Mountain Interval Part 6

Between the house and barn the gale Got him by something he had on And blew him out on the icy crust That cased the world, and he was gone!

Walls were all buried, trees were few: He saw no stay unless he stove A hole in somewhere with his heel.

But though repeatedly he strove

And stamped and said things to himself, And sometimes something seemed to yield, He gained no foothold, but pursued His journey down from field to field.

Sometimes he came with arms outspread Like wings, revolving in the scene Upon his longer axis, and With no small dignity of mien.

Faster or slower as he chanced, Sitting or standing as he chose, According as he feared to risk His neck, or thought to spare his clothes,

He never let the lantern drop.

And some exclaimed who saw afar The figures he described with it, "I wonder what those signals are

Brown makes at such an hour of night!

He's celebrating something strange.

I wonder if he's sold his farm, Or been made Master of the Grange."

He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked; He fell and made the lantern rattle (But saved the light from going out.) So half-way down he fought the battle

Incredulous of his own bad luck.

And then becoming reconciled To everything, he gave it up And came down like a coasting child.

"Well--I--be--" that was all he said, As standing in the river road, He looked back up the slippery slope (Two miles it was) to his abode.

Sometimes as an authority On motor-cars, I'm asked if I Should say our stock was petered out, And this is my sincere reply:

Yankees are what they always were.

Don't think Brown ever gave up hope Of getting home again because He couldn't climb that slippery slope;

Or even thought of standing there Until the January thaw Should take the polish off the crust.

He bowed with grace to natural law,

And then went round it on his feet, After the manner of our stock; Not much concerned for those to whom, At that particular time o'clock,

It must have looked as if the course He steered was really straight away From that which he was headed for-- Not much concerned for them, I say;

No more so than became a man-- _And_ politician at odd seasons.

I've kept Brown standing in the cold While I invested him with reasons;

But now he snapped his eyes three times; Then shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's 'Bout out!" and took the long way home By road, a matter of several miles.

THE GUM-GATHERER

There overtook me and drew me in To his down-hill, early-morning stride, And set me five miles on my road Better than if he had had me ride, A man with a swinging bag for load And half the bag wound round his hand.

We talked like barking above the din Of water we walked along beside.

And for my telling him where I'd been And where I lived in mountain land To be coming home the way I was, He told me a little about himself.

He came from higher up in the pa.s.s Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks Is blocks split off the mountain ma.s.s-- And hopeless grist enough it looks Ever to grind to soil for gra.s.s.

(The way it is will do for moss.) There he had built his stolen shack.

It had to be a stolen shack Because of the fears of fire and loss That trouble the sleep of lumber folk: Visions of half the world burned black And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.

We know who when they come to town Bring berries under the wagon seat, Or a basket of eggs between their feet; What this man brought in a cotton sack Was gum, the gum of the mountain spruce.

He showed me lumps of the scented stuff Like uncut jewels, dull and rough.

It comes to market golden brown; But turns to pink between the teeth.

I told him this is a pleasant life To set your breast to the bark of trees That all your days are dim beneath, And reaching up with a little knife, To loose the resin and take it down And bring it to market when you please.

THE LINE-GANG

Here come the line-gang pioneering by.

They throw a forest down less cut than broken.

They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread.

They string an instrument against the sky Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken Will run as hushed as when they were a thought.

But in no hush they string it: they go past With shouts afar to pull the cable taut, To hold it hard until they make it fast, To ease away--they have it. With a laugh, An oath of towns that set the wild at naught They bring the telephone and telegraph.

THE VANIs.h.i.+NG RED

He is said to have been the last Red Man In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed-- If you like to call such a sound a laugh.

But he gave no one else a laugher's license.

For he turned suddenly grave as if to say, "Whose business,--if I take it on myself, Whose business--but why talk round the barn?-- When it's just that I hold with getting a thing done with."

You can't get back and see it as he saw it.

It's too long a story to go into now.

You'd have to have been there and lived it.

Then you wouldn't have looked on it as just a matter Of who began it between the two races.

Some guttural exclamation of surprise The Red Man gave in poking about the mill Over the great big thumping shuffling mill-stone Disgusted the Miller physically as coming From one who had no right to be heard from.

"Come, John," he said, "you want to see the wheel pit?"

He took him down below a cramping rafter, And showed him, through a manhole in the floor, The water in desperate straits like frantic fish, Salmon and sturgeon, las.h.i.+ng with their tails.

Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it That jangled even above the general noise, And came up stairs alone--and gave that laugh, And said something to a man with a meal-sack That the man with the meal-sack didn't catch--then.

Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel pit all right.

SNOW

The three stood listening to a fresh access Of wind that caught against the house a moment, Gulped snow, and then blew free again--the Coles Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep, Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.