The Hawks Nest

We checked our pace, the red road sharply rounding;     We heard the troubled flow     Of the dark olive depths of pines resounding     A thousand feet below.     Above the tumult of the canyon lifted,     The gray hawk breathless hung,     Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted     Where furze and thorn-bush clung;     Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed     With many a seam and scar;     Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,     A mole-hill seen so far.     We looked in silence down across the distant     Unfathomable reach:     A silence broken by the guides consistent     And realistic speech.     Walker of Murphys blew a hole through Peters     For telling him he lied;     Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos     Across the Long Divide.     We ran him out of Strongs, and up through Eden,     And cross the ford below,     And up this canyon (Peters brother leadin),     And me and Clark and Joe.     He fout us game: somehow I disremember     Jest how the thing kem round;     Some say twas wadding, some a scattered ember     From fires on the ground.     But in one minute all the hill below him     Was just one sheet of flame;     Guardin the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him,     And, well, the dog was game!     He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him,     The pit of hell below.     We sat and waited, but we never found him;     And then we turned to go.     And then you see that rock thats grown so bristly     With chapparal and tan     Suthin crep out: it might hev been a grizzly     It might hev been a man;     Suthin that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted     In smoke and dust and flame;     Suthin that sprang into the depths about it,     Grizzly or man, but game!     Thats all! Well, yes, it does look rather risky,     And kinder makes one queer     And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey     Aint a bad thing right here!