A MAID OF YAVAPAI.
To S. M. H.
(AN IDYLLIC SKETCH.)
People from every land sojourn in Arizona.
From the Atlantic's sandy coasts, the icy shores of crystal lakes, fromturbid miasmatic swamps--east, north and south, they come.
Over mountain, canyon and gulch they roam, prospecting nature'sgrandest wonders.
But the purest gold on Arizona's literary field, that was found by thegenius of a lonesome valley's queen, the song-lark of our "GreatSouthwest."
From the sheltering tree of her ancestral hall shyly she flutteredforth.
Among stony crags of the sierra, on fearsome dizzy trails, in thesomber shadows of virgin forests, in the rustling of wind-blown leaves(the seductive swish of elfin skirts) she heard the voices of Juno'ssylvan train. Enchanted she listened to the syren's call, and ere theecho died within her ear she had devoted her talent to literature, apriestess self-ordained in Arizona's temple of the muses.
In the flight of her poetic mind she met his majesty, king of thehills, the mountain-lion at the threshold of his lair and toyed withhis cubs, princes and heirs to freedom.
She heard the were-wolf scourge of herds, fierce lobos snarl in silentgroves of timber and shivered at the coyote's piercing yelps from graveyards in the valleys.
At nighttime, in her lonely camp the dread tarantela disturbed her restand in day's early gloam a warning rattle of creepy serpents soundedher reveille:
"Fair maid, awake, arise in haste! When darkness vanishes with dawn,heed our alarm-clock in the morn!"
She spoke not to the sullen bear, in cautious silence passed him by andshunned the fetid breath of monster lizards and venom stings ofcentipedes and scorpions; but woman-like she feared thehydrophobia-skunk more for its scent than for its deadly poison.
She heeded not the half-tamed Indian on the trail; but the insolentleer of Sonora's scum, the brutalized peon, the low caste chulo ofChihuahua, froze into the panic-stare of abject terror under thestraight glance of her eye. The slightest motion of her tender hand tohim augured a sudden death, for she was of Arizona's daughters,invulnerable in the armor of their self-reliant strength, a shield oflovely innocence, white as the snow is driven.
On the Mesa del Mogollon, in the darkling Coconino Forest sheinterviewed the cowboy, that valiant belted knight of modern westernchivalry, and in the chaparral she cheered the lonesome herder.
In the treasure-vaults of earth, a thousand feet below the surface,invading the domain of Pluto's treacherous gnomes she met the hardiestman in Arizona, the miner, who always happy is and full of hope.
Poor fellows, they hobnob with death and do not mind it!
Floods of rivers, cloudbursts in narrow gorges, the lightning of thehills, blinding and smothering sandstorms on the desert detained hernot, for in her chosen path not on delay she thought.
By fragrant orange groves in the valley of Saltriver, past "lowing kineon pastures green," under the luring shade of palms, among the vinesshe passed.
Winging her virgin-flight to snowclad pinnacles of Parnassus she poursher jubilant songs of hope, faith, love into men's souls and women'shearts.
"May constant happiness attend thee, fair lady, our precious pearl inArizona's diadem!"
Though time shall wreath thy raven tresses with silvery laurel, andwith his palsied hand forever stay, in the fulfilment of thy mortaldestiny, the throbbing of thy faithful heart--"Yet shall the genius ofthy lyre with angel-hands reverberate the shining chords through untoldfuture ages in heavenly strains of resonance and glory, until thesolace of their faintest echoes dies within the last true heart inArizona."
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