could hope to attain their desired object.

Reaching Dawson safely, as they did after weeks of peril and many novel
experiences, they set to work at what seemed to them at the moment the
most lucrative labor of which they were capable. They were fitted for
laundry work only by being well and strong physically, and by having a
willingness to do whatever they first found to do.

This proved to be work at the wash-tub. Here the four women labored
month after month with a will, with the result that at the end of a year
their bank account was not insignificant, they owned several gold
claims, and in all the mining camp there were none who did not respect
the four sisters.

Then came their first dark days. It was midsummer. Down among the grass
roots and between the rocks of the hillside back of the famous camp,
there trickled numerous fresh water springs, pure and cold when they
left their sequestered sources among the seams and fissures, but gaining
nothing of purity when spread out upon the little plain now thickly
dotted with cabins.

Here in the hurry and rush of the fast growing camp, when fortunes came
quickly, and men lived at a rapid pace, there was little time for
sanitary precautions, and so it presently happened that a shadow, like a
huge black bird of ill omen, suddenly hovered above the camp, sending a
shudder through its entire length. A tiny germ, so small as to pass
unnoticed and unheeded by, and yet withal so deadly as to be called a
plague, crept along, insinuating itself into the streamlets making their
way as best they could to their father, the Yukon; and the fever laid
low many victims.

Early and late had the sisters toiled, never in a half-hearted way, but
untiringly, day after day, until one of their number, being perhaps less
strong, or more weary from work to which she had been unaccustomed, and
more susceptible to disease, was stricken with fever, and after only a
few days' illness, whispered her loving good-byes.

This happened in the summer of 1899, and rumors of the great gold strike
at Nome now reached Dawson. One sister had been persuaded by a member of
the Dawson Bar to make for him a happy home during the remainder of his
life, and she was married.

Again their party numbered the original four, though there were now only
three sisters.

The excitement in Dawson regarding the new Nome gold fields daily
increased, and it was stated by reliable steamer men from St. Michael
that the