Ballads of a Cheechako Part 3

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 m.u.f.fled 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 peris.h.i.+ng 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 d.i.n.ky patch with flowers and gra.s.s in a civilized bone-yard lot.

And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter a d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.s, North I pressed; river and peak and plain Pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d.

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 gla.s.sy 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 d.i.n.ky 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 sh.o.r.e; 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 sh.o.r.e; 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._