The collies halt; the slow herd sways and reels,
Huddled in fright above a low ravine,
Where wild with thirst a herd unshepherded
Beats up and down—with something dark between;
A narrow circle that they will not cross;
A thing to stop the maddest in their run—
A guarding dog too weak to lift his head,
Who licks a still hand shriveled in the sun.
THE MERCY OF NA-CHIS
Felix Knox was killed by a band of renegade Apaches under Na-chis, son of the famous chief Ca-chis, near York’s Ranch in south-eastern Arizona. Knox made a brave fight and when found his body was not mutilated, and the face had been covered to keep away the coyotes and vultures.
Knox the gambler—Felix Knox;
Trickster, short-card man, if you will;
Rustler, brand-wrangler—all of that—
But Knox the man and the hero still!
For life at best is a hard-set game;
The cards come stacked from the Dealer’s hand;
And a man plays king of his luck just once—
When he faces death in the last grim stand.
Knox had been drummer in Crook’s command;
A devil of daring lived in his drum;
With his heart in the call and his hand on the sticks
The dead from their sand-filled graves might come:
Crippled for life he drummed his last;
Shot through the knee in the Delshay fight—
But he crawled to a rock and drummed “Advance”
Till the Tonto renegades broke in flight.
That was the man who shamed Na-chis!
Two miles out on the Clifton Road
Beyond York’s Ranch the ambush lay,—
Till a near, swift-moving dust-whirl showed
Where the buckboard came. Na-chis crouched low
And gripped his rifle and grimly smiled
As he counted his prey with hawk-like eyes—
The men, the woman, the little child.
They halted—full in the teeth of the trap.
Knox saw—too late. He weighed the chance
And thrust the whip in the driver’s hand
And wheeled the mules: “Back! Back to the ranch!”
He cried as he jumped; “I’ll hold them off.
Whip for your life!” The bullets sung
Like swarming bees through the narrow pass,
And whirred and hummed and struck and stung.
But he turned just once—to wave his hand
To wife and child; then straight ahead,
With yell for yell and shot for shot,
Till the rocks of the pass were spattered red;
And seven bodies bepainted and grim
Sprawled in the cactus and sand below;
And seven souls of the Devil’s kin
Went with him the road that dead men know.
Ay! That was Knox! When the cowboys came
On the day-old trail of the renegade,
Na-chis the butcher, the merciless,
This was the tribute the chief had paid
To the fearless dead. No scarring fire;
No mangling knife; but across the face
His own rich blanket drawn smooth and straight,
Stoned and weighted to keep its place.
THE SEA TO A DESERT DWELLER
Lo here is the sea, the sea!
And long waves leaped to my feet;
Foam-white the breakers beat,
Or crept to the hedging rocks
As a whipped cur creeps to the knee—
Look, here is the sea, the sea!
Was it regal, as I had dreamed,
With its far-drawn dole of ships?
Or sad with the breath of lips
That greet their beloved no more?
Wetly the white sands gleamed;
Like those other sands they seemed.
I have stood as the sun went down,
At dusk on the desert’s edge,
In the grip of a sheltering ledge,
And watched the wide plain burn
To silver from red and brown;
Gem-set like a royal crown.
These waves that ripple and roll
Have rippled in waves of light
Long since to my childish sight;
And the pale heat vapors that glide
Were sea sprites taking toll
For a chartless voyager’s soul.
Low lights ashine on the lee,
Where the orient steamers come;
E’en so the stars at home
Hang low in the purple sky;—
’Twas the face of a friend to me,
But they cry “The sea! The sea!”
HIS PLACE
To the enduring memory of Clarence H. Shaw, who knew the desert as few men know it, and who lies at rest in one of its most beautiful corners.
This is his place—here where the mountains run,
Naked and scarred and seamed up to the face of the sun;
His place—reaches of wind-blown sand, brown and barren and old;
Where the creosote, scorched and glazed, clings with a stubborn hold;
And tall and solemn and strange the fluted cactus lifts
Its arms like a cross that pleads from the lonely, rock-hedged rifts;
His place—where the great, near stars lean low and burn and shine
Still and steady and clear, like lamps at the door of a shrine.
This is his land, his land—where the great skies bend
Over the wide, clean sweep of a world without measure or end:
His land—where across and between the pale, swift whirlwinds go
Like souls that may not rest, by their quest sent to and fro:
And down the washes of sand the vague mirages lay
Their spell of enchanted light, moving in ripple and spray
Of waters that gleam and glisten, with joy and color rife—
Streams where no mouth may drink, but fair as the River of Life.
This is his place—the mesquite, like a thin green mist of tears,
Knows the way of his wish, keeps the hope of his years;
Till, one appointed day, comes the with-holden spring;
Then, miracle wrought in gold, that swift, rare blossoming!
This is his place—where silence eternal fills
The still, white, sun-drowsed plain, and the slumbering, iron-rimmed hills;
Where To-day and Forever mingle, and Changeless and Change are one—
Here in his own land he waits till To-day and Forever are done.