Thus for a time he ruled this land
Where few might venture forth,
For never a man-made law held good
From Dixon's Entrance north.
He held this land in his claw tipped grip,
And he took his pay in souls,
Theirs was the blame, for they played his game,
And they paid for it on hell's coals.
But the Devil lost when the law came in,
Or the men who made the laws,
The gambling hall and the dance hall went
And the Devil was forced to pause.
For the life in the land develops men,
Men of an alien breed,
A new made lot, that couldn't be bought,
And strangers to graft or greed.
They loosed the land from the Devil's grip,
They pierced the hills with their trails,
They flagged the rocks at the harbor's mouth,
They paved the way for the rails.
They builded a school where the dance hall stood
And they brought in their children and wives;
They gave their all to the new land's call
And some of them gave their lives.
Now the pimp and the brothel have passed away
And the gambling hall is a dream;
A railroad train now follows the trail
Where we followed a nine-dog team.
A thousand stamps now sing their song
Where we panned on the gold shot ledge,
And a picture show now marks the line
That once was the frontier's edge.
The milch cows graze where the brown bear roamed
And a saw mill sings its lay
On a bar in the Yukon River
Where we panned one summer day.
They are raising wheat where the bull moose grazed
In the summers of long ago,
It seems kind of strange when we note the change,
But we'd rather have it so.
Yet, sometimes we dream as we camp at night
In the bend of the river's flow
Of the land that was, of the land we knew
In the days of the long ago.
The wild free land that bred the men
Who fought with might and main
And took this land from the Devil's hand,
And we'd like to see it again,
A WOMAN, A DOG, AND A WALNUT TREE
This Land is the orphan kiddie
Of the group with their stars in the Flag,
And it's looked on Outside as an alien,
Where its treatment makes honest men gag.
It's treated the same as the harlot
Who barters her body for pelf
And carries it home to her master
And is told to look after herself.