proved to be the one that Frank Clary and
his cohort had staked for sucker bait—and
it proved to be the break that earned “Lucky
Swede Charlie” his handle. He bought a

| eee: Lodge

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Oyster River, B. C.

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few supplies on credit, ran a prospect shaft
by hand, and found gold at twenty feet.

Frank Clary had returned to town by
the time news of the Lucky Swede’s strike
was reported. He sued Charlie to try to
regain possession; and his brother, Charlie
Clary, backed him in the suit. They were
doomed to failure, however, because Frank
Clary was too well known for a drifter and
a hoodlum.

With the case settled and the Lucky
Swede once more in possession of his claim,
he started open-cut operations. It proved
the richest mining property in the locality,
and from it he took at least a half-million
in gold.

Meanwhile, he fell in love with a beauti-
ful dancer at the Floradora, and offered her
her weight in gold to become his wife. The
Floradora made a gala affair of the wedding,

Despite the hardships involved, many women,

and even some children, followed the trail to the

Klondike, even taking their family pets with tiem.
—Photo: Winter & Rond

with the bride standing on the scales, bal-
anced by a stack of gold nuggets.

“Many girls left the Floradora like that—
bought and paid for,” little Mae Field told
me. “I could have done so more than once,
but somehow I—I couldn’t.”

I looked at her kind, gentle face.
Sincerity was written in every line. No, of
course she could never have done such a
thing.

“How did Charlie Anderson’s weight-in-
gold marriage turn out?”

“Who knows? They left for the States,
About two years later he came back in|
Dawson, alone, and flat broke. We Won
dered what had happened, of course, but
people didn’t ask personal questions in th,
North. Not in those days!” {

Dawson's heyday was past when Lucky
Swede Charlie returned. Fairbanks was
the make, but Charlie didn’t tarry then
long. He went down the Yukon to St
Michael, from there to Nome, and sought
another fortune in the placer sands of the
Seward Peninsula. There he proved oyg
again his right to his handle; for it wa
he who discovered Candle Creek, from
whose sands millions of dollars worth of
gold were taken.

“T’ve heard,” remarked Mae, “that after
he sold his Candle Creek claims, a fey
years later, he formed a mining company
and went to Peru.”

She was silent for a moment, that far
away look in her eyes. How I wished tha
I could look back with her, and see fo |
myself the bizarre events of those golden
days on the Yukon.

“It’s odd,” she continued, with a note
of sadness in her voice. ‘In some cases
gold was a blessing, but sometimes it proved
to be a curse. There was Mollie Walsh
She was one of my closest friends, and a
sweet and beautiful a girl as I’ve ever
known. I was matron of honour at her
wedding, when she married Mike Bartlett _

“It was a lovely wedding, Mollie wor
a beautiful white satin gown. But sh
should have married Jack Newman. If she
had, she might have been alive today. Mike
Bartlett was a packer, with the fastest team
on the Trail. Jack Newman was a packer,
too—Packer Jack, everyone called him,
Mollie operated a grub tent on the Chilkoot
Pass, where weavy travellers could stop and
have a square meal. ;

“Both Mike and Jack, as well as several

YOUBOU
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