Joaquin Miller

“ Out from the edge of the woods would stream, right and left, two long, corresponding, surging lines, bellowing and plunging forward now and then, their heads to the ground, their tails always in the air and their eyes aflame, as if they would set fire to the long gray grass. With the precision and discipline of a well-ordered army, they would close in upon the wild beast, too terrified now to either fight or fly, and, leaping upon him, one after another, with their long, sharp hoofs, he would, in a little time, be crushed into an unrecognizable mass. ”

“ As she shines through the wood like the light from the skies.
And a ship now and then from some far Ophir’s shore
Draws in from the sea. It lies close to the bank;
Then a dull, muffled sound of the slow-shuffled plank
As they load the black ship; but you hear nothing more,
And the dark dewy vines, and the tall sombre wood
Like twilight droop over the deep sweeping flood.
The black masts are tangled with branches that cross,
The rich, fragrant gums fall from branches to deck,
The thin ropes are swinging with streamers of moss
That mantle all things like the shreds of a wreck ”

“ But his grand, noble nature came to the surface in a second; and dropping his pick and pan in the trail, he caught up the two children, and in a moment more was, with one in each arm, rushing down the trail to his cabin. He met some men, and passed others. They all looked at him with wonder. One even laughed at him.
And it is hard to comprehend this. There were good men—good in a measure; men who would have gallantly died to save a woman—men who were true men on points of honor; yet men who could not think of even being civil to an Indian, or any one with a bit of Indian blood in his veins. ”

“ I see you now, away beyond the seas, beyond the lands where the sun goes down in the Pacific like some great ship of fire, resting still on the green hills, watching your herds, waiting
"Where rolls the Oregon,
And hears no sound save its own dashing."
Nearly a quarter of a century ago you took me the long and lonesome half-year's journey across the mighty continent, wild, and rent, and broken up, and sown with sand and ashes, viii and crossed by tumbling, wooded rivers that ran as if glad to get away, fresh and strange and new as if but half-fashioned from the hand of God. ”

“ Benny's last thought was of his wigwam that night as he slid off into the delicious sleep that only rosy-cheeked, tired boys know. He dreamed he was the chief of a powerful tribe, and that he found old Winneenis, not old any longer, but a little girl like Fanny, crying in the forest because she couldn't find her way to her people, and that he took her by the hand and led her home. ”

“ The two words came out like the bark of a bull-dog; as if one of the brutes he had drawn back under his bench had stuck out his nose and yelped in the face of the Widow, and Sandy was frightened nearly to death. The perspiration dropped from his brow to his hand, and he knew that things could not last in this way much longer. The bull-dogs would be out, and he knew it. The dead man that he was sitting down upon would rise up to judgment, and the felon at his side was only swinging and turning and twisting more than before. ”

“ Next to the giraffe, which you may know never makes any noise or note whatever, notwithstanding the wonderful length of his throat, the bear is the most noiseless of beasts. With his nose to the ground all the time, standing up only now and then to pull a wild plum or pick a bunch of grapes, or knock a man down if he must, he seems to me like some weary old traveler that has missed the right road of life and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. ”

“ O father of waters! O river so vast!
So deep, so strong, and so wondrous wild,—
He embraces the land as he rushes past,
Like a savage father embracing his child.
His sea-land is true and so valiantly true,
His leaf-land is fair and so marvellous fair,
His palm-land is filled with a perfumed air
Of magnolia blooms to its dome of blue.
His rose-land has arbors of moss-swept oak,—
Gray, Druid old oaks; and the moss that sways
And swings in the wind is the battle-smoke
Of duellists, dead in her storied days.
His love-land has churches and bells and chimes ”

“ Past brave men battling with a foe
That circled them with lance and bow
And feather'd arrows all a-wing;
Till months unmeasured came and ran
The calendar with him, as though
Old Time had lost all reckoning;
Then passed for aye the creaking trains,
And pioneers that named the plains.
Those brave old bricks of Forty-nine!
What lives they lived! what deaths they died!
A thousand cañons, darkling wide
Below Sierra's slopes of pine,
Receive them now.
And they who died 79
Along the far, dim, desert route.
Their ghosts are many.
Let them keep
Their vast possessions. ”

“ He holds it tenderly, as if a child, or something dearly loved. He takes it to the light and looks at the lock; he blows in the barrel; he mournfully shakes his head. "It is not loaded! Well, no matter; I can but die," and he clubs the gun and prepares for mortal battle.
"Oh, come, Carats," cries Gar Dosson, "let's have a little frolic before the sheriff comes—a kiss, eh? Come, my beauty!"
The rough man has all this time been stealing up, as nearly as he could to the girl, and now throws his arm about her neck. ”

“ But the Parson did not pass on. He came close up to the boy as he stood there alone in the dusk, half trembling with fear, as the Parson approached.
The strong man did not speak at first. His face was terrible with rage and a strange tumult of thought.
The stars were half hidden by the sailing clouds, and the moon had not risen. It was almost dark. Away up on the mountain side a wolf called to his companion, and a lonesome night-bird, with a sharp cracked voice, kept up a mournful monotone in the cañon below. ”

“ XIV. The sky is like an opal sea,
The air is like the breath of kine,
But oh her face is white, and she
Leans faint to see a lifted sign,—
To see two hands lift up and wave
To see a face so white with woe,
So ghastly, hollow, white as though
It had that moment left the grave.
Her sweet face at that ghostly sign,
Her fair face in her weight of hair,
Is like a white dove drowning there,—
A white dove drowned in Tuscan wine.
He tries to stand, to stand erect.
’T is gold, ’t is gold that holds him down! ”

“ Lyte got out his fiddle, keeping his gun, of course, close at hand. Pretty soon the oxen came down, came very close, so close that they almost put their cold, moist noses against the backs of our necks as we sat there on the ox-yokes or reclined in our blankets, around the crackling pine-log fire and listened to the wild, sweet strains that swept up and down and up till the very tree tops seemed to dance and quiver with delight. ”

“ Through wold of snows, through wood of flame, 46
Through golden Indian-summer days,
Hung round in soft September haze,
And no man cross'd or question'd him.
Nay, there was that in his stern air
That held e'en these rude men aloof:
None came to share the broad-built roof
That rose so fortress-like beside
The angry, rushing, sullen tide,
And only black men gather'd there,
The old man's slaves, in dull content,
Black, silent, and obedient.
Then men push'd westward through his wood,
His wild beasts fled, and now he stood
Confronting men. ”

“ Should he fire? To shoot, to shoot at, to even point a gun at a white man, is death to the Indian. A slave of the South had been ten-fold more safe in striking his master in the old days of slavery, than is an Indian on the border in defending his person against a white man.
The two children, like frightened pheasants, when the old one gives signs of danger, darted down behind him, quick as thought, still as death. Their desperate and destitute existence in that savage land had made them savages in their cunning and caution. ”

“ The Forks was the wildest and the freshest bit of the black-white, fir-set, and snow-crowned Sierras that ever the Creator gave, new from His hand, to man.
One thousand men! Not a woman, not a child, down in that cañon of theirs, so deep that the sun never reached them in the Winter and but a little portion of the day in Summer.
Forests, fir and pine, in the cañon, and out of the cañon, up the hills and up the mountains, black and dense, till they broke against the colossal granite peaks far above and crowned in everlasting snow. ”

“ But the footfall of God, or the far pheasant beating,
It is one and the same, whatever the mask
It may wear unto man. The woods keep repeating
The old sacred sermons, whatever you ask.
The brown-muzzled cattle come stealthy to drink,
The wild forest cattle, with high horns as trim
As the elk at their side: their sleek necks are slim
And alert like the deer. They come, then they shrink
As afraid of their fellows, of shadow-beasts seen
In the deeps of the dark-wooded waters of green.
It is man in his garden, scarce wakened as yet
From the sleep that fell on him when woman was made. ”

“ And he holds up John Logan's cap, which had been knocked from his head in his hasty retreat to cover, and he rolls his red eyes toward the bed, takes a step in that direction, reaches a hand, lays hold of the curtain, and is about to dash it aside.
"John Logan is there!" shouts Dosson, and again the curtain is clutched.
Does he dream of what is beyond? If he could only see the panting, breathless wretch that leans there eagerly, with lifted gun, ready to brain him—waiting, waiting for him to come, even wishing that he only would come—he would start back with terror to the other side. ”

“ Men kept away, kept going out and looking up toward the little cabin on the hill.
The man with the silver faro-box sat by the table with the green cloth, as if in a brown study. The great fire blazed up and snapped as if angry, for but few men gathered about it all that evening. The little brown mice up in the loft could be heard nibbling at the old boots and bacon rinds, and their little teeth ticked and rattled together as if the upper half of the Howling Wilderness had been the shop of a mender of watches. ”

“ Above the sea in sheen of gold,
His sea-bride leaping from his hold;
The lost Colossus, and his bride
In bronze perfection at his side:
As if the lost Colossus came
Companioned from the past, his bride
With torch all faithful at his side:
With star-tipped torch that reached and rolled
Through cloud-built corridors of gold:
His bride, austere and stern and grand,—
Bartholdi’s goddess by the sea,
Far lifting, lighting Liberty
From prison seas to Freedom’s land.
XLI. The flame! the envious flame, it leapt
Enraged to see such majesty,
Such scorn of death; such kingly scorn. ”

“ That pursuer was also an old man, and not much unlike himself; an old man with a scythe—death. Death following fast from the hot valley of pestilence, where he, death, kept, if possible, closer watch than the Agents, that no Indian ever returned to his native mountains. But death gave up the pursuit, and turned back from the moment the baptismal fountain touched the girl's fevered forehead. At last the old man who held her in his arms, rose up, rode on and down to his cabin in the twilight, all secure from pursuit of Agents, death, or any one. ”

“ On the little wooden mantel-piece above the fire-place there stood a row of nuggets. They lay there as if they were a sort of Winter fruit put by to ripen. They were like oranges which you see lying about the peasants' houses in Italy, and almost as large. These were the gifts of the hardy miners of the Forks to their patron saint; gifts given at such times and in such ways that they could not be well refused.
Once there had been, late in the night, a heavy stone thrown against the door, while the two "turtle doves," as the camp used to call its lovers, sat by the fire. ”