In Border Lands [pp. 291-298]

In Border Laids.
world hears too little, brave men and women
whose virtues were the fruits of striving Chris tian centuries, and you others who, without
personal faith, nevertheless ranged yourselves
on the side of the right without promise or
hope of reward, grand primitive figures,
whose lifted arms hold a light for humanity,
for you I write. Not, alas, always to you, for
the ears of the noblest are stopped with clay,
and the sails of others whiten out of hearing
down unfamiliar seas; but that such memo ries may not perish wholly from our hearts.
There is no more a dread in frontier homes
of the torch and knife of the assassin; on the
hills cattle graze without fear of a stampede;
and to you, pioneers, we owe it that we are
here and in safety.
It has wrongs and doubts, evils and sor rows, but to those who have known savagery
our civilization is worth even all that it has
cost; and for every grief there is hope, for
every young ambition glory, for every sinking
heart a promise, in the story of a border.
In the June of i86o there was born an
heiress to this vague world of rain and storm
and thunder, of boundless plains and wooded
ranges; a child whose cry was the first a
white mother had heard among those heights
since time was known. That mother, who
lay beneath a roof of pine boughs in a shed
with a dirt floor, an open fire-place, and a
blanket for a door, was as soft and delicate
a woman as ever plucked the rose of the
South; brought there by that most universal
and mysterious law which draws a woman to
a man's side wherever he may be, in ruin, in
defeat, or in exile. Have not the best of
Europe- in days when she held the world's
youth, and her cities were as yet but glorious
visions to uncrowned monarchs -endured
their travail under circumstances even more
miserable! Deep in the woman's heart
have ever lain the profoundest secrets of
existence, and to all good women the sorrows
of maternity are glorified by the divine joy
that shone over Bethlehem in Judah. The
deified womanhood of their time breathes in
the Madonnas of the old masters. They
knew that to every woman is re-enacted something of the wonder of Mary over her first
born, and that each young life with its possi bilities is like a new message from the soul
of the Eternal.
But, as in men's souls there are two natures,
the active and the passive, women have also
two, the virginal and maternal, neither easily
comprehending the other. One bears out
the Greek fancy of earth, the thousand
breasted, feeding the nations, clothed in the
fullness of content, ever fair and bringing
forth beauty. Its crown is in its children, in
love, and the touch of little hands. To the
other belong the heights and solemnities, ay,
and the great deeps of the soul. It loves
once, and spiritually, for love is only part of
its destiny, nor carn it be wholly dwarfed by
its loss. Alas! in the confused mortal life
one yearns vainly for loves that come not to
her; and the other, wandering under the
shadow of silent heavens, cries out against
the flesh that weighs her to the dust or turns
her subtlety into one of the lights of the
abyss.
II.
THE storm passed by, and flowers rose
again after its fury. Several days later, the
little maid lay in a rough crib in a corner of
the cabin. Over it bent a woman, sobbing
violently. She threw herself on her knees
beside it and kissed the tiny hands and feet
with a paroxysm of tenderness. The young
mother on her couch turned her head aside,
seeming not to notice the emotion that convulsed that scarred and evil-featured countenance.
"Mountain Sal" was the terror of the
camp, a sensual fury whom men feared as
much as they despised. She had been
employed as nurse because no other woman
could be found, but with the dismal warning
that no one in those diggings had seen her
sober for a week at one time. Whether it
was due to the trust reposed in her, pity, or
mere caprice, she proved good, thoughtful,
and utterly different from her noisy and combative self.
What feelings had wrought upon that
charred wreck of womanhood? None
would know, for with a furtive glance to see
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