Joseph Mills Hanson

“ Through the picket-ropes at night?
When a man or horse is hungry, ain't he bound to try and bolt?
When the trail got light and thin
And the ridges walled us in,
And the flankers had to scramble with their toes and finger-nails,
While the wind across the peaks
Whipped the snow against our cheeks,
Then the horses had to suffer for the badness of the trails. ”

“ I've lurched across the Painted Plains, my temples like to burst,
And seen men suckin' out their veins to quench their burnin' thirst,
With the sky a blazin' furnace and the earth a bakin' sea,
And he was there beside us—and was just as dry as we.
Oh, hang these army politics, when jealousy and spite
Can rob a veteran of his praise, his dearest, hard-earned right!
There's just one kind of officer enlisted men can like—
The kind who keeps his bearings when the shots begin to strike.
And that's the kind that Miles has been; he never ducked or flinched ”

“ To serve the onward march of man,
Which sweeping down the vale of time
With gathering strength and hope sublime
Is never checked nor stayed.
COWBOY SONG WE are up in the morning ere dawning of day
And the grub-wagon's busy and flap-jacks in play,
While the herd is astir over hillside and swale
With the night-riders rounding them into the trail.
Come, take up your cinches
And shake up your reins;
Come, wake up your bronco
And break for the plains;
Come, roust those red steers from the long chaparral,
For the outfit is off for the railroad corral! ”

“ AFTERGLOW (On the Missouri) TWILIGHT on the river, summer everywhere,
Prairie flowers perfuming the warm June air,
Breezes stirring softly on the high bluff's crest
Where stand a lad and maiden, looking toward the West.
Just a lad and maiden, standing, hand in hand,
While the lights are fading from the sunset's fairyland,
While on butte and buttress dies the crimson afterglow
And the mists creep upward from the river far below. ”

“ I am king of my day as he of his, from the swamp to the saw-backed spur,
And there's never a trail but has heard the hail of the ringing Winchester!
I've saved the leaguered wagon-train from the scalping-knife and stake;
I have held the lead through the blind stampede in the bison's dust-dimmed wake ”

“ Come, now for the steers in the long chaparral,
For we're far on the way to the railroad corral!
The afternoon shadows are starting to lean
When the grub-wagon sticks in a marshy ravine
And the herd scatters further than vision can look,
For you bet all true punchers will help out the cook! ”

“ 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? ”

“ I'm as dry as the Mormon Trail!"
Well, stranger, that there is the yarn o' Jake,
Jake Dale, o' the "Lucky George."
He wasn't no saint with a gilt-edged crown;
His language would shatter a church-steeple down;
He'd a thirst in his throat that nothin' could drown,
An' a fist like a blacksmith's forge.
But, all the same, he'd a Christian soul
If he hadn't the Christian creed,
An' a better heart, by a blame long shot,
Than some pious folks that brag a lot
On savin' their souls, but haven't got
No time fer their brother's need. ”

“ Ye mind, I'm Sergeant Noonan and I guess I ought to know!
I'll tell ye how it happened, dead straight, without no frills.
We'd tracked a Cheyenne war-band clean through the Blacksnake Hills,
Till, on the march one mornin', they jumped us from the right,
Three hundred bucks in war-paint, well armed and full of fight.
We'd fifty men in column—no time to close a rank—
We yanked our horses sideways and fired by the flank,
But, though we volleyed through 'em and dropped the foremost ones,
The rest came on like devils, right up against our guns. ”

“ Of bellowing bison in mad retreat
And the panic of smaller things.
Behind them the flames speed onward
O'er level and slope and swale,
And the grass is melted to embers,
Whirled high on the parching gale.
As strong as the ocean's billows,
As fierce as the blizzard's breath,
Is aught in Nature that may withstand
The league-long sweep of this scorching brand
That clutters the plains with death? ”

“ Plains in cold, sterile beauty dressed,
Your time of fruit draws near!
Creatures of thicket, vale and shore,
Tribes of the hills, your reign is o'er,
The conquerer is here!
His footprints mark your secret grounds,
His voice upon your air resounds,
His name, unto your utmost bounds,
Is one of strength and fear.
The magic of his virile powers
Shall change your desert wastes to bowers,
Your nakedness to shade;
Shall stretch broad, rustling ranks of corn
Along your stony crests forlorn
And wheat-fields, dappling in the sun,
Where your mad autumn fires have run. ”

“ Now half our boys were rookies who'd never smelt a fight;
The yappin' Cheyenne war-whoop just turned 'em blue with fright.
They started breakin' column and first we veterans knew,
The troop had gone to blazes and let the redskins through.
The sergeants clubbed their carbines, the Captain prayed and swore;
It didn't stop the rookies; they wouldn't stand for more.
Then a bullet caught my mustang and ploughed him underneath
And he bolted toward the hostiles with the bit between his teeth. ”

“ Ever to the hilltop, looking westward o'er the land
Will come some lad and maiden, dreaming, hand in hand;
In the twilight dreaming of a happy home to be
Beside thy restless waters, sweeping silent toward the sea,
Ever in the gloaming while time shall ebb and flow
Love will build its castles in the crimson afterglow. ”

“ That day the Cheyennes jumped us among the Blacksnake Hills,
Which is why I claim the chevrons that I'm sportin' on my sleeve
Was won by my old mustang and dead against my leave.
LARAMIE TRAIL ACROSS the crests of the naked hills,
Smooth-swept by the winds of God,
It cleaves its way like a shaft of gray,
Close-bound by the prairie sod.
It stretches flat from the sluggish Platte
To the lands of forest shade;
The clean trail, the lean trail,
The trail the troopers made. ”

“ Easy-chair officers sputter and swear,
Bureaucrats legislate—what do we care?
Down in the ranks we don't follow the styles;
Here's health to the General, Nelson A. Miles!
I've been readin' in the papers and I'm feelin' pretty mad
At the shabby sort of treatment that a game old soldier's had.
And the soldier I'm referrin' to, who's so surprisin' game,
Is Miles, Lieutenant General—I guess you've heard the name?
Now, the pointers that a twelve-year duty sergeant hasn't got
On the secrets of the Service, are a quite extensive lot ”

“ Original
But the longest of days must reach evening at last,
When the hills are all climbed and the creeks are all passed,
And the tired herd droops in the yellowing light;
Let them loaf if they will, for the railroad's in sight!
Come, strap up the saddle
Whose lap you have felt;
So flap up your holster
And snap up your belt;
Good-bye to the steers and the long chaparral;
There's a town that's a trump by the railroad corral!
CHRISTMAS EVE AT KIMBALL MET a chap the other night, down on Halsted Street,
Holdin' up Mike Kelley's bar, sippin' mint an' rye ”

“ If we hadn't, we'd felt lonely on Christmas, '68.
So I'm here to tell you rookies who are kicking on your lot
That you don't know service hardship as we got it, served up hot,
For the Philippines are easy and Hawaii is a snap
When compared to fighting Injins over all the Western map,
And, next time you start to growling when your mail's an hour late,
Just recall the boys at Buford, on Christmas, '68! ”

“ Was him I'm tellin' you about—you bet he came to fight!
I know he's no West Pointer—I've a notion, what is more,
That it isn't only Pointers who may-know the game of war,
And if he's a little partial to the medals on his chest
He's got a darned good right to be; he earned 'em in the West. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Blarcum broached the idee, supported by a speech,
That the closin' of the thirst-joints was the only thing would reach,
Since liquor bred dissension which only blood could stop
As he knew from observation, though he "never touched a drop!"
Then Pierpont Robyn Stebbins arose an' begged to say.
That the road to civic virtue lay quite another way:
To punish weepon toters would be the proper feat—
Jest confiscate their weepons an' make 'em clean the street.
But Bobby Earl was doubtful of Pierpont Robyn's plan;
He thought that cleaning roadways would humiliate a man. ”

“ Fer the wood bulged out o' the furnace door,
An' the steam-gauge hissed with the load it bore,
But she couldn't do the trick.
Sing ho! fer the pilot at the wheel
A-shavin' the choals on a twelve-inch keel,
Enough to scare yeh sick.
The "Queen" was doin' her level best
An' she wasn't leadin' far—
Fer the "Pauline" stuck like a barber's leech—
But she let her siren whistle screech
When she led the way into Dodson's Reach,
Three miles from Santee Bar.
Sing ho! fer the "Pauline's" roustabout
A-rollin' the Bismarck cargo out,
Big barrels o' black pine tar. ”

“ Then she toddled to Lemar an' looked up in his eyes:
"Oo's the big, long-whiskered man I'se heard my Mama tell,
'At brings nice fings to everyone what's good an' never cries.
"Mama's good; I'se tried to be"—her eyes began to fill—
"But she says 'at Santa Claus can't come this Christmas Day. ”

“ Charlie Gates an' "Doc" Lemar, curin' of their chills.
Well, that closed the "quiet" act; things was due to burn.
Dabbled with the red-eye till the lamp-lights ringed an' soared.
Then Lemar got wealthy an' thought he'd take a turn
Spinnin' out his sinkers on the racy roulette board.
Oh, the time was lovely (fer the man behind the wheel!)
Stokes an' "Shorthorn" joined the game, just to try their luck,
Charlie, landin' on the bar, started off a reel;
Then the banker "rolled the roll"—an' the blame thing stuck!
"Fixed!" yells Bill an' "Shorthorn," whippin' out their pipes ”

“ An' I'd backed her to the limit fer a winner in the play.
"But the beauty-spot on Kimball an' the boys that made her hum
Was the fact that rye an' roulette didn't petrify their souls;
Simply tip 'em to the theory that yer luck was on the bum
An' they'd cut the game instanter an' deliver up their rolls.
"An' if I'd a wife an' children an' was billed fer Canaan's Strand
I'd take a sight more pleasure in a-turnin' up my toes
If I left 'em to the mercies o' that old Dakota land
Than in your plug-hat city where the money-grubber grows." ”

“ Nothin' in the whoopin' line warm enough out West.
Made me sort o' weary, so, to ease my mind,
I dug up a Christmas tale an' let him take a rest.
Mind the Northwest homestead boom, twenty-odd years back,
When Dakota stuck her nose above the waves o' fame?
I was pottin' coyotes from a Brule County shack,
Burnin' hay an' eatin' pork an' holdin' down my claim.
Not a strictly stirrin' life; quite a lot less gay
Than workin' in a grave-yard, a-plantin' of remains. ”

“ A reg'lar Haygue Tribunal fer order, law, an' right,
Fer we'd about concluded that fightin' come too free
An' municipal conditions wasn't all they ought to be.
"Dad" Sykes had been to Denver an' Blake to Omaha,
An' they come back a-preachin' of the sights which they had saw,
How no one carried weepons an' folks was nice an' mild.
An', compared with them there cities, Coyoteville was wild.
In Coyoteville the habit of some gentlemen at nights,
If they felt in pleasant spirits, was to puncture out the lights. ”

“ The other folks concluded it was gettin' time they went,
An' started fer the doorways by unanimous consent,
While the Chair came down on Stebbins regardless of the law,
An' Blake propelled the Minutes at Mister Blarcum's jaw.
There'll be a bunch of fun'rals in Coyoteville today;
Some well-known ex-reformers in the leadin' parts will play;
An' Coyoteville's considerin' this lesson o'er an' o'er,
That peace may have its battles as well, sometimes, as war.
Original
Original
THE SONG OF THE WINCHESTER FULL heir to the twist-bored yager gun with its half-inch slug, I stand ”

“ Till she'd made her landin', broad against the bar.
Someone then jumped across the side,
Dragged him from the fire and toted him ashore.
Might as well just have let it slide;
Slim was done with engines for good and evermore.
But he spoke, just 'fore he got through,
Lookin' at the people in a sort o' mild surprise—
"Don't thank me, and don't be sorry, too—
I ain't got no feelin's," said Slim, and closed his eyes.
Original
THE "PAULINE" A MISSOURI tramp was the boat "Pauline"
An' she ran in '78 ”