Part 4

"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 bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze? Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation, And learned to know the desert's little ways? Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the ranges, Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through? Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes? Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver? (Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.) Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river, Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize? Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races, Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew? And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses? Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory, Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole? "Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story, Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul? Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders? (You'll never hear it in the family pew.) The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things -- Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching, They have soaked you in convention through and through; They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching -- But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you. Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us; Let us journey to a lonely land I know. There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us, And the Wild is calling, calling... let us go.

The Lone Trail

Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it, Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit. Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by; The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.

The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide; And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan, Yet you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on. And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs, And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave with the fever, and they rob the corpse for its clothes. And sometimes it leads to the Northland, and the scurvy softens your bones, And your flesh dints in like putty, and you spit out your teeth like stones. And sometimes it leads to a coral reef in the wash of a weedy sea, And you sit and stare at the empty glare where the gulls wait greedily. And sometimes it leads to an Arctic trail, and the snows where your torn feet freeze, And you whittle away the useless clay, and crawl on your hands and knees. Often it leads to the dead-pit; always it leads to pain; By the bones of your brothers ye know it, but oh, to follow you're fain. By your bones they will follow behind you, till the ways of the world are made plain.

Bid good-by to sweetheart, bid good-by to friend; The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow to the end. Tarry not, and fear not, chosen of the true; Lover of the Lone Trail, the Lone Trail waits for you.

The Pines

We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines; The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines, And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.

On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed; We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast; From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast.

To the niggard lands were we driven, 'twixt desert and floes are we penned; To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend; Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end;

Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of death-like sleep; Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing deep; Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep.

Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go!

We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar; The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar; But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.

We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie; From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe to the peaks that tusk the sky, We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a golden eye.

Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free: Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see; A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.

Sun, moon and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly stand, Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand, Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?

The Lure of Little Voices

There's a cry from out the loneliness -- oh, listen, Honey, listen! Do you hear it, do you fear it, you're a-holding of me so? You're a-sobbing in your sleep, dear, and your lashes, how they glisten -- Do you hear the Little Voices all a-begging me to go?