Grant's company came Pierre, the rhymster, bubbling over with jingling
minstrelsy, that was the delight of every half-breed camp on the plains.
Bareheaded, with a red handkerchief banding back his lank hair, and clad
in fringed buckskin from the bright neck-cloth to the beaded moccasins,
he was as wild a figure as any one of the savage rabble. Yet this was
the poet of the plain-rangers, who caught the song of bird, the burr of
cataract through the rocks, the throb of stampeding buffalo, the moan of
the wind across the prairie, and tuned his rude minstrelsy to wild
nature's fugitive music. Viking heroes, I know, chanted their deeds in
songs that have come down to us; but with the exception of the Eskimo,
descendants of North American races have never been credited with a
taste for harmony. Once I asked Pierre how he acquired his art of
verse-making. With a laugh of scorn, he demanded if the wind and the
waterfalls and the birds learned music from beardless boys and
draggle-coated dominies with armfuls of books. However, it may have been
with his Pegasus, his mount for the hunt was no laggard. He rode a
knob-jointed, muscular brute, that carried him like poetic inspiration
wherever it pleased. Though Pierre's right hand was busied upholding the
hunters' flag, and he had but one arm to bow-string the broncho's
arching neck, the half-breed poet kept his seat with the easy grace of
the plainsman born and bred in the saddle.

"Faith, man, 'tis the fate of genius to ride a fractious steed," said
Father Holland, when the bronchos of priest and poet had come into
violent collision with angry squeals for the third time in ten minutes.

"And what are the capers of this, my beast, compared to the antics of
fate, Sir Priest?" asked Pierre with grave dignity.

The wind caught his long hair and blew it about his face till he became
an equestrian personification of the frenzied muse. I had become
acquainted with his trick of setting words to the music of quaint
rhymes; but Father Holland was taken aback.

"By the saints," he exclaimed, "I've no mind to run amuck of Pegasus!
I'll get out of your way. Faith, 'tis the first time I've seen poetry in
buckskin of this particular binding," and he wheeled his broncho out,
leaving me abreast of the rhymster.

Pierre's lips began to frame some answer to the churchman.

"Have a care, Father," I warned. "You've escaped the broncho; but look
out for the poet."

"Save us! What's coming now?"