With nuggets and traces of gold.
He tinted the hills with a green copper ledge
And covered the valleys with game,
All this for a lure, then the Devil felt sure
That the white man would fall for the same.

* * * * *

THE LAND

The lure of the little known places
Still calls, as it called to your sires;
The longing for wide open spaces,
The perfume of evening camp fires;
The hunting for treasure unfound yet
The knocking at fortune's own gate;
The doing of deeds for the joy that it breeds
Were all used by the Devil as bait.

The summers besprinkled with sunshine,
The hillsides a riot of bloom
With meadows a color shot grandeur
And valleys as still as a tomb.
With mountains of cloud-encased beauty
Or with stars shining down on it all
It's the trails we don't know that call us to go
And no wonder man heeded the call.

The winters, the trails all unbroken,
The far fields that beckon and call;