"I didn't say nothin' about the warnin' to Father, for he was that
stubborn he'd ha' waded right in an' tried to clean up the whole
camp. He wouldn't ha' had the chance of a rat in a trap. He'd ha' got
himself carved up in little slices an' that was about all. So I jest
told him that one o' the Chinks had reported there was a new strike on
the Cassiar. Father took the bait like a hungry trout an' we was off
in an hour."

"But I always thought Chinamen were such a peaceful lot!" exclaimed
Clem.

"If a Chink comes into a white camp, he's willin' to sing small an' do
what he's told. But in a boom camp that white folks have given up an'
quit, if Johnny Chink comes in, he won't let nary a white come back. I
know! One o' my pardners was in the massacre o' Happy Man Gulch in
'87. That's a yarn worth hearin'! I'll tell it you, some time.

"Out we trailed to the Cassiar, an', funny enough, though I'd only
been bluffin' to Father about the strike there, we landed on the pay
gravel the very day after French Pete had struck a pocket. He was a
good prospector, was French Pete, an' knew more'n most, but he was
timid like, an' glad to have us there. He could handle Indians--he was
a half-breed himself--but he was that superstitious, he was afraid o'
the dark, alone. He was religious, too, an' Father an' him got along
together famous. We staked out a claim, right next to his, an', for a
few weeks, cleaned up a good fifty dollars a day.

"Then, one fine mornin', a bunch o' redskins come down, friends o'
French Pete. They palavered some, an', after a while, French Pete he
comes over to us an' says:

"'We got three days to get out!'

"Father he put up an awful howl an' was for plugging the redskins full
o' holes, pronto. But French Pete puts it to him that these Injuns was
his friends, an' shootin' wouldn't go. There'd been some kind o' deal
between this tribe an' the Chilkoots, an' every miner on the Divide
knew more'n plenty about the Chilkoots. They'd tortured to death
Georgie Holt, the first prospector that ever went over the Chilkoot
Pass, an' more'n one miner that got into their country wasn't never
heard of no more.

"So Father puts it up to French Pete where he's goin' next. French
Pete is a good pardner, an' tells a queer tale, but he tells it
straight. He allows there's gold on the islands off the coast an'
shows the lay.

"Some years afore, so he says, Joe Juneau, an old-time Hudson Bay
trapper, an' Dick Harris, one