Classic Poem

I

Across the bison-dotted plain
Where plodding thousands pressed,
He wandered with a wagon train
To seek the fabled West.

Not twenty yet! — but lithe and stout
As a gale-resisting pine,
He had heard the golden bugles shout
In the airs of 'Forty Nine;

And forth from his green Virginia home,
He had burst like a colt set free,
Called by the wind and sky to roam,
And beckoned by peak and tree.

But as he lumbered along the trail
Over the rutted grass,
His goal seemed less than a dreamer's tale
Beside one twinkling lass, —

Ellen, the daughter of their guide,
A maiden rosy-fair;
Supple of limb, and amber-eyed,
And dowered with auburn hair,
Whose gaze had a flash of stinging pride
That was the lad's despair!

Long in his memory, like a scourge,
He heard her scorn recur,
When, faltering-tongued, he tried to urge
A rendezvous with her.

" O Danny Long! " her laughter trilled,
But shook him like a blast.
" Your wish perhaps shall be fulfilled
When you're a man at last! "

And, laughing still, she tripped away;
But ever he bore the scar.
And ever vowing, " I'll have my day! "
He worshipped from afar.

II

Among the weedy flats they rolled,
And toiled up long inclines
Where mountains loomed remote and cold,
Like white, Titanic shrines.

And over the winding timber land,
Peopled by wolf and bear ...
Till they saw the salt plateaux expand
With a far, eye-wounding glare.

Then on, across a starving vast
Where the thirsty oxen fell,
And the mountains, strewn with sagebrush, cast
A spirit-clouding spell.

Even their leader's granite brow
Was furrowed with grim alarm:
" Make haste! We're late already now! "
He shouted, with upraised arm.

" Make haste! The winter comes! It comes,
And frosty mounds pile high!
Hear how the winds, like threatening drums,
Roar from the chilling sky! "

But slower and slower lagged the horde,
And the weak began to quail.
And half a score could trudge no more
Along the weary trail.

And half a score in silence lay,
With crosses to mark their rest,
Far on the huge and lonely gray
Of the desert's broken breast.

III

Scarce forty rovers, tattered and torn
And gaunt with the rationed fare,
Arrived, when autumn was newly born,
Where the carved Sierras stare, —

The bleak Sierras, snowy-browed
And ragged with fir and pine,
Beyond whose spires, the guide avowed,
Were valleys free of snow or cloud
And flowing in milk and wine!

But oh, the miles and miles between! —
The twisted hundred miles
Along the rim of the gnarled ravine
And the shadowy forest aisles!

Had but the mountains raised a rod
And bidden the wind to rest,
The tired wanderers would have trod
The warm and honeyed West;

But surely some maniac hand controlled
The leashes of the gale.
Too early came the winter cold,
And whitened the pilgrim trail.

Too early came the winter cold,
With snow-drifts shoulder-tall,
And solid ranks of icy banks,
Like some beleaguering wall! ...

How wracked the faces Danny Long
Viewed in the shivering camp, —
Trail-hardened men, once iron-strong,
Now with a skeleton stamp! —

And whimpering women, thin and white
As ghosts that came and passed,
Where the blazing logs threw back the night
But not the chattering blast.

" If only the storm will end, will end,
We'll push to the sunlit vale! "
But the sleet continued to descend,
Lashed by a scourging gale.

And the sleet continued to descend,
And famine was prowling nigh.
And the lean, sick oxen had to lend
The only food supply.

" When these are gone? When these are gone? "
The feverish plaint arose.
But the men, their brooding eyes withdrawn,
Stared at the gathering snows.

" Rations for barely three weeks more!
Three hungry weeks! " they said.
And the wind let out a screech and a roar
Like mockery of their dread.

" There is one hope! " the whispered word
Went flashing round the camp.
And the forlorn, desperate scheme they heard
Burned like a smoldering lamp.

" Should any man, as a last resort,
Plunge to the plain below,
He'll find a place — called Sutter's Fort —
Whence help for all may flow! "

Now on the men a silence fell,
And they nodded with mirthless smiles.
Who would set out on that frozen route
For a hundred trackless miles?

Better to die where warm lights glow,
With their women and their kin,
Than to fall alone in the night and snow
Where engulfing blizzards spin!

IV

As Danny Long, with sunken eyes,
Gazed on the blue-lipped crowd,
A startled hope began to rise
From his spirit's wrack and cloud.

Beside an icy-hooded van
He peered at the wasted face
Of her who, when their course began,
Had laughed with a lily grace.

And a message in her desolate glance,
Her ghostly-fragile cheeks,
Lashed out, and smote him like a lance:
" We die, and no man speaks! "

" Hear me! I speak! " cried Danny Long.
" I go! I take the trail! "
And the weary eyes of the wondering throng
Answered, " To what avail? "

But careless of all his comrades said,
He hastened the reckless flight.
For in the eyes of a maid he read
A sudden grateful light.

V

The clearing sky was palely blue
And the hooting wind had died,
When Danny waved a brisk adieu
And mounted a white divide;
While three companions — a haggard crew —
Stalked grayly at his side.

Over a bouldery ridge, and down
An iced precipitous aisle,
And through ravines with a piny crown,
They wandered in single file.

For hours, amid the mounded snow
That piled about their knees,
Their weakening footsteps pressed below
Through winding leagues of trees.

For hours they followed a river track,
And recognized the way
By tatters of clothes, and heaps of black
Where abandoned wagons lay.

And horns of cattle lined their path;
And sleek wolves nosed in sight.
And here and there, with grisly glare,
A skull of glittering white.

By evening the chargers of the gale
Tore through a shrieking land.
And the damp-log fires, smoky and pale,
Blinked on a cowering band;

While in the morning's pelted gloom
They crept to the trail again
Like shadows stealing from a tomb, —
Shadows that once were men.

Like shadows stealing from a tomb
After some ghoulish rite,
Mutely they dared the tempest-doom
And the billowing sweeps of white.

But long before that howling day
Had snorted to a close,
One of the starved adventurers lay
Silent amid the snows.

Shallow the grave they dug for him
There in the screeching cold.
But the living three heard distantly
Their own bleak dirges tolled.

Then forth once more into the blast
Where the creaking pine-trees strained ...
Till, when another dawn was past,
But two of the men remained.

Now Danny, as he dragged his way
Across the sneering wild
Beheld his sole companion sway
And whimper like a child ...

Then fall to earth ... and the rainy sky
Sobbed like a lost soul's moan.
And the youth knelt down; and, with a sigh,
Followed the trail alone.

VI

Far through the canyon's dim descent
He made his faltering way,
To slopes where dwarfish oaks were bent
Under a roof of gray.

And down and down, unceasingly,
Gnawing at roots for food,
Where, through wide hill-lands, he could see
No end to the solitude.

Only the thought of an ice-bound camp
In a spectral, bluish waste,
Upheld his steps on the tortured tramp
And murmured and cried, " Make haste! "

Only the memory of a maid
Pleading with ravaged eyes,
Stabbed at his heart as he kneeled, and prayed
To the showery, heedless skies.

" O Danny Long! " her laughter trilled
Out of the mocking past.
" Your wish for me shall be fulfilled
When you're a man at last! "

" Oh, may my wish be soon fulfilled! "
He muttered, half aloud.
But " Never! " the jeering north wind shrilled
From her rags of scudding cloud.

Now, with delirium in his brain
And a trembling in his limbs,
He sees the stretch of the great brown plain,
A plain that whirls and swims ...

And he droops and sinks, to rise once more
And stumble along the trail,
Devoured by fires that shrivel and roar,
And demons that howl, " You fail! "
But he staggers still by pond and hill,
Moaning, " I must prevail! "

VII

Sprawled in the mire beneath an oak
In the mirthful valley sun,
Two Indians saw the mud-stained cloak
Of him who was spent and done.

And they carefully gathered up the lad,
Hoping he yet might live,
But saw that he gasped for speech, and had
A message of blood to give.

" High up the trail — they waste away —
Help them — the time is short! "
Such was the prayer they heard him pray
When hastened to Sutter's Fort.

But as he tossed on a new-made bed,
Huddled in warm, dry clothes,
He knew that a rescuing party sped
Over the hills and snows;

And again he saw a maiden's face
And the sparkling glance she cast;
And she smiled with the olden, rose-hued grace:
" O Danny Long, you've won the race
And earned your wish at last! " ;

And the weary lids drew closed once more,
And quiet slumber came;
And the final word his faint lips bore
Was the echo of her name.

The final word his faint lips bore
Was, " Tell her I shall wait
Where never numbing snow can pour
Nor storm-gale scream its hate. "

Then, with that smile of bright content
Known to the blessed few,
He slipped away like one who went
To a lovers' rendezvous.