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diff --git a/old/bchee10.txt b/old/bchee10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c549b9c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/bchee10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2594 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Service's Ballads of a Cheechako + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Ballads of a Cheechako + +by Robert W. Service [British-born Canadian Poet -- 1874-1958.] + +May 1995, [Etext 259] + + +entered/proofed by A. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois + Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Illinois Benedictine College". + +This "Small Print!" by Charles B. Kramer, Attorney +Internet (72600.2026@compuserve.com); TEL: (212-254-5093) +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + + +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, + it 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 this Project Gutenberg Etext of Ballads of a Cheechako + + + + |