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The Shooting of
Dan McGrew
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A bunch of the boys were whooping it
up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's
known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was
fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and
loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the
strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for
drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we
searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan
McGrew.
There's men that somehow just grip
your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in
hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day
is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell
one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head -- and there watching him was the lady
that's known as Lou.
His eyes went rubbering round the
room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering
gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on
the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there
like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw
him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands -- my God! but
that man could play.
Were you ever out in the Great
Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most
could HEAR;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the
cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck
called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights
swept in bars? --
Then you've a haunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night
and the stars.
And hunger not of the belly kind,
that's banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it
means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a
roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's love
--
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true --
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, -- the lady
that's known as Lou.)
Then on a sudden the music changed,
so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it
once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a
devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away
and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you
through and through --
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous
Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away . . .
then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were
blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a
frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . . then the music stopped
with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most
peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed
with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his
voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none
of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my
poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan
McGrew."
Then I ducked my head, and the
lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay
stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan
McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the
lady that's known as Lou.
These are the simple facts of the
case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch",
and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two
--
The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke -- was the
lady that's known as Lou.
The illustration above is
by Marilen Van Nimwegen- Courtesy of Hancock House Publishers
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