The Shooting of Dan McGrew

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 luch 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 and 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 to 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;
Whit 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 watching him was the lady
     that's known as Lou.

His eyes wend 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 elso on
     the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there
     like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed in 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 mountians hemmed you in with a silence you most
     could hear;
With only the howl of a timber would, and you camped there
     in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the
     muck called gold;
While overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights
     swept in bars?--
Then you've a hunch of 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
     through and through--
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan
     McGrew.

The must almost died away..then it burst like a pent-up
     flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eys 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 a 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 in 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 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.