What is there out beyond the last divide? Seems like that country must be cold and dim. He'd miss this sunny range he used to ride, And he'd miss me, the same as I do him. It's no use thinkin'--all I'd think or say Could never make it clear. Out that dim trail that only leads one way He's gone--and left me here!
The range is empty and the trails are blind, And I don't seem but half myself today. I wait to hear him ridin' up behind And feel his knee rub mine the good old way. He's dead--and what that means no man kin tell. Some call it "gone before." Where? I don't know, but God! I know so well That he ain't here no more!
[Illustration: "_I wait to hear him ridin' up behind._"]
One time, 'way back where the year marks fade, God said: "I see I must lose my West, The prettiest part of the world I made, The place where I've always come to rest, For the White Man grows till he fights for bread And he begs and prays for a chance to spread.
"Yet I won't give all of my last retreat; I'll help him to fight his long trail through, But I'll keep some land from his field and street The way that it was when the world was new. He'll cry for it all, for that's his way, And yet he may understand some day."
And so, from the painted Bad Lands, 'way To the sun-beat home of the 'Pache kin, God stripped some places to sand and clay And dried up the beds where the streams had been. He marked His reserves with these plain signs And stationed His rangers to guard the lines.
Then the White Man came, as the East growed old, And blazed his trail with the wreck of war. He riled the rivers to hunt for gold And found the stuff he was lookin' for; Then he trampled the Injun trails to ruts And gashed through the hills with railroad cuts.
He flung out his barb-wire fences wide And plowed up the ground where the grass was high. He stripped off the trees from the mountain side And ground out his ore where the streams run by, Till last came the cities, with smoke and roar, And the White Man was feelin' at home once more.
But Barrenness, Loneliness, suchlike things That gall and grate on the White Man's nerves, Was the rangers that camped by the bitter springs And guarded the lines of God's reserves. So the folks all shy from the desert land, 'Cept mebbe a few that kin understand.