No More Learning

First, he saved his wife;
Her I spoke of;--nothin' but a squaw.
You might wonder by what sort of law
He, a white man born, should come to love her.
But 't was somehow so: he _did_ discover
Beauty in her, of the holding kind.
Some men love the light, an' some the shade.
Round that little Indian girl there played
Soft an' shadowy tremblings, like the dark
Under trees; yet now an' then a spark,
Quick 's a firefly, flashing from her eyes,
Made you think of summer-midnight skies.
She was faithful, too, like midnight stars.
As for Blackmouth, if you'd seen the scars
Made by wounds he suffered for her sake,
You'd have called _him_ true, and no mistake.

Growin' up a man, he scarcely met
Other white folks; an' his heart was set
On this red girl. Yet he said: "We'll wait.
You must never be my wedded mate
Till we reach the white man's country. There,
Everything that's done is fair and square. "
Patiently they stayed, thro' trust or doubt,
Till tow'rds Colorado he could scout
Some safe track. He told her: "You go first.
All my joy goes with you:--that's the worst!
But _I_ wait, to guard or hide the trail.
"

Indians caught him; an' they gave him--hail;
Cut an' tortured him, till he was bleeding;
Yet they found that still they weren't succeeding.
"Where's that squaw? " they asked. "We'll have her blood!
Either that, or grind you into mud;
Pick your eyes out, too, if you can't see
Where she's gone to. Which, now, shall it be?
Tell us where she's hid. "

"I'll show the way,"
Blackmouth says; an' leads toward dawn of day,
Till they come straight out beside the brink
Of a precipice that seems to sink
Into everlasting gulfs below.
"Loose me! " Blackmouth tells 'em. "But go slow. "
Then they loosed him; and, with one swift leap,
Blackmouth swooped right down into the deep;--
Jumped out into space beyond the edge,
While the Apaches cowered along the ledge.
Seven hundred feet, they say. That's guff!
Seventy foot, I tell you, 's 'bout enough.
Indians called him a dead antelope;
But they couldn't touch the bramble-slope
Where he, bruised and stabbed, crawled under brush.