Robert J. C. Stead

“ The Prairie is ever their own;
And far though they wander, unwary,
Far, far from the breath of the plain,
A thought of the wind on the Prairie
Will set their blood rushing again.
Then you to the City who want it,
Go, grovel its gain-glutted streets,
Be one of the ciphers that haunt it,
Or sit in its opulent seats;
But for me, where the Prairies are reaching
As far as the vision can scan—
Ah, that is the prayer and the preaching
That goes to the heart of a man! ”

“ Makes joyous night still brighter than the day!
Upon the plains a thousand towns arise,
And quickly each to be a city tries;
The sound of trade is heard on every hand
And sturdy men rise to possess the land;
Awhile they lingered, thinking it a dream,
But now they flow in a resistless stream
That seems to fill the prairie far and near,
Yet in its vastness soon they disappear.
[Pg 11] Where once the silent red man spurned the ground
A land of peace and plenty now is found,
A land by Nature destined to be great,
Where every man is lord of his estate ”

“ Next morning Sergeant Blue, arrayed in farmer smock and jeans,
In a jumper sleigh he had made himself set out for the evergreens
That grow on the bank of Snake Creek Gulch by a homestead shack he knew,
And a smoke curled up from the chimney-pipe to welcome Sergeant Blue.
"Aha, and that looks good to me," said the Sergeant to the smoke,
"For the lad that owns this homestead shack is East in his wedding-yoke;
There are strangers here and I'll bet a farm against a horn of booze
That they are the bums that are predestined to dangle in a noose." ”

“ The lullabies of childhood and the songs of long ago;
The sea of God on every hand in silent silver lay:
An atom fell: its circles spread through all eternity.
* * * * * * * *
The Thing was gone; its work was done; a lump of lifeless clay
Sat crouching, crouching, crouching in the dawning of the day;
[Pg 37] The frozen eyeballs stared upon a wilderness of snow,
And peered into the future, to the Place no man may know.
A she-wolf prowled about the spot, and sniffed below the sleigh,
And howled a melancholy howl, and slunk in fear away. ”

“ Where the farthest foothills flatten to a circle-sweeping plain,
And the cattle lands surrender to the onward march of grain,
Where the prairies stretch unbroken to the corners of the sky,
And the foremost wheat fields rustle in the warm winds droning by—
There a crippled cowboy batches in the haunts of old-time herds,
And the balance of the story is repeated in his words:
So you never heard how I lost my leg and hobble now on a crutch? ”

“ An' I filed my second homestead an' I bought a pair of jeans.
'Course it's sometimes kind o' lonely on the prairie here alone,
When the night-time settles round you an' your thoughts are all your own,
An' old faces flit before you like a flock o' homin' birds
An' your heart swells with emotion that no man can put in words,
An' you ponder on the Why-for, the Beginnin', an' the End;
An' you know the only things worth while are Family an' Friend—
From the trifles of existence your better judgment weans,
An' you get the right perspective on the homestead—in your jeans. ”

“ An' it minds me of the Eighties an' the Old Commission Trail—
Of the days we pledged our future to a land we hardly knew,
An' the men whose brave beginnings made prosperity for you;
There are men now worth their millions I remember in their teens,
An' they made their start by hustlin' on the homestead in their jeans.
There are times when most folks figure that their life has been a blank;
You may be a homeless hobo or director of a bank,
But the thought will catch you nappin'—catch you sometime unawares—
That your life has been a failure, and that no one really cares ”

“ The fickle wind seemed scarce to stay a moment at a place—
Now howling in a real attack, now snapping at his face;
And nearing, leering, peering, in the ghastly, ghostly light,
The Thing came softly after as it followed in the night.
A light! a light! a welcome light gleamed friendly from afar:
Oh, can it be—it cannot be—'tis surely not a star?
Nay, nay, it is more warm and near, a happy farmer's home
That beckons to the wanderer, "You need no longer roam."
[Pg 34] With eager hope they hastened on, and plied across the plain;
As often as the horses fell they rose to plunge again. ”

“ And he drove out in a buggy to where his section lay,
And his heart was very happy as he smoked along the way
Till the section burst upon them, and he scarce believed his sight,
For the land lay in the sunshine, flashing back a snowy white . . . . .
And His Lordship stooped and felt it, and he heaved a little sigh,
As the knowledge dawned upon him that his land was—alkali! ”

“ As long as some one pays the bill.
The present plan is, surely, fine;
The interest, at least, is mine."
Who owns the land?
In meek surprise
The child said, "Like the air, and skies,
And running water, flowers, and birds,
And lullabies, and gentle words,
And rosy sunsets, clouds, and storms,
And God revealed in all His forms—
'Tis plain the land's the right of birth
Of every creature on the earth:
No man can make a grain of sand;
How can he say he owns the land?" ”

“ That night in the post sat Sergeant Blue with paper and pen in hand,
And this is the word he wrote and signed and mailed to a foreign land:
"To U. S. Marshall of County Blank, greetings I give to you;
My squad has just brought in your men, and the squad was
"Sergeant Blue."
[Pg 69] There are things unguessed, there are tales untold, in the life of the great lone land,
But here is a fact that the prairie-bred alone may understand,
That a thousand miles in the fastness the fear of the law obtains,
And the pioneers of justice were the "Riders of the Plains." ”

“ The white snows of the wintertime will vanish in the heat,
And out-door life and color will follow their defeat.
"Can the paleface read the riddle? Has he eyes to see the signs?
Or thinketh he that snow will lie forever on the pines?
That housed-up life can triumph for the mastery of state,
Or cushioned chairs produce a race destined to dominate?
"Behold, the things your hands have done, the power your arts have won—
Behold, those things shall vanish as the snow before the sun ”

“ An' the only thing that figures is inherent manliness—
Give me no silk-spangled horses an' no silver-plated hearse,
But let some student preacher read a bit of Scripture verse,
An' find a sunny hillside where the water-willow screens,
An' plant me on the homestead where I hustled—in my jeans.
[Pg 20]
THE HOMESTEADER
Far away from the din of the city,
I dwell on the prairie alone,
With no one to praise or to pity,
And all the broad earth for my own;
The fields to allure me to labor,
The shanty to shelter my sleep,
A league and a half to a neighbor—
And Collie to watch if I weep. ”

“ Only a man of nerve and heart
Who has spurned the ease of the life "at home,"
Only a man who would play his part
In a new breed-birth on a distant loam;
Only a man of sense and worth
Who is not afraid of the ends of earth. ”

“ Who knows what inspiration may come on the ev'ning air? . . .
"Listen; you are a scholar, schooled in the paleface lore:
'Tis said a dying saint may sometimes see the shining shore;
That closing eyes peer far beyond the realm of mortal sight,—
Who knows but that a dying race may read the road aright?
"A dying race! We know it; the land is ours no more,
No more we roam the prairies as in the days of yore ”

“ A dozen miles lay stretched between the settler and his shack:
He thought of many things that night—not once of turning back.
[Pg 33] Above the crunching of the snow he heard the rising wind,
But never looked—and never saw—the Thing that stole behind.
The trail was lost; the horses took their way across the plain;
The settler strove to hold the course, but strove, alas, in vain ”

“ A man who can jug a down-South thug when he rushes the red-eye can;
A man who can pray with a dying bum or break up a range stampede—
Such are the men of the Mounted Police and such are the men they breed. ”

“ And the call-boy said, "Excuse me, sir, but I was sent to tell
That Ninety-six is waiting, and there's no one else about;
They're expecting you to take her. If you don't she can't go out."
[Pg 29] I left the answer to my wife. With lips as white as snow,
She whispered, "Do your duty," and I said, "All right, I'll go."
My fireman knew my trouble, and in rough-and-ready way
He let me know his heart was feeling things he couldn't say;
The night was dark and moonless, but the bright stars overhead
Seemed to whisper to each other, "His little boy is dead." ”

“ Yet we have placed our virgin trust
In spawn of Continental lust.
If dumb we be to Reason's cries—
Our children's cause she pleads in vain—
Our outraged sons at length will rise
And seize their heritage again;
And fools, who prate of vested right,
Will either cease to prate—or fight.
The land is ours, the land will keep,
And Time is nowise near its end;
We hold our birthright all too cheap
Its sacredness to comprehend;
In after years our sons will say,
"Why frittered ye the land away?"
[Pg 64]
THE SQUAD OF ONE
Sergeant Blue of the Mounted Police was a so-so kind of a guy ”

“ Well, no, I'm not superstitious,—at least, I don't call it that,—
But when someone spins a creepy yarn I don't deny it flat,
For a man who spends a lifetime with the throttle in his hand
Is bound to have adventures that he cannot understand ”

“ And the wet night-smell of the growing grain;
And their love they gave to me.
In the last race-birth of the sons of men a travail holdeth me;
But out of the night of pain and tears
A new life comes with the rolling years;
And I fondle the child of my hope and fears,
And it seemeth good to me.
[Pg 15]
HUSTLIN' IN MY JEANS
Yes, I'm holdin' down the homestead here an' roughin' it a bit,
It seems the only kind o' life that I was built to fit,
For it's thirty years last summer since I staked my first preserve,
An' I reckon on the whole I've prospered more than I deserve ”

“ And one of them is working on the street;
And one is washing dishes, and one has "hit the trail,"
For six have drunk the sorrows of defeat;
And one that's never spoken of where once she was supreme,
And one—they found him floating in an eddy of the stream:
They have paid the price of knowledge, they have dreamed their little dream:
And the City sucked them in.
[Pg 91]
THE OLD GUARD
Knew you the men of the Old Guard? Men of the camp and trail;
Guard of the van when Time began in the land of grass and gale,
Of a sky-wide land they seized command where the mightiest prevail. ”

“ And we reckon they's hid in Snake Creek Gulch and posin' as farmer folks.
"They's as full of sin as a barrel of booze and as quick as a cat with a gun.
So if you happen to hit their trail be first to start the fun;
And send out your strongest squad of men and round them up if you can,
For dead or alive we want them here. Yours truly, Jack McMann."
And Sergeant Blue sat back and smiled, "Ho, here is a chance of game!
Folks 'round here have been so good that life is getting tame ”

“ But her only thought was for her dad and the mother she scarcely knew.
'Course, she was bred to the ranges, and before she had reached her teens
She could straddle a nag with the best of us and ride in her smock and jeans
Till we all caved in, and she thought it fun to camp with the round-up bunch,
And she shared her pillow and shared our sky and shared our pipe and lunch,
[Pg 95] And all of us mad in love with her, but she was only a kid,
And she never dreamt what our feelings were, or the love-struck things we did. ”

“ And a full dress-suited dinner every ev'ning, free to all;
There is tennis, polo, marksmanship, and half the day in bed,
And we make them into farmers for a hundred pounds a head."
* * * * * * * His Lordship's college prospers and is crowded to the doors
With "students" playing poker while the "servants" do the chores;
[Pg 75] What they do not know of farming they make up in other lines
They are judges of tobacco and connoisseurs of wines ”

“ An' that no one would have missed you if you never had been born;
[Pg 19] An' I give you my conclusion—all that livin' really means
Is revealed to those who hustle on the homestead in their jeans.
Some day I reckon I'll cash in an' file another claim
Where the wicked cease from troublin' an' the good get in the game ”