|ROUND by tawny, foam-lipp'd streams, Portage des Sioux, In thy name what romance dreams, Portage des Sioux! But thy trails, once deep and worn, Now lie gulfed in rustling corn, And thy forest depths are shorn, Portage des Sioux. Where are all the dusky feet, Portage des Sioux, Trod thy pathways like a street, Portage des Sioux? Nevermore thy vales shall know Flash of spear and twang of bow, Nor the evening camp-fire's glow, Portage des Sioux. Yet when summer moonlight falls, Portage des Sioux, On thy glades and forest walls, Portage des Sioux, Phantom figures seem to go 'Neath the branches bending low, Moccasined and pacing slow, Portage des Sioux. And the hoot-owl's mournful rune, Portage des Sioux, Quavers toward the sailing moon, Portage des Sioux, While, where shore and river meet, Sob the waves with pulsing feet Like a tom-tom's dying beat, Portage des Sioux. JAKE DALE |WHAT, stranger, you never heerd tell o' Jake, Jake Dale, o' the "Lucky George"? You must 'a' been raised in the East, my son, If you never clapped ears to the yarn that's spun Of Jakey Dale an' the race he won In the year o' the big ice gorge. Come March in the Spring o' '81, An' the river broke at Pierre An' come rantin' down on the clean rampage. She marked 36 on the Yankton gauge, Which I reckon you know is some of a stage, An' she covered the bottoms here. The "George" was hitched on the city bar Close up by the railroad track. When the row began we fixed her strong, Rigged seven hawsers where two belong; She'd 'a' taken an acre o' soil along If she'd dragged in the grindin' pack. But along one night the drift-ice stopped; The flood run clear as June, Fer the stuff had jammed in Hagin's Bend An' choked the channel from end to end, An' it fought an' screamed like a wild-cat, penned, In the light o' the cold March moon. Yeh see that p'int acrost the bar With the riffle o' shoal below? Well, that's where the widow o' old Buck Slack Oncet had a claim an' a drift-wood shack. Where she lived an' slaved with her young-un pack, All which was some time ago. Well, we on the "George" had tumbled out-- The roar o' the jam was wild-- When we heerd a cry through the shriekin' night, An' there on the p'int, in the pale moonlight, A-wavin' an' yellin' with all her might, Stood Buck Slack's youngest child. An' we knowed, without darin' to say the word, They was tripped fer the Great Unknown, Fer the gorge had slapped the current round An' cut 'em off from the higher ground, An' the hand that could save 'em from bein' drowned Was the hand of God alone. Then all at oncet we heerd a yell An', down 'cross the willow bank, A-layin' a course that was skeercely snug, Came Jakey Dale with his whiskey jug, As drunk as the mate of a log-raft tug,