Heroes

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Title:     Heroes
Author: Yukon Bill [More Titles by Bill]

If ye run up ag'in Carnegie, I'd kind o' thankful be
If he gets a-talkin' of heroes, you'd ring in Sandy McPhee.

Now, Mac don't want no medals--he ain't th' braggin' set;
But what he done back in eighty-one, he's livin' t' tell; you bet!

We was trekin' th' trail t' Forty-Mile; sleepin' in snow-b'ilt caves,
An' the great White Trail we hoofed it on was milestoned jest by graves.

Mac shot on ahead with his dog--itchin' t' make his pile;
Carried his grub-stake on his back. Got there? I should smile!

But th' blizzard struck him; th'r he was, him an' his dog alone----
A week passed by--then his grub give out; but he never made no moan.

His husky died an' he e't his guts; tho't his brain 'ud go----
Then he 'member'd his wife an' kids at home. Who'd hoe their row?

Both feet fruz cle'r int' th' bone! Says he "Fac's is fac's";--
Gangrene sot in--black t' th' knees. Then he ups an' eyes his axe:--

"I ain't," says he, "no great M.D., but I kinder calcalate
To meet this here e-mergency as was sent b' a unkind Fate."

So he humped hisself up ag'in a rock in a little bunch o' trees,
A couple o' hacks with that there axe, an' off went his laigs at th' knees!

And he stumped it int' Forty-Mile! What's that? It ain't true?
It's hard t' b'leeve, I kin onderstand, b' a white-livered skunk like YOU!

But, if old Skibo is huntin' a hero, ther's somethin' in my mind
Says that, if he don't see McPhee, HE MUST BE GOL-DURN'D BLIND!

[The end]
Yukon Bill's poem: Heroes

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