The dim stars wheeled above the frontier post,
The wolf was silent, and the wind was lost;
The fire roared upward, lighting with its flames
Four white men's faces and four strong young frames.
They told how deer were plenty, by the Blue
In upland forests, till a red man threw
In from the window ledge a stone that rolled
Straight to their feet, and it was glittering gold.
Mad with desire to find the parent vein
They parted; one went southward where the plain
Returns his fervor to the burning sun,
And he was found, before his search was done,
With shriveled fingers, digging in the sand,
And black lips pressed against the thirsting land—
No look of grace to mark him woman-born—
A thing of horror that the wolves had torn.
But one climbed higher, where the budding flower
Bends, in mid August, to the sharp snow shower,
Frost bitten and frost blinded, sheathed in ice,
Among the cold, white mountain-tops he lies.
The third, in luck, found fortune and a bride,
A dainty dame, white-handed, gentle-eyed,
Yet, woe for woman's truth, she brought him shame,
Ruin, regret, a life without an aim.
Still the fourth man is wandering on and on;
With eyes that seek the distance, or the dawn
Of some new day, in loneliness he goes
Through waste or crowd, he neither cares nor knows.
Up and down, and all around,
Beat the free foot on the ground,
While the white man hunts his grave,
You have won your vengeance, brave!