Classic Poem

You'll wonder, if you go to Thirteenth Lake
In winter when the ice is hard and clear,
At the strange noises you will hear at night
When the wind blows. A wildcat's scream, you'd say,
Or some man driven crazy with black fear.
In winter when the Northwest wind blows hard,
Somehow it gets in under the thick ice
And whistles through each airhole down the lake,
And folks will say — unless you pin them down — :
" That's old Sabeal a-crying for his gold. "
I'll tell the story — yes, I'll fill my pipe.

Some lumberjacks can love a skidding horse
Better than humans, or a big log team
They winter with — why, you could call some 'jacks
Hard names and they would take them as a joke.
But say their horses weren't as good as those
Another shanty stabled, you'd strike fire.
There's shanty boys who'll coddle a pet pipe,
Or chewing plug, or some old fiddle string
They tune up in the bunk house after grub,
And others yarn about a girl back home, —
But French Sav'ree, he only loved his axe.

Or so we thought; he cradled it at night
Up in his bunk. When the sun caught the blade
'Twas double-bitted, steel-blue, spitting fire.
He ripped it back and forwards all the day.
He was the nerviest chopper that we had,
And the Boss favored him because of it.
He'd keep two horses skidding after him
And never miss a stroke; the blue axe bit
Both ways when he was " limbing " in the woods.
Oh, he was cordy, muscles just like wire,
But sullen. What we knew about Sav'ree
You could speak in one breath; he never said
Where he had come from, places that he'd worked
(Though we had heard he came from Canada),
What folks he had, or maybe none at all.
He never spent a penny of his pay;
He drew it from the " Company " in coin
And buried it somewhere till we broke camp.

Now on the Lake down by the long sand-bar
Lived old Sabeal, the last one of his tribe
In the North Woods — a fighting Iroquois,
And Sav'ree, somehow knowing Indian ways,
Made friends with him; we used to see him there
Helping the old man catch fish through the ice.
Once every week our shanty cook went down
To take Sabeal a pail of Christian grub.
One night she didn't find him at the hut;
The ashes of his fires were damp with frost;
There'd been no fire for close on to a week.

Now every lumberjack from the Thirteenth
To Newcomb Lake knew that the old man kept
A bag of gold hid, in the log shack there.
He'd been a trapper (fox furs they come high,
And mink and otter and the young lynx skins);
He always made the traders pay him gold.
You hate to think ill of a shanty mate,
But some dark feeling rolled up in our minds,
And we kept wondering about French Sav'ree.

Come Spring, when we were peeling hemlock bark;
The Sheriff rode in on the logging trail
And after supper when we all bunked in
He cornered us, turned round and barred the door,
And said: " I've come in here to get a man.
I've got my guns; don't spring a game on me.

You'll have to give him up — a lumber-jack
Killed old Sabeal; his body's floated down
The Outlet, someone knocked him in the head.
You lumber-jacks know who — now out with it. "

We swore we didn't know a thing; we cursed
The dirty coward. All the while we talked
Sav'ree stretched in his bunk beside his axe.
The Sheriff said: " There's one man in this camp
Guilty as hell; I'll take you all unless
You give him up. "

That moment on the edge
Of his pole bunk, Sav'ree's face showed as white
As rabbit fur against a black spruce tree.
He tumbled out down on the floor and screamed:
" 'Twas I, Sav'ree. . . . I keel heem with my axe,
He was so ol' — and I — see, I am young
And he had money, much, much money hid.
Why should he live and I lose everything
Because I cannot find a bag of gold?
That ol', ol' man — Now take me, keel me too.
He calls me every night; I hear him groan
And sleep comes not to me; he walks out there.
Take me away — 'twas I — 'twas I, Sav'ree. "

The Sheriff got the story out of him
After he put the bracelets on his wrists.
He loved some girl up on the Saguenay.
She had two lovers; one was French Sav'ree,
But he was poor. Her father drove him out.
He must find yellow gold to woo and wed.

It's dangerous to love things that aren't alive;
They're always sure to get the best of you.
'Twas that keen, wicked, blue-lipped axe of his
That leaped out quicker than Sav'ree's weak will,
And did the deed that drove him raving mad.

The old lake creaking in the winter gales
Cried to him " Murder " and " Sav'ree — Sav'ree " ;
Tortured him slowly till the Sheriff's voice
Came like a freshet on an icy jam.
. . . . . . .

I saw Sav'ree once since our lumbering days
A-building road up in a convict camp.
Beaten and doglike, sullen as the rock
He hammered, still there lay within his eyes
Something that froze the words down in my throat,
And for a minute I knew that he saw —
The girl he'd loved up on the Saguenay.
Your Frenchy men — now say — their dreams die hard!