Ballads of a Cheechako | Page 7

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