Classic Poem

Meanwhile
Where ran the Bozeman Road along the bleak
North slope of Lodge Trail Ridge to Peno Creek,
Big hopes were burning. Silence waited there.
The brown land, even as the high blue air,
Seemed empty. Yet the troubled crows that flew
Keen-eyed above the sunning valley knew
What made the windless slough-grass ripple so,
And how a multitude of eyes below
Were peering southward to the road-scarred rise
Where every covert was alive with eyes
That scanned the bare horizon to the south.

The white of dawn had seen the Peno's mouth
A-swarm with men — Cheyennes, Arapahoes,
Dakotas. When the pale-faced sun arose —
A spectre fleeing from a bath of blood —
It saw them like a thunder-fathered flood
Surge upward through the sounding sloughs and draws —
Afoot and mounted, veterans and squaws,
Youths new to war, the lowly and the great —
A thousand-footed, single-hearted hate
Flung fortward. Now their chanted battle-songs
Dismayed the hills. Now silent with their wrongs
They strode, the sullen hum of hoofs and feet,
Through valleys where aforetime life was sweet,
More terrible than songs or battle cries.
The sun had traversed half the morning skies
When, entering the open flat, they poured
To where the roadway crossed the Peno ford
Below the Ridge. Above them wheeled and pried
The puzzled crows, to learn what thing had died,
What carcass, haply hidden from the ken
Of birds, had lured so large a flock of men
Thus chattering with lust. There, brooding doom,
They paused and made the brown December bloom
With mockeries of August — demon flowers
And lethal, thirsting for the sanguine showers
That soon should soak the unbegetting fields —
The trailing bonnets and the pictured shields,
The lances nodding in the warwind's breath,
And faces brave with paint to outstare Death
In some swift hush of battle!


Briefly so
They parleyed. Then the spears began to flow
On either side the Ridge — a double stream
Of horsemen, winking out as in a dream
High up among the breaks that flanked the trail.
Amid the tall dry grasses of the vale
The footmen disappeared; and all the place
Was still and empty as a dead man's face
That sees unmoved the wheeling birds of prey.

The anxious moments crawled. Then far away
Across the hills a muffled tumult grew,
As of a blanket being ripped in two
And many people shouting underground.
The valley grasses rippled to the sound
As though it were a gusty wind that passed,
Far off a bugle's singing braved the vast
And perished in a wail.


The tall grass stirred.
The rumor of the distant fight was heard
A little longer. Suddenly it stopped;
And silence, like a sky-wide blanket, dropped
Upon the landscape empty as the moon.
The sun, now scarce a lance-length from the noon,
Seemed waiting for whatever might occur.
Across the far northwest a purplish blur
Had gathered and was crawling up the sky.

Now presently a nearer bugle cry
Defied the hush — a scarlet flower of sound
That sowed the sterile silences around
With futile seed of music.


Once again
The sound of firing and the cries of men
Arose; but now 'twas just beyond the place
Where, climbing to the azure rim of space,
The roadway topped the Ridge and disappeared.
The tongueless coverts listened, thousand-eared,
And heard hoof-thunders rumbling over there.

Then suddenly the high blue strip of air
Was belching warriors in a wind of cries.
In breakneck rout they tumbled from the skies,
Wheeled round to fling more arrows at a foe,
And fled to where the breast-deep grass below
Swayed wildly.


Now a crow-black stallion 'rose,
And looming huge against the blue noon doze,
Raced back and forth across the Ridge's rim,
While, shooting from beneath the neck of him,
The Cheyenne Big Nose held the roaring rear:
Nor did the snarling musket-balls come near,
So mighty was his medicine, they say.
Now presently the high blue wall of day
Spewed cavalry along the Ridge; and then
A marvel for the tongues and ears of men
Amazed the hidden watchers of the height.
For like a thunder-stridden wind of night
That rages through a touselled poplar grove,
The rider of the stallion charged, and drove
Straight through the middle of the mounted crowd.
Men saw his bonnet tossing in a cloud
Of manes and tails; and sabre lightnings played
About it. Then, emerging undismayed,
He charged back through and galloped down the hill
With bullets that were impotent to kill
Spat-pinging all around.


The firing ceased.
The fugitives were half a mile at least
Beyond the Peno ford. There, circling wide
With bows and lances brandished, they defied
The foe to come and fight with them. By now
The infantry had crossed the Ridge's brow.
It joined the troop a little way below;
Then all together, cautiously and slow,
Came down the hated road. And silence lay
On summit, slope and valley, deep as day
And doomful, as they came. The flat could hear
The murmur of the straining saddle-gear,
The shuffling feet, the clinking of the bits;
And when a nervous troop-horse neighed by fits,
The ponies, lurking in the broken lands
That flanked the Ridge, kept silence for the hands
That gripped their nostrils.


Now the eighty-one
Were half way down the hill. The nooning sun
Slipped fearfully behind a flying veil,
And from the gray northwest a raw cold gale
Came booming up. The fugitive decoys,
Off yonder in the flat, like playing boys
Divided now and waged a mimic fight.
Immediately half way up the height
Among the breaks appeared a warrior's torse.
A thousand hidden eyes knew Little Horse,
The Cheyenne chieftain; saw him wave a spear
Left-handed; pass it round him in the rear
To seize it with the right.


The whole flat swarmed
With footmen. Mounted warriors thunder-stormed
By hundreds from the breaks above; and one
Came dashing down the ridge-road at a run
And plunged among the soldiery to die
Beneath the frantic sabres. With a cry
That set the horses wild, the swarm closed in.
The cavalry, as hoping yet to win
The summit of the Ridge, wheeled round and hewed
A slow way upward through the solitude
Of lances, howling in the arrow-storm.
The rest, already circled by the swarm,
Took cover in a patch of tumbled rock
Where, huddled like a blizzard-beaten flock,
They faced the swirling death they could not stem,
A little while before it smothered them
The dwindling few toiled mightily, men say,
With gun-butts swinging in the dim mêlee
Of battle-clubs and lances; then were still.
The wave broke over, surging up the hill;
For yonder yet the battle smoked and roared
Where, midway 'twixt the summit and the ford,
The little band of troopers held the height —
Green manhood withering in a locust flight
Of arrows! Aye, a gloaming of despair
The shuttling arrows wove above them there,
So many were the bows. Cheyenne and Sioux
Went down beneath the shafts their brothers drew;
Arapahoes struck down Arapahoes
Unwittingly. And many a red gout froze
Along the slopes, so keen had grown the gale.

A little while those makers of a tale
Gave battle like a badger in a hole;
Nor could the ponies charge the narrow knoll,
For either slope was steep and gully-scrawled.
Still up and up the cautious bowmen crawled,
And still the troopers overawed the field.

Now presently, men say, a white chief reeled;
Rolled from his saddle; like a man gone daft
Got up and doddered, tugging at a shaft
That sprouted from his belly. Then a yell
Of many bowmen mocked him as he fell,
His writhing body feathered like a goose.

The troops began to turn their horses loose,
Retreating up the Ridge, a hopeless crowd.
A lull of battle thinned the arrow-cloud
Above them; for the mounted warriors knew
The soldiers doomed whatever they might do,
And fell to rounding up the runaways.
Meanwhile the broken troopers in a daze
Of desperation scrambled up the slope.
Strewn boulders yonder woke a lying hope,
And there they waited, living, in their grave.

The horse-chase ended. Once again the wave
Began to mount the steep on either side.
While warriors hailed their fellows and replied:
Be ready! — We are ready, brothers!


Then
The hillsides bellowed with a surf of men
Flung crowding on the boulders. 'Twas the end.

Some trooper's wolfhound, mourning for his friend,
Loped fortward, pausing now and then to cry
His urgent question to the hostile sky
That spat a stinging frost. And someone said:
" Let yonder dog bear tidings of the dead
To make the white men tremble over there. "
" No, teach them that we do not even spare
Their dogs! " another said. An arrow sang
Shrill to the mark. The wolfhound yelped and sprang,
Snapped at the feather, wilted, and was still.

And so they perished on that barren hill
Beside the Peno. And the Winter strode
Numb-footed down that bloody stretch of road
At twilight, when a squadron came to read
The corpse-writ rune of battle, deed by deed,
Between the Ridge's summit and the ford.

The blizzard broke at dusk. All night it roared
Round Fort Phil Kearney mourning for the slain.