"THE BABES IN THE WOODS"
(BIG PINE FLAT, 1871)
"Something characteristic," eh?
Humph! I reckon you mean by that
Something that happened in our way,
Here at the crossin' of Big Pine Flat.
Times aren't now as they used to be,
When gold was flush and the boys were frisky,
And a man would pull out his battery
For anything—maybe the price of whiskey.
Nothing of that sort, eh? That's strange!
Why, I thought you might be diverted
Hearing how Jones of Red Rock Range
Drawed his "hint to the unconverted,"
And saying, "Whar will you have it?" shot
Cherokee Bob at the last debating!
What was the question I forgot,
But Jones didn't like Bob's way of stating.
Nothing of that kind, eh? You mean
Something milder? Let's see!—O Joe!
Tell to the stranger that little scene
Out of the "Babes in the Woods." You know,
"Babes" was the name that we gave 'em, sir,
Two lean lads in their teens, and greener
Than even the belt of spruce and fir
Where they built their nest, and each day grew leaner.
No one knew where they came from. None
Cared to ask if they had a mother.
Runaway schoolboys, maybe. One
Tall and dark as a spruce; the other
Blue and gold in the eyes and hair,
Soft and low in his speech, but rarely
Talking with us; and we didn't care
To get at their secret at all unfairly.
For they were so quiet, so sad and shy,
Content to trust each other solely,
That somehow we'd always shut one eye,
And never seem to observe them wholly
As they passed to their work. 'Twas a worn-out claim,
And it paid them grub. They could live without it,
For the boys had a way of leaving game
In their tent, and forgetting all about it.
Yet no one asked for their secret. Dumb
It lay in their big eyes' heavy hollows.
It was understood that no one should come
To their tent unawares, save the bees and swallows.
So they lived alone. Until one warm night
I was sitting here at the tent-door,—so, sir!
When out of the sunset's rosy light
Up rose the Sheriff of Mariposa.
I knew at once there was something wrong,
For his hand and his voice shook just a little,
And there isn't much you can fetch along
To make the sinews of Jack Hill brittle.
"Go warn the Babes!" he whispered, hoarse;
"Tell them I'm coming—to get and scurry;
For I've got a story that's bad,—and worse,
I've got a warrant: G-d d—n it, hurry!"
Too late! they had seen him cross the hill;
I ran to their tent and found them lying
Dead in each other's arms, and still
Clasping the drug they had taken flying.
And there lay their secret cold and bare,
Their life, their trial—the old, old story!
For the sweet blue eyes and the golden hair
Was a WOMAN'S shame and a WOMAN'S glory.
"Who were they?" Ask no more, or ask
The sun that visits their grave so lightly;
Ask of the whispering reeds, or task
The mourning crickets that chirrup nightly.
All of their life but its love forgot,
Everything tender and soft and mystic,
These are our Babes in the Woods,—you've got,
Well—human nature—that's characteristic.
THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE
It was noon by the sun; we had finished our game,
And was passin' remarks goin' back to our claim;
Jones was countin' his chips, Smith relievin' his mind
Of ideas that a "straight" should beat "three of a kind,"
When Johnson of Elko came gallopin' down,
With a look on his face 'twixt a grin and a frown,
And he calls, "Drop your shovels and face right about,
For them Chinees from Murphy's are cleanin' us out—
With their ching-a-ring-chow
And their chic-colorow
They're bent upon making
No slouch of a row."
Then Jones—my own pardner—looks up with a sigh;
"It's your wash-bill," sez he, and I answers, "You lie!"
But afore he could draw or the others could arm,
Up tumbles the Bates boys, who heard the alarm.
And a yell from the hill-top and roar of a gong,
Mixed up with remarks like "Hi! yi! Chang-a-wong,"
And bombs, shells, and crackers, that crashed through the trees,
Revealed in their war-togs four hundred Chinees!
Four hundred Chinee;
We are eight, don't ye see!
That made a square fifty
To just one o' we.
They were dressed in their best, but I grieve that that same
Was largely made up of our own, to their shame;
And my pardner's best shirt and his trousers were hung
On a spear, and above him were tauntingly swung;
While that beggar, Chey Lee, like a conjurer sat
Pullin' out eggs and chickens from Johnson's best hat;
And Bates's game rooster was part of their "loot,"
And all of Smith's pigs were skyugled to boot;
But the climax was reached and I like to have died
When my demijohn, empty, came down the hillside,—
Down the hillside—
What once held the pride
Of Robertson County
Pitched down the hillside!
Then we axed for a parley. When out of the din
To the front comes a-rockin' that heathen, Ah Sin!
"You owe flowty dollee—me washee you camp,
You catchee my washee—me catchee no stamp;
One dollar hap dozen, me no catchee yet,
Now that flowty dollee—no hab?—how can get?
Me catchee you piggee—me sellee for cash,
It catchee me licee—you catchee no 'hash;'
Me belly good Sheliff—me lebbee when can,
Me allee same halp pin as Melican man!
But Melican man
He washee him pan
On BOTTOM side hillee
And catchee—how can?"
"Are we men?" says Joe Johnson, "and list to this jaw,
Without process of warrant or color of law?
Are we men or—a-chew!"—here be gasped in his speech,
For a stink-pot had fallen just out of his reach.
"Shall we stand here as idle, and let Asia pour
Her barbaric hordes on this civilized shore?
Has the White Man no country? Are we left in the lurch?
And likewise what's gone of the Established Church?
One man to four hundred is great odds, I own,
But this 'yer's a White Man—I plays it alone!"
And he sprang up the hillside—to stop him none dare—
Till a yell from the top told a "White Man was there!"
A White Man was there!
We prayed he might spare
Those misguided heathens
The few clothes they wear.
They fled, and he followed, but no matter where;
They fled to escape him,—the "White Man was there,"—
Till we missed first his voice on the pine-wooded slope,
And we knew for the heathen henceforth was no hope;
And the yells they grew fainter, when Petersen said,
"It simply was human to bury his dead."
And then, with slow tread,
We crept up, in dread,
But found nary mortal there,
Living or dead.
But there was his trail, and the way that they came,
And yonder, no doubt, he was bagging his game.
When Jones drops his pickaxe, and Thompson says "Shoo!"
And both of 'em points to a cage of bamboo
Hanging down from a tree, with a label that swung
Conspicuous, with letters in some foreign tongue,
Which, when freely translated, the same did appear
Was the Chinese for saying, "A White Man is here!"
And as we drew near,
In anger and fear,
Bound hand and foot, Johnson
Looked down with a leer!
In his mouth was an opium pipe—which was why
He leered at us so with a drunken-like eye!
They had shaved off his eyebrows, and tacked on a cue,
They had painted his face of a coppery hue,
And rigged him all up in a heathenish suit,
Then softly departed, each man with his "loot."
Yes, every galoot,
And Ah Sin, to boot,
Had left him there hanging
Like ripening fruit.
At a mass meeting held up at Murphy's next day
There were seventeen speakers and each had his say;
There were twelve resolutions that instantly passed,
And each resolution was worse than the last;
There were fourteen petitions, which, granting the same,
Will determine what Governor Murphy's shall name;
And the man from our district that goes up next year
Goes up on one issue—that's patent and clear:
"Can the work of a mean,
Degraded, unclean
Believer in Buddha
Be held as a lien?"
TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR
(YREKA, 1873)
Which it is not my style
To produce needless pain
By statements that rile
Or that go 'gin the grain,
But here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye has no skelp on his
brain!
On that Caucasian head
There is no crown of hair;
It has gone, it has fled!
And Echo sez "Where?"
And I asks, "Is this Nation a White Man's, and is generally things
on the square?"
She was known in the camp
As "Nye's other squaw,"
And folks of that stamp
Hez no rights in the law,
But is treacherous, sinful, and slimy, as Nye might hev well known
before.
But she said that she knew
Where the Injins was hid,
And the statement was true,
For it seemed that she did,
Since she led William where he was covered by seventeen Modocs, and—
slid!
Then they reached for his hair;
But Nye sez, "By the law
Of nations, forbear!
I surrenders—no more:
And I looks to be treated,—you hear me?—as a pris'ner, a pris'ner
of war!"
But Captain Jack rose
And he sez, "It's too thin!
Such statements as those
It's too late to begin.
There's a MODOC INDICTMENT agin you, O Paleface, and you're goin' in!
"You stole Schonchin's squaw
In the year sixty-two;
It was in sixty-four
That Long Jack you went through,
And you burned Nasty Jim's rancheria, and his wives and his papooses
too.
"This gun in my hand
Was sold me by you
'Gainst the law of the land,
And I grieves it is true!"
And he buried his face in his blanket and wept as he hid it from view.
"But you're tried and condemned,
And skelping's your doom,"
And he paused and he hemmed—
But why this resume?
He was skelped 'gainst the custom of nations, and cut off like a rose
in its bloom.
So I asks without guile,
And I trusts not in vain,
If this is the style
That is going to obtain—
If here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye with no skelp on his
brain?