The Lonesome Trail. John G. Neihardt

       John Neihardt

      The Lonesome Trail

      e-artnow, 2021

       Contact: [email protected]

      EAN: 4064066498559

Table of Contents

       I. The Alien

       II. The Look in the Face

       III. Feather for Feather

       IV. The Scars

       V. The Fading of Shadow Flower

       VI. The Art of Hate

       VII. The Singer of the Ache

       VIII. The White Wakunda

       IX. The Triumph of Seha

       X. The End of the Dream

       XI. The Revolt of a Sheep

       XII. The Mark of Shame

       XIII. The Beating of the War Drums

       XIV. Dreams are Wiser than Men

       XV. The Smile of God

       XVI. The Heart of a Woman

       XVII. Mignon

       XVIII. A Political Coup at Little Omaha

       XIX. The Last Thunder Song

       XX. The Nemesis of the Deuces

       THE OLD CRY

       O Mourner in the silence of the hills, O Thing of ancient griefs, art thou a wolf? I heard a cry that shook me—was it thine?

       Low in the mystic purple of the west The weird moon hangs, a tarnished silver slug: Vast, vast the hollow empty night curves down, Stabbed with the glass-like glinting of the stars, And, save when that wild cry grows up anon, No sound but this dull murmur of the hush— The winter hush.

       Hark! once again thy cry!

       Thy strange, sharp, ice-like, tenuous complaint, As though the spirit of this frozen waste Pinched with the cruel frost yearned summerward!

       I know thou art a wolf that criest so: Though hidden in the shadow, I can see Thy four feet huddled in the numbing frost, Thy snout, breath-whitened, pointing to the sky: Poor pariah of the plains, I know ’tis thou.

       And yet—and yet—I heard a kinsman shout! Down through the intricate centuries it came, A far-blown cry! From old-world graves it grew, Up through the tumbled walls of ancient realms, Up through the lizard-haunted heaps of stone, Up through the choking ashes of old fanes, The pitiful debris where Grandeur dwelt, Out of the old-world wilderness it grew— The cry I know! And I have heard my Kin!

      I. THE ALIEN

       Table of Contents

      Through the quiet night, crystalline with the pervading spirit of the frost, under prairie skies of mystic purple pierced with the glass-like glinting of the stars, fled Antoine.

      Huge and hollow-sounding with the clatter of the pinto’s hoofs hung the night above and about—lonesome, empty, bitter as the soul of him who fled.

      A weary age of flight since sunset; and now the midnight saw the thin-limbed, long-haired pony slowly losing his nerve, tottering, rasping in the throat. With pitiless spike-spurred heels the rider hurled the beast into the empty night.

      “Gwan! you blasted cayuse! you overgrown wolf-dog! you pot-bellied shonga! Keep up that tune; I’m goin’ somewheres. What’d I steal you fer? Pleasure? He, he, he, ho, ho, ho! I reckon; pleasure for the half-breed! Gwan!”

      Suddenly rounding a bank of sand, the pinto sighted the broad, ice-bound river, an elysian stream of glinting silver under the stars. Sniffing and crouching upon its haunches at the sudden glow that dwindled a gleaming thread into the further dusk, the jaded beast received a series of vicious jabs from the spike-spurred heels. It groaned and lunged forward again, taking with uncertain feet the glaring path ahead, and awakening dull, snarling thunder in the under regions of the ice. Slipping, struggling, doing its brute best to overcome fatigue and the uncertainty of its path, the pinto covered the ice.

      “Doin’ a war dance, eh?” growled the man with bitter mirth, and gouging the foaming bloody flanks of the animal. “Gwan! Set up that tune; I want fast music, ’cause I’m goin’ somewheres—don’t know where—somewheres out there in the shadders! Come here, will you? Take that and that and that! Now will you kick the scen’ry back’ards? By the——!”

      The brutal cries of the man were cut short as he shot far over the pommel, lunging headlong over the pinto’s head, and striking with head and shoulders upon the glare ice. When he stopped sliding he lay very still for a few moments. Then he groaned, sat up, and found that the bluffs and the river and the stars and the universe in general were whirling giddily, with himself for the dizzy centre.

      With uncertain arms he reached out, endeavouring to check the sickening motion of things with the sheer force of his powerful hands. He was thrown down like a weakling wrestling with a giant. He lay still, cursing in a whisper, trying to steady the universe, until the motion passed, leaving in his nerves the sickening sensation incident to the sudden ending of a rapid flight.

      With great care Antoine raised himself upon his elbows and gazed about with an imbecile leer. Then he began to remember; remembered that he was hunted; that he was an outcast, a man of no race; remembered dimly, and with a malignant grin, a portion of a long series of crimes; remembered that the last was horse-stealing and that some of the others concerned blood. And as he remembered, he felt with horrible distinctness the lariat tightening about his neck—the lariat that the men of Cabanne’s trading post were bringing on fleet horses, nearer, nearer, nearer through the silent night.

      Antoine shuddered and got to his feet, looming huge against the star-sprent surface of the ice, as he turned a face of bestial malevolence down trail and listened for the beat of hoofs. There was only the dim, hollow murmur that dwells at the heart of silence.

      “Got a long start,” he observed, with the chuckle of a