Tillicums of the Trail (continued 3)

Every winter since the Big Stampede, the Mounted Police have patrolled the four hundred miles of wilderness lying between Dawson and Fort McPherson. The latter place consists of a dozen log buildings, on the MacKenzie, far in the Arctic. It is the centre of administration for a hundred thousand square miles of territory. Dawson, the well-known gold-camp, is on the Yukon River, close to the edge of the Arctic Circle. One round trip is made each winter, with dog-teams carrying mail, personal and official, needed to keep that Northern world of Indians, Eskimo, Whites, and half-breeds, in touch with civilization, and to uphold our British traditions of law and order.

The journey is always beset with dangers. One day out, and the members of the patrol know that their lives depend wholly on themselves. They may see no one else for twenty or thirty days. They will go through a vast and lonely land travelling along the wide valleys of frozen rivers, up long narrow gulches filled with snow, over miles of wind-swept mesas, and across high, treeless, mountain ridges. "All goes well, if all goes well," is a proverb of the trail, for in winter-time there, death is always near. His opportunity comes easily in numerous ways. A gashed foot cut by a slip of the axe in getting firewood, a sprained ankle, an unsheltered camp with a blizzard in the night, fog, or wind, or snowstorm, sick dogs or men, short rations, a mile in the wrong direction, all these very simply lead to distress, maiming or death. The greatest and commonest danger comes from the glacial overflows. In winter the creeks freeze solid. This dams back the water in its sources in the banks, until the expulsive force in the hidden springs, deep in the mountains, drives the water out on top of the ice. Even in the most extreme cold you will find in these canyons, under the snow or shoal ice, pools of this overflow water remaining liquid for hours. To get into this with moccasins means an immediate camp and fire, otherwise there will be frozen feet and permanent crippling, and if one is alone and dry wood not at hand, it is fatal. All these and more are the chances the experienced "musher" must be prepared to take. No "tenderfoot," in his right senses, would attempt such a long journey, in winter, alone.

It was the morning of December 21st, 1910, that the patrol left Fort McPherson for Dawson. It comprised Inspector Fitzgerald, Constables Taylor and Kinney, and Special Constable Carter, with three dog-teams of five dogs each. They expected to be in Dawson about the beginning of February. They never reached Dawson. Their comrades at Fort McPherson of course gave no anxious thought to them, and when the Dawson search-party came in at close of day on March 22nd, it was with surprise and horror, that they heard of the loss of the whole patrol. Next day the frozen bodies of all four were brought in, those who three months before had set out on that wilderness journey, so keen and strong. They were found within thirty miles of the Fort, but it was a long, long trail of 300 terrible miles that they had travelled.

Towards the end of January the Dawson police commenced to expect the patrol. After the first week in February, they became uneasy. On the 20th February some Fort McPherson Indians arrived in Dawson. One of them, named Esau, had been with the patrol, as guide, to the head of Mountain Creek, where he was discharged on New Year's Day. The Police had lost their way, had come on this camp of Indians and employed Esau to guide them until Fitzgerald was satisfied the party could do without him, when he was dismissed. It was a tragic mistake.

On the 28th February, Supt. Snyder of the Dawson Post, fearing trouble, despatched the relief-party under Corporal Dempster, consisting in addition, of Constables Fyfe and Turner and a half-breed named Charles Stewart. March 12th, on the McPherson side of the Divide, Dempster saw the first sure traces of the lost patrol. In the Big Wind River valley he found a night-camp which had doubtless been made by the missing men. There were one or two empty butter and canned-beef tins lying about and a piece of flour-sack marked, "R.N.W.M. Police, Fort McPherson." The morning of March 16th, they discovered a toboggan and seven sets of dog-harness "cached" about six miles up Mountain Creek. On searching more carefully, a dog's paws and shoulder-blade were found, from the latter of which, the flesh had evidently been cooked and eaten.

Ten miles from Seven-Mile Portage, March 21st, Dempster noticed a blue handkerchief tied to a willow. He went over to it, climbed the bank, and broke through the fringe of willows into the timber. There before his eyes was the end of a chapter in the sad story. In the snow lay the bodies of Constables Kinney and Taylor. A fire had been at their feet. Their camp kettle was half-full of moose-skin, which had been cut up into small pieces and boiled. Dempster's party cut some brush, covered the bodies with it, and went on in the direction of the Fort. He says in his report, "I had now concluded that Fitzgerald and Carter had left these two men in a desperate effort to reach the Fort, and would be found somewhere between this point and McPherson. Next morning, about ten miles further down the river, a trail appeared to lead towards the shore and while feeling in the new snow for the old tracks underneath, we kicked up a pair of snow-shoes. We then climbed the bank and a little way back in the woods we came on the bodies of the other two men. This was Wednesday the 22nd March. Carter had died first, for he had been laid out upon his back, his hands crossed upon his breast and a handkerchief placed over his face. Fitzgerald lay near him."

Dempster and his party then went on to Fort McPherson arriving about six o'clock in the afternoon the same day. There help was obtained and the remains were brought in. On March 28th, the four bodies were laid side by side, in the same grave. The funeral service was read by the Rev. C. E. Whittaker, the Church of England missionary at that remote point. A firing-party of five men fired the usual volleys over the grave. The brave men of the lost patrol had all come to their last camping-ground.

Fitzgerald's diary of the fatal journey was found. He had kept it up to Sunday, February 5th, when it ceased. Between the lines, for there is no sign of weakening in the written words, one can read the pathetic story of a long struggle against death from starvation and exposure, an heroic battle, maintained to the last in terrible agony. Let me quote but six entries from the diary. It was carefully written commencing December 21st, the day they left the Fort. It is a sad but thrilling drama extending over fifty days, staged in a mystic, white, winter-land, cruel and lonely, silent too, save for the howl of wolf or roar of mountain storm. Every entry is of absorbing interest, but the quotations suffice to tell of the fateful seven days spent in vainly searching for the pass up Forrest Gulch, and then the brave struggle to retrace their steps to Fort McPherson. Death ever came closer, stalked at last beside them every moment. He had no power to destroy their unconquerable spirits but he finally claimed their weary, worn-out bodies. Here is the chronicle.

"Tuesday, Jan. 17th. Twenty three degrees below zero. Fine in the morning, with a strong gale in the evening. Did not break camp. Sent Carter and Kinney off at 7.15 A.M. to follow a river going south by a little east. They returned at 3.30 P.M. and reported that it ran right up into the mountains, and Carter said it was not the right river. I left at 8.00 A.M. and followed a river running south but could not see any cuttings on it. Carter is completely lost and does not know one river from another. We have now only ten pounds of flour, and eight pounds of bacon, and some dried fish. My last hope is gone (of getting through to Dawson) and the only thing I can do is to return and kill some of the dogs to feed the others and ourselves, unless we can meet some Indians. We have now been a week looking for a river to take us over the divide, but there are dozens of rivers and I am at a loss. I should not have taken Carter's word that he knew the way from Little Wind river."

* * * * *

"Tuesday, Jan. 24th. Fifty-six below. Strong south wind with very heavy mist. Left camp at 7.30, went six miles and found the river overflowed right across. Constable Taylor got in to the waist and Carter to the hips, and we had to go into camp at 11.00 A.M. Cold intense for all the open water. Killed another dog and all hands made a good meal on dog-meat."

* * * * *

"Tuesday, Jan. 31st. Forty-five below. Sixty-two below in the afternoon. Left camp at 7.15 A.M. had to double-up teams for the first mile and a half. Nooned one hour and camped at 4.15 P.M. four miles from Caribou river. Going heavy, travelled part of the time on our old trail, but it was filled in. Skin peeling off our faces and parts of the body, lips all swollen and split. I suppose this is caused by feeding on dog-meat. Everybody feeling the cold very much for want of proper food. Made seventeen miles."

* * * * *

"Wednesday, Feb. 1st. Fifty-one below. Left camp at 7.30 A.M. and camped at 4.30 P.M. on the river where we start around Caribou Born mountain. Killed another dog to-night. This makes eight dogs that we have killed. We have eaten most of them and fed what dried fish we had to the dogs. Sixteen miles."

"Friday, Feb. 3rd. Twenty-six below. Left camp at 7.15 A.M. Men and dogs very thin and cannot travel far. We have gone about 200 miles on dog-meat and have still about 100 miles to go. I think we shall make it all right but will have only three or four dogs left. Fourteen miles."

* * * * *

"Saturday, Feb. 5th. Forty-eight below. Just after noon I broke through shoal ice and had to make fire, found one foot slightly frozen. Killed another dog to-night; have only five dogs now and can only go a few miles a day: everybody breaking out on the body and skin peeling off. Eight miles."

These were his last written words, except his will, scrawled on a torn piece of paper with a cinder from the burnt-out fire by which he died. It read;—"All money in despatch bag and bank, clothes etc., I leave to my beloved mother, Mrs. John Fitzgerald, Halifax. God bless all."

So, in brief, runs the story of the "Lost Patrol." There have been widely-heralded expeditions to North and South Poles. In their months of outfitting and general preparations, these expeditions left nothing undone to ensure safety that science could devise or money buy. They knew they had the eyes of the world upon them with the consequent urge to worthy endeavour. I wish to take no honour from them, but to me there is something finer in the way brave men in lonely places and at dangerous tasks, in civilian as in military life, risk death continually, not for glory, or fame, or riches, but simply in doing their routine of duty year after year. The world takes little notice, save when some startling tragedy occurs, and then soon forgets.

This story is not told in vain if it will remind Canadians of our own noble fellows, who in the wilds of our far-flung northern boundaries are adventuring their lives in these so-called "common" ways. "Their heroic efforts," says Commissioner Perry, "to return to Fort McPherson, have not been exceeded in the annals of Arctic travel. Corporal Dempster's reports show that the unfortunate men were wasted to shadows. All were strong, powerful, young men, and in the best of health and condition, when they left on their ill-fated journey. It is the greatest tragedy which has occurred in this Force during its existence of thirty-seven years. Their loss has been felt most keenly by every member, but we cannot but feel a thrill of pride at their firm endeavour to carry out their duty, and the subsequent prolonged struggle they made to save their lives."

Brave and gallant gentlemen, I salute you!

XII. An Edinburgh Lad

The evening of August 7th, 1918, saw the British troops in France massed under cover along a front of many miles, ready for the morning and the grand attack of August 8th which led to our final victory.

Throughout the vast organization of our allied armies, now all under Gen. Foch, gigantic preparations of microscopic thoroughness had been going on for weeks. Our intentions had been most wonderfully hidden from our foes by all the artifices of elaborately developed camouflage. At night the roads of France back of the line were filled with hundreds of thousands of infantrymen marching to their appointed places; with countless batteries of big guns and little guns, and munitions, moving as required by the great secret plan; with lorries, armoured cars, and tanks, pounding along in almost endless succession through the darkness. In the daytime little movement was to be seen beyond what was usual. Artifices, many and varied, were used to trick our foes, such as fake attacks in Flanders by a platoon or two of Canadians left in the north to mislead the enemy, the Canadian troops being then far south. Altogether it seemed that the Germans were left wholly in the dark as to our purposes. It was the largest and most brilliantly arranged venture in the war. Armistice Day testifies how well the plans were carried through.

Our own corps had been slipping by night into a little patch of timber, on the Roye road, called Gentelles wood. We had been gathered there for two days, lying low but so packed in, that, if the enemy artillery had dropped a single shell anywhere in the woods, it would have decimated a battalion. What a chance they missed! Enough to give old Hindenburg the nightmare if he knows of it. It seemed like another direct intervention of Providence. For weeks before, the Germans had shelled these woods, a little, almost every day, but now, at the very time when a few shells would have materially disarranged our plans, something stayed the hands of the gunners and not a single shell or bomb came near us.

On the 7th, as soon as it was dark enough, the tanks, hidden in the brush at the edge of the wood and by hedges at roadsides, commenced to move to their attack positions. Two score must have passed through our battalion bivouac. The leading tank made its own road crashing through the brush, going over ditches and fallen timber, and turning aside only for the large standing trees. Each driver, hidden away in the tank and peering through the small look-out, could see only the lighted end of his officer's cigarette which was used to guide him in the deep darkness of the trees. No other lights were allowed. When they were gone we too moved forward, deploying to our positions in trenches ready for "zero-hour" next day.

The night passed safely, a momentous night, in which the enemy had his last good chance to spoil our plans and save himself from overwhelming defeat. Just before dawn, through the light morning mist, our artillery barrage came down with infernal noise and destructive effect. It told the enemy that we were going to attack. The German batteries of course replied with damaging precision, but it was too late then to save the day. Our guns lengthened range and the tanks went forward. The other fighting units followed and by sunrise the grand attack had been fully launched up and down the whole British and French front. It was an attack that was to continue victoriously for three months, finally forcing the Germans on Nov. 11th to confess themselves well and thoroughly whipped.

In this splendid affair the Canadian Corps had a place of special honor on the extreme right of the British line, and facing the central attack-area beyond Amiens down the Roye road. Of our own battalions the 43rd was on the right flank linking up with the left wing of the French troops. The "liaison platoon" was half Canadian Camerons and half French "poilus." This junction sector would probably be the place of greatest danger to the success of the whole advance, for there, if anywhere, misunderstanding or conflict in orders might occur leading to a dangerous dislocation in the long line of the Allies. We were very proud of the confidence placed in us. The results show that it was not misplaced.

It was a glorious victory. The tanks cleared up the out-lying German defence posts and enabled our machine-gunners and infantry following them, to put their full strength against the main German positions. Before noon the Hun was on the run. We chased him helter-skelter through fields of yellow grain, across meadows, and down dusty roads, cornered and captured hundreds of his men in orchards and chateaux. It was sunny, summer weather in one of the loveliest parts of France. Our success had surpassed expectations and we were still going on. There were "beaucoup souvenirs." The enemy in his hurry had left a litter of stuff behind him, post-cards half-written, tobacco-pipes half-smoked and still warm, shaving brushes with fresh lather on them, breakfasts commenced but finished elsewhere, if ever finished.

On Aug. 11th, three days after the attack our brigade was camped under the trees beside a chateau which had been a German Divisional Headquarters on Aug. 8th, and was now ten miles behind our line. I remember it distinctly for that day, a Sunday, I had preached my farewell sermon to my battalion. I had been inveigled into asking for a recall to England. They said I needed a rest. Perhaps I did, and then at that time you couldn't tell how much longer the war was to last. If I had foreseen an armistice in twelve weeks I should have done differently. So I was to go to Blighty for a few months, my substitute had reported for duty and there was nothing for me to do but go.

A group of men sat around me beneath the trees, as I lingered that afternoon, chatting about odds and ends of things, leaving the subject that, I think, was uppermost in our minds pretty much untouched, for we were all loth to say good-bye. Somehow the talk turned to stories of clever camouflage suggested by some of our recent experiences and the boys told several good yarns. I outlined an old one I had heard my father tell of the arts of camouflage practised by Indians in his own soldier days in Upper Canada. This elicited enquiries about my father, and how he came to be soldiering in Canada so long ago. It was a story I knew well, and so it was easily told. These men were friends of mine, true and tried, and I knew they would understand and fill in from their hearts the simple outline I gave them of my father's life.

* * * * *

Ever since I can remember, Edinburgh has been to me the fairest city in the world. I am Canadian-born, my mother also, but my father was an Edinburgh man, and my earliest memories are filled with word-pictures of that city drawn in warm tones of affection by a home-sick Scot. Many an hour have I sat at my father's feet, as we gathered around the fire of a winter's evening, listening to his stories. He had a wide range of Indian and soldier anecdotes so dear to a boy's heart, but none of them live so clearly in my recollection as those he had to tell of his birth-place. Long before I knew what geography was I had a fairly intimate knowledge of Edinburgh. Calton Hill, Arthur's Seat, Samson's Ribs, Holyrood Palace, High Street and Princes Street, I had the right location and a true picture of them all. When boy-like I would be building forts with blocks or in the sand, they would always be called Edinburgh Castle.

I knew all his stories except one, and that one was his own life. I heard that too, at last, and it came about in this wise. An important registered letter used to come to father quarterly, containing his soldier's pension. Until I was well along in school I was not specially interested in the envelope or its contents, but one day I read the address as it lay near me on the table, and it was "559 Cpl. G. McDonald, R.C.R." Naturally I became curious. My father, George Pringle, was getting George McDonald's letter and money. My father was honest, I never, of course, questioned that. Still it was a puzzle to my boyish mind. He came into the room, saw what I was doing, and so I asked him to tell me about it. "It must look odd to you, my boy," he said, "and I've been waiting until you were old enough to hear and understand the explanation. To-night after supper, if no visitors come, I'll tell you the reason of it." That evening under the lamplight we gathered around his arm-chair and he told his own story.

"Long ago," he said, "when I was a boy, our family were living very happily in what was then one of the best parts of old Edinburgh. My father was a man of substance and gave us all a good schooling and a trade. Of my mother I shall only say that she was to me the most wonderful and the most beautiful woman in the world. I had a twin brother John and we were very much alike in appearance. When we were fourteen years old our mother died. We mourned as only boys of that age can mourn, with deep grief too poignant for words. Within three years father married again. Our stepmother was an excellent woman and kind to us, and I know now my father did right. But we couldn't bear to have anyone else in our own mother's place. Loyal in our love to her we grew embittered towards our father. There were no "words," but when about seventeen years old we ran away from home, tramped south to London, and there, being Edinburgh tradesmen, soon found work. A year or so and then we got an inkling that father had traced us. Determined not to go back we enlisted in the Rifle Brigade and to hide our identity gave our names as John and George McDonald, our mother's maiden name. You see where our hearts were. Within the year our unit left for Canada, and we had been in barracks at Halifax, Nova Scotia, only a few months when we were paraded one day before the commanding officer, Col. Lawrence. He took us into his own room and there he spoke to us as a friend. He had received a letter eloquent with a father's love for his two wandering laddies. Father had traced us by our Christian names, and our likeness to each other. I think, too, the name McDonald, which we thought would baffle him, only made him more certain. Col. Lawrence read the letter aloud to us, and it moved us deeply. Money enough was enclosed to buy our discharge and pay our passage home. The officer urged us to return. At first we were inclined to yield, but some dour devil of bitterness took control of our hearts and we said we would not go, would accept no money, and wished to have no further communication with our father. Such was the unrelenting reply the colonel would have to send back to Edinburgh. How many, many times has remorse punished me for that unkind decision. Yet we blindly thought that love and loyalty to the mother we had lost made it right that we should turn our backs on our father's outstretched arms. We never heard from him again, and we have lost all trace of our relatives in Scotland.

"You can easily construct the rest of my story. After serving some years more we left the army for a time. I was married to your mother, Mary Cowan, at Murray Harbor South, Prince Edward Island. Shortly after we re-enlisted under our army name in the Royal Canadian Rifles, then a newly organized regiment, with which I served until I finally gave up the soldier life, and settled in Galt under my right name. My service was sufficient to get me a medal and a pension. The pension comes addressed as you have seen, and the medal is similarly inscribed. It is the regimental number that identifies me and the money and medal are rightfully mine. But a thousand pensions can never ease my heart of regrets for the suffering we needlessly inflicted on our father who loved us and whom we loved."

* * * * *

This was the homely story told in my father's words to those kiltie lads that summer afternoon under the apple trees in an alien land. They listened and understood, for every true Scottish heart responds to these stories of our own folk and our homeland.

And it's all the same whether they are from the east coast or the west, the Highlands, or the Islands, or the Borders, city or country-born, the Scot never knows the place Scotland has in his affections until he becomes an exile.

I slipped away after saying farewell, and, with my faithful henchman Macpherson, climbed up on a waiting lorry and was off down the dusty road towards Boulogne, homesick for the men I left behind me.

SEQUEL

It was my privilege to spend the winter of 1919-20 in Edinburgh taking lectures at New College, a glorious year. I had searched the city for traces of my father's people without success, and had almost given up hopes of ever finding them. One day early in the session I was standing in the Common Hall of the college chatting with other students, when one of them named Scott asked me if he might enquire why my father went to Canada, for I had been saying he came from Edinburgh. I gave him a few details and he seemed much interested. Further explanations and his eyes lighted up with excitement. I soon found what caused it. Several eager questions and answers back and forth and I knew that one of my great ambitions had been realized. I had found one of the old Edinburgh Pringles from whom we had been estranged so many years. His mother was a Pringle, the daughter of an older brother of my father's. It was one of the supreme occasions of my life. In our hand-clasp in that college hall under the shadow of the Castle, the separation of nearly a century was ended. Some of you can guess how deeply I was stirred. Fancy or fact, I was certain he had my father's voice and eyes. We opened our hearts to each other and it was pleasant talk. I had reason to be proud of my new-found cousin. He was then assistant-minister in one of the noblest of Edinburgh's many fine churches, "Chalmer's Territorial United Free," commonly called "The West Port." My first sermon in my father's city was preached from his pulpit, and in it I could not forbear telling the congregation of the strange and happy meeting with their minister.

XIII. Last Chance

For three months in the fall of 1918 I served with the 1st Canadian Tanks. Canada had two tank battalions organized late in the war. Neither of them had the good fortune to get to France. The first was composed of volunteer recruits drawn largely from the Universities of Ontario and Quebec, and they were a remarkably keen lot of soldiers. Quite a number of the officers belonged to the faculties of these colleges and many of the men were graduates or undergraduates.

After arrival from Canada they were under canvas for a week or two at Rhyll in Wales, but soon moved into permanent quarters on the Bovington farm in Dorset county. Bovington was a great tank camp. A number of Imperial tank units along with ours were located there for training, with large machine-shops and many auxiliary units. The country immediately around the huts swarmed with soldiers and "herds" of noisy tanks.

I joined the battalion for duty about mid-August and stayed with them until after the Armistice. Those were very happy weeks. Everyone was good to me. Besides I had just come from the turmoil of France, and the quaint, quiet, pastoral beauty of Dorset seemed a haven of peace. I had pleasant times in camp. Then there were exhilarating walks to take with my good friends, Somerville, Smith, Macfarlane, Bobbie Kerr and others, over the downs through miles of purple heather, and along deep hedge-lined country roads to some old-fashioned thatch-roofed village, where we would have tea and a rest before returning. Or of a morning we would walk down the six miles to Lulworth Cove on the coast, three miles of our journey between hedges of giant rhododendron, with the limbs of oak, pine and beech trees forming a leafy arch over our heads. At the Cove hotel we would enjoy one of their famous boiled-lobster dinners, with potatoes, water-cress and lettuce, and a rice-custard dessert. Dorset, too, is a country filled with stirring, historic association recalling frequent battles fought against sea-borne invaders, and many also were the smugglers' stories we heard of this shore so near to France and so filled with coves and caves. There is romance as well as adventure. Thomas Hardy found inspiration in the Dorset folklore for his masterpiece, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." The most imposing castle-ruin I have seen is there, Corfe Castle, visible for miles against the sky. It recalls fierce attack and prolonged siege in the days of Cavalier and Roundhead.

By the beginning of November the battalion was through its training, taking in its written examinations the highest marks in the camp. Soon after came the eagerly-awaited order to mobilize for France. In a few days we had our lorries parked, our kits ready, our fighting "colors" up on our tunics, and our final letters from England sent off home. The day was set, I think Nov. 14th, for our embarkation at a channel port for France.

They would have done great deeds in battle these fine bright lads, but they were not to be given the opportunity. Nov. 11th, 1918, was a dismal day for the Canadian Tank Corps. At eleven o'clock the order, "Cease fire," sounded along our whole line in France and the Armistice emerged into history, blasting their hopes of active service. On a Sunday following I had to preach a sermon of rejoicing to the battalion. It was a parade service so that I had a congregation of 900 men who gave me a perfect hearing, but all the same the sermon was a failure. I knew it would be even if I had been eloquent, and in my heart I was glad that these Canadian boys could not rejoice with me. They were disgusted with their fate. Another day or two and they would have got to France, and that would have been something, even if they hadn't been fortunate enough to get into battle.

From their standpoint it was no occasion for hilarity. They fired no guns, they beat no drums, and generally were a very gloomy-looking lot of fellows. I am enough of a barbarian to like them all the better for it. Later in the week I tried to relieve the situation a little for some of them by telling in the rest-hut one evening what I knew of the naming of one of the famous Klondike creeks.

* * * * *

There is a well-known creek in the North called Last Chance and I shall try to tell you something of its story. It may help you to feel that while you missed the real fighting in France there's still lots of chance of adventure in life for you all. Last Chance is a tributary of Hunker Creek, fifteen miles in the hills back of Dawson. In the rush days a road-house was put up there and named after the creek. Later it was assumed that the creek had got its name from the road-house, and this had been so named because it was the "last chance to get a drink" outward bound on that trail. But here's the real story.

"Old Yank" was the man who gave the creek its name. He was a gambler of that kind who go out into the wilds among giant mountain-peaks, and in far-off, unnamed valleys alone with their pick-axe, shovel, and gold-pan stake their lives on the chance that there is gold in rock or gravel. Who can quarrel with such gambling? There are no marked cards in that game. If they win they win clean, and if they lose, well they've lived a glorious, free life filled with health, hope, and work without a master, and the companionship of a few choice friends.

The old man had come to the time when he knew that shortly his prospecting days would be ended. Then he would land in some Old Man's Home unless he could make a clean-up soon and have enough to save him from that baleful finish. He had made several "stakes" when he was younger in the southern mountains, but he had either thrown his wealth away in the purchase or development of worthless claims, on further prospecting expeditions, or had lost it in a gold camp where he had been fleeced by some of the various kinds of human vultures which always flocked to the gold-diggings, when they proved rich, to prey upon the miners.

He told me a story of how once in the early days in the Caribou he was sitting in a card game with a number of strangers. He had lost half his spring clean-up to them when the police raided the road-house and took them all "in" to stand trial before Judge Begbie. Begbie was a man noted for his swift, stern methods and his keen penetration in court. He didn't interfere with what he called "square" card gambling among a group of miners, but he was a terror to the professional card-sharper. Next day every man pleaded that he was a working miner and had just come in from the hills. Where all were dressed alike in rough clothes it seemed impossible to decide who were telling the truth. Begbie never hesitated. "Show me the palms of your hands," he said, and the constable made them line up with their hands held up, palms out. The judge inspected them rapidly, ordered two men detained and dismissed the others. Those released had callouses on their hands that you can get only by the use of pick and shovel. The two detained, questioned, and sent to penitentiary in New Westminster were soft-handed.

When I first met Yank the sinews of his right hand were so drawn up and stiffened by the jar of the pick through years of work that he could not open his hand. The way he got his fingers around the pick-handle was by shoving the end of it in with his left hand through the curve of thumb and forefinger on his right.

He was busy prospecting in a valley near the Klondike at the time those wonderful gold-fields were discovered. He was only a divide or two away. A squaw-man passing with three Indians on his way to the mouth of the Klondike to fish salmon had stopped a day with him. He advised the man to "pan" here and there, where there was rim-rock showing, as they went along in the creek-bottoms. He himself was getting light prospects and it might be better closer in to the Klondike basin. He asked and was promised that, if they struck anything good, one of them would come back and let him know. They followed his advice and found rich pay on Rabbit Creek, but they failed to keep their promise to the old man whose advice had so enriched them. Yank never knew of the Klondike stampede, until the next year when two strangers, who had got lost, wandered into his valley and told him the amazing news. He put on his pack and left forthwith but he was too late. Hundreds of men from Stewart and Forty-Mile were now located on the best ground and the stream of stampeding "cheechacos" from the outside world was already commencing to flood in. There was nothing left that he thought worth staking. He crossed the ridge from Rabbit Creek, (now called Bonanza), with a heavy heart, heading back to his lonely cabin. Off the divide he came into a narrow gulch which he followed. It widened into a good-sized valley. He was surprised as he went along to see neither cabins nor claim-stakes. He travelled its whole length indeed and found none. Although right in the rich region it had been overlooked. When he got to the mouth of the gulch he saw why, in those first days of hurried staking it had been left untouched, for the valley narrowed into a very small opening where it entered the larger Hunker creek. The stampeders passing up and down Hunker would rarely see the scarcely noticeable break in the hills hidden by the trees, or if they saw it would not think it worth exploring. He lost no time in going back up the creek to the wider part. There he put down a hole near the rim where it was only a few feet to bed-rock and found excellent prospects. He now set about staking Discovery claim. With his axe he cut, about five feet from the ground, a smooth four-inch face on four sides of a small tree in the centre of the valley, and then pencilled on the down-stream side this inscription, "No. 1 Post. Discovery claim. I, Joe. Chronister, claim fifteen hundred feet down-stream, and from base to base, for placer mining purposes," signed his name with date and hour, and the number of his miner's certificate. Then he stepped off five hundred paces roughly downstream through the brush and then "blazed" his second tree as before, marking it, "No. 2 Post, Discovery claim," and writing as on No. 1, with "down-stream" changed to "up-stream."

He camped that night on his claim, and before he lay down on his spruce-bough bed to sleep, he sat awhile by the dying fire dreaming old dreams again. Perhaps this time it would be very rich; it prospected fine but "prospects" were only prospects. "Well," he mused, "old-timer, you're near the end of the game. If there's nothing good under the muck here it will be 'over the hill to the poorhouse' for you. It's your last chance, last chance."

It was with this thought running through his mind that next day he entered the recording office in Dawson, with his good friend the stalwart Capt. Jim McLeod at his side to see that he got square treatment, and recorded discovery on his creek which was named on the government records, "Last Chance," at his request.

It is good to know that Yank's claim was rich. Providence had been kind to the old man. He saved his clean-ups and lived in comfort the rest of his days in a snug log-cabin in Dawson, near the wild waters of the turbulent Klondike, where they rush into the depths of the mighty Yukon.

XIV. A Moose Hunt

It was my good fortune to be in London on "leave" the day the Armistice was signed. At 11 o'clock in the morning the multitude of giant "siren" whistles, used for warning the approach of enemy air-craft, broke into a wild chorus of deafening howls, and Londoners knew that Germany, the aggressor, had accepted the lowly seat of the vanquished. The sounds of public rejoicing commenced immediately and by the late afternoon the celebration was in full swing. It was a celebration in which I could not be content with a spectator's part. I entered into it with all my heart. The whole outburst, for the first day at least, was the spontaneous and natural expression of joy at a glad release from the curse of war, which had lain heavily upon the Old Land for four long, black, bitter years.

I then started out early in the evening, mingling with the immense crowds down Southampton Row and Kingsway to the Strand, along to Trafalgar Square, then up to Piccadilly, and home after midnight by way of Regent and Oxford Streets. All those great thoroughfares and squares were filled from side to side with whirlpools of people. Everywhere were groups of dancers or singers, all sorts of foolish processions big and little, all sorts of bands, noisemakers and fireworks. Workmen standing on ladders, surrounded by thousands of madly cheering observers, were taking the light-shields off the street-lamps. This meant that London streets would be lighted for the first time since 1914. In the immense moving crowds huge circles would form as if by magic, then everyone in it, all strangers to one another, would join hands and dance up and down, and in and out, to some old song. I got into one of these happy groups by chance in front of Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, where we all danced up to the centre and back singing, "Here we go gathering nuts in May," and then commenced to circle round to the chorus of "Ring-a-ring-a-rosy." We were just like a throng of happy children at a picnic. Then the formation dissolved, and its members disappeared into the singing, shouting, noisy crowds.

I fell in with an English officer, and he and I joined forces with an English bugler wearing an Australian soldier's hat. He had lost his own cap and had picked this one up somewhere. We three marched along arm-in-arm; the bugler would blow a call, then pass the bugle to us and we would each make some hideous noises upon it. I had my Cameron glengarry on and as we crushed along with the crowd, every now and then, out of the clamor, I could hear voices calling to me, "Well done, Jock," "Good old Scotty." Don't think we were at all conspicuous, for nearly everyone was doing things quite as foolish. We felt compelled to shout, cheer, sing, or do something to express our overflowing joy that the war was past at long last. These people of the Old Country knew the deep tragedy, the terrible heart-breaking, nerve-racking strain of the war as Canada could not know it. "It was meet that they should make merry and be glad." I saw practically no drinking nor roughness. It was a remarkable demonstration free, that night, from all the artificiality of pre-arrangement.

Next day I attended the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul's Cathedral. The King and Queen were there and many personages of note, but it was common folk who filled the vast building and crowded the streets for blocks around. There was no sermon. There could not have been any sermon or preacher adequate to such an occasion. The fortieth chapter of Isaiah was read, and how mystically and beautifully it expressed our thoughts, short prayers were said, and then the people stood up to sing, led by a great military massed band and the Cathedral organ. The instrumental music alone was enough to thrill one's soul, but when those thousands joined, with heart and voice, in melodious thanksgiving to God for release from the abundant travail of the bitter years, filling the glorious old temple full with a glad tumultuous harmony, the effect was indescribable. Hundreds were so moved they could find no voice for song, and could only lift their faces to heaven with tears of joy running down their cheeks. In all the history of the Empire there never was a moment when the whole British people were so stirred and held by such high and tense emotion. The glad, loud song of thankfulness had also the minor note vibrant with sorrow, there was the echo of a sob in it. This great nation, rejoicing in righteous victory, kept sad and sacred memories of her million slain.

While in London for these few wonderful days I stayed at the West Central Hotel, and there, one afternoon later in the week, I was delighted to meet an old "tillicum" of the trails, Tom Patton. For three rare days we companied together and talked about old friends and other days. We revelled in memories of the glorious years we spent together in the far-off northland. In imagination we travelled again many a well-known mile, and memorable experiences we had in common were recalled. I was sorry when the last day of my leave came, for Patton was one of the very best of my old Yukon friends and "there are no friends like the old friends after all." That last evening three other old Klondikers, whom we had discovered in London, foregathered with us in my room and enjoyed a Yukon evening. There were many interesting stories told that night. Each had his own contribution, and there were some yarns in whose spinning we all lent a hand. There was one in which Patton and I had equal share, one I had often told to my comrades in France to while away a weary hour. It described a hunting trip up the Yukon river he and I took one fall to get some wild-fowl. We ran on bigger game and that is why I call it a Moose Hunt.

* * * * *

In 1906, late in the autumn, when every night brought sharp frost, and fish and fowl were heading for the sea and the south to escape the icy-fingers of on-coming winter, Patton and I planned a fortnight's holiday up the Yukon to shoot ducks.

We hired a rowboat at Dawson, and put it aboard a river steamboat on which we had taken passage up-stream about a hundred miles to the mouth of White River. There the steamer slowed up enough to let us launch our boat and get into it with our outfit, leaving us then on the great river to our own devices.

We decided to make camp immediately for it was getting on in the day. So we pulled across to the left bank, tied up our boat, and commenced to look about us. I noticed a well-marked trail in the brush which I followed for a few yards and came on a cabin. I knocked at the door and it was quickly opened by the occupant. I told him who I was and he asked me in. The place was dark, dirty, and smelly, nor was I taken with the man's personal appearance, for his hair was long and tangled, and his face almost hidden by an untrimmed beard. His welcome was genuine, however, and when I grew accustomed to the dim candle-light I noticed that he had clear, kindly eyes. He was glad to see me. I was his first visitor in three months. He had staked some gold-bearing rock, and there he had lived alone for a year trying to uncover it enough to prove it a real ledge, and to prospect it sufficiently so that he might interest "capital" in it. He had absolute faith in the value of his find, talking with assurance of the day when he would sell it for thousands.

I informed him that I had a partner and called to Patton who came along. We told him what we were out for. He advised us to stay the night there, and in the early morning we would be sure to get some sport in the marshes, ponds, and slack-water where the White joins the Yukon. He wouldn't hear of us making camp for ourselves, and we had to accept his hospitality. He was very lonely, he said, and it did him a whole lot of good to see us and have some talk.

Late in the afternoon we went out to examine the ground and arrange our morning shoot. We heard a strange noise coming from beyond the distant northern skyline of the river valley. It sounded like the far-off cackling of barn-yard geese. Soon the source of it appeared in the north. It was the advance guard of a great flight of sandhill cranes on their journey to the south coast. They are toothsome birds, about the size of a small turkey but standing higher. They are very shy and it is all but impossible to get them within range of a shot-gun. I am not exaggerating when I say that they flew for two hours in a continuous, clamorous stream of arrow-shaped formations from our northern horizon, until they disappeared from view over the southern hills. There were thousands of them in that one contingent.

The old-timer, "Alabama Bill" he was called, served for supper that night a meat-stew composed of porcupine, moose-meat and other things. I ate my share and kept it. Patton is more sensitive that way than I am, and on this occasion he proved traitor to the good old British maxim, "What we have, we hold." I don't blame him. One had need of keen appetite and strong digestion to enjoy and profit by that mysterious mixture. "Alabama" made us talk far on into the morning, but at last we rolled into our bunks. We slept uneasily for various causes, and were glad to get out in the early morning to be ready in position for daylight and our birds.

To make a long story short, we had good luck the next ten days as we floated downstream towards Dawson, tying up and camping when and where we wished, and hunting in likely places. The sloughs and little lakes were alive with ducks and geese, and we had our boat half-full of them before we reached Indian river. From that point it was an easy day's run to Dawson.

We made camp on the shore at Indian in the afternoon, and went back into the thick woods on the extensive flats behind us to explore. We came on a pond and got a few more ducks. This pond was peculiar in that at one side a trail led down to it, and the shore was trampled as if herds of cattle were accustomed to water there. It was a "moose-lick," a place to which for years, at certain seasons, the moose came at night from miles around, because the water and soil had in them some salty substance which they liked or needed.

We weren't hunting big game and so had brought only one rifle for emergencies, but here was a chance right under our noses that we couldn't pass, although we knew it was rather late in the season for moose to visit the lick. At the edge of the pond we picked a good-sized tree that we could climb and find secure footing in. Then we went back the half-mile to the shore and had supper.

When it grew dark we went out to our tree and climbed up in it, to watch for the possible coming of the moose. For four long, miserably cold hours we clung to our perch. It was pitch dark and absolutely silent, save for the dull murmur of the Yukon, and the "plunk, plunk" of some little diving duck at long intervals in the pond. Half-a-dozen times we were inclined to abandon our vigil, but one encouraged the other and we hung on. About midnight we were rewarded by hearing, through the darkness, a sound like the breaking of a branch away on the mountain slope. It startled us, coming on us out of the night when we were tense with prolonged listening to unbroken silence. Soon there was no mistaking the approach of the monarch of the woods. It seemed as if some great boulder were crashing down the hillside through the trees. Every now and then there would be a minute of complete stillness, and we could imagine him standing, with lordly, lifted head and wide-branching antlers, listening and sniffing the air for strange noises or smells. He seemed satisfied that no danger lurked in the woods, for he came straight across from the foot of the mountain. At last by the noise we knew he was nearing our tree. Nearer he came and very near, leisurely now, probably feeding. In the dense darkness we could see nothing of him as yet until we heard something scrape against our tree. Looking down with straining eyes, I marked his dark, slowly-moving outline in the brush. I could have dropped on the animal's back had I been so minded. The proverbial "salt" might easily have been placed on his tail. The time for action had come. I had the rifle. In the darkness I couldn't see the barrel, so real aiming was impossible, but the moose was that near I felt I couldn't miss him anyway. I fired where I judged his shoulder should be. I regret to tell you that the flame of the gun showed that the bullet had gone an inch over his back, and I had missed him altogether! My left arm was around a limb and so the second shot was a trifle slow, but after the first, it seemed as if the moose jumped into the air, turned, and was fifty feet away in the timber on his back-trail when he lit! We heard him going at head-long speed and fired at the noise, but he went on until the sound died away in the distance.

We crawled down to the ground, stiff with cold, and dumb with disappointment. I knew it was a complete miss, but "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and we lighted matches and searched the ground and leaves for bloodstains. We searched his trail thus for twenty yards, then gave up, went back to camp and under our blankets. Patton was very decent about it. He knew how I felt. Once only did he make reference to my failure. The next day we were nearing Dawson, where our friends would come and inspect our "bag," when he said, "Well, George, wouldn't it be pleasant to pull into Dawson with a fine moose lying between us in the boat?" "Don't say another word, Tom," I replied, "or I'll burst into tears!"

I felt my almost inexcusable failure very keenly, for I made three separate trips, alone, to Indian river, and hunted there persistently, and very uncomfortably too, for that moose, but he never gave me another chance.

XV. An Old Prospector

The good ship Araguaya of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Line was under commission during the war as a Canadian hospital ship on the North Atlantic. She and her sister ship the Essequibo, with the Llandovery Castle and Letitia, composed the fleet used to convey our wounded from the old land to Canada. The Letitia was wrecked in a fog on the rocks near Halifax with no loss of lives. The Llandovery Castle was sunk by a submarine while returning empty to England. Mostly all the ship's officers, M.O.'s, nurses, and crew were drowned or shot by the fiend who commanded the U-boat. The chaplain, Capt. McPhail, was killed. By strange chance his body, with life-belt, was carried towards France and months afterwards was found on the beach and buried.

Thank God all the German submarines were not run by such as sank the Llandovery. I have a snapshot taken from the deck of the Essequibo of a U-boat which stopped that ship, searched her thoroughly but courteously and then let her go unharmed.

I spent ten months as chaplain on the Araguaya and a happy time it was. That was the "cushiest" job I have ever had. We were under cover all the time, had abundance of good food and luxuries for everyone, and every device that money could buy to entertain our patients on their nine-day trip across. Besides, in my special work I had a flock which never strayed far from me. They couldn't!

Practically all the staterooms had been taken out, only sufficient being left for M.O's, nurses, and ship's officers. This made fine, large, airy wards for the bed cases, fitted with swinging cots so that they did not feel the roll of the vessel. I had a comfortable room all to myself, for Col. Whidden and later Col. Murray were both very considerate of my comfort.

You will be interested to know that at the celebration of the completion of the Kiel Canal, the Araguaya was loaned by the R.M.S.P. Co. to the Kaiser for use as his private yacht during the regatta, as a token of British goodwill. The suite of rooms our O.C. used had been the Kaiser's, and mine was one of those that "Little Willie" had occupied!

The ship's officers and crew were all first-class seamen of heroic stuff. The majority of them had been through the dread experience of being torpedoed, some two or three times, and had seen many of their mates shot down or drowned. Yet here they were from stoke-hold to pilot-house carrying on as cheerfully as ever.

Capt. Barrett, the skipper, a short, stout, ruddy-faced Englishman sat at the head of the table, with our O.C. and officers to his right and his own officers to his left. Many a merry meal we had together there. I can hear Major Shillington's steadying voice when he thought he saw trouble ahead in our arguments, Gunn with the happy laugh, Langham bringing us down to cold, hard facts, and the others good men all, with whom I companied those days. Tell your choicest funny story and you'd hear Capt. Johnson's stage-whisper, "I kicked the slats out of my cradle the first time I heard that!" I often wore my tartan uniform for "old-time's" sake, and the Cameron trousers always started the skipper bemoaning that now we'd have a stormy night since the padre had put on his "tempestuous pants." Of course we frequently fought the question out around the table. I based my claim to wear Highland garb, blow high or blow low, not only on my connection with the 43rd, but because I was a thorough-bred Scot. I carried the war into the enemy's country by maintaining that it was wrong to let anyone wear it but those of Scottish extraction. My own Camerons were nearly all Scots, this I know from careful official census taken in France. We had ten or fifteen per cent. who did not belong to "the elect," but they became fine fellows from being continually in such good company, and I find no fault with them for wearing the kilts. But the principle is wrong. Suppose on the field of battle a fierce and haughty Prussian surrendered to a kilted man whom he thought to be a Scot, only to find on getting back to the corral that his captor was a peaceful Doukhobor in kilts. What a humiliation and what cruelty! I actually met an officer in France belonging to a Canadian Kiltie battalion (not ours) who asked me the meaning of the words "Dinna Forget," the title of a book which lay before him on the table. I asked him what he thought it was. He said "I suppose the name of a girl, the heroine of the story, 'Dinna' maybe a local way of spelling 'Dinah,' and 'Forget' is her surname. That's my guess." He was in full, Scottish, regimental field-uniform when he spoke these words! I was dumb for a little before I could tell him what the words really meant. It is not the claim of superiority of race but simply a matter of honest practice. The tartan costume has become the recognized badge of Scottish birth or ancestry. It is therefore perpetrating a fraud upon the public for a man of any other race to parade in this distinctively national garb.

It would fill too many pages even to outline the varied aspects of our life aboard the boat. Matron Shaw and her noble band of nurses should have a page to themselves. We carried about nine hundred patients each trip and after two days out, when they became able to hear "The Return of the Swallow" recited without getting pale around the gills, everything went along with a hum. There were lectures, concerts, movies, shovelboard and deck tennis tournaments, dozens of phonographs and all sorts of parlor games and books, and on Sunday our religious services. The boys were all glad to be going home to Canada and they were easily entertained.

The great event was, of course, our first sight of land and then the disembarkation. The later trips we unloaded at Portland, Maine, and I cannot recollect having seen a more magnificent demonstration of public good-will than was given us by those Yankees. The first time we put in there, while the boat was still twenty feet away from the dock the thousands of people on the wharf commenced to cheer and the bands to play, and we were bombarded with candies, cigars, cigarettes and fruit. Much of it fell into the water. When we tied up a score of committees came aboard and almost submerged us under endless quantities of oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, dough-nuts, cake, sandwiches, ice-cream, tea, coffee and soft drinks, and expensive candies and everything else that we could eat or drink, that the law would allow, in superabundance. They took our hundreds of letters and many telegrams and sent them without costing us a penny. The latest newspapers, bouquets, of choice flowers for everyone, concert parties, and indeed everything good that kind hearts could think of was showered upon us. I remember a western bed-patient asked me if I thought they would get him a plug of a special brand of chewing tobacco. He hadn't been able to buy it in four years overseas and it was his favorite. "Sure thing," one of them said and in half-an-hour two men came aboard lugging along enough of that tobacco to stock a small store! I cannot go further into details. Enough to say that every trip it was the same, except that their hospitality became more systematized. Probably fifteen thousand wounded Canadian soldiers passed through Portland on their way home, and I know they will find it hard to forget the free-handed, warm-hearted welcome they got in that city. This memory will surely be a leaven working towards the maintenance and development of peace and good-will between Canada and the United States.

But I must tell my story of the North. One trip Major Dick Shillington persuaded me to give them a Klondike evening. We gathered down below in "H" Mess and there I told something of the life-story of my old friend of by-gone days, a trail-blazer and prospector, Duncan McLeod.

* * * * *

When first I met Duncan McLeod, "Cassiar Mac" he was commonly called, he and his partner, John Donaldson, both old men, were working far up a tributary of Gold Bottom Creek which had not yet been fully prospected. Each liked to have his own house and do his own cooking, and so they lived within a few yards of each other in the creek bottom at the foot of the mountain summit that rose between them and Indian River. My trail over to the other creeks passed across their ground, and when we became friends I seldom failed to arrange my fortnightly trip over the divide so as to reach their place about dusk. I would have supper with one or the other and stay the night.

McLeod was an old-country Scot, Donaldson born of Scottish parents in Glengarry county, Ontario. I am not using their real names, but they were real men. One of them, Donaldson, is still living in the wilds of the Yukon, still prospecting. He was the first white man the Teslin Indians had seen and known. They looked upon him as their "Hi-yu-tyee," a sort of super-chief, during the years he lived near them. He had been just and kind with them, and his consequent influence saved occasional serious friction between the Indians and whites from becoming murder or massacre.

After supper we would all three gather in one of the cabins and I would hear good talk until far towards midnight. Then there would be a pause and McLeod would say, "Well, Mr. Pringle, I think it is time we were getting ready for our beds." I knew what he meant. "Yes, it is," I would reply. The Bible would be handed me, I would read a chapter and we would kneel in prayer to God. Then to our bunks for a good sleep and early away in the morning for me to make the twenty-five miles over the heights to Gold Run before dark.

What great talks those were I used to hear. I was only a boy then, and these old men had seen so much of the wild free life of the West of long ago days. What stirring adventures they had had! They came west before the railways by way of the American prairies, and, lured by gold discoveries, had entered the mountains, and then following the prospector's will-o-the-wisp, the better luck that lies "just over the divide," they had gone farther and farther north. They had met and become partners in the Caribou camp, and had been together nearly forty years, in the Cassiar, on the Stewart, at Forty-Mile and now the Klondike.

Donaldson had a wonderful native power of description. When story-telling he would pace slowly back and forth in the shadow beyond the dim candle-light and picture with quiet, resonant voice scenes and events of the past. How vivid it seemed to me! How the soul of the young man thrilled as he listened! Often there was a yearning at my heart when under his spell to lay aside my mission and go out into the farthest wilds, seeking adventure and living the free, fascinating life they had lived. How I wish I had written down these stories as they were told to me. But maybe they wouldn't have "written," for much of the interest lay in the personality of the story-teller.

McLeod's part was usually to help with dates or names when Donaldson's memory failed to recall them, but often he too would spin a yarn, and when he did there was always in its telling a gentleness, I can think of no better word, that gave a charm often missing in Donaldson's rougher style.

They were both big men physically, but McLeod had been magnificent. He was now nearly eighty years old and broken with rheumatism, but in the giant frame and noble face and head crowned with its snow-white hair I saw my ideal of what a great Highland Chieftain might have been in the brave days of old.

Donaldson told me one night, while his partner was making a batch of bread in his own cabin, what he knew of McLeod's history. "I have never known a man," he said, "that would measure up to my partner. None of us want our record searched too closely but it wouldn't make any difference to him. Nothing, nobody, seemed to have any power to make Mac do anything crooked or dirty. Whisky, gambling, bad women—he passed them up without apparent effort. Very strange too, even the few good women we have met in these camps never won anything from him but wholesome admiration. He had only to say the word and he could have had any one of them, but he didn't seem to care that way. What his experience had been before we met I do not know, he has never spoken much about it to anyone. But he and I have lived together as partners for nearly half a century, through the crazy, wicked days of all these gold camps, and Mac never did anything that he would be ashamed to tell his own mother."

A fine tribute. Perhaps under the circumstances the finest thing that could be said of any man, for you cannot imagine the thousand almost irresistible temptations that were part of the daily life of the stampeders in those northern camps. Enough for me to say that many men of really good character back East, where they were unconsciously propped up by influences of family, church, and community, failed miserably to keep their footing when they came to the far north where all these supports were absent and temptation was everywhere. I do not judge them. God only knows the fight they had before they surrendered. So it was an arresting event to meet a man who had seen it all and whose partner of forty years told me he had lived clean.

I often wondered what McLeod's story was. I had known him for three years before I ventured to ask him details about his home in Scotland, and why he left it to come so far away. I knew he had been reared in a village south of Edinburgh, in a good home with good parents, and much else he had told me, but there had always been a reticence that made you certain there was something else held back.

One winter night when we were alone in his cabin, he opened his heart to me. He was an old-fashioned Scot. I was his "minister" and he knew me well. Besides he was coming to the end of the trail, and he needed a confidant.

He said his story was hardly worth while bothering me with, I knew most of it, but what he could never tell anyone was about the lassie he had loved and lost. He had fallen in love with the brown eyes and winsome face of Margaret Campbell, a neighbour's daughter. They had gone to the same school, had taken their first communion together, and had both sung in the village church choir. When he revealed his love to her she told him she had guessed his secret and had lang syne given her heart to him. They were betrothed and very happy. But Margaret took ill in the fall and died before the new year. Early in the year he sailed from Leith for Canada, hoping that new scenes would soften his grief. As the years passed he kept moving west and then north. He grew to like the free life of the prospector and had not cared to leave the mountains and the trails.

Time had healed the wound but his love for the sweetheart of his youth was just as true and tender as ever. From a hidden niche at the head of his bed he took down a small box, brought it to the table near the candle and unlocked it. He showed me his simple treasures. His rough, calloused hands trembled as he lifted them carefully from the box. There was a small photo so faded I could barely see the face on it. "You'll see she was very beautiful," he said, for he saw with the clear vision of loving memory what was not for my younger but duller eyes to discern. There was her gold locket with a wisp of brown hair in it. "She left me this," he said, "when she died." Last, there was an old letter, stained and worn, the only love-letter she had ever written him, for he had only once been far enough or long enough away to need letters. He had spent a week in Glasgow after they became engaged and she had written to him. This was all.

Somehow I felt as if I were on sacred ground, that the curtain had been drawn from before a Holy Place, and I was looking upon something more beautiful than I had ever seen before. As the old man put the box away his eyes were shining "with a light that never was on sea or land." Mine were moist, and for a little I couldn't trust my voice to speak as I thought of the life-time of unswerving fealty to his dead lassie. Such long, lonely years they must have been!

We did not say much more that night but the words we spoke were full of understanding and reverence. When it grew late and he handed me the Bible I hesitated in choosing a chapter, but not for long. The comfort and rejoicing of the twenty-third Psalm were all we wanted.

One morning, not long afterwards, Donaldson came into my cabin on Hunker creek in evident distress. McLeod hadn't come out as usual to his work that morning, and he had gone to see what was wrong and found him in his bunk hardly able to speak. He had taken "a stroke." A neighbouring miner watched by the sick man while Donaldson hitched up his dogs and raced to Dawson for medical aid. Donaldson went off down the trail and I hurried up the gulch to my old friend. He lingered for two or three days. The doctor could do nothing for him but to ease his last moments.

I stayed near him until the end came. When he tried to speak his utterance was indistinct and what few words I could make out showed that his mind was wandering. Sometimes he was on the trail or in the camp, but oftenest he was home again in the far away land he loved, and in boyhood days among folk we did not know save one, known only to me, whose name was continually on his lips.

He had a lucid interval just before he died and for a minute or two he thought and spoke clearly. I told him that death was near. Was there anything that we could do for him? "Not very much," he said, "I want Donaldson to have all I own. He's been a good partner. Bury my box with me. I'm not afraid to go now. It's just another prospecting trip to an unknown land and I have a Great Guide. He won't forsake an old prospector. He was one Himself, I'm thinking, when He came seeking us. He will keep a firm grip of me now that the trail is growing dark. I'm not afraid."

These were his last words, and as he slipped away, we, who were gathered in the dimly-lighted little cabin, felt somehow that the Guide he spoke of was right at hand. He would surely keep "a firm grip" of the old miner on his last prospecting trip, even if strange storms were blowing, and it was black dark when they crossed the Great Divide. It would come morning too in that land when night was past, and when the new day dawned I know he would soon find the one whom he had "loved long since and lost awhile."

XVI. Soapy Smith, the Skagway Bandit

My billet on the hospital ship Araguaya was very comfortable and my duties agreeable, but every time we reached port on the Canadian side of the Atlantic I had an impulse to desert the ship and become a stowaway on the hospital-train bound for British Columbia. It was there my wife and boy lived and I hadn't seen them for three years. However I got the chance at last to go without breaking regulations, for when I requested it, leave was readily granted me to stay ashore over one round-trip of the boat. This was supplemented by my taking the place of an absent conducting officer on the western train. So my transportation cost me nothing, except the congenial task of making myself generally useful to the returning soldiers.

We had crossed the prairies, dropping many of our crowd at way points, and were climbing slowly along after supper up through a lonely stretch of mountains, when someone in the car where I was "visiting" gave it as his opinion that this would be a good piece of road on which to stage a train-robbery. This, of course, led to the mention of gun-men that they had known or heard of, men of the same ilk as Jesse James and Bill Miner. I contributed the story of Soapy Smith, the man who pulled off the most remarkably prolonged hold-up of which I have ever read. In the most approved dime-novel style he terrorized a town, not for a few days or weeks, but for six months.

* * * * *

"You'll have to see the spot where Soapy died." The Skagway man who said this was rather proud of the celebrity which the bandit had brought to the place. I had come by the steamboat the nine hundred miles north from Vancouver, and was forced to spend a day in Skagway before going over the White Pass on my way to Dawson. A resident of the town was taking me around showing me the sights of this mushroom camp. It was humming with life and packed with people. The rush to the goldfields was then at its height. I judged by my friend's tone that he expected me to be deeply impressed with this particular sight. So down to the sea we went and out on the wharf. As we walked down he outlined the story of Smith's career in the camp. On the pier he showed me a dark stain, covering about a square foot, made by the life-blood of the man who for half-a-year forced Skagway to pay him tribute in hard cash. He was the leader of a group of men who robbed and cheated in wholesale style, and when it was necessary, in getting their victim's money, did not stop at murder. No one had attempted successfully to interfere with him. Reputable merchants were all intimidated into handing him their "life-insurance premiums" whenever he asked for them. His reputation as a "killer" was such that on the fourth of July, when good Americans celebrate their freedom, he rode at the head of the procession on a white horse! Very few complained loudly enough for Soapy to hear. Without question his nerve is to be admired. I have never heard or read in the annals of the west anything to equal his record in that Alaskan port. Desperadoes have ridden into towns, "shot them up," took what they wanted and got away with it. But this man and his gang lived openly in a town of several thousands and in the most brazen fashion ran the place for months, although he was known as a crook, gunman, and leader of a gang of thugs. Skagway, it is true, was simply an eddy in a stream running into the gold-fields. In their mad haste to get on and over the Pass people wouldn't take time to straighten out the morals of the camp. The Soapy Smith business was especially uninviting as something to mix into. "It isn't my funeral," they would say, "and I don't want it to be."

Jefferson B. Smith hailed from the city of St. Louis in the U.S.A. He got the nickname he bore because at the beginning of his career of crookedness he used to sell soap to some of the citizens of Denver, Colorado. There is nothing remarkable about selling soap unless you do it Smith's way. In the evenings he and a confederate would set up their "stand" on a suitable downtown street. All he needed was a high box for a "pulpit" and a smaller box behind it to stand on. This with a flaring torch giving an uneven light, some cakes of cheap soap, a couple of five-dollar bills and some change, completed the outfit. A little clever "spieling," kept up more or less all evening, and the usual crowd would gather out of curiosity. He would show them an unwrapped piece of soap all the while extolling its great merits as a cleanser. To show how disinterested he was in introducing this superior article that only needed to be known to become popular, he would say he was going to wrap a five-dollar-bill in with some of these cakes of soap. He would sell the soap at fifty cents each piece, and everyone that bought stood to get the soap and make four dollars and fifty cents in cash out of the deal. Further if they watched him carefully they would see him actually put the five-dollar bill in when he wrapped up the soap, although he wouldn't guarantee that it would always be found there when the purchaser unwrapped his package. Of course he deceived them simply by clever sleight-of-hand. Rarely would any money be found, but people liked to be fooled if it is done the right way. To get them "biting" he might let one of the bills go to a confederate who was seemingly just one of the crowd. It was a money-making business as a rule for there were ordinarily quite a number of "easy-marks" around. They got the soap anyway. So came the name "Soapy."

Well, it was the same old clever, crooked game in other bigger and bolder forms that he now worked in Skagway, with the gun-play in addition. When the steamboat City of Seattle came into port there on January 17th, 1898, Soapy and his "merrie-men" were among the passengers. He was a slight built man, only five feet seven inches tall, very dark complexioned with a full beard and moustache. He wore a round Stetson hat with a hard brim. He soon established headquarters in the "Kentucky saloon" and "Jeff Smith's Parlors." These were liquor saloons, not providing board or lodging, and running crooked gambling games in their rear, a fruitful source of revenue to Smith's card-sharpers. Then he and his confederates got busy on all sorts of other schemes to steal people's money. He had at least thirty followers, and there wasn't a dishonest trick known to the underworld of those days that some of them couldn't work. They wore Masonic, Oddfellow, Elk and other fraternity emblems that might help in working "confidence-games." They opened up Information Bureaus where newcomers could be conveniently sized-up and robbed then or later on. One member who was very successful in luring victims was Old Man Tripp. He had grey hair, a long white beard and a benevolent countenance. It seemed impossible to suspect him of criminal intent. Smith had most of the gambling-joints paying him a big percentage. He even had men clever at the old, old "shell-game" running it in the fine weather at relay points on the trail.

One of his favorite stunts for a while at first was to recruit for the Spanish-American war which was just then stirring the fighting blood of Americans. While the would-be soldier was stripped, having a fake medical examination, his clothing was looted of whatever money or valuables it might contain.

A rather amusing incident occurred during Smith's regime in connection with the efforts of a Sky Pilot to raise some money at Skagway to build a church in a little place along the coast called Dyea. The parson came to Skagway in a rowboat one morning and started out with his subscription list. One of the first he tackled by chance and unknown to himself was the notorious bandit. Smith heartily endorsed the proposition and headed the list with one hundred dollars which he paid over in cash to the clergyman. Then he took the latter gentleman along to the principal merchants, hotel-men and gamblers and saw to it that they all gave handsome donations. At the close of the day the visitor decided to make for home. He was happy in the possession of over $2,000 in cash for his new church, thinking too what a splendid fellow this Mr. Smith was. On the way to the beach he was "held up" by one of Mr. Smith's lieutenants and relieved of all the money he had collected. He could get no redress.

Other occurrences, such as the smothering of the negro-wench in order to steal the few hundred dollars she had earned by washing, were despicable and worthy only of the meanest type of criminal.

Naturally there were many shooting scrapes in connection with the operations of the gang, and some killings, but nothing was done to end it. Not only was no move made to interfere with Soapy, but almost everyone refrained from speaking against him openly for reasons easy to understand. Of course there were men in Skagway who hotly resented the hold this outlaw had on the town, and were doing what they could to bring public sentiment to efficient action against him. One of these, a Canadian, was the editor of a local news sheet. In later years he became governor of Alaska. His name was Strong and it suited him, for he wasn't lacking in strength of character. One day, after his paper had appeared with an editorial making a scarcely-veiled attack on Soapy and his gang, he was met and stopped on the street by Smith accompanied by a tough named Mike Daley. They were loud and boisterous in accusing Strong of having offered personal insult to them in his newspaper. They demanded a retraction and apology and evidently meant to force a street-fight. Strong refused to withdraw his statement and declared that he intended to stand by his editorial. The loud quarrelling tones of the two desperadoes attracted the attention of two friends of Strong's, named D. C. Stephens and Allen, who happened to be walking down the same street. They hurried to the aid of their friend who at the risk of his life still refused to back down. The sight of reinforcements spoiled Smith's game and he and Daley went on without accomplishing their sinister purpose.

There was another man who did not hesitate to say anywhere, and in most forcible terms what he thought of these criminals. This man was Frank Reid, a land-surveyor. He was fearless, and too quick with a gun for these crooks to attempt to silence. But he got very little open support and could do nothing single-handed.

Of course things couldn't go on like this. In the Spring matters reached a climax. Word had at last got into the Klondike that it wasn't safe to come out by way of Skagway with your gold, that you were likely to be relieved of your "poke" by desperadoes. This news commenced to turn out-going gold-laden traffic down the Yukon and out by way of St. Michaels. The Skagway merchants saw "the goose that laid the golden eggs" flying away, and it put them at last into a ferment of anger at the cause of it. This led to the formation of a Vigilance Committee of which Reid was the moving spirit.

Finally a Nanaimo man named Stewart, waiting for the steamboat on his way home from the Klondike, had $3,000.00 in nuggets stolen from him by one of Soapy's confidence men who had offered to turn it into currency. It was all he had and he made such a fuss that the whole town knew about his loss. He reported it to the U.S. Deputy-Marshal, a man named Taylor who was in Smith's pay. He got no satisfaction. The Vigilance Committee then took it up, and made it a "casus belli" against Soapy. They attempted to hold a secret meeting in a private hall but Smith and his confederates managed to break in on them. They then adjourned to Sylvester's wharf. At the land-end of the pier Frank Reid and a man named Murphy were posted to stop anyone approaching who was not a member of the Committee. Smith heard of this move and set off on the war-path down the main street towards the water-front. He carried a loaded .30-.30 Winchester rifle and as he went down the road he called on everyone to put up their hands. There were hundreds of men there but Soapy got a completely unanimous "vote" as he passed along, until he reached Reid and in him he met a man who called his bluff. Reid ordered him to stop and fired at him, but his revolver, a .45 Colt, failed to go off. He then grabbed the muzzle of Smith's gun and shoved it up in the air before he could shoot. Smith in the struggle backed away hanging on to his rifle, and while the gun was thus lowered and pointed momentarily at Reid's groin he fired. Reid fell to the ground but instantly fired at Smith again. This time the revolver responded and Smith dropped shot through the heart. He bled to death in a few minutes where he lay. This was the evening of July 8th, three days after the celebration already mentioned in which the gunman had taken the leading part. So the wharf was stained, and so ended the life of a man with a career of which the last six months were unique in the history of the wild west.

Their leader gone, the break-up of his followers was quick and easy. After caring for Reid the Committee split up into armed groups of five or six men each. Some guarded the exits from the town, others closed the dance-halls, saloons, and gambling places. Every cabin was searched. Smith was killed on Friday and by Sunday the lot were rounded up and jailed. The captures included the five most dangerous members of the gang, Old Man Tripp, Slim Jim, Bowers, Mike Daly, and Scar-faced Charlie. It was indeed hard for any of them to escape. In front was the sea and behind the mountains with only one passable trail through them over into the Yukon Territory. They were all deported on out-going steamers. Most of them got long terms in penetentiary. Before the shooting a few of them who saw danger ahead straggled over into Canada by way of the White Pass but they changed into "model citizens" when they came under the surveillance of the Mounted Police.

Smith was buried with scant ceremony and no mourners. Frank Reid lingered for two weeks when he also died. The whole place turned out at his funeral to do honor to his bravery in ridding the town of the pestilential group of criminals who had been in control so long.

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