No Indian woman dances in the light;
Silent they sit together out of sight.
But to-night I think this artist from the East,
Who had come to paint the natives hereabout,
Found a splendid flare of crimson on the feast
And moved near the open door,
Where the firelight on the floor
Caught the red of beads upon your moccasins.
So it is, O Cun-ne-wa-bum,
Who were wont to look on stars,
That you sit for ever here,
Like a wild lost note from far,
From the days of ancient war
And of towered stockade and guns
In the Edmonton of seventy years ago.
In your buckskin and your beads
(Feel the sudden wind from out the western hills)
The tip-end of a swan's wing for your fan
With a handle of porcupine quills.
BALLAD OF JASPER ROAD
I know a Blackfoot Chief
Whose name is Dark Plume Bill.
He lived beside the Jasper Road—
And lives there still.
He wears a queer checked coat
And a grey bowler hat,
But looks his ninety-seven years
For all of that.
His gaze is unconcerned
As he sits in the sun,
And counts the flashing motor-cars
That pass, one-by-one,
And trucks, like dreary monsters
Of a prehistoric day,
That are rushing down the road
In their crazy way.
"The first Red River cart,"
Said Dark Plume Bill to me,
"Came lurching up the prairie
Like a ship at sea."
(Oh, the long blue road,
And the stealthy pad of feet
And the first patient ox-cart
With its sail-like sheet!)