But fast on vengeful foot was I;
His steed fell, too, and was left to die;
He fled where a river's channel dry
Made way to the rolling stream.

Red as my rage the huge sun sank.
My foe bent low on the river's bank
And deep of the kindly flood he drank
While the giant stars broke forth.

Then face to face and man to man
I fought him where the river ran,
While the trembling palm held up its fan
And the emerald serpents lay.

The mad, remorseless bullets broke
From tongues of flame in the sulphur smoke;
The air was rent till the desert spoke
To the echoing hills afar.

Hot from his lips the curses burst;
He fell! The sands were slaked of thirst;
A stream in the stream ran dark at first,
And the stones grew red as hearts.

I shot him where the Rio flows;
I shot him when the moon arose;
And where he lies the vulture knows
Along the Tinto River.

But where she lies to none is known
Save to my poor heart and a lonely stone
On which I sit and weep alone
Where the cactus stars are white.

Where I shall lie, no man can say;
The flowers all are fallen away;
The desert is so drear and grey,
O Marta of Milrone!
_Herman Scheffauer._

JACK DEMPSEY'S GRAVE

FAR out in the wilds of Oregon,
On a lonely mountain side,
Where Columbia's mighty waters
Roll down to the Ocean's tide;
Where the giant fir and cedar
Are imaged in the wave,
O'ergrown with ferns and lichens,
I found poor Dempsey's grave.

I found no marble monolith,
No broken shaft nor stone,
Recording sixty victories
This vanquished victor won;
No rose, no shamrock could I find,
No mortal here to tell
Where sleeps in this forsaken spot
The immortal Nonpareil.

A winding, wooded canyon road
That mortals seldom tread
Leads up this lonely mountain
To this desert of the dead.
And the western sun was sinking
In Pacific's golden wave;
And these solemn pines kept watching
Over poor Jack Dempsey's grave.

That man of honor and of iron,
That man of heart and steel,
That man who far out-classed his class
And made mankind to feel
That Dempsey's name and Dempsey's fame
Should live in serried stone,
Is now at rest far in the West
In the wilds of Oregon.

For