Only three and a starving dog, surveying, my God! my God!
And all the rest who had started were lying beneath the sod.
All gone but three, the three of us, it couldn't be very long
Before the wild would sing again its cursedly mocking song.
It seemed as though we once had dreamed of the
careless survey crew
Who started in the summertime with cares that are ever few—
The reckless men who tame the wild, encamping around its throne;
We tried to think, but gave it up and waited the end alone.
We struggled when at first it came, the foe that had
dogged our trail;
But struggling turned to weariness; we knew that we
soon must fail.
The very atmosphere seemed full of death in its every form,
And one by one the fellows to Eternity's rest were borne.
A teamster started back for help; we wondered it never came.
Found frozen in the wilderness, his horses had fallen lame.
The wolves or devil's imps from hell had scented him
in his plight;
Watching him far in the silence, fighting his desperate fight.
Young Johnson was the first to go; we buried him by the hill,
Farewelling to endless silence, the boy lying quiet and still.
The first, I said! God in Heaven, how many have gone
since then!
An axeman made the number nine, the transitman made it ten.
With caches burned and water bad, and fever upon our trail,
We tried to return ere winter would grip us within the veil.
Wondering who was selected, soon to have yielded the price,
The price of a nation's comfort, a deal with the loaded dice.
At last 'twas only Joe and me with Cromarty and the pup,
With faces soft as putty and a hope we had given up.
I thought of Green whom we'd never seen since starting
away for help,
And wondered if our bones they'd find in Spring when
the snow should melt.
When at last we could fight no more, blinded and
fevered and ill,
Envying little Johnson, who was sleeping beside the hill,
We stretched our hands and tried to speak; forever
good-bye we said,
Surrendering to the wilderness, and praying we'd soon be dead.
Looking back over all the years, it seemed that I died that night,
Leaving the silence and anguish, the moon that was shining bright.
Found by an Indian trapper, cared for by hearts that were true,
Wresting us far from the shadow, nursed by the squaws
of the Sioux.
Sitting to-day in a smoker, viewing the oldest survey,
Don't feel inclined to discredit things I have tried to portray.
God only knows of the hardness, blizzards that robbed
us of sight,
Stumbling on with an effort, turning the day into night.
This is the story of fellows lying afar in the gloom,
The fellows who never faltered, e'en on the edge of the doom.
Trying to smile through the fever, knowing the finish
had come;
Giving their lives in the service, losing the fight they
had won.