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III. IN DIALECT"CICELY"(ALKALI STATION)
Cicely says you`re a poet; maybe,--I ain`t much on rhyme:
I reckon you`d give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry!--that`s the way some chaps puts up an idee,
But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that`s what`s the
matter with me. Poetry!--just look round you,--alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain`t it a pretty page!
Sun in the east at mornin`, sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this `yer station the on`y thing moves in sight. Poetry!--Well now--Polly! Polly, run to your mam;
Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Ain`t she a lamb?
Poetry!--that reminds me o` suthin` right in that suit:
Jest shet that door thar, will yer?--for Cicely`s ears is cute. Ye noticed Polly,--the baby? A month afore she was born,
Cicely--my old woman--was moody-like and forlorn;
Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees;
Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman be`s. Narvous she was, and restless,--said that she "couldn`t stay."
Stay!--and the nearest woman seventeen miles away.
But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand,
And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o` land. One night,--the tenth of October,--I woke with a chill and a fright,
For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn`t in sight,
But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she
"couldn`t stay,"
But had gone to visit her neighbor,--seventeen miles away! When and how she stampeded, I didn`t wait for to see,
For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she;
Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the
scent,
For there warn`t no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went. I`ve had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,--
Lost on the Plains in `50, drownded almost and shot;
But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife,
Was ra`ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life. "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath,
And "Cicely!" came from the canyon,--and all was as still as death.
And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below,
And jest but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them peaks of snow. I ain`t what you call religious,--but I jest looked up to the sky,
And--this `yer`s to what I`m coming, and maybe ye think I lie:
But up away to the east`ard, yaller and big and far,
I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star. Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me:
Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see:
Big and yaller and dancing,--I never saw such a star,
And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then
and thar. Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead,
Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led.
It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh,
Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby`s cry. Listen! thar`s the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now
Than the day I packed her and her mother,--I`m derned if I jest know
how.
But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o` the whole thing is
That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this! But Cicely says you`re a poet, and maybe you might, some day,
Jest sling her a rhyme `bout a baby that was born in a curious way,
And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of the star,
don`t tell
As how `twas the doctor`s lantern,--for maybe `twon`t sound so well.
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