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The Shooting of Dan McGrew
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Hank Snow
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1
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
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The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
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Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
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And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
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When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
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There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
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He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
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Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
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There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
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But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
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There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
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And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
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With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
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As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
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Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
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And I turned my head -- and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou.
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His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
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Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
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The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
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So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
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In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
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Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands -- my God! but that man could play.
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Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
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And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could HEAR;
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With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
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A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
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While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? --
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Then you've a haunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars.
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And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,
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But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
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For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
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But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's love --
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A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true --
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(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, -- the lady that's known as Lou.)
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Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
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But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
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That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
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That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
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'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and through --
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"I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan McGrew.
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The music almost died away . . . then it burst like a pent-up flood;
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And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
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The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
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And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . . then the music stopped with a crash,
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And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
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In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
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Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
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And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;
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But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,
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That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew."
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Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,
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And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
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Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
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While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.
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These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
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They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch", and I'm not denying it's so.
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I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two --
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The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke -- was the lady that's known as Lou.
Robert Service - Dangerous Dan McGrew
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