The Return
1
Every life is but a journey—
Trav’ling on from place to place—
Starting from the point God gave us
With an ever-varying pace.
Outward, onward, spurred by motives
In our wand’rings here and there,
Sometimes led by hope alluring,
Sometimes halted by despair;
But the life that travels farthest
On that deeper strength depends,
For with love, there is no turning;
When love dies the journey ends.
2
Back across the broken foothills,
With a courage none can feel
Till the burning pangs of sorrow
Turn the heart-strings into steel;
Back across the winter’s playground,
Tracing out the paths he trod,
With each muttered execration
Ending in a prayer to God.
Blasts that howled with fiendish laughter,
By their loud derisive cry
Seemed to mock his labored progress
As they passed him swiftly by;
Icy, blizzard-driven snowflakes
Into ghost-like fancies whirled,
Painting on the barren canvas,
Gaunt Death battling for the world.
3
Back across the snow-strewn desert,
Fighting famine face to face,
Trusting to his horse to take him
To each former camping place.
Once Zeb stopped beside a snowdrift
With a loud and startling neigh;
Tried to tell his half-dazed master
Where his mate, old Simon, lay.
Pressing on, he reached the border
Of Nebraska’s whitened plain,
Where his mind in maudlin fancies
Yielded to the bitter strain,
As he saw far in the distance,
Like a battered mast at sea,
Once again the twisted branches
Of the lone and friendly tree.
4
“Git up, Zeb. Come, see! She’s waving!
Waving there for you and me.
See her there, so white and pretty,
Standing by our friend, the tree!
Quit that stumbling! Now then, streak it!
Hit the gait you used to do
When we hired out for the round up
And you beat the first one through.
There she is! There’s where I saw her
When we stayed there all that night;
Though ’twas dark, I saw her riding,
By those flashing threads of light;
She’s been waiting! Oh, I left her
In this awful lonely place!
God forgive me! Nancy! hear me!
Oh, that face—that poor white face!”
5
One cold morning, old Zach Baxter,
Riding o’er this snowbound sea
Saw a famished pony standing
Near a queer and lonely tree.
From his frost-encrusted nostrils
Came a plaintive whinny, low,
As the man rode up beside him
Struggling through the drifted snow.
When the old man tried to lead him,
He refused to turn away;
But he pawed the drift beneath him,
Where his stricken master lay.
And below the cold, white cover,
In a deathlike stupor deep,
Old Zach found a sorry stranger
Shrouded for his last long sleep.
6
Tearing at the ragged bundle
Lodged between the horse’s feet,
Clutching at the frozen blanket,
Brushing back the crusted sleet,
Faithful in his rude endeavors,
Rousing by his loud commands,
Roughly shaking, turning, rubbing,
Zach breathed on his face and hands;
Till the stiffened limbs responded
And the closed eyes opened wide,
Dazed and puzzled at the stranger
Working fiercely at his side.
Billy felt the strong arms raise him,
Felt the Frost King’s stinging breath
As he struggled, half unconscious,
In the wav’ring fight with death.
7
In the east, the sun dogs glistened
Like tall shafts of marble, bright,
O’er the whitened grave of nature,—
Ghostly spires of frozen light,
Flying frost flakes snapping, sparkling,
Dancing in a wild display,
Turned into a mist of diamonds
As they mocked the newborn day.
8
Old Zach’s pony bearing double,
Reeking steam from every pore,
Reached at last the covered pathway
Leading to the dug-out door.
With his arms clasped tight round Billy,
Zach half dragged his helpless load
Through the lowly, mud-walled entrance
Of his rudely built abode.
There, upon the narrow bunk bed
Spread with nondescript attire,
Zach enfolded him in wrappings
While he started up a fire;
And no nurse, however skillful,
Whatsoever her degree,
Ever gave more loyal service
To a patient, than did he.
9
Poor and meager were the comforts
Of Zach’s cave-like prairie home,
Permeated with the odor
Of the fresh-dug virgin loam.
Pungent wreaths of smoke, slow drifting,
Floated lazily above,
To the dried grass of the ceiling
From the cracked and rusty stove.
Willow poles athwart for rafters
Sagged beneath the dirt roof’s strain,
And a piece of grease-smeared paper
Formed the only window-pane.
In the center, on the dirt floor
Stood a table-like affair
Fashioned from a wagon end-gate,
Where Zach spread his scanty fare.
10
There for weeks lay Billy, helpless,
Racked with mad’ning fever pains,
As the burning sun of summer
Scorches sere the desert plains.
Then he lay with cold, white features
And the feeble, scarce drawn breath,
As the silent winter prairie
Lies beneath its shroud of death.
Ofttimes when the raging sickness
Sent the hot blood to his brain,
He would point with frantic gesture
To the dingy window pane,
Calling in excited mutterings,
Eyes transfixed in frenzied fright—
“There she is! Now, can’t you see her?
See her face there in the light!”
11
Then old Zach would try to soothe him
In his simple-hearted way;
“She won’t hurt you,” he would tell him,
“I’ll go drive her clear away.
I’ve seen things—now listen, pardner—
Those things happened once to me
Once down there in old Dodge City,
Winding up a three weeks’ spree.
What you see is jest a ‘lusion,
’Cause you’re crazy in your head;
When your thinker’s runnin’ proper
You’ll find ‘She’ is gone or dead.
There, now, pardner, see what this is!
Ain’t it purty? Your tin cup;
Found a little pinch o’ coffee.
That’s the boy, now, drink it up!”
12
When the breeze of spring in whispers
Stirred the withered bunch-grass plume,
Humming hymns of resurrection
Over nature’s silent tomb,
And the fleeing clouds of heaven,
Bending low at God’s command,
Spilled their tribute from the ocean
On the long-forsaken land,
And the sun, with mellow kindness
Spread abroad his softened rays,
Calling bud and blade and blossom
From their sleep of many days,
Billy heard, at last, the music
Of the glad earth’s jubilee,
Felt a new strength stir within him,
And a longing to be free.
13
One day, o’er the hill’s low summit,
Whence the prairie dipped away,
There appeared a moving wagon
With its canvas patched and gray,
Like a vessel on the ocean
Under taut and close-reefed sail,
Rising slowly on the billows
Heaped up by the driving gale.
Veering towards the little dug-out,
Making for a friendly shore,
Heaving to, the schooner anchored
Close beside the open door.
Loud and hearty were the greetings,
For the driver of the team
Was Tom Frothingham, a neighbor,
Who had lived near Billy’s claim.
14
Bit by bit he told the story—
How he’d wandered all around
Since he left his Kansas homestead
And the folks near North Pole mound;
How he’d traveled all through Texas
With the roving fever on,
Camping oft in strange new places,
Where no other soul had gone.
So the news, now half forgotten
In his absence from the place,
Came in broken recollections—
Careful efforts to retrace
All the incidents of interest
To the sick one listening there,
Who, with pale and careworn features,
Heard the story with despair.
15
“Three weeks after you left Kansas
I hitched up and came away.
Still, I reckoned you intended
To improve your claim and stay;
For your eighty was a picture—
Running spring and good clear land—
Everything a body needed
For a starter, right at hand.
Well, some others left ’fore I did—
You remember Mac, of course,
How he got the moving notion
When Bill Kelly missed his horse?
Chased him clear to Old Man’s crossing,
So I heard the posse say;
Thought they had him fairly cornered,
But, by jings! he got away.
16
“There are stranger things than fiction;
What is natural may seem queer,
So I s’pose we needn’t wonder
At the things we see out here.
One thing happened since you left there
That I call a burning shame—
Did you know that rope-necked Johnson
Jumped your eighty-acre claim?
Last I saw him, he was plowing,
And he laughed and tried to joke:
Said ’twas kind of you to leave him
All the ground that you had broke;
Said your house was so untidy
He was sleeping out of doors,
Till he got a girl to help him
Wash the pans and scrub the floors.
17
“Lots of people coming in there
From most every foreign land—
Massachusetts and Missouri—
Made a mess I couldn’t stand.
Every man that’s made of manhood
Wants to live where he is free,
So I’m bound to keep on moving
When they get to crowding me.
Then another thing that happened:
Puzzled every one around
When they heard one morning early,
That Bill Kelly’s horse was found.
Aleck Rose told me about it
After I had packed and gone;
Said the mare strayed in the dooryard
With Mac’s steel-horn saddle on.”
18
As each day in steady conquest
Charged the ranks of fleeing night,
Winning back the stolen hours
With their golden spears of light;
As the living in all nature
Felt that mighty spirit’s sway,
So the sick man caught the power
And his illness wore away.
One clear morning, as Aurora
Silver-tinted all the plain,
In his weatherbeaten saddle
Billy took the trail again.
“Good by, boy,” old Zach repeated,
“I’m most sure you’ll never see
Any more o’ them ’ere ‘lusions,
Anyway, what you called ‘She.’”
19
Day by day the low horizon
Spread its narrow circle round,
As if fate had drawn a barrier,
And forbade advance beyond.
Though the journey dragged on slowly,
Night time brought its sure reward,
For the added miles behind him
Stretched at length to Mingo’s Ford,
Where the breeze bore from the upland
Broken fragments of the song
Of the cowboy with his cattle,
As he drove the strays along;
Where the voice of flowing water
And the treble of the birds,
Swelled the hallowed evening anthem
To the bass of lowing herds.
20
Then the trail along the Solomon
Where the timber, making friends
With the ever-widening valley,
Filled the rounded river bends;
Then the rankling recollection,
As he passed some well-known place
Where before, with hope and vigor,
He had sped in fruitless chase.
Then the lonely camp at nightfall,
Where the wind in monotone
Thrummed the harp strings of the grass stems,
Breathing low its song, “Alone!”
Where the stars, fixed in the heavens,
To his upturned face would say,
With their heartless glint of distance,
“She thou seek’st is far away.”
21
Then the long, far-reaching bottoms
Rank with withered blue-joint grass,
With its broken stems entangled
In a matted jungle mass;
Then across the higher prairie,
Searching out a shorter way,
To the creek that joined the river
Where Mac crossed and got away;
Then the twinge of bitter sorrow
As he neared his journey’s end,
And beheld the fringe of timber
On the banks of Old Man’s bend,
Where no living sign or token
Broke the gloom that brooded there,
Save a solitary buzzard
Floating idly in the air.
22
From these high and broken hilltops
He could trace the river’s flow,
And the creek’s untamed meandering,
With its looplike bend below,
Seeming in the light of evening
Like a giant serpent there,
Which had coiled about its victim,
And lay resting in its lair.
Breaking through the tangled brushwood
As the night was coming on,
Creeping down the steep embankment
Where the muddy waters run,
Billy crossed within the timber
Where the shroud of deeper gloom,
And its chilling breath of darkness
Marked the hidden prairie tomb.
23
As the soul in deep communion,
Seeks some isolated bower
Where the body’s sordid cravings
Yield beneath the spirit’s power,
So the searcher, bowed in reverence,
Left untouched his evening fare
As he listened to the voices
Of the shadows gathering there.
Here no lighted torch or camp fire
With its weak and fitful ray,
Could illume the mystic journey
Of prayer’s consecrated way.
Here the silence brought its message
Of forebodings, vague and deep,
In its visions to the dreamer,
Through the mystery of sleep.
24
In his dreams he saw a monarch
Decked in sumptuous array,
Seated on a throne of glory,
Bearing royal title, Day.
Then some mighty power transcendent,
Thrust him from his gorgeous throne,
Turning all the realm to darkness,
And the world was left alone.
As the shades of gloom were spreading,
By strange flashing threads of light
He beheld in dim-drawn outline,
On the background of the night,
Phantom horse and girlish rider,
Speeding on in reckless race,
Till she turned directly toward him
And he saw her fearless face.
25
Then, behold! the King returning
With a pageantry so bright,
That the shadow-clad usurpers
Fled in ignominious fright.
As he saw the hosts approaching
Through a cloud of battle smoke,
Charging wildly down upon him,
He, in sudden fear, awoke.
As he looked, the blackened heavens
Splashed with demon-tinted blood
From the hue of burning prairie
Throbbed above the fiery flood.
Leaping o’er the rounded bluff-tops,
Down the valley’s long incline,
He could see the lurid column
Spread its blazing battle line.
26
Like a troop of charging horsemen
Sweeping on with maddened roar,
Mowing down the grass battalions,
Crackling flames swept all before.
Then the driftwood’s rifted breastwork,
Left there by the waters high,
Flashed up in a hissing furnace,
As the red-armed fiends leaped by.
Clinging to the swaying saddle
And the plunging horse’s mane,
Billy dashed through falling embers
To the level, open plain.
On the right and left, the head fires
Rushing on at furious pace,
Stretched beside the horse and rider
In the life-and-death-fought race.
27
Here the gale with venomed fury
Met in vortex from afar,
Raising high the flaming pennons
Of the fiery fiends of war.
Flashing by, the blazing grass stems
Sped like arrows through the air,
Falling on the distant prairie,
Kindling fresh fires everywhere.
Pressing through the low-flung smoke clouds—
Stifling fumes of Hades’ breath—
Fiercer with each flying moment
Drove those scorching blasts of death.
Thrice his horse, ’neath quirt and rowel
Bravely struggling, almost fell,
As he fled in desperation
O’er the trail that led through hell.
28
One poor singed and panting coyote
Through the perils of the ride
Hemmed in by the flames pursuing
Ran close by the horse’s side.
Scarce a meager pace behind them,
Pressing hard the coyote’s rear,
Raced a frantic old jack rabbit,
Ears laid low in speed and fear.
Reaching now a stretch of upland,
Here the coyote changed his course,
Breaking through the narrow side-fire,
Followed fast by hare and horse;
And, upon the smoking prairie
Over which the fire had passed,
Steaming horse and stricken rider
Found a breathing space at last.
29
When the morning sun in splendor
Rose upon the blackened plain,
His red beams revealed the lover
Back at Old Man’s Bend again.
Waist deep in its soothing waters
Bathing blistered brow and hands;
While near by, in pain a-tremble,
Faithful Zeb impatient stands.
Through the bend he searched and wandered,
But except the furrowed bark,
Of a gnarled and aged elm tree
Which revealed one bullet-mark,
Naught was left save blackened embers;
And the words he “knew in part”—
“Dust to dust and then to ashes”—
Told the story of his heart.
30
Back along the Solomon River,
Trailing towards the humble claim
He had lost when love and duty
Fired his soul to “being game”;
Back, across the beaver fordway,
Where love first had found the track,
Now returning with the rankling
Sting of hate to bring him back—
Hate, that hunger made more bitter
When his last jerked beef was gone;
Climbing trees to cut off branches
For his horse to browse upon;
Back, where once the flower-decked prairie,
Spread its bloom of hope and bliss,
Now a blackened field of mourning,
From the fire of one sweet kiss.
31
Till one day, he saw beyond him,
In the distance, purple crowned,
That old monarch of the prairie,
Guard of ages, North Pole Mound.
Then the field where Zeb and Simon
Pulled the old sod-breaking plow
Stretching like a narrow ribbon
On the land that lay below.
Now the horse’s steps grew lighter
As he passed each well-known sign
Of the old familiar landscape,
And they crossed the eighty’s line,
Where the spring of running waters
Gave envenomed purpose birth,
As he drank its bubbling offering
From the pulsing heart of earth.
32
Then, ascending from the hollow,
Full before his eyes appeared
Home—his home—the low-walled sodhouse
Which his toiling hands had reared.
Near the straw shed stood the wagon
He had brought from Wichita,
And beneath the grass-fringed gable
Hung his trusty crosscut saw.
In the dooryard, near the window,
Lay the broken homemade chair,
Where, at evening, love-born fancies
Revelled, as he rested there;
Love, whose scattered seed had fallen
On a mystic field of fate,
Where the tangled vine extending
Bore the bitter fruit of hate.
33
Hurrying nearer, he dismounted,
Trembling with the rage he felt,
As he cast aside the bridle
And drew taut his cartridge belt.
Throwing down his torn sombrero,
There, before the tight-closed door,
On the cowardly usurper
Loud and bitter vengeance swore.
“Come, you dirty, green-scummed scoundrel,
With your sneaking ‘plan or two’!
Just come out, you rope-necked buzzard!
See how far you’ll put them through.
You can keep the eighty acres,
Hell will write your pedigree,
But I’ll rub your crooked nose-piece
In the dirt you stole from me.
34
“Come outside, you sneaking coyote!
If you’ve got a drop of man
In your greasy, thieving carcass,
Finish up what you began.”
Fiercer grew his coarse invective,
Louder yet his taunting calls,
When no answer to his challenge
Came from out the low sod walls.
Uncontrolled, his furious anger
Spoke in quick and murderous roar
As he pumped his old six-shooter
Through the barred and bolted door.
When he paused the rude door opened,
And before its splintered place
Stood the vision of the shadows,
And he saw Her fearless face.
35
As the artist in his painting
Plans the background to enhance
All the beauty of his subject
Both in pose and countenance,
So the poor and dark interior
Lent its gloom to magnify
All the power and witching beauty
Of her face and lustrous eye.
Standing there, a pictured goddess
Sketched against a lowering storm,
Bearing on her pallid features
That supernal gift of calm.
36
“Nancy! Woman! God in heaven,
Speak, girl! Can this thing be true?
Are you here with that—that scoundrel,
After all that I’ve gone through?
Do you stand there, fiend or human,
After lending him your hand,
First to break an honest spirit,
Then to steal away my land?
Must a man who loves a woman
Like a devil’s imp be driven
Through the tortures of damnation
For a single glimpse of heaven?
Tell me where the cur is hiding—
I’ve no wish to hurt his bride,
But I’ll braid a twelve-foot bull whip
From his dirty, yaller hide!
37
“Speak to me and tell me, woman,
How the God in heaven above
Starts the fires of hell a-burning
From a spark of human love;
Why He ever made a woman
Who could play a fickle part;
Why He ever made a fellow
With his soul tied to his heart;
Why He made life just a gamble—
I can’t talk the way I feel—
In the game that I’ve been playing,
You know this ain’t no square deal!
I will go away and leave you,
But ’twould kind o’ ease the pain
If you’d only tell me, Nancy—
If you’d try—to—just explain.
38
“If you wouldn’t stand there looking
With a face of livid white
Like the specter of the prairie
That I saw one horrid night,
Riding through the endless darkness
Like a being doomed from birth
Just to roam outside of heaven
And denied a place on earth.
Say one word to me! Speak, Nancy,
If you have a voice and live!
Tell the worst, e’en though you ask me
To be patient and forgive.
I will listen—I will suffer—
I will do the best I can;
Nancy, sweetheart! hear the pleading
Of a broken-hearted man,”
39
“See here, Billy! You gone crazy?
Charging like you got a fit?
Johnson ain’t in—just at present—
Won’t you stop and rest a bit?
Don’t act strange. There’s no hard feelings,
Though I’ve never seen before
Any man that knocked like you did
On a peaceful neighbor’s door.
Come right in; now, don’t be backward,
Like old times to have you’round!
You look tired, like you’d traveled
Over quite a stretch of ground.
Sit right here in this old rocker;
Johnson fixed it up one day,
Feeling certain you would never
Come meandering ’round this way.
40
“Don’t get up and act uneasy,
Rest yourself, now, if you can,
You don’t mind me like Jim Johnson—
He’s a most obedient man.
You went off and left your eighty,
Roaming where the luck-wind blows,
Like a tumbleweed in winter,
Where you’ve been, Lord only knows.
While Jim’s gone we’ll talk together,
As we used to, months ago,
When I tried to quench the burning
Of a love I didn’t know.
Listen, Billy, while I tell you
All about my ‘fickle part’;
When I’m done you may know better
How God made a woman’s heart.
41
“While you’re resting, I’ll get supper,
Though there ain’t much here to eat,
‘Cepting bran, to make some muffins,
And a little rabbit meat.
Wish I had that pinch of coffee
I saved up for—oh, so long,
Till one day I went and used it,
Though I somehow felt ’twas wrong;
For I kind o’ thought that sometime
Some one might be coming here
Worn out with a long, long journey,
And would crave that kind o’ cheer.
Now, then, Billy, draw your stool up;
What we’ve got is scant and plain—
I ain’t hungry—honest—Billy,
While you eat—why—I’ll ’explain.’”