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.

It draws aside with a wary curve

From the lurking, dark ravine,

It launches fair as a lance in air

O'er the raw-ribbed ridge between:

With never a wait it plunges straight

Through river or reed-grown brook;

The deep trail, the steep trail,

The trail the squadrons took.

They carved it well, those men of old,

Stern lords of the border war,

They wrought it out with their sabres stout

And marked it with their gore.

They made it stand as an iron band

Along the wild frontier;

The strong trail, the long trial,

The trail of force and fear.

For the stirring note of the bugle's throat

Ye may hark to-day in vain,

For the track is scarred by the gang-plow's shard

And gulfed in the growing grain.

But wait to-night for the moonrise white;

Perchance ye may see them tread

The lost trail, the ghost trail,

The trail of the gallant dead.

Original

'Twixt cloud and cloud o'er the pallid moon

From the nether dark they glide

And the grasses sigh as they rustle by

Their phantom steeds astride.

By four and four as they rode of yore

And well they know the way;

The dim trail, the grim trail,

The trail of toil and fray.

With tattered guidons spectral thin

Above their swaying ranks,

With carbines swung and sabres slung

And the gray dust on their flanks.

They march again as they marched it then

When the red men dogged their track,

The gloom trail, the doom trail,

The trail they came not back.

They pass, like a flutter of drifting fog,

As the hostile tribes have passed,

As the wild-wing'd birds and the bison herds

And the unfenced prairies vast,

And those who gain by their strife and pain

Forget, in the land they won,

The red trail, the dead trail,

The trail of duty done.

But to him who loves heroic deeds

The far-flung path still bides,

The bullet sings and the war-whoop rings

And the stalwart trooper rides.

For they were the sort from Snelling Fort

Who traveled fearlessly

The bold trail, the old trail,

The trail to Laramie.