"Kit Carson's Ride"
By: TW Editors 03/01/2008
The February 19, 1898, New York Times reports in a review of The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller:
In “Kit Carson’s Ride” as it originally appeared the trapper and scout saves himself, while his Indian bride is overtaken by the prairie fire; but Miller thought better of that and makes Kit Carson save her, while her horse and their companion are overwhelmed by the flames.”
ORIGINAL KIT CARSON’S RIDE
Kit Carson’s Ride
From Songs of the Sierras
Run? Now you bet you; I rather guess so!
But he’s blind as a badger. Whoa, Paché boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn’t believe it to look at his eyes,
But he is badger-blind, and it happened this wise:—
We lay in the grasses and the sunburnt clover,
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, to where our lodges lay,
One broad and unbroken sea of brown,
Awaiting the curtains of night to come down
To cover us over and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.
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