  The year was eighteen hundred twenty three. ‘Twas when the guns that blustered at the Ree Had ceased to brag, and ten score martial clowns Turned from the unwhipped Aricara towns, Earning the scornful laughter of the Sioux. A withering blast the arid South still blew, And creeks ran thin beneath the glaring sky; For ‘twas a month ere honking geese would fly Southward before the Great White Hunter’s face: And many generations of their race, As bow-flung arrows, now have fallen spent. It happened then that Major Henry went With eighty trappers up the dwindling Grand, Bound through the weird, unfriending barren-land For where the Big Horn meets the Yellowstone; And old Hugh Glass went with them. Large of bone, Gray-bearded, gray of eye and crowned with gray Was Glass. It seemed he never had been young; And, for the grudging habit of his tongue, None knew the place or season of his birth. Slowly he ‘woke to anger or to mirth; Yet none laughed louder when the rare mood fell, And hate in him was like a still, white hell, A thing of doom not lightly reconciled. What memory he kept of wife or child Was never told; for when his comrades sat About the evening fire with pipe and chat, Exchanging talk of home and gentler days, Old Hugh stared long upon the pictured blaze, And what he saw went upward in the smoke. But once, as with an inner lightning stroke, The veil was rent, and briefly men discerned What pent-up fires of selfless passion burned Beneath the still gray smoldering of him. There was a rakehell lad, called Little Jim, Jamie or Petit Jacques; for scarce began The downy beard to mark him for a man. Blue-eyed was he and femininely fair. A maiden might have coveted his hair So, tardily, outflowered the wild blond strain That gutted Rome grown overfat in sloth. A Ganymedes haunted by a Goth Was Jamie. When the restive ghost was laid, He seemed some fancy-ridden child who played At manliness ‘mid all those bearded men. The sternest heart was drawn to Jamie then. But his one mood ne’er linked two hours together. To schedule Jamie’s way, as prairie weather, Was to get fact by wedding doubt and whim; For very lightly slept that ghost in him. No cloudy brooding went before his wrath That, like a thunder-squall, recked not its path, But raged upon what happened in its way. Some called him brave who saw him on that day When Ashley stormed a bluff town of the Ree, And all save beardless Jamie turned to flee For shelter from that steep, lead-harrowed slope. Yet, hardly courage, but blind rage agrope Inspired the foolish deed. ‘Twas then old Hugh Tore off the gray mask, and the heart shone through. For, halting in a dry, flood-guttered draw, The trappers rallied, looked aloft and saw Out of a breathless hush, the old man’s cry Leaped shivering, an anguished cry and wild As of some mother fearing for her child, And up the steep he went with mighty bounds. Long afterward the story went the rounds, How old Glass fought that day. With gun for club, Grim as a grizzly fighting for a cub, He laid about him, cleared the way, and so, Supported by the firing from below, Brought Jamie back. And when the deed was done, Taking the lad upon his knee: “My Son, Brave men are not ashamed to fear,” said Hugh, “And I’ve a mind to make a man of you; So here’s your first acquaintance with the law!” Whereat he spanked the lad with vigorous paw And, having done so, limped away to bed; For, wounded in the hip, the old man bled. It was a month before he hobbled out, And Jamie, like a fond son, hung about The old man’s tent and waited upon him. And often would the deep gray eyes grow dim With gazing on the boy; and there would go— As though Spring-fire should waken out of snow— And once Hugh smiled his enigmatic way, While poring long on Jamie’s face, and said: “So with their sons are women brought to bed, Sore wounded!” Thus united were the two: And some would dub the old man ‘Mother Hugh’; While those in whom all living waters sank To some dull inner pool that teemed and stank With formless evil, into that morass Gazed, and saw darkly there, as in a glass, The foul shape of some weakly envied sin. For each man builds a world and dwells therein. Nor could these know what mocking ghost of Spring Stirred Hugh’s gray world with dreams of blossoming That wooed no seed to swell or bird to sing. So might a dawn-struck digit of the moon Dream back the rain of some old lunar June And ache through all its craters to be green. Little they know what life’s one love can mean, Who shrine it in a bower of peace and bliss: Pang dwelling in a puckered cicatrice More truly figures this belated love. Yet very precious was the hurt thereof, Grievous to bear, too dear to cast away. If ‘twas a warm heart or a wind of whim, Love, or the rover’s teasing itch in him, Moved Jamie? Howsoe’er, ‘twas good to see Graybeard and Goldhair riding knee to knee, One age in young adventure. One who saw Has likened to a February thaw Hugh’s mellow mood those days; and truly so, For when the tempering Southwest wakes to blow A phantom April over melting snow, Deep in the North some new white wrath is brewed. Out of a dim-trailed inner solitude The old man summoned many a stirring story, Lived grimly once, but now shot through with glory Caught from the wondering eyes of him who heard— Tales jaggÉd with the bleak unstudied word, Stark saga-stuff. “A fellow that I knew,” So nameless went the hero that was Hugh— A mere pelt merchant, as it seemed to him; Yet trailing epic thunders through the dim, Whist world of Jamie’s awe. And so they went, One heart, it seemed, a
class="line">For some old joy to lean upon, and found The stark, cold something Jamie knew was there. Yet, womanlike, he stroked the hoary hair Or bathed the face; while Jules found tales to tell— Lugubriously garrulous. Night fell. At sundown, day-long winds are like to veer; So, summoning a mood of relished fear, Le Bon remembered dire alarms by night— The swoop of savage hordes, the desperate fight Of men outnumbered: and, like him of old, In all that made Jules shudder as he told, His the great part—a man by field and flood Fate-tossed. Upon the gloom he limned in blood Their situation’s possibilities: Two men against the fury of the Rees— A game in which two hundred men had failed! He pointed out how little it availed To run the risk for one as good as dead; Yet, Jules Le Bon meant every word he said, And had a scalp to lose, if need should be. That night through Jamie’s dreaming swarmed the Ree. Gray-souled, he wakened to a dawn of gray, Nor knew what thing. Some whisper of the will Bade him rejoice that Hugh was living still; But Hugh, the real, seemed somehow otherwhere. Jules, snug and snoring in his blanket there, Was half a life the nearer. Just so, pain Is nearer than the peace we seek in vain, And by its very sting compels belief. Jules woke, and with a fine restraint of grief Saw early dissolution. ‘One more night, And then the poor old man would lose the fight— Ah, such a man!’ A day and night crept by, And yet the stubborn fighter would not die, But grappled with the angel. All the while, With some conviction, but with more of guile, Jules colonized the vacancy with Rees; Till Jamie felt that looseness of the knees That comes of oozing courage. Many men May tower for a white-hot moment, when The wild blood surges at a sudden shock; But when, insistent as a ticking clock, Blind peril haunts and whispers, fewer dare. Dread hovered in the hushed and moony air The long night through; nor might a fire be lit, Lest some far-seeing foe take note of it. And day-long Jamie scanned the blank sky rim A childish anger—dumb for ruth and shame— That Hugh so dallied. But the fourth dawn came And with it lulled the fight, as on a field Where broken armies sleep but will not yield. Or had one conquered? Was it Hugh or Death? The old man breathed with faintly fluttering breath, Nor did his body shudder as before. Jules triumphed sadly. ‘It would soon be o’er; So men grew quiet when they lost their grip And did not care. At sundown he would slip Into the deeper silence.’ Jamie wept, Unwitting how a furtive gladness crept Into his heart that gained a stronger beat. So cities, long beleaguered, take defeat— Unto themselves half traitors. Jules began To dig a hole that might conceal a man; And, as his sheath knife broke the stubborn sod, He spoke in kindly vein of Life and God And Mutability and Rectitude. The immemorial funerary mood Brought tears, mute tribute to the mother-dust; And Jamie, seeing, felt each cutting thrust Less like a stab into the flesh of Hugh. And through the air a chill of evening ran; But, though the grave yawned, waiting for the man, The man seemed scarce yet ready for the grave. Now prompted by a coward or a knave That lurked in him, Le Bon began to hear Faint sounds that to the lad’s less cunning ear Were silence; more like tremors of the ground They were, Jules said, than any proper sound— Thus one detected horsemen miles away. For many moments big with fate, he lay, Ear pressed to earth; then rose and shook his head As one perplexed. “There’s something wrong,” he said. And—as at daybreak whiten winter skies, Agape and staring with a wild surmise— The lad’s face whitened at the other’s word. Jules could not quite interpret what he heard; A hundred horse might noise their whereabouts In just that fashion; yet he had his doubts. It could be bison moving, quite as well. But if ‘twere Rees—there’d be a tale to tell That two men he might name should never hear. He reckoned scalps that Fall were selling dear, Men, fit to live, were not afraid to die! Then, in that caution suits not courage ill, Jules saddled up and cantered to the hill, A white dam set against the twilight stream; And as a horseman riding in a dream The lad beheld him; watched him clamber up To where the dusk, as from a brimming cup, Ran over; saw him pause against the gloom, Portentous, huge—a brooder upon doom. What did he look upon? Some moments passed; Then suddenly it seemed as though a blast Of wind, keen-cutting with the whips of sleet, Smote horse and rider. Haunched on huddled feet, The steed shrank from the ridge, then, rearing, wheeled And took the rubbly incline fury-heeled. Those days and nights, like seasons creeping slow, Had told on Jamie. Better blow on blow Of evil hap, with doom seen clear ahead, Than that monotonous, abrasive dread, Blind gnawer at the soul-thews of the blind. Thin-worn, the last heart-string that held him kind; Now snapped in Jamie, as he saw the two So goaded by some terrifying sight. Death riding with the vanguard of the Night, Life dwindling yonder with the rear of Day! What choice for on
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