Drygulching on Mars

I wrote this also for the Bouts-Rimes contest at Westercon. It wasn't nearly as good as the Dunsany poem, but I read it anyway for fun.

The wagon train is stranded. Bones of dead
draft animals lie bleaching in the sun
still in their traces. Those who tried to run
on trembling legs, across the red-stained mead
were cut down in a hail of blazing lead.
No-one can tell you why the thing was done,
if bandits thought that massacre was fun,
or if they'd just been chewing devil-weed
here in a land where barren winter never
gives up its grip, where fairy-rings of frost
swirl in the hungry wind that howls and shrills
and buries wagon tracks. No-one will ever
find the bleaching bones of travellers lost
among the hollows of the Martian hills.