Chapter 2
And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it befell One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town to sell The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made their lives a hell.
She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the wondrous fur; Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as a spur; She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise and follow her.
The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson town; They see its lights a blaze o' nights and harshly they look down; They mock the plan and plot of man with grim, ironic frown.
The trail was steep; 'twas at the time when swiftly sinks the snow; All honey-combed, the river ice was rotting down below; The river chafed beneath its rind with many a mighty throe.
And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed in fear, Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it dear; And hard she pressed it to her breast--then Windy Ike drew near.
She made no moan--her heart was stone--she read his smiling face, And like a dream flashed all her life's dark horror and disgrace; A moment only--with a snarl he hurled her into space.
She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded like a ball; From crag to crag she carromed down through snow and timber fall; . . . A hole gaped in the river ice; the spray flashed--that was all.
A bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet and frail; And blinding bright the land was dight in gay and glittering mail; And with a wondrous black fox skin a man slid down the trail.
IV.
A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the river bank, Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and ever slipped and sank, And ever cursed his Maker's name, and ever "hooch" he drank.
He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore distrest; The old grandmother moon crept out from her cloud-quilted nest; The aged mountains mocked at him in their primeval rest.
Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild; The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild; The still, sardonic laughter of an ogre o'er a child.
The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like one in pain, And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and yawned again; And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split in twain.
From out the road-house by the trail they saw a man afar Make for the narrow river-reach where the swift cross-currents are; Where, frail and worn, the ice is torn and the angry waters jar.
But they did not see him crash and sink into the icy flow; They did not see him clinging there, gripped by the undertow, Clawing with bleeding finger-nails at the jagged ice and snow.
They found a note beside the hole where he had stumbled in: "Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived in sin, And to the one who loves me least I leave this black fox skin."
And strange it is; for, though they searched the river all around, No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after found; Though one man said he saw the tread of HOOFS deep in the ground.
The Ballad of Pious Pete
_"The North has got him."_ --Yukonism.
I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did. I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid. I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could; I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for his good. By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold, With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, in hunger and hardship and cold. I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit; In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I strove with the powers of the Pit. I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town; I dragged him from dissolute brawls; But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls.
God knows what I did he should seek to be rid of one who would save him from shame. God knows what I bore that night when he swore and bade me make tracks from his claim. I started to tell of the horrors of hell, when sudden his eyes lit like coals; And "Chuck it," says he, "don't persecute me with your cant and your saving of souls." I'll swear I was mild as I'd be with a child, but he called me the son of a slut; And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run, he threatened my face with the butt. So what could I do (I leave it to you)? With curses he harried me forth; Then he was alone, and I was alone, and over us menaced the North.
Our cabins were near; I could see, I could hear; but between us there rippled the creek; And all summer through, with a rancor that grew, he would pass me and never would speak. Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death crept down from the peaks far away; The water was still; the twilight was chill; the sky was a tatter of gray. Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold the lights of the witches arose; The frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was cinched by the stark and cadaverous snows. The trees were like lace where the star-beams could chase, each leaf was a jewel agleam. The soft white hush lapped the Northland and wrapped us round in a crystalline dream; So still I could hear quite loud in my ear the swish of the pinions of time; So bright I could see, as plain as could be, the wings of God's angels ashine.
As I read in the Book I would oftentimes look to that cabin just over the creek. Ah me, it was sad and evil and bad, two neighbors who never would speak! I knew that full well like a devil in hell he was hatching out, early and late, A system to bear through the frost-spangled air the warm, crimson waves of his hate. I only could peer and shudder and fear--'twas ever so ghastly and still; But I knew over there in his lonely despair he was plotting me terrible ill. I knew that he nursed a malice accurst, like the blast of a winnowing flame; I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud--Oh, God! then calamity came.
Mad! If I'm mad then you too are mad; but it's all in the point of view. If you'd looked at them things gallivantin' on wings, all purple and green and blue; If you'd noticed them twist, as they mounted and hissed like scorpions dim in the dark; If you'd seen them rebound with a horrible sound, and spitefully spitting a spark; If you'd watched IT with dread, as it hissed by your bed, that thing with the feelers that crawls-- You'd have settled the brute that attempted to shoot electricity into your walls.
Oh, some they were blue, and they slithered right through; they were silent and squashy and round; And some they were green; they were wriggly and lean; they writhed with so hateful a sound. My blood seemed to freeze; I fell on my knees; my face was a white splash of dread. Oh, the Green and the Blue, they were gruesome to view; but the worst of them all were the Red. They came through the door, they came through the floor, they came through the moss-creviced logs. They were savage and dire; they were whiskered with fire; they bickered like malamute dogs. They ravined in rings like iniquitous things; they gulped down the Green and the Blue. I crinkled with fear whene'er they drew near, and nearer and nearer they drew.
And then came the crown of Horror's grim crown, the monster so loathsomely red. Each eye was a pin that shot out and in, as, squidlike, it oozed to my bed; So softly it crept with feelers that swept and quivered like fine copper wire; Its belly was white with a sulphurous light, its jaws were a-drooling with fire. It came and it came; I could breathe of its flame, but never a wink could I look. I thrust in its maw the Fount of the Law; I fended it off with the Book. I was weak--oh, so weak--but I thrilled at its shriek, as wildly it fled in the night; And deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day. (Was ever so welcome the light?)
I loaded my gun at the rise of the sun; to his cabin so softly I slunk. My neighbor was there in the frost-freighted air, all wrapped in a robe in his bunk. It muffled his moans; it outlined his bones, as feebly he twisted about; His gums were so black, and his lips seemed to crack, and his teeth all were loosening out. 'Twas a death's head that peered through the tangle of beard; 'twas a face I will never forget; Sunk eyes full of woe, and they troubled me so with their pleadings and anguish, and yet As I rested my gaze in a misty amaze on the scurvy-degenerate wreck, I thought of the Things with the dragon-fly wings, then laid I my gun on his neck. He gave out a cry that was faint as a sigh, like a perishing malamute, And he says unto me, "I'm converted," says he; "for Christ's sake, Peter, don't shoot!"
* * * * *
They're taking me out with an escort about, and under a sergeant's care; I am humbled indeed, for I'm 'cuffed to a Swede that thinks he's a millionaire. But it's all Gospel true what I'm telling to you-- up there where the Shadow falls-- That I settled Sam Noot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls.
The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill
I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie, Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die-- Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon; In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon; On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw; In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw; By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead-- I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead.
For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot. And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone "epigram". So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin (Which the same I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin). Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie", And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die.
Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange, Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range; Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still, Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill. So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the shelf The swell black box with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself; And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh; Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day.
You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine below; When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow; When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood, And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood; When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit, And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit; When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill-- Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill.
Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand, As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land; Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes, And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows! North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.
River and plain and mighty peak--and who could stand unawed? As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God. North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes, And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes, Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill, And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.
Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall; Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all; Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his hair, Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare; Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread. I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead, And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes, A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies."
Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole, With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can't control? Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin, And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but you'll never jam me in"? I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so blue As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd do. Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round about, And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.
Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't seem no good; His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood. Till at last I said: "It ain't no use--he's froze too hard to thaw; He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess I got to--SAW." So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate; And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down; Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.
So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep, And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep; And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun, And sometimes I wonder if they WAS, the awful things I done. And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of the Law, I often think of poor old Bill--AND HOW HARD HE WAS TO SAW.
The Ballad of One-Eyed Mike
_This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye, As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the Glories swept the sky; As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of "hooch" was dry._
A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong; I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft of his hate was strong. He thonged me East and he thonged me West; he harried me back and forth, Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite to the bleak, bald-headed North.
And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan, For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man; And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams; And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams.
So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such, Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch; About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will, In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man I sought to kill.
'Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed to the Prince of Gloom For the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom. Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago; My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so.
It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon's oily flow, I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky's port-winey glow; Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the river seemed to shrink, All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink.
'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a queer, hypnotic dream, Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream; It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring; It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing.
In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering round its head, Like butterflies of a monster size--then I knew it for the Dead. Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate; In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner-plate.
It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew; It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through. It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat, With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet.
And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that "floater" say: "I am the man from whom you ran, the man you sought to slay. That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say `Revenge is sweet', In the grit and grime of the river's slime I am rotting at your feet.
"The ill we rue we must e'en undo, though it rive us bone from bone; So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed I might atone. I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought where you might live; And now you're found, though I'm dead and drowned, I beg you to forgive."
So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed, and its fingers flicked the shore; And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore; That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe; Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, I forgave you long ago."
Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke from a horrid dream. The moon rode high in the naked sky, and something bobbed in the stream. It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it sheered from the shore; It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never saw it more.
_This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped and gray, Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed in his eye in a wolfish way-- That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird Auroral ray._
The Ballad of the Brand
'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare, Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair; Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand, Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land; Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him little ones, That the name of Tellus, the master smith, might live in his stalwart sons.
Now there was little of law in the land, and evil doings were rife, And every man who joyed in his home guarded the fame of his wife; For there were those of the silver tongue and the honeyed art to beguile, Who would cozen the heart from a woman's breast and damn her soul with a smile. And there were women too quick to heed a look or a whispered word, And once in a while a man was slain, and the ire of the King was stirred; So far and wide he proclaimed his wrath, and this was the law he willed: "That whosoever killeth a man, even shall he be killed."
Now Tellus, the smith, he trusted his wife; his heart was empty of fear. High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a beacon of love and cheer. High on the hill they builded their bower, where the broom and the bracken meet; Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily sweet. Here he enshrined her, his dearest saint, his idol, the light of his eye; Her kisses rested upon his lips as brushes a butterfly. The weight of her arms around his neck was light as the thistle down; And sweetly she studied to win his smile, and gently she mocked his frown. And when at the close of the dusty day his clangorous toil was done, She hastened to meet him down the way all lit by the amber sun.
Their dove-cot gleamed in the golden light, a temple of stainless love; Like the hanging cup of a big blue flower was the topaz sky above. The roses and lilies yearned to her, as swift through their throng she pressed; A little white, fragile, fluttering thing that lay like a child on his breast. Then the heart of Tellus, the smith, was proud, and sang for the joy of life, And there in the bronzing summertide he thanked the gods for his wife.
Now there was one called Philo, a scribe, a man of exquisite grace, Carved like the god Apollo in limb, fair as Adonis in face; Eager and winning in manner, full of such radiant charm, Womenkind fought for his favor and loved to their uttermost harm. Such was his craft and his knowledge, such was his skill at the game, Never was woman could flout him, so be he plotted her shame. And so he drank deep of pleasure, and then it fell on a day He gazed on the wife of Tellus and marked her out for his prey.
Tellus, the smith, was merry, and the time of the year it was June, So he said to his stalwart helpers: "Shut down the forge at noon. Go ye and joy in the sunshine, rest in the coolth of the grove, Drift on the dreamy river, every man with his love." Then to himself: "Oh, Beloved, sweet will be your surprise; To-day will we sport like children, laugh in each other's eyes; Weave gay garlands of poppies, crown each other with flowers, Pull plump carp from the lilies, rifle the ferny bowers. To-day with feasting and gladness the wine of Cyprus will flow; To-day is the day we were wedded only a twelvemonth ago."
The larks trilled high in the heavens; his heart was lyric with joy; He plucked a posy of lilies; he sped like a love-sick boy. He stole up the velvety pathway--his cottage was sunsteeped and still; Vines honeysuckled the window; softly he peeped o'er the sill. The lilies dropped from his fingers; devils were choking his breath; Rigid with horror, he stiffened; ghastly his face was as death. Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with a prurient jibe, He shrank--'twas the wife of his bosom in the arms of Philo, the scribe.
Tellus went back to his smithy; he reeled like a drunken man; His heart was riven with anguish; his brain was brooding a plan. Straight to his anvil he hurried; started his furnace aglow; Heated his iron and shaped it with savage and masterful blow. Sparks showered over and round him; swiftly under his hand There at last it was finished--a hideous and infamous Brand.