"Indeed I will," I said.

He suddenly became grave.

"If I only could take the literary game seriously I might make good. But I'm too much of a 'farceur.' Well, one day we'll see. Maybe the North will inspire me. Maybe I'll yet become the Spokesman of the Frozen Silence, the Avatar of the Great White Land."

He strutted up and down, inflating his chest.

"Have you framed up any dope lately?" asked the Prodigal.

"Why, yes; only this morning, while I was eating my beans and bacon, I dashed off a few lines. I always write best when I'm eating. Want to hear them?"

He drew from his pocket an old envelope.

"They were written to the order of Stillwater Willie. He wants to present them to one of the Labelle Sisters. You know--that fat lymphatic blonde, Birdie Labelle. It is short and sweet. He wants to have it engraved on a gold-backed hand-mirror he's giving her.

"I see within my true love's eyes The wide blue spaces of the skies; I see within my true love's face The rose and lily vie in grace; I hear within my true love's voice The songsters of the Spring rejoice.

Oh, why need I seek Nature's charms-- I hold my true love in my arms.

"How'll that hit her? There's such a lot of natural beauty about Birdie."

"Do you get much work?" I asked.

"No, it's dull. Poetry's rather a drug on the market up here. It's just a side-line. For a living I clean shoes at the 'Elight' Barbershop--I, who have lingered on the sunny slopes of Parnassus, and quenched my soul-thirst at the Heliconian spring--gents' tans a specialty."

"Did you ever publish a book?" I asked.

"Sure! Did you never read my 'Rhymes of a Rustler'? One reviewer would say I was the clear dope, the genuine eighteen-carat, jewelled-movement article; the next would aver I was the rankest dub that ever came down the pike. They said I'd imitated people, people I'd never read, people I'd never heard of, people I never dreamt existed. I was accused of imitating over twenty different writers. Then the pedants got after me, said I didn't conform to academic formulas, advised me to steep myself in tradition. They talked about form, about classic style and so on. As if it matters so long as you get down the thing itself so that folks can see it, and feel it go right home to their hearts. I can write in all the artificial verse forms, but they're mouldy with age, back numbers.

Forget them. Quit studying that old Greek dope: study life, modern life, palpitating with colour, crying for expression. Life! Life! The sunshine of it was in my heart, and I just naturally tried to be its singer."

"I say," said the Prodigal from the bunk where he was lounging, in a haze of cigarette smoke, "read us that thing you did the other day, 'The Last Supper.'"

The Pote's eyes twinkled with pleasure.

"All right," he said. Then, in a clear voice, he repeated the following lines:

"THE LAST SUPPER.

Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, And the mouth so mocking gay; A wanton you to the finger tips, That break men's hearts in play; A thing of dust I have striven for, Honour and Manhood given for, Headlong for ruin driven for-- And this is the last, you say:

Drinking your wine with dainty sips, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips.

Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, Long have you held your sway; I have laughed at your merry quips, Now is my time to pay.

What we sow we must reap again; When we laugh we must weep again; So to-night we will sleep again, Nor wake till the Judgment Day.

'Tis a prison wine that your palate sips, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips.

Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips, Down on your knees and pray; Pray your last ere the moment slips, Pray ere the dark and the terror grips, And the bright world fades away: Pray for the good unguessed of us, Pray for the peace and rest of us.

Here comes the Shape in quest of us, Now must we go away--

You and I in the grave's eclipse, Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips."

Just as he finished there came a knock at the door, and a young man entered. He had the broad smiling face of a comedian, and the bulgy forehead of a Baptist Missionary. The Pote introduced him to me.

"The Yukon Yorick."

"Hello," chuckled the newcomer, "how's the bunch? Don't let me stampede you. How d'ye do, Horace! Glad to meet you." (He called everybody Horace.) "Just come away from a meeting of my creditors. What's that?

Have a slab of booze? Hardly that, old fellow, hardly that. Don't tempt me, Horace, don't tempt me. Remember I'm only a poor working-girl."

He seemed brimming over with jovial acceptance of life in all its phases. He lit a cigar.

"Say, boys, you know old Dingbats the lawyer. Ha, yes. Well, met him on Front Street just now. Says I: 'Horace, that was a pretty nifty spiel you gave us last night at the Zero Club.' He looked at me all tickled up the spine. Ha, yes. He was pleased as Punch. 'Say, Horace,' I says, 'I'm on, but I won't give you away. I've got a book in my room with every word of that speech in it.' He looked flabbergasted. So I have--ha, yes, the dictionary."

He rolled his cigar unctuously in his mouth, with many chuckles and a histrionic eye.

"No, don't tempt me, Horace. Remember, I'm only a poor working-girl.

Thanks, I'll just sit down on this soap-box. Knew a man once, Jobcroft was his name, Charles Alfred Jobcroft, sat down on a custard pie at a pink tea; was so embarrassed he wouldn't get up. Just sat on till every one else was gone. Every one was wondering why he wouldn't budge: just sat tight."

"I guess he _cussed hard_," ventured the Prodigal.

"Oh, Horace, spare me that! Remember I'm only a poor working-girl.

Hardly that, old fellow. Say, hit me with a slab of booze quick. Make things sparkle, boys, make things sparkle."

He drank urbanely of the diluted alcohol that passed for whisky.

"Hit me easy, boys, hit me easy," he said, as they refilled his glass.

"I can't hold my hootch so well as I could a few summers ago--and many hard Falls. Talking about holding your 'hooch,' the best I ever saw was a man called Podstreak, Arthur Frederick Podstreak. You couldn't get that man going. The way he could lap up the booze was a caution. He would drink one bunch of boys under the table, then leave them and go on to another. He would start in early in the morning and keep on going till the last thing at night. And he never got hilarious even; it didn't seem to phase him; he was as sober after the twentieth drink as when he started. Gee! but he was a wonder."

The others nodded their heads appreciatively.

"He was a fine, healthy-looking chap, too; the booze didn't seem to hurt him. Never saw such a constitution. I often watched him, for I suspected him of 'sluffing,' but no! He always had a bigger drink than every one else, always drank whisky, always drank it neat, and always had a chaser of water after. I said to myself: 'What's your system?' and I got to studying him hard. Then, one day, I found him out."

"What was it?"

"Well, one day I noticed something. I noticed he always held his glass in a particular way when he drank, and at the same time he pressed his stomach in the region of the 'solar plexus.' So that night I took him aside.

"'Look here, Podstreak,' I said, 'I'm next to you.' I really wasn't, but the bluff worked. He grew white.

"'For Heaven's sake, don't give me away,' he cried; 'the boys'll lynch me.'

"'All right,' I said; 'if you'll promise to quit.'

"Then he made a full confession, and showed me how he did it. He had an elastic rubber bag under his shirt, and a tube going up his arm and down his sleeve, ending in a white nozzle inside his cuff. When he went to empty his glass of whisky he simply pressed some air out of the rubber bag, put the nozzle in the glass, and let it suck up all the whisky. At night he used to empty all the liquor out of the bag and sell it to a saloon-keeper. Oh, he was a phoney piece of work.

"'I've been a total abstainer (in private) for seven years,' he told me.

'Yes,' I said, 'and you'll become one in public for another seven.' And he did."

Several men had dropped in to swell this Bohemian circle. Some had brought bottles. There was a painter who had been "hung," a Mus Bac., an ex-champion amateur pugilist, a silver-tongued orator, a man who had "suped" for Mansfield, and half a dozen others. The little cabin was crowded, the air hazy with smoke, the conversation animated. But mostly it was a monologue by the inimitable Yorick.

Suddenly the conversation turned to the immorality of the town.