LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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

      That travesty of war against the sky.

      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—

      A wistful light across that mask of gray.

      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.

      Now Jamie went with Hugh; but who shall say

      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, and that heart well content

      With tale and snatch of song and careless laughter.

      Never before, and surely never after,

      The gray old man seemed nearer to his youth—

      That myth that somehow had to be the truth,

      Yet could not be convincing any more.

      Now when the days of travel numbered four

      And nearer drew the barrens with their need,

      On Glass, the hunter, fell the task to feed

      Those four score hungers when the game should fail.

      For no young eye could trace so dim a trail,

      Or line the rifle sights with speed so true.

      Nor might the wistful Jamie go with Hugh;

      “For,” so Hugh chaffed, “my trick of getting game

      Might teach young eyes to put old eyes to shame.

      An old dog never risks his only bone.”

      ‘Wolves prey in packs, the lion hunts alone’

      Is somewhat nearer what he should have meant.

      And so with merry jest the old man went;

      And so they parted at an unseen gate

      That even then some gust of moody fate

      Clanged to betwixt them; each a tale to spell—

      One in the nightmare scrawl of dreams from hell,

      One in the blistering trail of days a-crawl,

      Venomous footed. Nor might it ere befall

      These two should meet in after days and be

      Graybeard and Goldhair riding knee to knee,

      Recounting with a bluff, heroic scorn

Скачать книгу