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@@ -0,0 +1,2699 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ballads of a Cheechako, by Robert W. Service + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ballads of a Cheechako + +Author: Robert W. Service + +Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #259] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALLADS OF A CHEECHAKO *** + + + + +Produced by A. Light + + + + + +BALLADS OF A CHEECHAKO + +by Robert W. Service + +[British-born Canadian Poet--1874-1958.] + + + [Note on text: Italicized stanzas will be indented 5 spaces. + Italicized words or phrases will be capitalised. Lines longer + than 75 characters have been broken according to metre, + and the continuation is indented two spaces.] + + + [This etext was transcribed from an American 1909 edition.] + + + + +BALLADS OF A CHEECHAKO + +by Robert W. Service + +Author of "The Spell of the Yukon" + + + + +CONTENTS: + + + + To the Man of the High North + My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming + + Men of the High North + Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; + + The Ballad of the Northern Lights + One of the Down and Out--that's me. Stare at me well, ay, stare! + + The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin + There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame, + + The Ballad of Pious Pete + I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did. + + The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill + I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie, + + The Ballad of One-Eyed Mike + This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye, + + The Ballad of the Brand + 'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare, + + The Ballad of Hard-Luck Henry + Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank + + The Man from Eldorado + He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town, + + My Friends + The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief; + + The Prospector + I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight, + + The Black Sheep + Hark to the ewe that bore him: + + The Telegraph Operator + I will not wash my face; + + The Wood-Cutter + The sky is like an envelope, + + The Song of the Mouth-Organ + I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone; + + The Trail of Ninety-Eight + Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools. + + The Ballad of Gum-Boot Ben + He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim. + + Clancy of the Mounted Police + In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear + + Lost + "Black is the sky, but the land is white-- + + L'Envoi + We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure, + + + + + +To the Man of the High North + + + My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming + I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream, + Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming, + Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam. + + I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices + From peak snow-diademed to regal star; + Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices, + The pregnant voices of the Things That Are. + + The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us; + The gold-delirium, the ferine strife; + The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us; + Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life. + + The nameless men who nameless rivers travel, + And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone; + The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel + The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone. + + These will I sing, and if one of you linger + Over my pages in the Long, Long Night, + And on some lone line lay a calloused finger, + Saying: "It's human-true--it hits me right"; + Then will I count this loving toil well spent; + Then will I dream awhile--content, content. + + + + +Men of the High North + + + Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; + Islands of opal float on silver seas; + Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing; + Pale ports of amber, golden argosies. + Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing; + Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky; + Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing, + Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye. + + Men of the High North, you who have known it; + You in whose hearts its splendors have abode; + Can you renounce it, can you disown it? + Can you forget it, its glory and its goad? + Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it? + Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot; + Only remain the guerdon and gain of it; + Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought! + + You who have made good, you foreign faring; + You money magic to far lands has whirled; + Can you forget those days of vast daring, + There with your soul on the Top o' the World? + Nights when no peril could keep you awake on + Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in the snow; + Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bacon + Fried at the camp-fire at forty below? + + Can you remember your huskies all going, + Barking with joy and their brushes in air; + You in your parka, glad-eyed and glowing, + Monarch, your subjects the wolf and the bear? + Monarch, your kingdom unravisht and gleaming; + Mountains your throne, and a river your car; + Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming; + Forest your couch, and your candle a star. + + You who this faint day the High North is luring + Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet; + You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring, + Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat: + Honor the High North ever and ever, + Whether she crown you, or whether she slay; + Suffer her fury, cherish and love her-- + He who would rule he must learn to obey. + + Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you; + Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast. + See, the austere sky, pensive above you, + Dons all her jewels to smile on your rest. + Children of Freedom, scornful of frontiers, + We who are weaklings honor your worth. + Lords of the wilderness, Princes of Pioneers, + Let's have a rouse that will ring round the earth. + + + + +The Ballad of the Northern Lights + + + One of the Down and Out--that's me. Stare at me well, ay, stare! + Stare and shrink--say! you wouldn't think that I was a millionaire. + Look at my face, it's crimped and gouged--one of them death-mask things; + Don't seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the pal of kings? + Slouching along in smelly rags, a bleary-eyed, no-good bum; + A knight of the hollow needle, pard, spewed from the sodden slum. + Look me all over from head to foot; how much would you think I was worth? + A dollar? a dime? a nickel? Why, I'M THE WEALTHIEST MAN ON EARTH. + + No, don't you think that I'm off my base. You'll sing a different tune + If only you'll let me spin my yarn. Come over to this saloon; + Wet my throat--it's as dry as chalk, and seeing as how it's you, + I'll tell the tale of a Northern trail, and so help me God, it's true. + I'll tell of the howling wilderness and the haggard Arctic heights, + Of a reckless vow that I made, and how I STAKED THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. + + Remember the year of the Big Stampede and the trail of Ninety-eight, + When the eyes of the world were turned to the North, + and the hearts of men elate; + Hearts of the old dare-devil breed thrilled at the wondrous strike, + And to every man who could hold a pan came the message, "Up and hike". + Well, I was there with the best of them, and I knew I would not fail. + You wouldn't believe it to see me now; but wait till you've heard my tale. + + You've read of the trail of Ninety-eight, but its woe no man may tell; + It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, + and the name of the brand was "Hell". + We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind, + And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind; + For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall, + And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, + and the gold lust crazed us all. + + Bold were we, and they called us three the "Unholy Trinity"; + There was Ole Olson, the sailor Swede, and the Dago Kid and me. + We were the discards of the pack, the foreloopers of Unrest, + Reckless spirits of fierce revolt in the ferment of the West. + We were bound to win and we revelled in the hardships of the way. + We staked our ground and our hopes were crowned, + and we hoisted out the pay. + We were rich in a day beyond our dreams, + it was gold from the grass-roots down; + But we weren't used to such sudden wealth, and there was the siren town. + We were crude and careless frontiersmen, with much in us of the beast; + We could bear the famine worthily, but we lost our heads at the feast. + + The town looked mighty bright to us, with a bunch of dust to spend, + And nothing was half too good them days, and everyone was our friend. + Wining meant more than mining then, and life was a dizzy whirl, + Gambling and dropping chunks of gold down the neck of a dance-hall girl; + Till we went clean mad, it seems to me, and we squandered our last poke, + And we sold our claim, and we found ourselves one bitter morning--broke. + + The Dago Kid he dreamed a dream of his mother's aunt who died-- + In the dawn-light dim she came to him, and she stood by his bedside, + And she said: "Go forth to the highest North till a lonely trail ye find; + Follow it far and trust your star, and fortune will be kind." + But I jeered at him, and then there came the Sailor Swede to me, + And he said: "I dreamed of my sister's son, + who croaked at the age of three. + From the herded dead he sneaked and said: `Seek you an Arctic trail; + 'Tis pale and grim by the Polar rim, but seek and ye shall not fail.'" + And lo! that night I too did dream of my mother's sister's son, + And he said to me: "By the Arctic Sea there's a treasure to be won. + Follow and follow a lone moose trail, till you come to a valley grim, + On the slope of the lonely watershed that borders the Polar brim." + Then I woke my pals, and soft we swore by the mystic Silver Flail, + 'Twas the hand of Fate, and to-morrow straight + we would seek the lone moose trail. + + We watched the groaning ice wrench free, crash on with a hollow din; + Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the taint of sin. + The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us swift along; + The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song. + We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain; + We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our boat again; + We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with many a twist and turn; + We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid sunsets burn. + O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a rush at the clumsy fly; + By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls sheer from out the sky; + By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wallows in huge content; + By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at our tiny tent. + Through the black canyon's angry foam we hurled to dreamy bars, + And round in a ring the dog-nosed peaks bayed to the mocking stars. + Spring and summer and autumn went; the sky had a tallow gleam, + Yet North and ever North we pressed to the land of our Golden Dream. + + So we came at last to a tundra vast and dark and grim and lone; + And there was the little lone moose trail, and we knew it for our own. + By muskeg hollow and nigger-head it wandered endlessly; + Sorry of heart and sore of foot, weary men were we. + The short-lived sun had a leaden glare and the darkness came too soon, + And stationed there with a solemn stare was the pinched, anaemic moon. + Silence and silvern solitude till it made you dumbly shrink, + And you thought to hear with an outward ear + the things you thought to think. + + Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in camp o' nights + We would watch and watch the silver dance of the mystic Northern Lights. + And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in primrose haze; + And swift they pranced with their silver feet, + and pierced with a blinding blaze. + They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver shod; + It was not good for the eyes of man--'twas a sight for the eyes of God. + It made us mad and strange and sad, and the gold whereof we dreamed + Was all forgot, and our only thought was of the lights that gleamed. + + Oh, the tundra sponge it was golden brown, and some was a bright blood-red; + And the reindeer moss gleamed here and there + like the tombstones of the dead. + And in and out and around about the little trail ran clear, + And we hated it with a deadly hate and we feared with a deadly fear. + And the skies of night were alive with light, + with a throbbing, thrilling flame; + Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came. + It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quivered back to a wedge; + Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy golden edge. + Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled; + Sudden splendors of sabres gleamed, lightning javelins were hurled. + There in our awe we crouched and saw with our wild, uplifted eyes + Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battlefield of the skies. + + But all things come to an end at last, and the muskeg melted away, + And frowning down to bar our path a muddle of mountains lay. + And a gorge sheered up in granite walls, and the moose trail crept betwixt; + 'Twas as if the earth had gaped too far and her stony jaws were fixt. + Then the winter fell with a sudden swoop, and the heavy clouds sagged low, + And earth and sky were blotted out in a whirl of driving snow. + + We were climbing up a glacier in the neck of a mountain pass, + When the Dago Kid slipped down and fell into a deep crevasse. + When we got him out one leg hung limp, and his brow was wreathed with pain, + And he says: "'Tis badly broken, boys, and I'll never walk again. + It's death for all if ye linger here, and that's no cursed lie; + Go on, go on while the trail is good, and leave me down to die." + He raved and swore, but we tended him with our uncouth, clumsy care. + The camp-fire gleamed and he gazed and dreamed + with a fixed and curious stare. + Then all at once he grabbed my gun and he put it to his head, + And he says: "I'll fix it for you, boys"--them are the words he said. + + So we sewed him up in a canvas sack and we slung him to a tree; + And the stars like needles stabbed our eyes, and woeful men were we. + And on we went on our woeful way, wrapped in a daze of dream, + And the Northern Lights in the crystal nights + came forth with a mystic gleam. + They danced and they danced the devil-dance over the naked snow; + And soft they rolled like a tide upshoaled with a ceaseless ebb and flow. + They rippled green with a wondrous sheen, they fluttered out like a fan; + They spread with a blaze of rose-pink rays never yet seen of man. + They writhed like a brood of angry snakes, hissing and sulphur pale; + Then swift they changed to a dragon vast, lashing a cloven tail. + It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an everlasting stare, + The sky was a pit of bale and dread, and a monster revelled there. + + We climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, + When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. + He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, + And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. + He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then he seemed to brood, + And I watched him there like a fox a hare, for I knew it was not good. + And sure enough in the dim dawn-light I missed him from the tent, + And a fresh trail broke through the crusted snow, + and I knew not where it went. + But I followed it o'er the seamless waste, and I found him at shut of day, + Naked there as a new-born babe--so I left him where he lay. + + Day after day was sinister, and I fought fierce-eyed despair, + And I clung to life, and I struggled on, I knew not why nor where. + I packed my grub in short relays, and I cowered down in my tent, + And the world around was purged of sound like a frozen continent. + Day after day was dark as death, but ever and ever at nights, + With a brilliancy that grew and grew, blazed up the Northern Lights. + + They rolled around with a soundless sound like softly bruised silk; + They poured into the bowl of the sky with the gentle flow of milk. + In eager, pulsing violet their wheeling chariots came, + Or they poised above the Polar rim like a coronal of flame. + From depths of darkness fathomless their lancing rays were hurled, + Like the all-combining search-lights of the navies of the world. + There on the roof-pole of the world as one bewitched I gazed, + And howled and grovelled like a beast as the awful splendors blazed. + My eyes were seared, yet thralled I peered + through the parka hood nigh blind; + But I staggered on to the lights that shone, and never I looked behind. + + There is a mountain round and low that lies by the Polar rim, + And I climbed its height in a whirl of light, + and I peered o'er its jagged brim; + And there in a crater deep and vast, ungained, unguessed of men, + The mystery of the Arctic world was flashed into my ken. + For there these poor dim eyes of mine beheld the sight of sights-- + That hollow ring was the source and spring of the mystic Northern Lights. + + Then I staked that place from crown to base, and I hit the homeward trail. + Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred, + and I crawled like a sickly snail. + In that vast white world where the silent sky + communes with the silent snow, + In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and fro. + But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me to the sea, + And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and they fed and sheltered me. + They fed the feeble scarecrow thing that stumbled out of the wild + With the ravaged face of a mask of death + and the wandering wits of a child-- + A craven, cowering bag of bones that once had been a man. + They tended me and they brought me back to the world, and here I am. + + Some say that the Northern Lights are the glare of the Arctic ice and snow; + And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems to know. + But I'll tell you now--and if I lie, may my lips be stricken dumb-- + It's a MINE, a mine of the precious stuff that men call radium. + I'ts a million dollars a pound, they say, + and there's tons and tons in sight. + You can see it gleam in a golden stream in the solitudes of night. + And it's mine, all mine--and say! if you have a hundred plunks to spare, + I'll let you have the chance of your life, I'll sell you a quarter share. + You turn it down? Well, I'll make it ten, seeing as you are my friend. + Nothing doing? Say! don't be hard--have you got a dollar to lend? + Just a dollar to help me out, I know you'll treat me white; + I'll do as much for you some day . . . God bless you, sir; good-night. + + + + +The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin + + + There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame, + When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name; + Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came. + + His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam + when the brown spring freshets flow; + Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre eyes aglow; + They knew him far for the fitful man who spat forth blood on the snow. + + "Did ever you see such a skin?" quoth he; + "there's nought in the world so fine-- + Such fullness of fur as black as the night, + such lustre, such size, such shine; + It's life to a one-lunged man like me; it's London, it's women, it's wine. + + "The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox, and swore that no man could kill; + That he who hunted it, soon or late, must surely suffer some ill; + But I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales. + Ha! Ha! I'm laughing still. + + "For look ye, the skin--it's as smooth as sin, + and black as the core of the Pit. + By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I would capture it; + By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and would not quit. + + "For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly, and it seemed to fleer at me; + I would wake in fright by the camp-fire light, hearing its evil glee; + Into my dream its eyes would gleam, and its shadow would I see. + + "It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had poisoned to excess; + Unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead ('twas as if I shot by guess); + Yet it came by night in the stark moonlight to mock at my weariness. + + "I tracked it up where the mountains hunch like the vertebrae of the world; + I tracked it down to the death-still pits where the avalanche is hurled; + From the glooms to the sacerdotal snows, + where the carded clouds are curled. + + "From the vastitudes where the world protrudes + through clouds like seas up-shoaled, + I held its track till it led me back to the land I had left of old-- + The land I had looted many moons. I was weary and sick and cold. + + "I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase, and there and then I swore + The foul fiend fox might scathless go, for I would hunt no more; + Then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise--it stood by my cabin door. + + "A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom, and a vengeful shot that sped; + A howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse-- + and the demon fox lay dead. . . . + Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a drop he bled. + + "So that was the end of the great black fox, + and here is the prize I've won; + And now for a drink to cheer me up--I've mushed since the early sun; + We'll drink a toast to the sorry ghost of the fox whose race is run." + + + II. + + Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike, bad as the worst were they; + In their road-house down by the river-trail + they waited and watched for prey; + With wine and song they joyed night long, and they slept like swine by day. + + For things were done in the Midnight Sun that no tongue will ever tell; + And men there be who walk earth-free, but whose names are writ in hell-- + Are writ in flames with the guilty names of Fournier and Labelle. + + Put not your trust in a poke of dust would ye sleep the sleep of sin; + For there be those who would rob your clothes ere yet the dawn comes in; + And a prize likewise in a woman's eyes is a peerless black fox skin. + + Put your faith in the mountain cat if you lie within his lair; + Trust the fangs of the mother-wolf, and the claws of the lead-ripped bear; + But oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles + of a dance-hall wench beware! + + Wherefore it was beyond all laws that lusts of man restrain, + A man drank deep and sank to sleep never to wake again; + And the Yukon swallowed through a hole the cold corpse of the slain. + + + III. + + The black fox skin a shadow cast from the roof nigh to the floor; + And sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed, and the woman stroked it o'er; + And the man stood by with a brooding eye, and gnashed his teeth and swore. + + When thieves and thugs fall out and fight there's fell arrears to pay; + And soon or late sin meets its fate, and so it fell one day + That Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike fanged up like dogs at bay. + + "The skin is mine, all mine," she cried; "I did the deed alone." + "It's share and share with a guilt-yoked pair", + he hissed in a pregnant tone; + And so they snarled like malamutes over a mildewed bone. + + And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it befell + One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town to sell + The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made their lives a hell. + + She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the wondrous fur; + Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as a spur; + She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise and follow her. + + The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson town; + They see its lights a blaze o' nights and harshly they look down; + They mock the plan and plot of man with grim, ironic frown. + + The trail was steep; 'twas at the time when swiftly sinks the snow; + All honey-combed, the river ice was rotting down below; + The river chafed beneath its rind with many a mighty throe. + + And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed in fear, + Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it dear; + And hard she pressed it to her breast--then Windy Ike drew near. + + She made no moan--her heart was stone--she read his smiling face, + And like a dream flashed all her life's dark horror and disgrace; + A moment only--with a snarl he hurled her into space. + + She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded like a ball; + From crag to crag she carromed down through snow and timber fall; . . . + A hole gaped in the river ice; the spray flashed--that was all. + + A bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet and frail; + And blinding bright the land was dight in gay and glittering mail; + And with a wondrous black fox skin a man slid down the trail. + + + IV. + + A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the river bank, + Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and ever slipped and sank, + And ever cursed his Maker's name, and ever "hooch" he drank. + + He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore distrest; + The old grandmother moon crept out from her cloud-quilted nest; + The aged mountains mocked at him in their primeval rest. + + Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild; + The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild; + The still, sardonic laughter of an ogre o'er a child. + + The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like one in pain, + And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and yawned again; + And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split in twain. + + From out the road-house by the trail they saw a man afar + Make for the narrow river-reach where the swift cross-currents are; + Where, frail and worn, the ice is torn and the angry waters jar. + + But they did not see him crash and sink into the icy flow; + They did not see him clinging there, gripped by the undertow, + Clawing with bleeding finger-nails at the jagged ice and snow. + + They found a note beside the hole where he had stumbled in: + "Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived in sin, + And to the one who loves me least I leave this black fox skin." + + And strange it is; for, though they searched the river all around, + No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after found; + Though one man said he saw the tread of HOOFS deep in the ground. + + + + +The Ballad of Pious Pete + + _"The North has got him."_ --Yukonism. + + + I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did. + I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid. + I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could; + I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; + I plotted and planned for his good. + By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold, + With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, + in hunger and hardship and cold. + I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit; + In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, + I strove with the powers of the Pit. + I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; + I dragged him from dissolute brawls; + But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls. + + God knows what I did he should seek to be rid + of one who would save him from shame. + God knows what I bore that night when he swore + and bade me make tracks from his claim. + I started to tell of the horrors of hell, + when sudden his eyes lit like coals; + And "Chuck it," says he, "don't persecute me + with your cant and your saving of souls." + I'll swear I was mild as I'd be with a child, + but he called me the son of a slut; + And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run, + he threatened my face with the butt. + So what could I do (I leave it to you)? With curses he harried me forth; + Then he was alone, and I was alone, and over us menaced the North. + + Our cabins were near; I could see, I could hear; + but between us there rippled the creek; + And all summer through, with a rancor that grew, + he would pass me and never would speak. + Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death + crept down from the peaks far away; + The water was still; the twilight was chill; the sky was a tatter of gray. + Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold the lights of the witches arose; + The frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was cinched + by the stark and cadaverous snows. + The trees were like lace where the star-beams could chase, + each leaf was a jewel agleam. + The soft white hush lapped the Northland and wrapped + us round in a crystalline dream; + So still I could hear quite loud in my ear + the swish of the pinions of time; + So bright I could see, as plain as could be, + the wings of God's angels ashine. + + As I read in the Book I would oftentimes look + to that cabin just over the creek. + Ah me, it was sad and evil and bad, two neighbors who never would speak! + I knew that full well like a devil in hell + he was hatching out, early and late, + A system to bear through the frost-spangled air + the warm, crimson waves of his hate. + I only could peer and shudder and fear--'twas ever so ghastly and still; + But I knew over there in his lonely despair + he was plotting me terrible ill. + I knew that he nursed a malice accurst, + like the blast of a winnowing flame; + I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud--Oh, God! then calamity came. + + Mad! If I'm mad then you too are mad; but it's all in the point of view. + If you'd looked at them things gallivantin' on wings, + all purple and green and blue; + If you'd noticed them twist, as they mounted and hissed + like scorpions dim in the dark; + If you'd seen them rebound with a horrible sound, + and spitefully spitting a spark; + If you'd watched IT with dread, as it hissed by your bed, + that thing with the feelers that crawls-- + You'd have settled the brute that attempted to shoot + electricity into your walls. + + Oh, some they were blue, and they slithered right through; + they were silent and squashy and round; + And some they were green; they were wriggly and lean; + they writhed with so hateful a sound. + My blood seemed to freeze; I fell on my knees; + my face was a white splash of dread. + Oh, the Green and the Blue, they were gruesome to view; + but the worst of them all were the Red. + They came through the door, they came through the floor, + they came through the moss-creviced logs. + They were savage and dire; they were whiskered with fire; + they bickered like malamute dogs. + They ravined in rings like iniquitous things; + they gulped down the Green and the Blue. + I crinkled with fear whene'er they drew near, + and nearer and nearer they drew. + + And then came the crown of Horror's grim crown, + the monster so loathsomely red. + Each eye was a pin that shot out and in, as, squidlike, it oozed to my bed; + So softly it crept with feelers that swept + and quivered like fine copper wire; + Its belly was white with a sulphurous light, + its jaws were a-drooling with fire. + It came and it came; I could breathe of its flame, + but never a wink could I look. + I thrust in its maw the Fount of the Law; I fended it off with the Book. + I was weak--oh, so weak--but I thrilled at its shriek, + as wildly it fled in the night; + And deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day. + (Was ever so welcome the light?) + + I loaded my gun at the rise of the sun; to his cabin so softly I slunk. + My neighbor was there in the frost-freighted air, + all wrapped in a robe in his bunk. + It muffled his moans; it outlined his bones, as feebly he twisted about; + His gums were so black, and his lips seemed to crack, + and his teeth all were loosening out. + 'Twas a death's head that peered through the tangle of beard; + 'twas a face I will never forget; + Sunk eyes full of woe, and they troubled me so + with their pleadings and anguish, and yet + As I rested my gaze in a misty amaze on the scurvy-degenerate wreck, + I thought of the Things with the dragon-fly wings, + then laid I my gun on his neck. + He gave out a cry that was faint as a sigh, like a perishing malamute, + And he says unto me, "I'm converted," says he; + "for Christ's sake, Peter, don't shoot!" + + * * * * * + + They're taking me out with an escort about, and under a sergeant's care; + I am humbled indeed, for I'm 'cuffed to a Swede + that thinks he's a millionaire. + But it's all Gospel true what I'm telling to you-- + up there where the Shadow falls-- + That I settled Sam Noot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls. + + + + +The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill + + + I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie, + Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die-- + Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon; + In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon; + On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw; + In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw; + By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead-- + I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead. + + For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot + On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot. + And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn + So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone "epigram". + So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin + (Which the same I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin). + Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie", + And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die. + + Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange, + Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range; + Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still, + Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill. + So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, + and I took down from the shelf + The swell black box with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself; + And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh; + Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day. + + You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine below; + When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads + through the crust of the pale blue snow; + When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood, + And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood; + When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit, + And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit; + When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill-- + Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill. + + Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand, + As I blundered blind with a trail to find + through that blank and bitter land; + Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, + with its grim heart-breaking woes, + And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows! + North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain + Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again. + + River and plain and mighty peak--and who could stand unawed? + As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed + at the foot of the throne of God. + North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes, + And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes, + Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill, + And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill. + + Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall; + Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all; + Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his hair, + Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare; + Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread. + I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, + and I gazed at the gruesome dead, + And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes, + A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies." + + Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole, + With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can't control? + Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin, + And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but you'll never jam me in"? + I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so blue + As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd do. + Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round about, + And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out. + + Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't seem no good; + His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood. + Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze too hard to thaw; + He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess I got to--SAW." + So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight + In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate; + And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down; + Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town. + + So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep, + And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, + when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep; + And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun, + And sometimes I wonder if they WAS, the awful things I done. + And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of the Law, + I often think of poor old Bill--AND HOW HARD HE WAS TO SAW. + + + + +The Ballad of One-Eyed Mike + + + _This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye, + As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, + and the Glories swept the sky; + As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, + and the bottle of "hooch" was dry._ + + A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong; + I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft of his hate was strong. + He thonged me East and he thonged me West; he harried me back and forth, + Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite + to the bleak, bald-headed North. + + And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan, + For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man; + And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams; + And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams. + + So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such, + Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch; + About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will, + In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man I sought to kill. + + 'Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed to the Prince of Gloom + For the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom. + Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago; + My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so. + + It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon's oily flow, + I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky's port-winey glow; + Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the river seemed to shrink, + All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink. + + 'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a queer, hypnotic dream, + Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream; + It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring; + It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing. + + In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering round its head, + Like butterflies of a monster size--then I knew it for the Dead. + Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate; + In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner-plate. + + It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew; + It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through. + It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat, + With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet. + + And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that "floater" say: + "I am the man from whom you ran, the man you sought to slay. + That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say `Revenge is sweet', + In the grit and grime of the river's slime I am rotting at your feet. + + "The ill we rue we must e'en undo, though it rive us bone from bone; + So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed I might atone. + I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought where you might live; + And now you're found, though I'm dead and drowned, I beg you to forgive." + + So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed, + and its fingers flicked the shore; + And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore; + That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe; + Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, I forgave you long ago." + + Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke from a horrid dream. + The moon rode high in the naked sky, and something bobbed in the stream. + It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it sheered from the shore; + It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never saw it more. + + _This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped and gray, + Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed + in his eye in a wolfish way-- + That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird Auroral ray._ + + + + +The Ballad of the Brand + + + 'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare, + Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair; + Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand, + Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land; + Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him little ones, + That the name of Tellus, the master smith, might live in his stalwart sons. + + Now there was little of law in the land, and evil doings were rife, + And every man who joyed in his home guarded the fame of his wife; + For there were those of the silver tongue and the honeyed art to beguile, + Who would cozen the heart from a woman's breast + and damn her soul with a smile. + And there were women too quick to heed a look or a whispered word, + And once in a while a man was slain, and the ire of the King was stirred; + So far and wide he proclaimed his wrath, and this was the law he willed: + "That whosoever killeth a man, even shall he be killed." + + Now Tellus, the smith, he trusted his wife; his heart was empty of fear. + High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a beacon of love and cheer. + High on the hill they builded their bower, + where the broom and the bracken meet; + Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily sweet. + Here he enshrined her, his dearest saint, his idol, the light of his eye; + Her kisses rested upon his lips as brushes a butterfly. + The weight of her arms around his neck was light as the thistle down; + And sweetly she studied to win his smile, and gently she mocked his frown. + And when at the close of the dusty day his clangorous toil was done, + She hastened to meet him down the way all lit by the amber sun. + + Their dove-cot gleamed in the golden light, a temple of stainless love; + Like the hanging cup of a big blue flower was the topaz sky above. + The roses and lilies yearned to her, + as swift through their throng she pressed; + A little white, fragile, fluttering thing + that lay like a child on his breast. + Then the heart of Tellus, the smith, was proud, + and sang for the joy of life, + And there in the bronzing summertide he thanked the gods for his wife. + + Now there was one called Philo, a scribe, a man of exquisite grace, + Carved like the god Apollo in limb, fair as Adonis in face; + Eager and winning in manner, full of such radiant charm, + Womenkind fought for his favor and loved to their uttermost harm. + Such was his craft and his knowledge, such was his skill at the game, + Never was woman could flout him, so be he plotted her shame. + And so he drank deep of pleasure, and then it fell on a day + He gazed on the wife of Tellus and marked her out for his prey. + + Tellus, the smith, was merry, and the time of the year it was June, + So he said to his stalwart helpers: "Shut down the forge at noon. + Go ye and joy in the sunshine, rest in the coolth of the grove, + Drift on the dreamy river, every man with his love." + Then to himself: "Oh, Beloved, sweet will be your surprise; + To-day will we sport like children, laugh in each other's eyes; + Weave gay garlands of poppies, crown each other with flowers, + Pull plump carp from the lilies, rifle the ferny bowers. + To-day with feasting and gladness the wine of Cyprus will flow; + To-day is the day we were wedded only a twelvemonth ago." + + The larks trilled high in the heavens; his heart was lyric with joy; + He plucked a posy of lilies; he sped like a love-sick boy. + He stole up the velvety pathway--his cottage was sunsteeped and still; + Vines honeysuckled the window; softly he peeped o'er the sill. + The lilies dropped from his fingers; devils were choking his breath; + Rigid with horror, he stiffened; ghastly his face was as death. + Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with a prurient jibe, + He shrank--'twas the wife of his bosom in the arms of Philo, the scribe. + + Tellus went back to his smithy; he reeled like a drunken man; + His heart was riven with anguish; his brain was brooding a plan. + Straight to his anvil he hurried; started his furnace aglow; + Heated his iron and shaped it with savage and masterful blow. + Sparks showered over and round him; swiftly under his hand + There at last it was finished--a hideous and infamous Brand. + + That night the wife of his bosom, the light of joy in her eyes, + Kissed him with words of rapture; but he knew that her words were lies. + Never was she so beguiling, never so merry of speech + (For passion ripens a woman as the sunshine ripens a peach). + He clenched his teeth into silence; he yielded up to her lure, + Though he knew that her breasts were heaving from the fire of her paramour. + "To-morrow," he said, "to-morrow"--he wove her hair in a strand, + Twisted it round his fingers and smiled as he thought of the Brand. + + The morrow was come, and Tellus swiftly stole up the hill. + Butterflies drowsed in the noon-heat; coverts were sunsteeped and still. + Softly he padded the pathway unto the porch, and within + Heard he the low laugh of dalliance, heard he the rapture of sin. + Knew he her eyes were mystic with light that no man should see, + No man kindle and joy in, no man on earth save he. + And never for him would it kindle. The bloodlust surged in his brain; + Through the senseless stone could he see them, wanton and warily fain. + Horrible! Heaven he sought for, gained it and gloried and fell-- + Oh, it was sudden--headlong into the nethermost hell. . . . + + Was this he, Tellus, this marble? Tellus . . . not dreaming a dream? + Ah! sharp-edged as a javelin, was that a woman's scream? + Was it a door that shattered, shell-like, under his blow? + Was it his saint, that strumpet, dishevelled and cowering low? + Was it her lover, that wild thing, that twisted and gouged and tore? + Was it a man he was crushing, whose head he beat on the floor? + Laughing the while at its weakness, till sudden he stayed his hand-- + Through the red ring of his madness flamed the thought of the Brand. + + Then bound he the naked Philo with thongs that cut in the flesh, + And the wife of his bosom, fear-frantic, he gagged with a silken mesh, + Choking her screams into silence; bound her down by the hair; + Dragged her lover unto her under her frenzied stare. + In the heat of the hearth-fire embers he heated the hideous Brand; + Twisting her fingers open, he forced its haft in her hand. + He pressed it downward and downward; she felt the living flesh sear; + She saw the throe of her lover; she heard the scream of his fear. + Once, twice and thrice he forced her, heedless of prayer and shriek-- + Once on the forehead of Philo, twice in the soft of his cheek. + Then (for the thing was finished) he said to the woman: "See + How you have branded your lover! Now will I let him go free." + He severed the thongs that bound him, laughing: "Revenge is sweet", + And Philo, sobbing in anguish, feebly rose to his feet. + The man who was fair as Apollo, god-like in woman's sight, + Hideous now as a satyr, fled to the pity of night. + + _Then came they before the Judgment Seat, + and thus spoke the Lord of the Land: + "He who seeketh his neighbor's wife + shall suffer the doom of the Brand. + Brutish and bold on his brow be it stamped, + deep in his cheek let it sear, + That every man may look on his shame, and shudder and sicken and fear. + He shall hear their mock in the market-place, + their fleering jibe at the feast; + He shall seek the caves and the shroud of night, + and the fellowship of the beast. + Outcast forever from homes of men, far and far shall he roam. + Such be the doom, sadder than death, of him who shameth a home."_ + + + + +The Ballad of Hard-Luck Henry + + + Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank + That's staked out nigh three hundred claims, and every one a blank; + That's followed every fool stampede, and seen the rise and fall + Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all; + That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song + To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along; + That's sunk a dozen bed-rock holes, and not a speck in sight, + Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right? + Now aren't things like that enough to drive a man to booze? + But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof--he knew the way to lose. + + 'Twas in the fall of nineteen four--leap-year I've heard them say-- + When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay. + And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile past, + Late in the year he struck it rich, the real pay-streak at last. + The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with speckled earth, + And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth. + And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired, + He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired. + + One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate, + He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate; + A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life, + A woman with soft, soothing ways, a confidant, a wife. + And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove, + He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's rich treasure-trove; + When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg, + For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg. + + You know these Yukon eggs of ours--some pink, some green, some blue-- + A dollar per, assorted tints, assorted flavors too. + The supercilious cheechako might designate them high, + But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by-and-by. + Well, Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light, + And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight. + At last he made it out, and then the legend ran like this-- + "Will Klondike miner write to Peg, Plumhollow, Squashville, Wis.?" + + That night he got to thinking of this far-off, unknown fair; + It seemed so sort of opportune, an answer to his prayer. + She flitted sweetly through his dreams, she haunted him by day, + She smiled through clouds of nicotine, she cheered his weary way. + At last he yielded to the spell; his course of love he set-- + Wisconsin his objective point; his object, Margaret. + + With every mile of sea and land his longing grew and grew. + He practised all his pretty words, and these, I fear, were few. + At last, one frosty evening, with a cold chill down his spine, + He found himself before her house, the threshold of the shrine. + His courage flickered to a spark, then glowed with sudden flame-- + He knocked; he heard a welcome word; she came--his goddess came. + Oh, she was fair as any flower, and huskily he spoke: + "I'm all the way from Klondike, with a mighty heavy poke. + I'm looking for a lassie, one whose Christian name is Peg, + Who sought a Klondike miner, and who wrote it on an egg." + + The lassie gazed at him a space, her cheeks grew rosy red; + She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes, then tenderly she said: + "Yes, lonely Klondike miner, it is true my name is Peg. + It's also true I longed for you and wrote it on an egg. + My heart went out to someone in that land of night and cold; + But oh, I fear that Yukon egg must have been mighty old. + I waited long, I hoped and feared; you should have come before; + I've been a wedded woman now for eighteen months or more. + I'm sorry, since you've come so far, you ain't the one that wins; + But won't you take a step inside--I'LL LET YOU SEE THE TWINS." + + + + +The Man from Eldorado + + + He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town, + In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt. + He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown; + He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt. + He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog; + Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back; + He slops along the sidewalk followed by his yellow dog, + But he's got a bunch of gold-dust in his sack. + + He seems a little wistful as he blinks at all the lights, + And maybe he is thinking of his claim + And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and dreamed at nights, + (Thank God, he'll never see the place again!) + Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed and sourdough bread, + On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould; + His stomach's out of kilter and his system full of lead, + But it's over, and his poke is full of gold. + + He has panted at the windlass, he has loaded in the drift, + He has pounded at the face of oozy clay; + He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp and double shift, + He has labored like a demon night and day. + And now, praise God, it's over, and he seems to breathe again + Of new-mown hay, the warm, wet, friendly loam; + He sees a snowy orchard in a green and dimpling plain, + And a little vine-clad cottage, and it's--Home. + + + II. + + He's the man from Eldorado, and he's had a bite and sup, + And he's met in with a drouthy friend or two; + He's cached away his gold-dust, but he's sort of bucking up, + So he's kept enough to-night to see him through. + His eye is bright and genial, his tongue no longer lags; + His heart is brimming o'er with joy and mirth; + He may be far from savory, he may be clad in rags, + But to-night he feels as if he owns the earth. + + Says he: "Boys, here is where the shaggy North and I will shake; + I thought I'd never manage to get free. + I kept on making misses; but at last I've got my stake; + There's no more thawing frozen muck for me. + I am going to God's Country, where I'll live the simple life; + I'll buy a bit of land and make a start; + I'll carve a little homestead, and I'll win a little wife, + And raise ten little kids to cheer my heart." + + They signified their sympathy by crowding to the bar; + They bellied up three deep and drank his health. + He shed a radiant smile around and smoked a rank cigar; + They wished him honor, happiness and wealth. + They drank unto his wife to be--that unsuspecting maid; + They drank unto his children half a score; + And when they got through drinking very tenderly they laid + The man from Eldorado on the floor. + + + III. + + He's the man from Eldorado, and he's only starting in + To cultivate a thousand-dollar jag. + His poke is full of gold-dust and his heart is full of sin, + And he's dancing with a girl called Muckluck Mag. + She's as light as any fairy; she's as pretty as a peach; + She's mistress of the witchcraft to beguile; + There's sunshine in her manner, there is music in her speech, + And there's concentrated honey in her smile. + + Oh, the fever of the dance-hall and the glitter and the shine, + The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl, + The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine, + The languorous allurement of a girl! + She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt and grim; + But she fondles him and gazes in his eyes; + Her kisses seek his heavy lips, and soon it seems to him + He has staked a little claim in Paradise. + + "Who's for a juicy two-step?" cries the master of the floor; + The music throbs with soft, seductive beat. + There's glitter, gilt and gladness; there are pretty girls galore; + There's a woolly man with moccasins on feet. + They know they've got him going; he is buying wine for all; + They crowd around as buzzards at a feast, + Then when his poke is empty they boost him from the hall, + And spurn him in the gutter like a beast. + + He's the man from Eldorado, and he's painting red the town; + Behind he leaves a trail of yellow dust; + In a whirl of senseless riot he is ramping up and down; + There's nothing checks his madness and his lust. + And soon the word is passed around--it travels like a flame; + They fight to clutch his hand and call him friend, + The chevaliers of lost repute, the dames of sorry fame; + Then comes the grim awakening--the end. + + + IV. + + He's the man from Eldorado, and he gives a grand affair; + There's feasting, dancing, wine without restraint. + The smooth Beau Brummels of the bar, the faro men, are there; + The tinhorns and purveyors of red paint; + The sleek and painted women, their predacious eyes aglow-- + Sure Klondike City never saw the like; + Then Muckluck Mag proposed the toast, "The giver of the show, + The livest sport that ever hit the pike." + + The "live one" rises to his feet; he stammers to reply-- + And then there comes before his muddled brain + A vision of green vastitudes beneath an April sky, + And clover pastures drenched with silver rain. + He knows that it can never be, that he is down and out; + Life leers at him with foul and fetid breath; + And then amid the revelry, the song and cheer and shout, + He suddenly grows grim and cold as death. + + He grips the table tensely, and he says: "Dear friends of mine, + I've let you dip your fingers in my purse; + I've crammed you at my table, and I've drowned you in my wine, + And I've little left to give you but--my curse. + I've failed supremely in my plans; it's rather late to whine; + My poke is mighty weasened up and small. + I thank you each for coming here; the happiness is mine-- + And now, you thieves and harlots, take it all." + + He twists the thong from off his poke; he swings it o'er his head; + The nuggets fall around their feet like grain. + They rattle over roof and wall; they scatter, roll and spread; + The dust is like a shower of golden rain. + The guests a moment stand aghast, then grovel on the floor; + They fight, and snarl, and claw, like beasts of prey; + And then, as everybody grabbed and everybody swore, + The man from Eldorado slipped away. + + + V. + + He's the man from Eldorado, and they found him stiff and dead, + Half covered by the freezing ooze and dirt. + A clotted Colt was in his hand, a hole was in his head, + And he wore an old and oily buckskin shirt. + His eyes were fixed and horrible, as one who hails the end; + The frost had set him rigid as a log; + And there, half lying on his breast, his last and only friend, + There crouched and whined a mangy yellow dog. + + + + +My Friends + + + The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief; + And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief; + A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief. + + My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple and green and gray; + The little flesh that clung to my bones, + you could punch it in holes like clay; + The skin on my gums was a sullen black, and slowly peeling away. + + I was sure enough in a direful fix, and often I wondered why + They did not take the chance that was left and leave me alone to die, + Or finish me off with a dose of dope--so utterly lost was I. + + But no; they brewed me the green-spruce tea, + and nursed me there like a child; + And the homicide he was good to me, and bathed my sores and smiled; + And the thief he starved that I might be fed, + and his eyes were kind and mild. + + Yet they were woefully wicked men, and often at night in pain + I heard the murderer speak of his deed and dream it over again; + I heard the poor thief sorrowing for the dead self he had slain. + + I'll never forget that bitter dawn, so evil, askew and gray, + When they wrapped me round in the skins of beasts + and they bore me to a sleigh, + And we started out with the nearest post an hundred miles away. + + I'll never forget the trail they broke, with its tense, unuttered woe; + And the crunch, crunch, crunch as their snowshoes sank + through the crust of the hollow snow; + And my breath would fail, and every beat of my heart was like a blow. + + And oftentimes I would die the death, yet wake up to life anew; + The sun would be all ablaze on the waste, and the sky a blighting blue, + And the tears would rise in my snow-blind eyes + and furrow my cheeks like dew. + + And the camps we made when their strength outplayed + and the day was pinched and wan; + And oh, the joy of that blessed halt, and how I did dread the dawn; + And how I hated the weary men who rose and dragged me on. + + And oh, how I begged to rest, to rest--the snow was so sweet a shroud; + And oh, how I cried when they urged me on, cried and cursed them aloud; + Yet on they strained, all racked and pained, + and sorely their backs were bowed. + + And then it was all like a lurid dream, and I prayed for a swift release + From the ruthless ones who would not leave me to die alone in peace; + Till I wakened up and I found myself at the post of the Mounted Police. + + And there was my friend the murderer, and there was my friend the thief, + With bracelets of steel around their wrists, and wicked beyond belief: + But when they come to God's judgment seat--may I be allowed the brief. + + + + +The Prospector + + + I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight, + A-purpose to revisit the old claim. + I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate, + And the lads who once were with me in the game. + Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day + Can show a dozen colors in his poke; + And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and gray, + And I'm looking for a grub-stake, and I'm broke. + + I strolled up old Bonanza. The same old moon looked down; + The same old landmarks seemed to yearn to me; + But the cabins all were silent, and the flat, once like a town, + Was mighty still and lonesome-like to see. + There were piles and piles of tailings where we toiled with pick and pan, + And turning round a bend I heard a roar, + And there a giant gold-ship of the very newest plan + Was tearing chunks of pay-dirt from the shore. + + It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung; + It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs; + Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung; + It glared around with fierce electric eyes. + Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed out for more; + It looked like some great monster in the gloom. + With two to feed its sateless greed, it worked for seven score, + And I sighed: "Ah, old-time miner, here's your doom!" + + The idle windlass turns to rust; the sagging sluice-box falls; + The holes you digged are water to the brim; + Your little sod-roofed cabins with the snugly moss-chinked walls + Are deathly now and mouldering and dim. + The battle-field is silent where of old you fought it out; + The claims you fiercely won are lost and sold; + But there's a little army that they'll never put to rout-- + The men who simply live to seek the gold. + + The men who can't remember when they learned to swing a pack, + Or in what lawless land the quest began; + The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back, + The restless buccaneer of pick and pan. + On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of the North, + You will find us, changed in face but still the same; + And it isn't need, it isn't greed that sends us faring forth-- + It's the fever, it's the glory of the game. + + For once you've panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust, + Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell; + It's little else you care about; you go because you must, + And you feel that you could follow it to hell. + You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in cold; + You'd follow it in solitude and pain; + And when you're stiff and battened down let someone whisper "Gold", + You're lief to rise and follow it again. + + Yet look you, if I find the stuff it's just like so much dirt; + I fling it to the four winds like a child. + It's wine and painted women and the things that do me hurt, + Till I crawl back, beggared, broken, to the Wild. + Till I crawl back, sapped and sodden, to my grub-stake and my tent-- + There's a city, there's an army (hear them shout). + There's the gold in millions, millions, but I haven't got a cent; + And oh, it's me, it's me that found it out. + + It was my dream that made it good, my dream that made me go + To lands of dread and death disprized of man; + But oh, I've known a glory that their hearts will never know, + When I picked the first big nugget from my pan. + It's still my dream, my dauntless dream, that drives me forth once more + To seek and starve and suffer in the Vast; + That heaps my heart with eager hope, that glimmers on before-- + My dream that will uplift me to the last. + + Perhaps I am stark crazy, but there's none of you too sane; + It's just a little matter of degree. + My hobby is to hunt out gold; it's fortressed in my brain; + It's life and love and wife and home to me. + And I'll strike it, yes, I'll strike it; I've a hunch I cannot fail; + I've a vision, I've a prompting, I've a call; + I hear the hoarse stampeding of an army on my trail, + To the last, the greatest gold camp of them all. + + Beyond the shark-tooth ranges sawing savage at the sky + There's a lowering land no white man ever struck; + There's gold, there's gold in millions, and I'll find it if I die, + And I'm going there once more to try my luck. + Maybe I'll fail--what matter? It's a mandate, it's a vow; + And when in lands of dreariness and dread + You seek the last lone frontier, far beyond your frontiers now, + You will find the old prospector, silent, dead. + + You will find a tattered tent-pole with a ragged robe below it; + You will find a rusted gold-pan on the sod; + You will find the claim I'm seeking, + with my bones as stakes to show it; + But I've sought the last Recorder, and He's--God. + + + + +The Black Sheep + + "The aristocratic ne'er-do-well in Canada frequently finds his way + into the ranks of the Royal North-West Mounted Police." --Extract. + + + + _Hark to the ewe that bore him: + "What has muddied the strain? + Never his brothers before him + Showed the hint of a stain." + Hark to the tups and wethers; + Hark to the old gray ram: + "We're all of us white, but he's black as night, + And he'll never be worth a damn_." + + I'm up on the bally wood-pile at the back of the barracks yard; + "A damned disgrace to the force, sir", with a comrade standing guard; + Making the bluff I'm busy, doing my six months hard. + + "Six months hard and dismissed, sir." Isn't that rather hell? + And all because of the liquor laws and the wiles of a native belle-- + Some "hooch" I gave to a siwash brave who swore that he wouldn't tell. + + At least they SAY that I did it. It's so in the town report. + All that I can recall is a night of revel and sport, + When I woke with a "head" in the guard-room, + and they dragged me sick into court. + + And the O. C. said: "You are guilty", and I said never a word; + For, hang it, you see I couldn't--I didn't know WHAT had occurred, + And, under the circumstances, denial would be absurd. + + But the one that cooked my bacon was Grubbe, of the City Patrol. + He fagged for my room at Eton, and didn't I devil his soul! + And now he is getting even, landing me down in the hole. + + Plugging away on the wood-pile; doing chores round the square. + There goes an officer's lady--gives me a haughty stare-- + Me that's an earl's own nephew--that is the hardest to bear. + + To think of the poor old mater awaiting her prodigal son. + Tho' I broke her heart with my folly, I was always the white-haired one. + (That fatted calf that they're cooking will surely be overdone.) + + I'll go back and yarn to the Bishop; I'll dance with the village belle; + I'll hand round tea to the ladies, and everything will be well. + Where I have been won't matter; what I have seen I won't tell. + + I'll soar to their ken like a comet. They'll see me with never a stain; + But will they reform me?--far from it. We pay for our pleasure with pain; + But the dog will return to his vomit, the hog to his wallow again. + + I've chewed on the rind of creation, and bitter I've tasted the same; + Stacked up against hell and damnation, I've managed to stay in the game; + I've had my moments of sorrow; I've had my seasons of shame. + + That's past; when one's nature's a cracked one, + it's too jolly hard to mend. + So long as the road is level, so long as I've cash to spend. + I'm bound to go to the devil, and it's all the same in the end. + + The bugle is sounding for stables; the men troop off through the gloom; + An orderly laying the tables sings in the bright mess-room. + (I'll wash in the prison bucket, and brush with the prison broom.) + + I'll lie in my cell and listen; I'll wish that I couldn't hear + The laugh and the chaff of the fellows swigging the canteen beer; + The nasal tone of the gramophone playing "The Bandolier". + + And it seems to me, though it's misty, that night of the flowing bowl, + That the man who potlatched the whiskey and landed me into the hole + _Was Grubbe, that Unmerciful Bounder, Grubbe, of the City Patrol_. + + + + +The Telegraph Operator + + + I will not wash my face; + I will not brush my hair; + I "pig" around the place-- + There's nobody to care. + Nothing but rock and tree; + Nothing but wood and stone, + Oh, God, it's hell to be + Alone, alone, alone! + + Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws + Corral me in a ring. + I feel as if I was + The only living thing + On all this blighted earth; + And so I frowst and shrink, + And crouching by my hearth + I hear the thoughts I think. + + I think of all I miss-- + The boys I used to know; + The girls I used to kiss; + The coin I used to blow: + The bars I used to haunt; + The racket and the row; + The beers I didn't want + (I wish I had 'em now). + + Day after day the same, + Only a little worse; + No one to grouch or blame-- + Oh, for a loving curse! + Oh, in the night I fear, + Haunted by nameless things, + Just for a voice to cheer, + Just for a hand that clings! + + Faintly as from a star + Voices come o'er the line; + Voices of ghosts afar, + Not in this world of mine; + Lives in whose loom I grope; + Words in whose weft I hear + Eager the thrill of hope, + Awful the chill of fear. + + I'm thinking out aloud; + I reckon that is bad; + (The snow is like a shroud)-- + Maybe I'm going mad. + Say! wouldn't that be tough? + This awful hush that hugs + And chokes one is enough + To make a man go "bugs". + + There's not a thing to do; + I cannot sleep at night; + No wonder I'm so blue; + Oh, for a friendly fight! + The din and rush of strife; + A music-hall aglow; + A crowd, a city, life-- + Dear God, I miss it so! + + Here, you have moped enough! + Brace up and play the game! + But say, it's awful tough-- + Day after day the same + (I've said that twice, I bet). + Well, there's not much to say. + I wish I had a pet, + Or something I could play. + + Cheer up! don't get so glum + And sick of everything; + The worst is yet to come; + God help you till the Spring. + God shield you from the Fear; + Teach you to laugh, not moan. + Ha! ha! it sounds so queer-- + Alone, alone, alone! + + + + +The Wood-Cutter + + + _The sky is like an envelope, + One of those blue official things; + And, sealing it, to mock our hope, + The moon, a silver wafer, clings. + What shall we find when death gives leave + To read--our sentence or reprieve?_ + + I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the fag-end of earth; + O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet; + Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth; + Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat. + + Last! Ah, yes, it's the finish. Have ever you heard a man cry? + (Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from the base of the chest.) + That's how I've cried, oh, so often; and now that my tears are dry, + I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest. + + Rest! Well, it's restful around me; it's quiet clean to the core. + The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden the hills are clad; + The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door, + And I think it's only the river that keeps me from going mad. + + By day it's a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate thing, + With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast; + By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring, + Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest. + + It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown. + I've learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well. + I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town, + Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell. + + Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit alone + I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care: + (The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone; + Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer.) + + _Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate; + A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison bars; + 'Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless I wait, + Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti of stars_. + + See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night, + The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly, serenely it nears; + A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley of light, + Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with hopes and fears. + + I look as one looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by; + I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel. + Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence swoops from the sky. + Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only knows how I feel. + + Maybe you've seen me sometimes; maybe you've pitied me then-- + The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my cabin door. + Some day you'll look and see not; futile and outcast of men, + I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore. + + _My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and profitless sum. + Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt. + Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy moistened thumb, + Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever out!_ + + + + +The Song of the Mouth-Organ + + (With apologies to the singer of the "Song of the Banjo".) + + + I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone; + I'm beloved by the Legion of the Lost; + I haven't got a "vox humana" tone, + And a dime or two will satisfy my cost. + I don't attempt your high-falutin' flights; + I am more or less uncertain on the key; + But I tell you, boys, there's lots and lots of nights + When you've taken mighty comfort out of me. + + I weigh an ounce or two, and I'm so small + You can pack me in the pocket of your vest; + And when at night so wearily you crawl + Into your bunk and stretch your limbs to rest, + You take me out and play me soft and low, + The simple songs that trouble your heartstrings; + The tunes you used to fancy long ago, + Before you made a rotten mess of things. + + Then a dreamy look will come into your eyes, + And you break off in the middle of a note; + And then, with just the dreariest of sighs, + You drop me in the pocket of your coat. + But somehow I have bucked you up a bit; + And, as you turn around and face the wall, + You don't feel quite so spineless and unfit-- + You're not so bad a fellow after all. + + Do you recollect the bitter Arctic night; + Your camp beside the canyon on the trail; + Your tent a tiny square of orange light; + The moon above consumptive-like and pale; + Your supper cooked, your little stove aglow; + You tired, but snug and happy as a child? + Then 'twas "Turkey in the Straw" till your lips were nearly raw, + And you hurled your bold defiance at the Wild. + + Do you recollect the flashing, lashing pain; + The gulf of humid blackness overhead; + The lightning making rapiers of the rain; + The cattle-horns like candles of the dead + You sitting on your bronco there alone, + In your slicker, saddle-sore and sick with cold? + Do you think the silent herd did not hear "The Mocking Bird", + Or relish "Silver Threads among the Gold"? + + Do you recollect the wild Magellan coast; + The head-winds and the icy, roaring seas; + The nights you thought that everything was lost; + The days you toiled in water to your knees; + The frozen ratlines shrieking in the gale; + The hissing steeps and gulfs of livid foam: + When you cheered your messmates nine with "Ben Bolt" and "Clementine", + And "Dixie Land" and "Seeing Nellie Home"? + + Let the jammy banjo voice the Younger Son, + Who waits for his remittance to arrive; + I represent the grimy, gritty one, + Who sweats his bones to keep himself alive; + Who's up against the real thing from his birth; + Whose heritage is hard and bitter toil; + I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth, + The helots of the sea and of the soil. + + I'm the Steinway of strange mischief and mischance; + I'm the Stradivarius of blank defeat; + In the down-world, when the devil leads the dance, + I am simply and symbolically meet; + I'm the irrepressive spirit of mankind; + I'm the small boy playing knuckle down with Death; + At the end of all things known, where God's rubbish-heap is thrown, + I shrill impudent triumph at a breath. + + I'm a humble little bit of tin and horn; + I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest; + The virtuoso looks on me with scorn; + But there's times when I am better than the best. + Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea; + Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine; + Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the grain-- + There's a lowly, loving kingdom--and it's mine. + + + + +The Trail of Ninety-Eight + + + I. + + Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools. + Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools. + Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold, + Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold! + + Men from the sands of the Sunland; men from the woods of the West; + Men from the farms and the cities, into the Northland we pressed. + Graybeards and striplings and women, good men and bad men and bold, + Leaving our homes and our loved ones, crying exultantly--"Gold!" + + Never was seen such an army, pitiful, futile, unfit; + Never was seen such a spirit, manifold courage and grit. + Never has been such a cohort under one banner unrolled + As surged to the ragged-edged Arctic, urged by the arch-tempter--Gold. + + "Farewell!" we cried to our dearests; little we cared for their tears. + "Farewell!" we cried to the humdrum and the yoke of the hireling years; + Just like a pack of school-boys, and the big crowd cheered us good-bye. + Never were hearts so uplifted, never were hopes so high. + + The spectral shores flitted past us, and every whirl of the screw + Hurled us nearer to fortune, and ever we planned what we'd do-- + Do with the gold when we got it--big, shiny nuggets like plums, + There in the sand of the river, gouging it out with our thumbs. + + And one man wanted a castle, another a racing stud; + A third would cruise in a palace yacht like a red-necked prince of blood. + And so we dreamed and we vaunted, millionaires to a man, + Leaping to wealth in our visions long ere the trail began. + + + II. + + We landed in wind-swept Skagway. We joined the weltering mass, + Clamoring over their outfits, waiting to climb the Pass. + We tightened our girths and our pack-straps; we linked on the Human Chain, + Struggling up to the summit, where every step was a pain. + + Gone was the joy of our faces, grim and haggard and pale; + The heedless mirth of the shipboard was changed to the care of the trail. + We flung ourselves in the struggle, packing our grub in relays, + Step by step to the summit in the bale of the winter days. + + Floundering deep in the sump-holes, stumbling out again; + Crying with cold and weakness, crazy with fear and pain. + Then from the depths of our travail, ere our spirits were broke, + Grim, tenacious and savage, the lust of the trail awoke. + + "Klondike or bust!" rang the slogan; every man for his own. + Oh, how we flogged the horses, staggering skin and bone! + Oh, how we cursed their weakness, anguish they could not tell, + Breaking their hearts in our passion, lashing them on till they fell! + + For grub meant gold to our thinking, and all that could walk must pack; + The sheep for the shambles stumbled, each with a load on its back; + And even the swine were burdened, and grunted and squealed and rolled, + And men went mad in the moment, huskily clamoring "Gold!" + + Oh, we were brutes and devils, goaded by lust and fear! + Our eyes were strained to the summit; the weaklings dropped to the rear, + Falling in heaps by the trail-side, heart-broken, limp and wan; + But the gaps closed up in an instant, and heedless the chain went on. + + Never will I forget it, there on the mountain face, + Antlike, men with their burdens, clinging in icy space; + Dogged, determined and dauntless, cruel and callous and cold, + Cursing, blaspheming, reviling, and ever that battle-cry--"Gold!" + + Thus toiled we, the army of fortune, in hunger and hope and despair, + Till glacier, mountain and forest vanished, and, radiantly fair, + There at our feet lay Lake Bennett, and down to its welcome we ran: + The trail of the land was over, the trail of the water began. + + + III. + + We built our boats and we launched them. Never has been such a fleet; + A packing-case for a bottom, a mackinaw for a sheet. + Shapeless, grotesque, lopsided, flimsy, makeshift and crude, + Each man after his fashion builded as best he could. + + Each man worked like a demon, as prow to rudder we raced; + The winds of the Wild cried "Hurry!" the voice of the waters, "Haste!" + We hated those driving before us; we dreaded those pressing behind; + We cursed the slow current that bore us; we prayed to the God of the wind. + + Spring! and the hillsides flourished, vivid in jewelled green; + Spring! and our hearts' blood nourished envy and hatred and spleen. + Little cared we for the Spring-birth; much cared we to get on-- + Stake in the Great White Channel, stake ere the best be gone. + + The greed of the gold possessed us; pity and love were forgot; + Covetous visions obsessed us; brother with brother fought. + Partner with partner wrangled, each one claiming his due; + Wrangled and halved their outfits, sawing their boats in two. + + Thuswise we voyaged Lake Bennett, Tagish, then Windy Arm, + Sinister, savage and baleful, boding us hate and harm. + Many a scow was shattered there on that iron shore; + Many a heart was broken straining at sweep and oar. + + We roused Lake Marsh with a chorus, we drifted many a mile; + There was the canyon before us--cave-like its dark defile; + The shores swept faster and faster; the river narrowed to wrath; + Waters that hissed disaster reared upright in our path. + + Beneath us the green tumult churning, above us the cavernous gloom; + Around us, swift twisting and turning, the black, sullen walls of a tomb. + We spun like a chip in a mill-race; our hearts hammered under the test; + Then--oh, the relief on each chill face!--we soared into sunlight and rest. + + Hand sought for hand on the instant. Cried we, "Our troubles are o'er!" + Then, like a rumble of thunder, heard we a canorous roar. + Leaping and boiling and seething, saw we a cauldron afume; + There was the rage of the rapids, there was the menace of doom. + + The river springs like a racer, sweeps through a gash in the rock; + Buts at the boulder-ribbed bottom, staggers and rears at the shock; + Leaps like a terrified monster, writhes in its fury and pain; + Then with the crash of a demon springs to the onset again. + + Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears; + Called on the Gods of our fathers, juggled forlorn with our fears; + Sank to our waists in its fury, tossed to the sky like a fleece; + Then, when our dread was the greatest, crashed into safety and peace. + + But what of the others that followed, losing their boats by the score? + Well could we see them and hear them, strung down that desolate shore. + What of the poor souls that perished? Little of them shall be said-- + On to the Golden Valley, pause not to bury the dead. + + Then there were days of drifting, breezes soft as a sigh; + Night trailed her robe of jewels over the floor of the sky. + The moonlit stream was a python, silver, sinuous, vast, + That writhed on a shroud of velvet--well, it was done at last. + + There were the tents of Dawson, there the scar of the slide; + Swiftly we poled o'er the shallows, swiftly leapt o'er the side. + Fires fringed the mouth of Bonanza; sunset gilded the dome; + The test of the trail was over--thank God, thank God, we were Home! + + + + +The Ballad of Gum-Boot Ben + + + _He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim. + He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him. + He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold + To question his veracity, this is the tale he told._ + + "I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust; + I am not fain for sake of gain to irk the frozen crust; + Let fellows gross find gilded dross, far other is my mark; + Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth--I go to seek the Ark. + + "I prospected the Pelly bed, I prospected the White; + The Nordenscold for love of gold I piked from morn till night; + Afar and near for many a year I led the wild stampede, + Until I guessed that all my quest was vanity and greed. + + "Then came I to a land I knew no man had ever seen, + A haggard land, forlornly spanned by mountains lank and lean; + The nitchies said 'twas full of dread, of smoke and fiery breath, + And no man dare put foot in there for fear of pain and death. + + "But I was made all unafraid, so, careless and alone, + Day after day I made my way into that land unknown; + Night after night by camp-fire light I crouched in lonely thought; + Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth--I knew not what I sought. + + "I rose at dawn; I wandered on. 'Tis somewhat fine and grand + To be alone and hold your own in God's vast awesome land; + Come woe or weal, 'tis fine to feel a hundred miles between + The trails you dare and pathways where the feet of men have been. + + "And so it fell on me a spell of wander-lust was cast. + The land was still and strange and chill, and cavernous and vast; + And sad and dead, and dull as lead, the valleys sought the snows; + And far and wide on every side the ashen peaks arose. + + "The moon was like a silent spike that pierced the sky right through; + The small stars popped and winked and hopped in vastitudes of blue; + And unto me for company came creatures of the shade, + And formed in rings and whispered things that made me half afraid. + + "And strange though be, 'twas borne on me that land had lived of old, + And men had crept and slain and slept where now they toiled for gold; + Through jungles dim the mammoth grim had sought the oozy fen, + And on his track, all bent of back, had crawled the hairy men. + + "And furthermore, strange deeds of yore in this dead place were done. + They haunted me, as wild and free I roamed from sun to sun; + Until I came where sudden flame uplit a terraced height, + A regnant peak that seemed to seek the coronal of night. + + "I scaled the peak; my heart was weak, yet on and on I pressed. + Skyward I strained until I gained its dazzling silver crest; + And there I found, with all around a world supine and stark, + Swept clean of snow, a flat plateau, and on it lay--the Ark. + + "Yes, there, I knew, by two and two the beasts did disembark, + And so in haste I ran and traced in letters on the Ark + My human name--Ben Smith's the same. And now I want to float + A syndicate to haul and freight to town that noble boat." + + _I met him later in a bar and made a gay remark + Anent an ancient miner and an option on the Ark. + He gazed at me reproachfully, as only topers can; + But what he said I can't repeat--he was a bad old man._ + + + + +Clancy of the Mounted Police + + + In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear + That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear; + Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail-- + In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word as "fail"-- + Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell's top-turrets freeze, + Half round the world, if need there be, on bleeding hands and knees. + It's duty, duty, first and last, the Crimson Manual saith; + The Scarlet Rider makes reply: "It's duty--to the death." + And so they sweep the solitudes, free men from all the earth; + And so they sentinel the woods, the wilds that know their worth; + And so they scour the startled plains and mock at hurt and pain, + And read their Crimson Manual, and find their duty plain. + Knights of the lists of unrenown, born of the frontier's need, + Disdainful of the spoken word, exultant in the deed; + Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players of the game, + Props of the power behind the throne, upholders of the name: + For thus the Great White Chief hath said, "In all my lands be peace", + And to maintain his word he gave his West the Scarlet Police. + + Livid-lipped was the valley, still as the grave of God; + Misty shadows of mountain thinned into mists of cloud; + Corpselike and stark was the land, with a quiet that crushed and awed, + And the stars of the weird sub-arctic glimmered over its shroud. + + Deep in the trench of the valley two men stationed the Post, + Seymour and Clancy the reckless, fresh from the long patrol; + Seymour, the sergeant, and Clancy--Clancy who made his boast + He could cinch like a bronco the Northland, + and cling to the prongs of the Pole. + + Two lone men on detachment, standing for law on the trail; + Undismayed in the vastness, wise with the wisdom of old-- + Out of the night hailed a half-breed telling a pitiful tale, + "White man starving and crazy on the banks of the Nordenscold." + + Up sprang the red-haired Clancy, lean and eager of eye; + Loaded the long toboggan, strapped each dog at its post; + Whirled his lash at the leader; then, with a whoop and a cry, + Into the Great White Silence faded away like a ghost. + + The clouds were a misty shadow, the hills were a shadowy mist; + Sunless, voiceless and pulseless, the day was a dream of woe; + Through the ice-rifts the river smoked and bubbled and hissed; + Behind was a trail fresh broken, in front the untrodden snow. + + Ahead of the dogs ploughed Clancy, haloed by steaming breath; + Through peril of open water, through ache of insensate cold; + Up rivers wantonly winding in a land affianced to death, + Till he came to a cowering cabin on the banks of the Nordenscold. + + Then Clancy loosed his revolver, and he strode through the open door; + And there was the man he sought for, crouching beside the fire; + The hair of his beard was singeing, the frost on his back was hoar, + And ever he crooned and chanted as if he never would tire:-- + + _"I panned and I panned in the shiny sand, + and I sniped on the river bar; + But I know, I know, that it's down below + that the golden treasures are; + So I'll wait and wait till the floods abate, + and I'll sink a shaft once more, + And I'd like to bet that I'll go home yet + with a brass band playing before."_ + + He was nigh as thin as a sliver, and he whined like a Moose-hide cur; + So Clancy clothed him and nursed him as a mother nurses a child; + Lifted him on the toboggan, wrapped him in robes of fur, + Then with the dogs sore straining started to face the Wild. + + Said the Wild, "I will crush this Clancy, so fearless and insolent; + For him will I loose my fury, and blind and buffet and beat; + Pile up my snows to stay him; then when his strength is spent, + Leap on him from my ambush and crush him under my feet. + + "Him will I ring with my silence, compass him with my cold; + Closer and closer clutch him unto mine icy breast; + Buffet him with my blizzards, deep in my snows enfold, + Claiming his life as my tribute, giving my wolves the rest." + + Clancy crawled through the vastness; o'er him the hate of the Wild; + Full on his face fell the blizzard; cheering his huskies he ran; + Fighting, fierce-hearted and tireless, snows that drifted and piled, + With ever and ever behind him singing the crazy man. + + _"Sing hey, sing ho, for the ice and snow, + And a heart that's ever merry; + Let us trim and square with a lover's care + (For why should a man be sorry?) + A grave deep, deep, with the moon a-peep, + A grave in the frozen mould. + Sing hey, sing ho, for the winds that blow, + And a grave deep down in the ice and snow, + A grave in the land of gold."_ + + Day after day of darkness, the whirl of the seething snows; + Day after day of blindness, the swoop of the stinging blast; + On through a blur of fury the swing of staggering blows; + On through a world of turmoil, empty, inane and vast. + + Night with its writhing storm-whirl, night despairingly black; + Night with its hours of terror, numb and endlessly long; + Night with its weary waiting, fighting the shadows back, + And ever the crouching madman singing his crazy song. + + Cold with its creeping terror, cold with its sudden clinch; + Cold so utter you wonder if 'twill ever again be warm; + Clancy grinned as he shuddered, "Surely it isn't a cinch + Being wet-nurse to a looney in the teeth of an arctic storm." + + The blizzard passed and the dawn broke, knife-edged and crystal clear; + The sky was a blue-domed iceberg, sunshine outlawed away; + Ever by snowslide and ice-rip haunted and hovered the Fear; + Ever the Wild malignant poised and panted to slay. + + The lead-dog freezes in harness--cut him out of the team! + The lung of the wheel-dog's bleeding--shoot him and let him lie! + On and on with the others--lash them until they scream! + "Pull for your lives, you devils! On! To halt is to die." + + There in the frozen vastness Clancy fought with his foes; + The ache of the stiffened fingers, the cut of the snowshoe thong; + Cheeks black-raw through the hood-flap, eyes that tingled and closed, + And ever to urge and cheer him quavered the madman's song. + + Colder it grew and colder, till the last heat left the earth, + And there in the great stark stillness the bale fires glinted and gleamed, + And the Wild all around exulted and shook with a devilish mirth, + And life was far and forgotten, the ghost of a joy once dreamed. + + Death! And one who defied it, a man of the Mounted Police; + Fought it there to a standstill long after hope was gone; + Grinned through his bitter anguish, fought without let or cease, + Suffering, straining, striving, stumbling, struggling on. + + Till the dogs lay down in their traces, and rose and staggered and fell; + Till the eyes of him dimmed with shadows, + and the trail was so hard to see; + Till the Wild howled out triumphant, and the world was a frozen hell-- + Then said Constable Clancy: "I guess that it's up to me." + + Far down the trail they saw him, + and his hands they were blanched like bone; + His face was a blackened horror, from his eyelids the salt rheum ran; + His feet he was lifting strangely, as if they were made of stone, + But safe in his arms and sleeping he carried the crazy man. + + So Clancy got into Barracks, and the boys made rather a scene; + And the O. C. called him a hero, and was nice as a man could be; + But Clancy gazed down his trousers at the place where his toes had been, + And then he howled like a husky, and sang in a shaky key: + + _"When I go back to the old love that's true to the finger-tips, + I'll say: `Here's bushels of gold, love,' + and I'll kiss my girl on the lips; + `It's yours to have and to hold, love.' + It's the proud, proud boy I'll be, + When I go back to the old love that's waited so long for me."_ + + + + +Lost + + + _"Black is the sky, but the land is white-- + (O the wind, the snow and the storm!)-- + Father, where is our boy to-night? + Pray to God he is safe and warm."_ + + _"Mother, mother, why should you fear? + Safe is he, and the Arctic moon + Over his cabin shines so clear-- + Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."_ + + "It's getting dark awful sudden. Say, this is mighty queer! + Where in the world have I got to? It's still and black as a tomb. + I reckoned the camp was yonder, I figured the trail was here-- + Nothing! Just draw and valley packed with quiet and gloom; + Snow that comes down like feathers, thick and gobby and gray; + Night that looks spiteful ugly--seems that I've lost my way. + + "The cold's got an edge like a jackknife--it must be forty below; + Leastways that's what it seems like--it cuts so fierce to the bone. + The wind's getting real ferocious; it's heaving and whirling the snow; + It shrieks with a howl of fury, it dies away to a moan; + Its arms sweep round like a banshee's, swift and icily white, + And buffet and blind and beat me. Lord! it's a hell of a night. + + "I'm all tangled up in a blizzard. There's only one thing to do-- + Keep on moving and moving; it's death, it's death if I rest. + Oh, God! if I see the morning, if only I struggle through, + I'll say the prayers I've forgotten since I lay on my mother's breast. + I seem going round in a circle; maybe the camp is near. + Say! did somebody holler? Was it a light I saw? + Or was it only a notion? I'll shout, and maybe they'll hear-- + No! the wind only drowns me--shout till my throat is raw. + + "The boys are all round the camp-fire wondering when I'll be back. + They'll soon be starting to seek me; they'll scarcely wait for the light. + What will they find, I wonder, when they come to the end of my track-- + A hand stuck out of a snowdrift, frozen and stiff and white. + That's what they'll strike, I reckon; that's how they'll find their pard, + A pie-faced corpse in a snowbank--curse you, don't be a fool! + Play the game to the finish; bet on your very last card; + Nerve yourself for the struggle. Oh, you coward, keep cool! + + "I'm going to lick this blizzard; I'm going to live the night. + It can't down me with its bluster--I'm not the kind to be beat. + On hands and knees will I buck it; with every breath will I fight; + It's life, it's life that I fight for--never it seemed so sweet. + I know that my face is frozen; my hands are numblike and dead; + But oh, my feet keep a-moving, heavy and hard and slow; + They're trying to kill me, kill me, the night that's black overhead, + The wind that cuts like a razor, the whipcord lash of the snow. + Keep a-moving, a-moving; don't, don't stumble, you fool! + Curse this snow that's a-piling a-purpose to block my way. + It's heavy as gold in the rocker, it's white and fleecy as wool; + It's soft as a bed of feathers, it's warm as a stack of hay. + Curse on my feet that slip so, my poor tired, stumbling feet-- + I guess they're a job for the surgeon, they feel so queerlike to lift-- + I'll rest them just for a moment--oh, but to rest is sweet! + The awful wind cannot get me, deep, deep down in the drift." + + _"Father, a bitter cry I heard, + Out of the night so dark and wild. + Why is my heart so strangely stirred? + 'Twas like the voice of our erring child."_ + + _"Mother, mother, you only heard + A waterfowl in the locked lagoon-- + Out of the night a wounded bird-- + Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."_ + + Who is it talks of sleeping? I'll swear that somebody shook + Me hard by the arm for a moment, but how on earth could it be? + See how my feet are moving--awfully funny they look-- + Moving as if they belonged to a someone that wasn't me. + The wind down the night's long alley bowls me down like a pin; + I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep in the snow. + Beaten back to my corner, how can I hope to win? + And there is the blizzard waiting to give me the knockout blow. + + Oh, I'm so warm and sleepy! No more hunger and pain. + Just to rest for a moment; was ever rest such a joy? + Ha! what was that? I'll swear it, somebody shook me again; + Somebody seemed to whisper: "Fight to the last, my boy." + Fight! That's right, I must struggle. I know that to rest means death; + Death, but then what does death mean?--ease from a world of strife. + Life has been none too pleasant; yet with my failing breath + Still and still must I struggle, fight for the gift of life. + + * * * * * + + Seems that I must be dreaming! Here is the old home trail; + Yonder a light is gleaming; oh, I know it so well! + The air is scented with clover; the cattle wait by the rail; + Father is through with the milking; there goes the supper-bell. + + * * * * * + + Mother, your boy is crying, out in the night and cold; + Let me in and forgive me, I'll never be bad any more: + I'm, oh, so sick and so sorry: please, dear mother, don't scold-- + It's just your boy, and he wants you. . . . Mother, open the door. . . . + + _"Father, father, I saw a face + Pressed just now to the window-pane! + Oh, it gazed for a moment's space, + Wild and wan, and was gone again!"_ + + _"Mother, mother, you saw the snow + Drifted down from the maple tree + (Oh, the wind that is sobbing so! + Weary and worn and old are we)-- + Only the snow and a wounded loon-- + Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."_ + + + + +L'Envoi + + + We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure, + Of men who played the game and lost or won; + Of mad stampedes, of toil beyond all measure, + Of camp-fire comfort when the day was done. + We talked of sullen nights by moon-dogs haunted, + Of bird and beast and tree, of rod and gun; + Of boat and tent, of hunting-trip enchanted + Beneath the wonder of the midnight sun; + Of bloody-footed dogs that gnawed the traces, + Of prisoned seas, wind-lashed and winter-locked; + The ice-gray dawn was pale upon our faces, + Yet still we filled the cup and still we talked. + + The city street was dimmed. We saw the glitter + Of moon-picked brilliants on the virgin snow, + And down the drifted canyon heard the bitter, + Relentless slogan of the winds of woe. + The city was forgot, and, parka-skirted, + We trod that leagueless land that once we knew; + We saw stream past, down valleys glacier-girted, + The wolf-worn legions of the caribou. + We smoked our pipes, o'er scenes of triumph dwelling; + Of deeds of daring, dire defeats, we talked; + And other tales that lost not in the telling, + Ere to our beds uncertainly we walked. + + And so, dear friends, in gentler valleys roaming, + Perhaps, when on my printed page you look, + Your fancies by the firelight may go homing + To that lone land that haply you forsook. + And if perchance you hear the silence calling, + The frozen music of star-yearning heights, + Or, dreaming, see the seines of silver trawling + Across the sky's abyss on vasty nights, + You may recall that sweep of savage splendor, + That land that measures each man at his worth, + And feel in memory, half fierce, half tender, + The brotherhood of men that know the North. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Ballads of a Cheechako, by Robert W. 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