Part 3

We climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then he seemed to brood, And I watched him there like a fox a hare, for I knew it was not good. And sure enough in the dim dawn-light I missed him from the tent, And a fresh trail broke through the crusted snow, and I knew not where it went. But I followed it o'er the seamless waste, and I found him at shut of day, Naked there as a new-born babe--so I left him where he lay.

Day after day was sinister, and I fought fierce-eyed despair, And I clung to life, and I struggled on, I knew not why nor where. I packed my grub in short relays, and I cowered down in my tent, And the world around was purged of sound like a frozen continent. Day after day was dark as death, but ever and ever at nights, With a brilliancy that grew and grew, blazed up the Northern Lights.

They rolled around with a soundless sound like softly bruised silk; They poured into the bowl of the sky with the gentle flow of milk. In eager, pulsing violet their wheeling chariots came, Or they poised above the Polar rim like a coronal of flame. From depths of darkness fathomless their lancing rays were hurled, Like the all-combining search-lights of the navies of the world. There on the roof-pole of the world as one bewitched I gazed, And howled and grovelled like a beast as the awful splendors blazed. My eyes were seared, yet thralled I peered through the parka hood nigh blind; But I staggered on to the lights that shone, and never I looked behind.

There is a mountain round and low that lies by the Polar rim, And I climbed its height in a whirl of light, and I peered o'er its jagged brim; And there in a crater deep and vast, ungained, unguessed of men, The mystery of the Arctic world was flashed into my ken. For there these poor dim eyes of mine beheld the sight of sights-- That hollow ring was the source and spring of the mystic Northern Lights.

Then I staked that place from crown to base, and I hit the homeward trail. Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred, and I crawled like a sickly snail. In that vast white world where the silent sky communes with the silent snow, In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and fro. But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me to the sea, And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and they fed and sheltered me. They fed the feeble scarecrow thing that stumbled out of the wild With the ravaged face of a mask of death and the wandering wits of a child-- A craven, cowering bag of bones that once had been a man. They tended me and they brought me back to the world, and here I am.

Some say that the Northern Lights are the glare of the Arctic ice and snow; And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems to know. But I'll tell you now--and if I lie, may my lips be stricken dumb-- It's a MINE, a mine of the precious stuff that men call radium. I'ts a million dollars a pound, they say, and there's tons and tons in sight. You can see it gleam in a golden stream in the solitudes of night. And it's mine, all mine--and say! if you have a hundred plunks to spare, I'll let you have the chance of your life, I'll sell you a quarter share. You turn it down? Well, I'll make it ten, seeing as you are my friend. Nothing doing? Say! don't be hard--have you got a dollar to lend? Just a dollar to help me out, I know you'll treat me white; I'll do as much for you some day . . . God bless you, sir; good-night.

The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame, When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name; Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head 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.