44 THE CARIBOO TRAIL

known. Perhaps too great an air of secrecy.
Perhaps too strenuous denials. Perhaps the
payment of provisions in nuggets. But when
these two packed back over the hills on snow-
shoes, they were trailed. Followers came in
with a whoop behind them on Antler Creek.
Claims were staked faster than they could be
recorded. The same claims were staked over
and over, thecorner of one overlapping another.
When the gold commissioner came hurriedly
across the country in March, he found the
MacDonald-Rose party living in a cabin and
the rest of the camp holding down their claims
by living in holes which they had dug in the
ground.

This was the spring of ’61; and Antler
Creek proved only the beginning of the rush
to Cariboo. Over the divide in mad stampede
rushed the gold-seekers northward and east-
ward. Ed Stout and Billy Deitz and two
others found signs that seemed very poor ona
creek which they named William’s after Deitz.
The gold did not pan a dollar a wash; but in
wild haste came the rush to William’s Creek.
Crossing a creek one party of prospectors was
overtaken by a terrific thunderstorm, with
rock-shattering flashes of lightning. Shivering
in the canyon, but afraid to stand under trees