THAT 30 U.S. ON THE WALL
A man that's spent years knocking round "out in front"
Has most usually had lots of pals—
He's mixed up with pardners at various times
And he's had his affairs with the gals.
Now, a pardner's peculiar in lots of his ways
And he'll ditch you for various reasons,
And a gal never knows straight up from twice
And her mind seems to change with the seasons.
I've been in on good ground with pardners I've staked
And I thought they were square, till I found
They were trying to cross me, the miserable pups,
And whipsaw me out of my ground.
I've had a few pards that would stand the hard grind
And they'd stick through hard luck night and day;
They were all you could ask while you rustled for grub,
But they blew up when you uncovered the "pay."
Way back in the "eighties" when I'm just a kid,
I crossed up with a breed gal I'd met
One winter at Circle; she cleaned me that year
And skipped out with all she could get.
I've fallen for females in half of the camps
That's spread over this country up here,
But "square guys" or "pretzels" I couldn't get by
And none of them stuck for a year.
I got kind of discouraged and quit the she sex
And figgered I'd just herd with males,
But it don't make no difference, I guess that I'm wrong,
'Cause there's always the parting of trails.
I've had lots of dogs, but a dog always dies,
Or else the poor devil gets killed.
When you like 'em and lose 'em, their loss leaves a hole
That seems for a time can't be filled.
So pardners and females and dogs is taboo
And I know, 'cause I've fussed with 'em all.
There's only one pal that I know is true blue
And it's that Thirty U.S. on the wall.
She's stood by my shoulder and stopped a brown bear
And she keeps the cache full in the Fall;
She's got the one talk that a claim jumper knows
And she craves no attention at all.
I'm getting old now, and some sot in my ways,
And I don't loosen up like I did.
I'm slower to make friends and slower to trust
Than I used to be when I'm a kid.
So it's good-by to females and good-by to dogs,
And good-by to pardners and all,
For the only one pal that I find I can trust
Is that Thirty U.S. on the wall.
FLOTSAM
The China Coast's a dumping ground
And the South Sea gets its share
Of the kind of men that don't make good
The kind of man that never could
The men that never care.
A worthless, careless drinking lot
Combed out from between the Poles.
It's gin, and cards, a woman's breath,
Laughter and love and sudden death
And the Devil gets their souls.
It's a throwback to a weaker strain
That's washed by the Tropic tide.
And a mixture of Dago and Japanese
Latin and Jew and Portugese
Crops out thru a sun-tanned hide.
But the Northland gets a sterner breed
To fuse in its harder mould.
It's the breed of men that don't know fail;
That's the breed of men that hit the trail
For the fabled land of gold.
They're a sturdy, fearless, fighting lot
And they play the game to win.
They fall for women, wine, the game
And win or lose, they smile the same
And to quit is their only sin.
Here the Norsman bunks with the canny Scot
And the lad from the Emerald Isle
Works side by side with Russ and Dane,
North-bred men of brawn and brain,
Men that are worth your while.
So me for the land of the Midnight Sun
With the north lights in the sky,
Me for the land that mothers this race
Where you have to fight to hold your place,
Where you can't quit till you die.
TRYING
The dream of the white man ever goes out
To the fight that can never be won,
And ever he plans to do the things
That they say can never be done.
It's seldom he values the things that are
What he craves he may never gain,
Yet ever he tries, till the day he dies
And then feels he has lived in vain.
He climbs to the top of the highest hills
To search out the vales afar;
He bedrocks a hole on the deepest creeks
He hitches his cart to a star.
He's ever the first in the far stampede
As he chases the rainbow's blend,
But it's not the need, and it's not the greed,
It's the wanting to win in the end.
And whether he strives in the lofty range
Or tries in the crowded mart,
The longing to do what has never been done
Is uppermost in his heart.
He tries to build where none other has built,
Win the maid that none other has won,
To find the gold that he never can hold,
To finish what cannot be done.
He lives his life in a trying way
And he scorns the things that are tame,
If all seems lost, he still fights on,
For ever he plays the game.
And the efforts he makes as he strives to win
Are a credit to him and his breed,
And the gods will count and give full amount
And accept the act for the deed.
FOR
The dream of the white man ever goes out
To the fight that can never be won,
And ever he plans to do the things
That they say can never be done.
It's seldom he values the things that are,
What he craves he never may gain,
But ever he tries, till the day he dies
And then feels he has lived in vain.
THE NEW MASTER
As one who lays aside a task, where one has ruled alone,
I lay aside the crown of hell, and give to you my throne;
As one who feels his race is run, whose day is of the past,
I recognize your genius, and abdicate at last.
I go and leave you master, and I feel it's just as well,
For Hades lacks its master, until you rule in hell.
The world wags on and changes, old methods now seem weak,
And the changes of a thousand years, of these I fain would speak.
I've raised and sponsored many names, that darken history's page,
I've made them rulers of the world in many a by-gone age.
They all have shown a human turn, from Nero down to you,
But now my life-long dream of a super fiend at last seems coming true.
I've watched you since the faintest spark blazed in your mother's womb,
I've watched your hypocritic grief, beside your father's tomb;
I know the tainted blood that flows thru your each and every vein
That shows up in your withered arm, and feeds your fevered brain.
I saw it in your grandsire, where first it cropped out plain
When German gold was squandered to slay the honest Dane.
I fed you dreams of empire, and dreams of lust and greed
And the age old lust of conquest that taints all of your breed.
The strain that showed in Nero, cropped out alike in you,
You killed your gentle mother, but not as Nero slew.
I gave you hate of Albion, for all the world will tell
That could I kill that Anglo strain, I'd use the earth for hell.
I loathe the Anglo-Saxon race, I hate their English speech,
For where the Union Jack waves high, the Cross will ever reach.
Their ignorant millions till the soil, for they protect their own,
I hate it for I've never had this ensign for mine own.
I taught you how to use God's church, I built the path you trod,
I filled your mouth until you claimed, a pardnership with God.
I told you tales to tell to men, I coached you every hour
Until an egomaniac ran wild, mad with a lust for power.
I made an army for you then, the peer of all war lords,
I smiled the night you went away to visit Norway fiords.
I knew your Bagdad railway schemes, I knew the Austrian claims,
I knew that German gold would guide the mad assassin's aims.
I knew the schemes that you had planned, the one that nothing curbs,
I envied your diplomacy that blamed it on the Serbs.
My brain ne'er hatched a finer scheme, your armies marking time
And then the rape of Belgium, your premier man-sized crime.
And if one deals in hellish schemes, that one must stamp your worth,
You made a shambles of that land, you moved hell up on earth.
The cries of mangled maidens, the mutilated child,
The tears of butchered mothers, would drive an earth man wild,
And thru it all proclaiming, you were the tool of God—
O pardner in this orgy, no one suspected fraud.
You butchered, maimed and pillaged, hell never saw such sights
As the Prussian Guard remembers, on those first Belgian nights.
O shades of maddened Nero and his early Christian fires,
Could he have been in Belgium and have seen your funeral pyres!
Could he have seen your orgies he would have wept for shame
But had he your fiendish cunning, he might have done the same.
But the hated Saxon balked you and the desperate fighting Frank
Hurled back our super devils and took us on the flank.
Your inbred tainted offspring lost his chances at Verdun
Where curtained steel just saved the world from the grip of brutal Hun.
But Wilhelm, you are crafty, you are mine own I ween
Your fertile brain had brought to life the hell-born submarine,
You killed the unarmed merchantmen, you murdered in the dark,
You sent the child and mother to feed your friend the shark.
The world grew sick with wonder, no voice was raised to laud
And still you did it in your name, the name of you and God.
Where you have trod the world is dead, no sign of life or mirth,
You beat me, Bill, you beat my hell, with this of yours on earth.
You won hell's admiration and of all of mine own folk
When you paired off with the ghastly Turk, that was a master stroke.
And all the things you did before, just now seem weak and tame
Since you launched that Dardanelles campaign of pillage, lust and shame.
To fuss thus with my chosen race, my ally since time dates
Proclaimed that Kultur and the Turk are well matched running mates.
And tho I've watched hell's orgies, and stood by in fiendish glee,
I quit you, Bill, these Turkish stunts are far too much for me.
When officers from Kultur's class stand by and watch a Turk
Just disembowel a mother, why, Bill, it makes me shirk.
It makes me shudder and I've watched the master fiends of hell,
But none of them have brains like you, none do their work so well.
When Turk and German flood with oil, then set a school ablaze
And bayonet the babies, as they stumble thru the haze,
I yield the crown to you, Dear Bill, my pupil passes me
You take the rôle of Master and your pupil I will be.
I've worked for hell's best interests, my master now appears
For when your name is mentioned, the imps break into cheers.
The gavel of the poor damned souls, that long has rung their knell,
Is passed to you, I abdicate and now you rule in hell.
For years I've done the best I could, now I realize I'm thru,
And in the future I'm content to live and learn from you.
Your earthly work is finished, soon in hell you'll carve your name
And I shudder when I realize that hell won't be the same.
PROSPECTING
Looking for placer pangar,
Loafing about in the hills,
Getting your grub with a rifle,
Taking your drink from rills.
Getting your bed from the spruce tree,
Taking your course by your dreams,
Just camping alone in the mountains,
Siwashing along the streams.
Locating the hind sight on Nature,
Traveling alone and far,
Thinking with no one to guide you,
Digesting the things that are.
Back trailing the life that's past you,
Peeping at what's in store,
Pondering over life's mistakes,
Wondering, how many more.
Dreaming alone of childhood days,
Regretting some things that are past,
Recalling lost opportunities,
And chances too good to last.
Living your whole life over,
Recalling the daily grind,
Thanking your God that it's over,
Glad that you've left it behind.
But still regretting your errors,
Sad for some things you have done,
Wishing that you had coppered some plays
As you count them one by one.
Now living a life, clean, decent,
For man never sins alone,
Getting a grip on your ego,
Coming at last to your own.
You dream and you hunt all summer
Till you notice a chill in the air,
Then you think of your warm snug cabin
And you feel that you'd rather be there.
Then you head over unblazed passes
Till at last you herd with your own,
And though you located no pangar
You are better for being alone.
THE WOMAN THAT YOU PASS BY
My trade was old when the world was new,
Ere the pyramids rose by the Nile
Men quitted their wives, and gave me their goods
For the warmth of my kiss, and my smile.
For never was wife who could hold her man
By the honeymoon's afterglow
Did I veil mine eyes and beckon to him,
God's truth, and 'tis you who know.
My trade was old when the world was new,
Long ere Caesar ruled in Rome,
To spend their gold in a harlot's cell
Patricians quitted home.
And high born dames since the world began
Have learned to sit and to sigh
And to patiently wait for their lords to leave
The woman that you pass by.
I'm only a pawn in the game called life,
Yet I take what you never could hold;
I garner the kisses you'd barter life for
And with them, I gather your gold.
I garner the best of your manhood's prime
Then quit them when shattered in health;
I bring to heel the ones that you love
And smiling I shear them of wealth.
To garner the wealth that you hold in store
I must keep me surpassing fair,
For the life that I lead is an open book
And the game that I deal is square.
Stop—think of the maids and wives you know
As you drift thru life's subtle game—
How many are dealing as straight as I?
How many can say the same?
You give your all, and you slave your life
In a struggle to hold one man;
You think you're paid if he call you wife
And be true to you for a span.
You keep his house and you bear his child
And you walk with your head held high
But most of his love, and his kisses go
To the woman that you pass by.
The favors you give, I sell for gold,
And men prize what costs them high;
You never will learn that love goes out
With the tear in a woman's eye;
That the patient drudge who sits at home
And learns to save and to mend
Can never hold the light of love
But is doomed to lose in the end.
So I follow the old dishonored trade,
Bedecked in garments fine,
And the cream of the earth is saved for me
In raiment and food and wine.
And life to me is a merry game
Tho, sometimes, I weep and sigh,
For deep down in your heart, do you envy me
The woman that you pass by?
WHY
Why is it Alaskans all come back
When they've quit this land for good?
Why is it that no man stays away
When he's sworn to his friends he would?
Where lies the grip this country hath
All tangled around the heart
That takes a grip that can never slip
And can never be torn apart?
Is it the lure of the summer sunshine
That goes to the head like wine?
Is it the lure of the far flung meadows
Of the shadowy scented pine?
Is it the lure of going where none have gone
Of just being alone in the wild?
Is it the lure of the ancient glaciers
That were old when Christ was a child?
They come here wild, athirst for gold
They would win and run away,
They lose the stake they brought along
And then they have to stay.
Here each one follows his own bent,
The mines, the hills, the mart,
Work's but a name, the end's the same,
The country steals your heart.
There's a lure to the land of the poppy,
There's a lure to the land of your birth,
You swear you abhor it, and yet you'll long for it
As no other land on this earth.
There's the lure of the snow mantled vastness,
There's the lure of each valley and hill,
Of friends that you've met, that you'll never forget
And you'll want to come back, and you will.
AND STILL I LIKE ALASKA
I've tramped across her endless miles of tundra,
I've rafted all her rapid flowing streams,
She's kept me on the hummer,
I've fought mosquits in summer
And "siwashed" neath Aurora's wintry beams,
And still, I like Alaska.
I went a winter once on pay streak bacon,
I've gone a year on nothing much but beans,
I've squandered all my time checks,
The kind they give us roughnecks,
And haven't got a dollar in my jeans,
And still, I like Alaska.
I got a stake one time and wandered Outside,
And I'm telling you I surely put on "dog,"
But they got in between me and my poke
They sure did clean me
And I hit for Dixon's Entrance, on the "hog,"
And still, I like Alaska.
I don't suppose a man will live to beat it,
Some day we'll quit this land of ice and snow,
And when the Devil gits us,
And finds a place that fits us,
And we're working on the sulphur beds below,
I know I'll like Alaska.