FRONTIER BALLADS
By JOSEPH MILLS HANSON
With Pictures in Color and Other Drawings by Maynard Dixon
1910
[Original]
[Original]
CONTENTS
[ THE GIRL OF THE YANKTON STOCKADE ]
[ THE BALLAD OF SERGEANT ROSS ]
[ THE SPRINGFIELD CALIBRE FIFTY ]
[ THE COYOTEVILLE PEACE MEETING ]
[ THE SONG OF THE WINCHESTER ]
[ THE ENGINEER OF THE "GOLDEN HIND" ]
MY CREED
NOW, this is the simple, living faith of a humble heart and mind,
Drunk up from the storm-brewed Western streams, breathed in
with the prairie wind.
My paints are crude and my pictures rude, but if some worth
they show
Which those may see who have thoughts as free, the rest may
let them go.
I hold that the things which make earth good may work most
harm in use
If the wit of men heed not the line 'twixt temperance and abuse,
For speech or mood, or drink or food may be a curse at will,
Though, rightly weighed, they only aid the cup of life to fill.
I hold that the silent sea and plain, the mountain, wood, and
down.
Are better haunts for the feet of men than the streets of the
roaring town,
And that those who tread for the price of bread in the thronging
hives of toil
Will stronger grow with the more they know of the kiss of the
virgin soil.
I hold that our sons should learn to love, not gods of gold and
greed,
But the virile men of brain and brawn who served our country's
need,
And should more delight in a clean-cut fight, stout blade and
courage whole,
That the morbid skill of a critic's drill in the core of a sin-sick
soul.
Three stars that shine on the trail of life can make man's
pathway bright,
And one is the strength of the living God, that stands in his
heart upright,
And one is a noble woman's love, on which his heart may lean,
And one is the sight of his country's flag, to keep his courage
keen.
Who knows the balm of the summer's calm or the chords of the
blizzard's hymn
And finds not God in blast and breeze, his sense is strangely dim.
For he whose ear is attuned can hear the very planets sing
That the soul of man, by a God-wrought plan, is the heir of
creation's King.
Who feels the joy of the golden days with her who shares his
mood
In the sun-washed wastes of the prairie hills or the breaks of
the tangled wood;
Who has won the fate of a steel-true mate, real comrade, friend
and wife,
He tastes the kiss of Elysian bliss in instant, earthly life.
Who sees the gleam of the Stars and Stripes, on land or sea
displayed,
Atilt in the reek of the battle-smoke or aloft o'er the marts of
trade—
Unless his veins are the sluggish drains for the blood of a craven race.—
He will gain new life for a better strife, whatever the odds he
face.
So that is the rede and the homely creed of one who has spelled
it forth
In the rivers' sweep and the splendors deep of the stars of the
hardy North;
To some, I ween, it may seem but mean; too short, too blunt, too plain,
But if those I touch who have felt as much, it will not have been
in vain.
I. SOLDIER SONGS
DAKOTA MILITIA
(1862)
NO "scare-heads" in big city papers,
No "puffs" in Department reports,
No pictures by "special staff artists"
Of assaults on impregnable forts;
We are far from the war-vexed Potomac,
Our fights are too small to make news;
We are merely Dakota militia,
Patrolling the frontier for Sioux.
Three hundred-odd "empire builders,"
Gathered in from three hundred-odd claims,
Far scattered across the wide prairies
From Pierre to the mouth of the James.
Perhaps they seemed little or nothing,
Our losses, our toil, and our pain,
The rush of the war ponies, tearing
Through cornfields and yellowing grain;
The whoop of the hostile at midnight,
The glare of the flaming log shacks,
A beacon of hate and destruction
As we fled, with the foe at our backs;
Our women and young driven, weeping,
Exhausted, half-naked, afraid,
To the refugee huts of Vermillion
Or the sun-smitten Yankton stockade.
Small things to a Nation embattled,
But great to the pioneer band
Who are blazing the roads of the future
Through the wastes of a wilderness land.
We plod past the desolate coulées
In the sweltering afternoon heat.
While the far ridges shine in a waving blue line
Where the earth and the brazen sky meet.
No sound save the hoofs of the column
As they swish through the dry prairie grass,
No life anywhere save a hawk, high in air,
Gazing down as we wearily pass.
There is never a foe we may grapple
In the heat of a steel-clashing fray.
For the quarry we hunt is a shadow in front
That flits, and comes never to bay;
A feather of smoke to the zenith,
The print of a hoof in the sod,
A shot from the grass where the far flankers pass
Sending one more poor comrade to God.
Would we rest when the day's work is over
And the stars twinkle out in the sky?
There is double patrol round the lean water-hole
And the picketed horses hard by.
Breast-down in the rain-rutted gully.
With muskets clutched close in our hands,
The hours of night drag their heavy-winged flight
Like Eternity's slow falling sands.
While the Great Dipper, pinned to the Pole Star,
Swings low in the dome of the North
And, faint through the dark, sounds the prairie wolf's bark
Or a snake from the weeds rustles forth.
And the darkness that chokes like a vapor
Is thronged with the visions which come
Of children and wife and the dear things of life
That peopled the lost cabin home.
Till the East flushes red with the morning
And the dawn-wind springs fresh o'er the plain,
And the reveille's note from the bugle's clear throat
Calls us up to our labors again.
We were not in the fight at Antietam,
We never have seen Wilson's Creek,
We were guiding our trains over Iowa's plains
While the shells at Manassas fell thick,
But we're waging a war for a new land
As the East wages war for the old,
That the mountains and plains of the red man's domains
May be brought to Columbia's fold,
And though only a squad of militia
That the armies back East never knew,
We are playing a game which is largely the same
With the truculent, turbulent Sioux.
[Original]
THE GIRL OF THE YANKTON STOCKADE
YES, it's pretty, this town. And it's always been so;
We pioneers picked it for beauty, you know.
See the far-rolling bluffs; mark the trees, how they hide
All its streets, and, beyond, the Missouri, bank-wide,
Swinging down through the bottoms. Up here on the height
Is the college. Eh, sightly location? You're right!
It has grown, you may guess, since I've been here; but still
It is forty-five years since I looked from this hill
One morning, and saw in the stockade down there
Our women and children all gathered at prayer,
While we, their defenders, with muskets in rest
Lay waiting the Sioux coming out of the West.
They had swept Minnesota with bullet and brand
Till her borders lay waste as a desert of sand,
When we in Dakota awakened to find
That the red flood had risen and left us behind.
Then we rallied to fight them,—Sioux, Sissetons, all
Who had ravaged unchecked to the gates of Saint Paul.
Is it strange, do you think, that the women took fright
That morning, and prayed; that men, even, turned white
When over the ridge where the college now looms
We caught the first glitter of lances and plumes
And heard the dull trample of hoofs drawing nigh,
Like the rumble of thunder low down in the sky?
Such sounds wrench the nerves when there's little to see;
It seemed madness to stay, it was ruin to flee.
But, handsome and fearless as Anthony Wayne,
Our captain, Frank Ziebach, kept hold on the rein,
Like a bugle his voice made us stiffen and thrill—
"Stand steady, boys, steady! And fire to kill!"
So the most of us stayed. But when dangers begin
You will always find some who are yellow within.
We had a few such, who concluded to steer
For the wagon-train, parked in the centre and rear.
They didn't stay long! But you've heard, I dare say,
Of the girl who discouraged their running away.
What, no? Never heard of Miss Edgar? Why, sir,
Dakota went wild with the praises of her!
As sweet as a hollyhock, slender and tall,
And brave as the sturdiest man of us all.
By George, sir, a heroine, that's what she made.
When her spirit blazed out in the Yankton stockade!
The women were sobbing, for every one knew
She must blow out her brains if the redskins broke through,
When into their midst, fairly gasping with fright,
Came the panic-struck hounds who had fled from the fight.
They trampled the weak in their blind, brutal stride,
Made straight for the wagons and vanished inside.
Then up rose Miss Edgar in anger and haste
And grasped the revolver that hung at her waist;
She walked to the wagon which nearest her lay,
She wrenched at the back-flap and tore it away,
Then aiming her gun at the fellow beneath
She held it point-blank to his chattering teeth.
"Go back to your duty," she cried, "with the men!
Go back, or you'll never see sunrise again!
Do you think, because only the women are here,
You can skulk behind skirts with your dastardly fear?
Get out on the ground. Take your gun. About, face!
And don't look around till you're back in your place!"
Well, he minded; what's more, all the others did, too.
That girl cleared the camp of the whole scurvy crew,
For a pistol-point, hovering under his nose,
Was an argument none of them cared to oppose.
Yet so modest she was that she colored with shame
When the boys on the line began cheering her name!
Well, that's all; just an echo of old border strife
When the sights on your gun were the guide-posts of life.
Harsh times breed strong souls, by eternal decree,
Who can breast them and win—but it's always struck me
That the Lord did an extra good job when He made
Miss Edgar, the girl of the Yankton stockade.
[Original]
[Original]
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,