There winters of long hungry hardships,
  Summers of pest-ridden heat;
Dicing with death for a grub stake,
  Risking his life for meat.
Tossing away his young manhood,
  Giving the best of his youth
To the holes that he bedrocked on wildcats,
  Where gold was scarcer than truth.

Ten years spent in Alaska
  Gray haired, with cheeks all atan,
Beaten, but still unconquered.
  Flat broke, but still a man,
Digging and sinking and drifting,
  Trying to locate the "pay,"
With each hole a fresh disappointment—
  Yet hoping to strike it next day.

Scorning the letters recalling,
  Forgetting the friends he had known,
Turning his back on the Outside,
  Facing the future alone.
A Cabin, a Squaw, and a Fishwheel,
  A bend in the river's flow,
A band of half-naked breed kids—
  He stayed there, a sourdough.

When the stars from the skies have fallen
  And the smoke of the world's cleared away;
When Saint Peter marks "30" in Life's Book
  And we meet there on Judgment Day;
When our trials and troubles are ended
  And we're wise to the best and the worst;
When the time has arrived that the wise ones
  Have told us the last shall be first;

When the men who've made good are rewarded
  And the losers are turned loose in Hell;
That's the time that a lot will be learning
  The true reason and cause that they fell.
And I wonder when Peter gets busy
  As he works out the tenement plan,
And when Heaven's thrown free for location
  Will he confine the locations to man?

If he does, my claim's open for jumping
  For I can't figure Heaven complete,
If the dim distant trails of the sky land
  Are not pattered by malamutes' feet.
Cause I know it would never seem home-like
  No matter how golden the strand,
If I lose out that pal-loving feeling
  Of a malamute's nose in my hand.

And it's that way with lots of Alaskans
  These men of our own last frontier,
Who tear into nature unaided
  And who scarce know the meaning of fear.
Who live on lone creeks all alone here
  Where the living and dying are hard,
And where oft times their only companion
  Is a malamute pup for a pard.

He's a real chum with things coming easy,
  He's a pal with things breaking tough,
He's a hell-roaring fighting companion
  When somebody starts something rough.
He's a true friend in sorrow and sickness
  And he doesn't mind hunger or cold,
And he's really the only one pardner
  You can trust when you uncover gold.

He's a guard you can trust at the sluice box,
  And he'll watch by your cache thru the night,
And if some cheechako tries to molest it
  That cheechako's in for a fight.
As a pardner he's silent, but cheerful
  With never a kick 'bout the trails
And if it wasn't for him in the winter
  There never would be any mails.

He pulls on our sleds in the winter
  He's first in the rushing stampede
He goes where a horse couldn't travel
  And besides that he rustles his feed.
He takes a pack saddle in summer
  And follows us off thru the hills
And when we go short on the grub pile
  He shares up whatever he kills.

'Twas a malamute first scaled the Chilkoot
  At the time of the great Klondike charge;
'Twas a malamute first saw Lake Bennett
  And left his footprints at La Barge;
They hauled the first mail into Dawson,
  That Land of the Old Timer's dream,
And when Wada first drove in from Fairbanks
  He was driving a malamute team.

They broke the first trail into Bettles
  With no guide save the lone Northern Star;
They freighted next year to Kantishna
  And from there to the famed Chandelar.
They know the long trail to Innoko,
  Tacotna and Iditarod too,
For there's never a Camp in the Northland
  But what these same malamutes knew.

They brought the first sport to the Nome Beach
  Where they showed up in action and deed
That the North dog is game as they make them
  And besides that has plenty of speed.
He came home with the bacon from Candle
  Like a bat out of Hell, thru the snow,
And the plunger that cashed in his "out tab"
  Was his pardner, the Old Sourdough.

So it seems to me kind of unfair now
  As we drift toward that permanent Camp
Where the angels are running a dance hall
  And a millionaire grades with a tramp;
Where the trails are located on pay dirt
  And a grub stake can never expire—
Well, if they shut out my dog, they can keep it
  And I'll "siwash" it, down by Hell's Fire.

They herald the growth of the Northland
  And progress is marked by their trail;
A railroad now goes where they brought out
  The Seward-Iditarod mail.
He's first in the growth of Alaska
  And without him this land would be lost,
For there's never a stream in this country
  That the malamutes' trail has not crossed.

But you can't tell me God would have Heaven
  So a man couldn't mix with his friends;
That we're doomed to meet disappointment
  When we come to the place the trail ends.
That would be a low-grade sort of Heaven
  And I'd never regret a damned sin
If I mush up to the gates, white and pearly,
  And they don't let my malamute in.

Some sigh for the breath of the desert
  Where the stifling heat waves blow;
Some pant for the trackless tundra
  And the sting of the cold and snow;
Some long for the wash of a sultry sea
  As it breaks on a tropic shore;
Some pine for the breeze of the northern seas
  And the sound of the Arctic's roar.

The things that men love be countless
  But they're seldom the same with two,
For the things I care for most of all
  Might never appeal to you.
Some men run to wine and woman,
  Some long for a wife and a home,
And he drifts with the tide, unsatisfied,
  Who leaves these things to roam.

For he hates the sands of the desert
  And the slimy tropic south,
Or his dreams of a northern fortune
  Are as ashes in his mouth.
He loses the best life holds for man
  His existence means discontent
Still he goes his way, until comes the day
  When he quits it—a life misspent.

YET

Some sigh for the breath of the desert
  Where the stifling heat waves blow;
Some pant for the trackless tundra
  And the sting of the cold and snow;
Some long for the wash of a sultry sea
  As it breaks on a tropic shore;
Some pine for the breeze of the northern seas
  And the sound of the Arctic's roar.

Where the ragged, snow-capped saw tooth
  Cuts the azure