he plains is before my eyes; the
tingle of courage, danger-born, is in my pulse-beat; the soft hand of
love is touching my hand. I live again the drama of life wherein there
are no idle actors, no stale, unmeaning lines. And beyond the action,
this way _up_ the years, there runs also the forward-gazing vision
toward a new Hesperides:

Through the veins
Of whose vast Empire flows, in strength'ning tides,
Trade, the calm health of nations.

* * * * *

And sometimes I would doubt
If statesmen, rocked and dandled into power,
Could leave such legacies to kings.

I

CLEARING THE TRAIL

VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS

A ROMANCE OF THE SANTA FE TRAIL

I

THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAINSMAN

There came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke, and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.
--LANGDON SMITH.

It might have been but yesterday that I saw it all: the glinting
sunlight on the yellow Missouri boiling endlessly along at the foot of
the bluff; the flood-washed sands across the river; the tangle of tall,
coarse weeds fringing them, edged by the scrubby underbrush. And beyond
that the big trees of the Missouri woodland, so level against the
eastern horizon that I used to wonder if I might not walk upon their
solid-looking tops if I could only reach them. I wondered, too, why the
trees on our side of the river should vary so in height when those in
the eastern distance were so evenly grown. One day I had asked Jondo the
reason for this, and had learned that it was because of the level ground
on the farther side of the valley. I began then to love the level places
of the earth. I love them still. And, always excepting that one titanic
rift, where the world stands edgewise, with the sublimity of the
Almighty shimmering through its far depths, I love them more than any
other thing that nature has yet offered to me.

But to come back to that picture of yesterday: old Fort Leavenworth on
the bluff; the little and big ravines that billow the landscape about
it; the faint lines of trails winding along the hillsides toward the
southwest; the unclouded skies so everlastingly big and intensely blue;
and, hanging like a spray of glorious blossoms flung high above me, the
swaying folds of the wind-caressed flag, now drooping on its tall staff,
now swelling full and free, straight from its gripping halyards.

Betwe