Ballads of a Cheechako Part 6

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 G.o.d'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 sh.o.r.e.

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 windla.s.s 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-c.h.i.n.ked 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 h.e.l.l.

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 hoa.r.s.e 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--G.o.d.

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 d.a.m.n_."

I'm up on the bally wood-pile at the back of the barracks yard; "A d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l?

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 circ.u.mstances, denial would be absurd.

But the one that cooked my bacon was Grubbe, of the City Patrol.

He f.a.gged 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 ch.o.r.es 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 h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation, 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.