's living. That's the way to tell! "
A spinning copper jangled like a bell.
But even as he stooped to pick it up,
Behold! the coin became a whisky cup
Bored smoothly through the center! " Look at this! "
He seemed to shout: " I knew Mike couldn't miss!
Bill only played at dying for a joke! "

Then laughter filled his dream, and he awoke.
The dawn was like a stranger's cold regard
Across the lifeless land, grotesquely scarred
As by old sorrow; and the man's dull sense
Of woe, become objective and immense,
Seemed waiting there to crush him.

Still Fink slept;
And even now, it seemed, his loose mouth kept
A shape for shameless words, as though a breath,
Deep drawn, might set it gloating o'er the death
Of one who loved its jesting and its song.
And while Talbeau sat pondering the wrong
So foully done, and all that had been killed,
And how the laughter of the world was stilled
And all its wine poured out, he seemed to hear
As though a spirit whispered in his ear:
You won't forget I gave my gun to you!
And instantly the deep conviction grew
That 'twas a plea for justice from the slain.
Ah, not without a hand upon the rein,
Nor with an empty saddle, had the mare
Outrun the flame that she might carry there
The means of vengeance!

Yet — if Mike were dead!
He shuddered, gazing where the gray sky bled
With morning, like a wound. He couldn't kill;
Nor did it seem to be the way of Bill
To bid him do it. Yet the gun was sent.
For what? — To make Mike suffer and repent?
But how?

Awhile his apathetic gaze
Explored yon thirst- and hunger-haunted maze.
As though he might surprise the answer there.
The answer came. That region of despair
Should be Mike's Purgatory! More than Chance
Had fitted circumstance to circumstance
That this should be! He knew it! And the plan,
Thus suddenly conceived, possessed the man.
It seemed the might of Bill had been reborn
In him.

He took the gun and powder horn,
The water flasks and sun-dried bison meat
The panniers gave; then climbing to a seat
Above the sleeper, shouted down to him:
" Get up! " Along the further canyon rim
A multitude of voices swelled the shout.
Fink started up and yawned and looked about,
Bewildered. Once again the clamor ran
Along the canyon wall. The little man,
Now squinting down the pointed rifle, saw
The lifted face go pale, the stubborn jaw
Droop nervelessly. A twinge of pity stirred
Within him, and he marvelled as he heard
His own voice saying what he wished unsaid:
" It's Bill's own rifle pointing at your head;
Go east, and think of all the wrong you've done! "

Fink glanced across his shoulder where the sun
Shone level on the melancholy land;
And, feigning that he didn't understand,
Essayed a careless grin that went awry.
" Bejasus, and we'll not go there, me b'y, "
He said; " for shure 'tis hell widout the lights! "
That one-eyed stare along the rifle sights
Was narrowed to a slit. A sickening shock
Ran through him at the clucking of the lock.
He clutched his forehead, stammering: " Talbe
I've been yer frind — "

" I'll give you three to go, "
The other said, " or else you'll follow Bill!
One — two. "

Fink turned and scuttled down the hill;
And at the sight the watcher's eyes grew dim,
For something old and dear had gone from him —
His pride in one who made a clown of Death.
Alas, how much the man would give for breath!
How easily Death made of him the clown!

Now scrambling for a grip, now rolling down,
Mike landed at the bottom of the steep,
And, plunging in the river belly deep,
Struck out in terror for the other shore.
At any moment might the rifle's roar
Crash through that rearward silence, and the lead
Come snarling like a hornet at his head —
He felt the spot! Then presently the flood
Began to cool the fever in his blood,
And furtive self-derision stung his pride.
He clambered dripping up the further side
And felt himself a fool! He wouldn't go!
That little whiffet yonder was Talbeau!
And who was this that he, Mike Fink, had feared?
He'd go and see.

A spurt of smoke appeared
Across the river, and a bullet struck —
Spat ping — beside him, spewing yellow muck
Upon his face. Then every cliff and draw
Rehearsed the sullen thunders of the law
He dared to question. Stricken strangely weak,
He clutched the clay and watched the powder reek
Trail off with glories of the level sun.
He saw Talbeau pour powder in his gun
And ram the wad. A second shot might kill!
That brooding like a woman over Bill
Had set the fellow daft. A crazy man!
The notion spurred him. Springing up, he ran
To where a gully cleft the canyon rim
And, with that one-eyed fury after him.
Fled east.

The very buttes, grotesque and weird,
Seemed startled at the sight of what he feared
And powerless to shield him in his need.
'Twas more than man he fled from; 'twas a deed,
Become alive and subtle as the air,
That turned upon the doer. Everywhere
It gibbered in the echoes as he fled.
A stream of pictures flitted through his head:
The quiet body in the hearth-lit hall,
The grinning ghost, the flight, the stallion's fall,
The flame-girt isle, the spectral morning sun,
And then the finding of the dead man's gun
Beside the glooming river. Flowing by,
These fused and focused in the deadly eye
He felt behind him.

Suddenly the ground
Heaved up and smote him with a crashing sound;
And in the vivid moment of his fall
He thought he heard the snarling rifle ball
And felt the one-eyed fury crunch its mark.
Expectant of the swooping of the dark.
He raised his eyes. — The sun was shining still;
It peeped about the shoulder of a hill
And viewed him with a quizzifying stare.
He looked behind him. Nothing followed there;
But Silence, big with dread-begotten sound,
Dismayed him; and the steeps that hemmed him round
Seemed plotting with a more than human guile.
He rose and fled; but every little while
A sense of eyes behind him made him pause;
And always down the maze of empty draws
It seemed a sound of feet abruptly ceased.

Now trotting, walking now, he labored east;
And when at length the burning zenith beat
Upon him, and the summits swam with heat,
And on the winding gullies fell no shade,
He came to where converging gulches made
A steep-walled basin for the blinding glare.
Here, fanged and famished, crawled the prickly pear;
Malevolent with thirst, the soap weed thrust
Its barbed stilettos from the arid dust,
Defiant of the rain-withholding blue:
And in the midst a lonely scrub oak grew,
A crooked dwarf that, in the pictured bog
Of its own shadow, squatted like a frog.
Fink, panting, flung himself beneath its boughs.

A mighty magic in the noonday drowse
Allayed the driving fear. A waking dream
Fulfilled a growing wish. He saw the stream
Far off as from a space-commanding height.
And now a phantasy of rapid flight
Transported him above the sagging land,
And with a sudden swoop he seemed to stand
Once more upon the shimmering river's brink.
His eyes drank deep; but when his mouth would drink,
A giant hornet from the other shore —
The generating center of a roar
That shook the world — snarled by.

He started up,
And saw the basin filling as a cup
With purple twilight! Gazing all around
Where still the flitting ghost of some great sound
Troubled the crags a moment, then was mute,
He saw along the shoulder of a butte,
A good three hundred paces from the oak,
A slowly spreading streak of rifle smoke
And knew the deadly eye was lurking there.
He fled again.

About him everywhere
Amid the tangled draws now growing dim,
Weird witnesses took cognizance of him
And told abroad the winding way he ran.
He halted only when his breath began
To stab his throat. And lo, the staring eye
Was quenched with night! No further need he fly
Till dawn. And yet — He held his breath to hear
If footsteps followed. Silence smote his ear,
The gruesome silence of the hearth-lit hall.
More dread than sound. Against the gully wall
He shrank and huddled with his eyes shut tight,
For fear a presence, latent in the night,
Should walk before him.

Then it seemed he ran
Through regions alien to the feet of Man,
A weary way despite the speed of sleep,
And came upon a river flowing deep
Between black crags that made the sky a well.
And eerily the feeble starlight fell
Upon the flood with water lilies strown.
But when he stooped, the stream began to moan,
And suddenly from every lily pad
A white face bloomed, unutterably sad
And bloody browed.

A swift, erasing flame
Across the dusky picture, morning came.
Mike lay a moment, blinking at the blue;
And then the fear of yesterday broke through
The clinging drowse. For lo, on every side
The paling summits watched him, Argus-eyed,
In hushed anticipation of a roar.
He fled.

All day, intent to see once more
The open plain before the night should fall,
He labored on. But many a soaring wall
Annulled some costly distance he had won;
And misdirected gullies, white with sun,
Seemed spitefully to baffle his desire.

The deeps went blue; on mimic dome and spire
The daylight faded to a starry awe.
Mike slept; and lo, they marched along the draw —
Or rather burned — tall, radiantly white!
A hushed procession, tunnelling the night,

They came, with lips that smiled and brows that bled,
And each one bore a tin cup on its head,
A brimming cup. But ever as they came
Before him, like a draught-struck candle flame
They shuddered and were snuffed.

'Twas deep night yet
When Mike awoke and felt the terror sweat
Upon his face, the prickling of his hair.
Afraid to sleep, he paced the gully there
Until the taller buttes were growing gray.

He brooded much on flowing streams that day.
As with a weight, he stooped; his feet were slow;
He shuffled. Less and less he feared Talbeau
Behind him. More and more he feared the night
Before him. Any hazard in the light,
Or aught that might befall twixt living men,
Were better than to be alone again
And meet that dream!

The deeps began to fill
With purple haze. Bewildered, boding ill,
A moaning wind awoke. 'Twould soon be dark.
Mike pondered. Twice Talbeau had missed the mark.
Perhaps he hadn't really meant to hit.
And surely now that flaring anger fit
Had burned away. It wasn't like the man
To hold a grudge. Mike halted, and began
To grope for words regretful of the dead,
Persuasive words about a heart that bled
For Bill. 'Twas all a terrible mistake.
" Plase now, a little dhrop fer owld toime's sake! "
With troublesome insistence, that refrain
Kept running through the muddle of his brain
And disarranged the words he meant to speak.
The trickle of a tear along his cheek
Consoled him. Soon his suffering would end.
Talbeau would see him weeping for his friend —
Talbeau had water!

Now the heights burned red
To westward. With a choking clutch of dread
He noted how the dusk was gathering
Along the draws — a trap about to spring.
He cupped his hands about his mouth and cried:
" Talbeau! Talbeau! " Despairing voices died
Among the summits, and the lost wind pined.
It made Talbeau seem infinitely kind —
The one thing human in a ghostly land.
Where was he? Just a touch of that warm hand
Would thwart the dark! Mike sat against a wall
And brooded.

By and by a skittering fall
Of pebbles at his back aroused the man.
He scrambled to his feet and turned to scan
The butte that sloped above him. Where the glow
Still washed the middle height, he saw Talbeau
Serenely perched upon a ledge of clay!
And Mike forgot the words he meant to say,
The fitted words, regretful of his deed.
A forthright, stark sincerity of need
Rough hewed the husky, incoherent prayer
He shouted to that Lord of water there
Above the gloom. A little drop to drink
For old time's sake!

Talbeau regarded Fink
Awhile in silence; then his thin lips curled.
" You spilled the only drink in all the world!
Go on, " he said, " and think of what you've done! "
Beyond the pointed muzzle of his gun
He saw the big man wither to a squat
And tremble, like a bison when the shot
Just nips the vital circle. Then he saw
A stooping figure hurry down the draw,
Grow dim, and vanish in the failing light.

'Twas long before Talbeau could sleep that night.
Some questioner, insistently perverse,
Assailed him and compelled him to rehearse
The justifying story of the friend
Betrayed and slain. But when he reached the end,
Still unconvinced the questioner was there
To taunt him with that pleading of despair —
For old time's sake! Sleep brought him little rest;
For what the will denied, the heart confessed
In mournful dreams. And when the first faint gray
Aroused him, and he started on his way,
He knew the stubborn questioner had won.
No brooding on the wrong that Mike had done
Could still that cry: " Plase now, fer owld toime's sake,
A little dhrop! " It made his eyeballs ache
With tears of pity that he couldn't shed.
No other dawn, save that when Bill lay dead
And things began to stare about the hall.
Had found the world so empty. After all,
What man could know the way another trod?
And who was he, Talbeau, to play at God?
Let one who curbs the wind and brews the rain
Essay the subtler portioning of pain
To souls that err! Talbeau would make amends!
Once more they'd drink together and be friends.
How often they had shared!

He struck a trot,
Eyes fixed upon the trail. The sun rose hot;
Noon poured a blinding glare along the draws;
And still the trail led on, without a pause
To show where Mike had rested. Thirst began
To be a burden on the little man;
His progress dwindled to a dragging pace.
But when he tipped the flask, that pleading face
Arose before him, and a prayer denied
Came mourning back to thrust his need aside —
A little drop! How Mike must suffer now!
" I'm not so very thirsty, anyhow, "
He told himself. And almost any bend
Might bring him on a sudden to his friend.
He'd wait and share the water.

Every turn
Betrayed a hope. The west began to burn;
Flared red; went ashen; and the stars came out.
Dreams, colored by an unacknowledged doubt,
Perplexed the trail he followed in his sleep;
And dreary hours before the tallest steep
Saw dawn, Talbeau was waiting for the day.

Till noon he read a writing in the clay
That bade him haste; for now from wall to wall
The footmarks wandered, like the crabbed scrawl
An old man writes. They told a gloomy tale.
And then the last dim inkling of a trail
Was lost upon a patch of hardened ground!

The red west saw him, like a nervous hound
That noses vainly for the vanished track,
Still plunging into gullies, doubling back,
And pausing now and then to hurl a yell
Among the ululating steeps. Night fell.
The starlit buttes still heard him panting by,
And summits weird with midnight caught his cry
To answer, mocking.

Morning brought despair;
Nor did he get much comfort of his prayer:
" God, let me find him! Show me where to go! "
Some greater, unregenerate Talbeau
Was God that morning; for the lesser heard
His own bleak answer echoed word for word:
Go on, and think of all the wrong you've done!

His futile wish to hasten sped the sun.
That day, as he recalled it in the dark,
Was like the spinning of a burning arc.
He nodded, and the night was but a swoon;
And morning neighbored strangely with the noon;
And evening was the noon's penumbral haze.

No further ran the reckoning of days.
'Twas evening when at last he stooped to stare
Upon a puzzling trail. A wounded bear,
It seemed, had dragged its rump across the sands
That floored the gullies now. But sprawling hands

Had marked the margin! Why was that? No doubt
Mike too had tarried here to puzzle out
What sort of beast had passed. And yet — how queer —
'Twas plain no human feet had trodden here!
A trail of hands! That throbbing in his brain
Confused his feeble efforts to explain;
And hazily he wondered if he slept
And dreamed again. Tenaciously he kept
His eyes upon the trail and labored on,
Lest, swooping like a hawk, another dawn
Should snatch that hope away.

A sentry crow,
Upon a sunlit summit, saw Talbeau
And croaked alarm. The noise of many wings.
In startled flight, and raucous chatterings
Arose. What feast was interrupted there
A little way ahead? 'Twould be the bear!
He plodded on. The intervening space
Sagged under him; and, halting at the place
Where late the flock had been, he strove to break
A grip of horror. Surely now he'd wake
And see the morning quicken in the skies!

The thing remained! — It hadn't any eyes —
The pilfered sockets bore a pleading stare!

A long, hoarse wail of anguish and despair
Aroused the echoes. Answering, arose
Once more the jeering chorus of the crows.