The Hero of the Coonskin Cap

When the blaze leaps forth from the camp's great hearth,
And the fitful shadows come and go;
When the ruddy beam lights the deacon-seat
And the silent faces in a row;
As the storm-gust drags at the sighing eaves
And moans at the shuddering window-pane,
Some droning voice from a shadowy bank
Intones a song to the wind's long strain,
And like the soughing, ebbing blast
The gusty chorus bursts and swells;
And then one single, sighing voice
Drones plaintively the tale it tells.
They're simple songs, they're homely songs,
And yet they cling in heart and brain,----
Those songs of the darkling forest depths,
These songs of the lumber woods of Maine.

There's the song of home and the song of love,
And the lilt of battle, bold and free;
There's the song of the axe in the ringing wood,
And the sighing song of the distant sea.
Yet oft when the choruses are stilled
Some honest woodsman's voice can wake
A tender thrill with the homely song
Of a nameless hero of Moosehead Lake.

A hero in leggings, he volunteered
--When the treacherous ice lay black as loam
In the melting spring--to risk his life
And bring to others the news from home.
He bore the mail for the lumber camp,
The missives for many an anxious man
Who toiled for the ones he loved so well,
In the wilds of the far Socatean.
He'd fingered each as he studied the names
And sorted the letters with kindly care;
While with honest heart of a friend he guessed
At the news that the precious notes might hear.

There was one for Kane, and the last had said
That his little girl was sorely ill--
Poor man, he had worried the whole long week!
--And here was one for the Bluenose-Will,
Who had left a sweetheart to come to Maine,
And had looked for a line in a homesick way;
And here were a couple from Henry's wife,
--And one bore "Forward without delay!"

A tiny message to "Pa John Booth"
Had a cross to show where a rousing smack
Had been pressed on the paper; and here, alas,
Was a letter fringed with a sombre black.
Freighted with sorrow or bringing the smiles,
Fresh from the homes so far away,
He tucked them all in his coon-skin cap
And breasted the sleet of the dreary day.
No one knew how it came about,
No man witnessed the fight for breath,
When the cruel clutch of the great black lake
Reached up and dragged him down to death.
But we always knew that his fiercest strength
Was spent in the supreme flash of life
When he, poor wanderer, thought alone
Of the news for others from home and wife.
For, as far on the edge of the broken ice
As his arm could reach, when he sank and died,
We found the worn old coon-skin cap
With the letters carefully tucked inside.