NOW THE OLD CAMP-FIRE OW shift your blanket pad before your saddle back you fling, And draw your cinch up tighter till the sweat drops from the ring: We've a dozen miles to cover ere we reach the next divide. Our limbs are stiffer now than when we first set out to ride, And worse, the horses know it, and feel the leg-grip tire, Since in the days when, long ago, we sought the old camp-fire. Yes, twenty years! Lord! how we'd scent its incense down the trail, Through balm of bay and spice of spruce, and eye and ear would fail, And worn and faint from useless quest we crept like this to rest, Or, flushed with luck and youthful hope, we rode, like this, abreast. Ay! straighten up, old friend and let the mustang think he's nigher, Through looser rein and stirrup strain, the welcome old camp-fire. You know the shout that would ring out before us down the glade, And start the blue jays like a flight of arrows through the shade, And sift the thin pine needles down like slanting, shining rain, And send the squirrels scampering back to their holes again, Until we saw, blue-veiled and dim, or leaping like desire, That flame of twenty years ago, which lit the old camp-fire. And then the rest on Nature's breast, when talk had dropped, and slow The night wind went from tree to tree with challenge soft and low! We lay on lazy elbows propped, or stood to stir the flame, Till up the soaring redwood's shaft our shadows danced and came, As if to draw us with the sparks, high o'er its unseen spire, To the five stars that kept their ward above the old camp-fire, Those picket stars whose tranquil watch half soothed, half shamed our sleep. What recked we then what beasts or men around might lurk or creep? We lay and heard with listless ears the far-off panther's cry, The near coyote's snarling snap, the grizzly's deep-drawn sigh, The brown bear's blundering human tread, the gray wolves' yelping choir Beyond the magic circle drawn round the old camp-fire. And then that morn! Was ever morn so filled with all things new? The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue, The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call. The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall, The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier, Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's old camp-fire! Bret Harte TH LINE UP, BRAVE BOYS! HE packs are on, the cinches tight, Upon the grass the frost lies white, The leader's cry rings sharp and clear, The camp-fires smoulder low; Before us lies a shallow mere, Beyond, the mountain snow. "Line up, Billy, line up, boys, Five hundred miles behind us lie, As many more ahead, Through mud and mire on mountains high Our weary feet must tread. So one by one, with loyal mind, The horses swing to place, |