There's a MODOC INDICTMENT agin you, O Paleface, and you're goin' in!
"You stole Schonchin's squaw
In the year sixty-two;
It was in sixty-four
That Long Jack you went through,
And you burned Nasty Jim's rancheria, and his wives and his papooses
too.
"This gun in my hand
Was sold me by you
'Gainst the law of the land,
And I grieves it is true!"
And he buried his face in his blanket and wept as he hid it from view.
But you're tried and condemned,
And skelping's your doom,"
And he paused and he hemmed--
But why this resume?
He was skelped 'gainst the custom of nations, and cut off like a rose
in its bloom.
So I asks without guile,
And I trusts not in vain,
If this is the style
That is going to obtain--
If here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye with no skelp on his
brain?
AN IDYL OF THE ROAD
(SIERRAS, 1876)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
First Tourist
Second Tourist
Yuba Bill, Driver
A Stranger
FIRST TOURIST
Look how the upland plunges into cover,
Green where the pines fade sullenly away.
Wonderful those olive depths! and wonderful, moreover--
SECOND TOURIST
The red dust that rises in a suffocating way.
FIRST TOURIST
Small is the soul that cannot soar above it,
Cannot but cling to its ever-kindred clay:
Better be yon bird, that seems to breathe and love it--
SECOND TOURIST
Doubtless a hawk or some other bird of prey.
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