The Ghost That Jim Saw

Why, as to that, said the engineer,
Ghosts ain't things we are apt to fear;
Spirits don't fool with levers much,
And throttle-valves don't take to such;
And as for Jim,
What happened to him
Was one half fact, and t'other half whim!

Running one night on the line, he saw
A house--as plain as the moral law--
Just by the moonlit bank, and thence
Came a drunken man with no more sense
Than to drop on the rail
Flat as a flail,
As Jim drove by with the midnight mail.

Down went the patents--steam reversed.
Too late! for there came a 'thud.' Jim cursed
As the fireman, there in the cab with him,
Kinder stared in the face of Jim,
And says, 'What now?'
Says Jim, 'What now!
I've just run over a man,--that's how!'

The fireman stared at Jim. They ran
Back, but they never found house nor man,--
Nary a shadow within a mile.
Jim turned pale, but he tried to smile,
Then on he tore
Ten mile or more,
In quicker time than he'd made afore.

Would you believe it! the very next night
Up rose that house in the moonlight white,
Out comes the chap and drops as before,
Down goes the brake and the rest encore;
And so, in fact,
Each night that act
Occurred, till folks swore Jim was cracked.

Humph! let me see; it's a year now, 'most,
That I met Jim, East, and says, 'How's your ghost?'
'Gone,' says Jim; 'and more, it's plain
That ghost don't trouble me again.
I thought I shook
That ghost when I took
A place on an Eastern line,--but look!

'What should I meet, the first trip out,
But the very house we talked about,
And the selfsame man! 'Well,' says I, 'I guess
It's time to stop this 'yer foolishness.'
So I crammed on steam,
When there came a scream
From my fireman, that jest broke my dream:

''You've killed somebody!' Says I, 'Not much!
I've been thar often, and thar ain't no such,
And now I'll prove it!' Back we ran,
And--darn my skin!--but thar WAS a man
On the rail, dead,
Smashed in the head!--
Now I call that meanness!' That's all Jim said.

(ALKALI STATION)

Cicely says you're a poet; maybe,--I ain't much on rhyme:
I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry!--that's the way some chaps puts up an idee,
But I takes mine 'straight without sugar,' and that's what's the matter with me.

Poetry!--just look round you,--alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain't it a pretty page!
Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this 'yer station the on'y thing moves in sight.

Poetry!--Well now--Polly! Polly, run to your mam;
Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Ain't she a lamb?
Poetry!--that reminds me o' suthin' right in that suit:
Jest shet that door thar, will yer?--for Cicely's ears is cute.

Ye noticed Polly,--the baby? A month afore she was born,
Cicely--my old woman--was moody-like and forlorn;
Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees;
Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman be's.

Narvous she was, and restless,--said that she 'couldn't stay.'
Stay!--and the nearest woman seventeen miles away.
But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand,
And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o' land.

One night,--the tenth of October,--I woke with a chill and a fright,
For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in sight,
But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she
'couldn't stay,'
But had gone to visit her neighbor,--seventeen miles away!

When and how she stampeded, I didn't wait for to see,
For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she;
Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the
scent,
For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went.

I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,--
Lost on the Plains in '50, drownded almost and shot;
But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife,
Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.

'Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!' I called, and I held my breath,
And 'Cicely!' came from the canyon,--and all was as still as death.
And 'Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!' came from the rocks below,
And jest but a whisper of 'Cicely!' down from them peaks of snow.

I ain't what you call religious,--but I jest looked up to the sky,
And--this 'yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think I lie:
But up away to the east'ard, yaller and big and far,
I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star.

Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me:
Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see:
Big and yaller and dancing,--I never saw such a star,
And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then
and thar.

Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead,
Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led.
It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh,
Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby's cry.

Listen! thar's the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now
Than the day I packed her and her mother,--I'm derned if I jest know
how.
But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o' the whole thing is
That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this!

But Cicely says you're a poet, and maybe you might, some day,
Jest sling her a rhyme 'bout a baby that was born in a curious way,
And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of the star,
don't tell
As how 'twas the doctor's lantern,--for maybe 'twon't sound so well.