First published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (September 1911), "The Death of 'Frisco Red" is also found in his collected Poems for Men (1947), published the year after his death.
Raton Pass is thirteen miles south of Trinidad on I-25, entering New Mexico.
Under the wheels of the fast express as it slid down Raton Pass
Me ole pal 'Frisco Red was caught, an' churned to a shapeless mass.
As I knelt by him in a bank o' snow, his eyes were opened wide,
An', so help me Bob! he spoke to me, an' he said before he died:
" Has the good Christ passed on the record you took to Him o' me,
Kathleen?
Has He said that I might sit by you, with my soul washed white an'
clean?
Oh, what has He said o' my deeds o' blood an' the sins that I've had
to do?
Are they offset by the way I've held in my faith an' my love for you? "
Yeggman, kegman, tough guy, Red; it seems to me yet that I dreamed
O' hearin' him speak the words I heard, while the switch-lights softly
streamed
Like little stars through the bars o' snow on the top o' the Raton Pass,
An' 'Frisco Red lay a-dyin' there an' drooled o' some kid-time lass.
" Has the dear Christ listened to what you've told o' the good in me,
Kathleen?
Oh, it wasn't much but my love for you---still, that was pure an' clean;
It has been my anchor through all the years; my claim on the throne
o' grace;
An' I go in the hope that I've earned the right to look once more on
your face. "
Yeggman, kegman, tough guy, Red; an' that's the way he died
Where the switch-lights gleam on Raton Pass, an' the headlights swiftly
glide;
An' I wouldn't believe it from any one else, but that's what I heard
an' seen,
As I left him makin' peace up there with his God an' his Kathleen.
--Alfred Damon Runyon
Note:
Alfred Runyan was the poet's father. A typographical error first convinced young Damon
to go with the more melodious Runyon. With time, he'd drop the Alfred. Alfred Runyan
died in Arizona of tubercolosis. Damon Runyon wrote of his father's last days in the poem, "Song of the Exiles."
In distance:
Trinidad & Fishers Peak
to
Raton Pass.
Photo: Andrew Hemesath
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