THE BALLAD OF SERGEANT ROSS
THE south wind's up at the break of dawn
From the dun Missouri's breast,
It has tossed the grass of the Council Hill
And wakened the flames on its crest;
The flames of the sentry fires bright,
Ablaze on the prairies pale,
Where sixty men of the Frontier Corps
Are guarding the Government Trail.
A rattle of hoofs from the northern hills,
A steed with a sweat-wrung hide
And Olaf Draim, of the Peska Claim,
Swings off at the captain's side.
A limb of the sturdy Swedes is he,
Marauders in days of old,
But the swart of his face is stricken white
And the grip of his hand is cold.
"Now, hark ye, men of the Frontier Corps,
I ride from the Beaver Creek,
Where I saw a sight at the grim midnight
That might turn a strong man weak.
"Chief Black Bear's out from the Crow Creek lands,
The buzzards his track have showed;
Last eve he pillaged at Old Fort James,
To-day on the Firesteel road,
"And Corporal Stowe, of the Frontier Corps,
On furlough to reap his grain,
At the Peska stage-house lieth dead
With his wife and his children twain."
Then up and spoke First Sergeant Ross,
Who had bunked with Corporal Stowe:
"By the glory of God, they shall pay in blood
The debt of that dastard blow!
"Ye know the path to the Crow Creek lands;
It is sown with this spawn of hell,
And there's deep ravine and there's plum-hedge green
To shelter a foeman well.
"Now, who of my comrades mounts with me
For a murdered mess-mate's wrong,
That the Sioux who rides with those scalps at his side
May swing from a hempen thong?"
Of three-score men there were only ten
Would gird for that chase of death.
Quoth Ross: "As ye please. For the cur, his fleas,
But men for the rifle's breath."
They have tightened cinches and passed the lines
Ere the lowland mists have flown;
The men are astride of the squadron's best,
And Ross, of the Captain's roan.
They ride till the crickets have sought the shade;
They ride till the sun-motes glance;
And they have espied on a far hillside
The whirl of the Sioux scalp-dance.
Then it's up past the smouldering stage-house barn
And out by the well-curb's marge;
The Sioux are a-leap for the tether-ropes:—
"Revolvers! Guide centre! Charge!"
The Sioux, they flee like a wild wolf-pack
At the flick of the shot-tossed sod,
Six braves have lurched to the fore fetlocks
And two of the Sergeant's squad.
But Ross has tightened his sabre-belt
And given the roan his head,
And set his pace for a single chase,
A furlong's length ahead.
He has set his pace for the chief, Black Bear,
Who shrinks from a strong man's strife
But flaunts in the air the long, brown hair
Of the scalp of the Corporal's wife.
The eight, they follow like swirled snow-spume,
A-drive o'er an ice-bound bar,
But the redskin's track is the dim cloud-wrack
That streams in the sky afar.
They ride till the hearts of their steeds are dead
And they gallop with lolling tongues,
And the tramp of their feet is a rhythmic beat
To the sob of their panting lungs.
And two are down in a prairie draw
And three on a chalk-stone ledge.
And three have won to the Bon Homme Run
And stuck in the marsh-land sedge.
But Black Bear's horse still holds the course,
Though her breath is a thick-drawn moan,
And a length behind is the straining stride
Of the Captain's steel-limbed roan.
The Sergeant rides with a loose-thrown rein,
Nor sabre nor shoot will he
Till the pony has pitched at a gopher mound
And flung her rider free;
And Ross has wrenched the knife from his hand
And smitten him to the ground;—
"Did ye think to win to the Bijou Hills,
Ye whelp of a Blackfoot hound?
"I had riddled your carcass this six miles back
And left ye to rot on the plain,
Had the blood of the slaughtered not called on me
That I hail ye to Peska again,
"To point this lesson to all your tribe.
That the price of a white man's soul
No longer goes, in the mart of death,
Unpaid to its last dark goal.
"Wherefore, that your tribesmen may see and feel
The cost of a white man's wrong,
And to sweeten the rest of my mess-mate's kin,
Ye shall swing from a hempen thong."
He has slung the chief to the saddle-bow,
Triced up in his own raw-hide,
And has borne him back to the stage-house yard,
All bleak on the green hillside.
And they swung him at dawn from a scaffold stout,
As a warning to all his kind,
To fatten the birds and to scare the herds
And to sport with the prairie wind.
