Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/458

Strange hunger'd birds, black-wing'd and still as death,
And crown'd of red and hooked beaks, flew low
And close about till we could touch their breath
Strange unnamed birds, that seem'd to come and go
In circles now, and now direct and slow,
Continual, yet never touch the earth;
Slim foxes shied and shuttled to and fro
At times across the dusty weary dearth
Of life, looked back, then sank like crickets in a hearth.

Then dust arose, a long dim line like smoke
From out of riven earth. The wheels went groaning by,
The thousand feet in harness, and in yoke,
They tore the ways of ashen alkali,
And desert winds blew sudden, swift, and dry.
The dust! it sat upon and flll'd the train.
It seem'd to fret and fill the very sky.
Lo! dust upon the beasts, the tent, the plain,
And dust, alas! on breasts that rose not up again.

They sat in desolation and in dust
By dried-up desert streams; the mother's hands
Hid all her bended face; the cattle thrust
Their tongues and faintly called across the lands.
The babes that knew not what the way through sands
Could mean, did ask if it would end today.
The panting wolves slid by, red-eyed, in bands
To pools beyond. The men look'd far away,
And silent deemed that all a boundless desert lay.
 
They rose by night, they struggl'd on and on
As thin and still as ghosts ; then here and there
Beside the dusty way before the dawn,
Men silent laid them down in their despair,
And died. But woman ! Woman, frail as fair !
May man have strength to give to you your due ;
You falter'd not nor murmur'd anywhere,
You held your babes, held to your course, and you
Bore on through burning hell your double burdens through.
 
Men stood at last, the decimated few,
Above a land of running streams, and they ?
They pushed aside the boughs, and peering through
Beheld afar the cool refreshing bay ;
Then some did curse, and some bend hands to pray ;
But some looked back upon the desert wide
And desolate with death, then all the day
They mourned. But one, with nothing left beside
His dog to love, crept down among the ferns and died.