Читать книгу East and West: Poems - Bret Harte - Страница 3

We checked our pace,—the red road sharply rounding;

  We heard the troubled flow

Of the dark olive depths of pines, resounding

  A thousand feet below.

Above the tumult of the cañon lifted,

  The gray hawk breathless hung;

Or on the hill a wingèd shadow drifted

  Where furze and thorn-bush clung;

Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed

  With many a seam and scar;

Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,—

  A mole-hill seen so far.

We looked in silence down across the distant

  Unfathomable reach:

A silence broken by the guide's consistent

  And realistic speech.

"Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters

  For telling him he lied;

Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos

  Across the long Divide.

"We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden,

  And 'cross the ford below;

And up this cañon (Peters' brother leadin'),

  And me and Clark and Joe.

"He fou't us game: somehow, I disremember

  Jest how the thing kem round;

Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember

  From fires on the ground.

"But in one minute all the hill below him

  Was just one sheet of flame;

Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him.

  And,—well, the dog was game!

"He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him,

  The pit of hell below.

We sat and waited, but never found him;

  And then we turned to go.

"And then—you see that rock that's grown so bristly

  With chaparral and tan—

Suthin' crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly,

  It might hev been a man;

"Suthin' that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted

  In smoke and dust and flame;

Suthin' that sprang into the depths about it,

  Grizzly or man,—but game!

"That's all. Well, yes, it does look rather risky,

  And kinder makes one queer

And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey

  Ain't a bad thing right here!"