The Spell of the Yukon | Page 6

a flag unfurled, As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of
the world."
This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive; That
surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive. Dissolute,
damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, This is the Will
of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!
The Parson's Son
This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone, On
the wild, weird nights, when the Northern Lights
shoot up from the
frozen zone,
And it's sixty below, and couched in the snow the
hungry huskies moan:
"I'm one of the Arctic brotherhood, I'm an old-time pioneer. I came

with the first -- O God! how I've cursed
this Yukon -- but still I'm
here.
I've sweated athirst in its summer heat, I've frozen and starved
in its cold; I've followed my dreams by its thousand streams,
I've
toiled and moiled for its gold.
"Look at my eyes -- been snow-blind twice; look where my foot's half
gone; And that gruesome scar on my left cheek,
where the frost-fiend
bit to the bone.
Each one a brand of this devil's land,
where I've
played and I've lost the game,
A broken wreck with a craze for
`hooch', and never a cent to my name.
"This mining is only a gamble; the worst is as good as the best; I was in
with the bunch and I might have come out right on top with the rest;
With Cormack, Ladue and Macdonald -- O God! but it's hell to think
Of the thousands and thousands I've squandered on cards and women
and drink.
"In the early days we were just a few, and we hunted and fished around,
Nor dreamt by our lonely camp-fires of the wealth that lay under the
ground. We traded in skins and whiskey, and I've often slept under the
shade Of that lone birch tree on Bonanza, where the first big find was
made.
"We were just like a great big family, and every man had his squaw,
And we lived such a wild, free, fearless life beyond the pale of the law;
Till sudden there came a whisper, and it maddened us every man, And I
got in on Bonanza before the big rush began.
"Oh, those Dawson days, and the sin and the blaze,
and the town all
open wide!
(If God made me in His likeness, sure He let the devil
inside.) But we all were mad, both the good and the bad, and as for the
women, well -- No spot on the map in so short a space has hustled more
souls to hell.
"Money was just like dirt there, easy to get and to spend.
I was all
caked in on a dance-hall jade, but she shook me in the end. It put me
queer, and for near a year I never drew sober breath, Till I found myself

in the bughouse ward with a claim staked out on death.
"Twenty years in the Yukon, struggling along its creeks;
Roaming its
giant valleys, scaling its god-like peaks;
Bathed in its fiery sunsets,
fighting its fiendish cold --
Twenty years in the Yukon . . . twenty
years -- and I'm old.
"Old and weak, but no matter, there's `hooch' in the bottle still. I'll hitch
up the dogs to-morrow, and mush down the trail to Bill. It's so long
dark, and I'm lonesome -- I'll just lay down on the bed; To-morrow I'll
go . . . to-morrow . . . I guess I'll play on the red.
". . . Come, Kit, your pony is saddled.
I'm waiting, dear, in the
court . . .
. . . Minnie, you devil, I'll kill you
if you skip with that
flossy sport . . .
. . . How much does it go to the pan, Bill? . . .
play
up, School, and play the game . . .
. . . Our Father, which art in
heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . ."
This was the song of the parson's son, as he lay in his bunk alone, Ere
the fire went out and the cold crept in,
and his blue lips ceased to
moan,
And the hunger-maddened malamutes had torn him flesh from
bone.
The Call of the Wild
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze
on, Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved
to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon, Black canyons where the
rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley
with the
green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a
something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then
for God's sake go and do it; Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay
the cost.
Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation, The