LITMIR.BIZ

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with knots. Nor might Hugh tarry long

      There where the trail forked outward far and dim;

      Or so it seemed. And when they lifted him,

      His moan went treble like a song of pain,

      He was so tortured. Surely it were vain

      To hope he might endure the toilsome ride

      Across the barrens. Better let him bide

      There on the grassy couch beside the spring.

      And, furthermore, it seemed a foolish thing

      That eighty men should wait the issue there;

      For dying is a game of solitaire

      And all men play the losing hand alone.

      But when at noon he had not ceased to moan,

      And fought still like the strong man he had been,

      There grew a vague mistrust that he might win,

      And all this be a tale for wondering ears.

      So Major Henry called for volunteers,

      Two men among the eighty who would stay

      To wait on Glass and keep the wolves away

      Until he did whatever he should do.

      All quite agreed ’twas bitter bread for Hugh,

      Yet none, save Jamie, felt in duty bound

      To run the risk—until the hat went round,

      And pity wakened, at the silver’s clink,

      In Jules Le Bon.

      ‘He would not have them think

      That mercenary motives prompted him.

      But somehow just the grief of Little Jim

      Was quite sufficient—not to mention Hugh.

      He weighed the risk. As everybody knew,

      The Rickarees were scattered to the West:

      The late campaign had stirred a hornet’s nest

      To fill the land with stingers (which was so),

      And yet—’

      Three days a southwest wind may blow

      False April with no drop of dew at heart.

      So Jules ran on, while, ready for the start,

      The pawing horses nickered and the men,

      Impatient in their saddles, yawned. And then,

      With brief advice, a round of bluff good-byes

      And some few reassuring backward cries,

      The troop rode up the valley with the day.

      Intent upon his friend, with naught to say,

      Sat Jamie; while Le Bon discussed at length

      The reasonable limits of man’s strength—

      A self-conducted dialectic strife

      That made absurd all argument for life

      And granted but a fresh-dug hole for Hugh.

      ’Twas half like murder. Yet it seemed Jules knew

      Unnumbered tales accordant with the case,

      Each circumstantial as to time and place

      And furnished with a death’s head colophon.

      Vivaciously despondent, Jules ran on.

      ‘Did he not share his judgment with the rest?

      You see, ’twas some contusion of the chest

      That did the trick—heart, lungs and all that, mixed

      In such a way they never could be fixed.

      A bear’s hug—ugh!’

      And often Jamie winced

      At some knife-thrust of reason that convinced

      Yet left him sick with unrelinquished hope.

      As one who in a darkened room might grope

      For some belovéd face, with shuddering

      Anticipation of a clammy thing;

      So in the lad’s heart sorrow fumbled round

      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,

      And felt that something strong had gone away,

      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,

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