Across the Brazos, Colorado, through Concho's broad, fair valley, sweeping on By Abilene it climbs upon the plains, The Llano Estacado (beyond lie wastes Of alkali and hunger gaunt and death),-- And here is lost in shifting rifts of sand. Anon it lingers by a hidden spring That bubbles joy into the wilderness; Its pathway trenched that distant mountain side, Now grown to gulches through torrential rain. De Vaca gathered pinons by the way, Long ere the furrows grew on yonder hill, Cut by the creaking prairie-schooner wheels; La Salle, the gentle Frenchman, crossed this course, And went to death and to a nameless grave. For ages and for ages through the past Comanches and Apaches from the north Came sweeping southward, searching for the sun, And charged in mimic combat on the sea. The scions of Montezuma's low-browed race Perhaps have seen that knotted, thorn-clad tree; Or sucked the cactus apples growing there. All these have passed, and passed the immigrants, Who bore the westward fever in their brain, The Norseman tang for roving in their veins; Who loved the plains as sailors love the sea, Braved danger, death, and found a resting place While traveling on the old Mackenzie Trail. Brave old Mackenzie long has laid him down To rest beyond the trail that bears his name; A granite mountain makes his monument; The northers, moaning o'er the low divide, Go gently past his long deserted camps. No more his rangers guard the wild frontier, No more he leads them in the border fight. No more the mavericks, winding stream of horns To Kansas bound; the dust, the cowboy songs And cries, the pistol's sharp report,--the free, Wild days in Texas by the Rio Grande. And some men say when dusky night shuts down, Dark, cloudy nights without a kindly star, One sees dim horsemen skimming o'er the plain Hard by Mackenzie's trail; and keener ears Have heard from deep within the bordering hills The tramp of ghostly hoofs, faint cattle lows, The rumble of a moving wagon train, Sometimes far echoes of a frontier song; Then sounds grow fainter, shadows troop away,-- On westward, westward, as they in olden time Went rangeing o'er the old Mackenzie Trail. _John A. Lomax._ THE SHEEP-HERDER[3] ALL day across the sagebrush flat, Beneath the sun of June, My sheep they loaf and feed and bleat Their never changin' tune. And then, at night time, when they lay As quiet as a stone, I hear the gray wolf far away, "Alo-one!" he says, "Alo-one!"