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THE LONESOME TRAIL


[Illustration: _Drawn by F. E. Schoonover_
THE RACE WITH THE FIRE
_See “The Nemesis of the Deuces,” page 300_]


THE LONESOME TRAIL

by

JOHN G. NEIHARDT

   “_In the fell clutch of circumstance
   I have not winced nor cried aloud._”







New York: John Lane Company, MCMVII
London: John Lane, The Bodley Head

Copyright, 1907,
by
John G. Neihardt


                                  TO

                            VOLNEY STREAMER

                      “_Friend of my Yester-age_”




_The stories in this volume have appeared in the following magazines:
Munsey’s, The American Magazine, The Smart Set, The Scrap Book,
The All-Story, Watson’s, Overland Monthly. The author gratefully
acknowledges permission to republish._




  CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                         PAGE

      I. THE ALIEN                                  11

     II. THE LOOK IN THE FACE                       31

    III. FEATHER FOR FEATHER                        45

     IV. THE SCARS                                  58

      V. THE FADING OF SHADOW FLOWER                75

     VI. THE ART OF HATE                            93

    VII. THE SINGER OF THE ACHE                    110

   VIII. THE WHITE WAKUNDA                         123

     IX. THE TRIUMPH OF SEHA                       143

      X. THE END OF THE DREAM                      151

     XI. THE REVOLT OF A SHEEP                     168

    XII. THE MARK OF SHAME                         182

   XIII. THE BEATING OF THE WAR DRUMS              194

    XIV. DREAMS ARE WISER THAN MEN                 204

     XV. THE SMILE OF GOD                          219

    XVI. THE HEART OF A WOMAN                      229

   XVII. MIGNON                                    239

  XVIII. A POLITICAL COUP AT LITTLE OMAHA          255

    XIX. THE LAST THUNDER SONG                     276

     XX. THE NEMESIS OF THE DEUCES                 288




_THE OLD CRY_


  _O Mourner in the silence of the hills,
  O Thing of ancient griefs, art thou a wolf?
  I heard a cry that shook me—was it thine?_

  _Low in the mystic purple of the west
  The weird moon hangs, a tarnished silver slug:
  Vast, vast the hollow empty night curves down,
  Stabbed with the glass-like glinting of the stars,
  And, save when that wild cry grows up anon,
  No sound but this dull murmur of the hush—
  The winter hush._

                _Hark! once again thy cry!_
  _Thy strange, sharp, ice-like, tenuous complaint,
  As though the spirit of this frozen waste
  Pinched with the cruel frost yearned summerward!_

  _I know thou art a wolf that criest so:
  Though hidden in the shadow, I can see
  Thy four feet huddled in the numbing frost,
  Thy snout, breath-whitened, pointing to the sky:
  Poor pariah of the plains, I know ’tis thou._

  _And yet—and yet—I heard a kinsman shout!
  Down through the intricate centuries it came,
  A far-blown cry! From old-world graves it grew,
  Up through the tumbled walls of ancient realms,
  Up through the lizard-haunted heaps of stone,
  Up through the choking ashes of old fanes,
  The pitiful debris where Grandeur dwelt,
  Out of the old-world wilderness it grew—
  The cry I know! And I have heard my Kin!_




I

THE ALIEN


THROUGH the quiet night, crystalline with the pervading spirit of the
frost, under prairie skies of mystic purple pierced with the glass-like
glinting of the stars, fled Antoine.

Huge and hollow-sounding with the clatter of the pinto’s hoofs hung the
night above and about—lonesome, empty, bitter as the soul of him who
fled.

A weary age of flight since sunset; and now the midnight saw the
thin-limbed, long-haired pony slowly losing his nerve, tottering,
rasping in the throat. With pitiless spike-spurred heels the rider
hurled the beast into the empty night.

“Gwan! you blasted cayuse! you overgrown wolf-dog! you pot-bellied
shonga! Keep up that tune; I’m goin’ somewheres. What