ck Bessie, and how Bessie had pranced
her hind legs over the rough corduroy
ds, almost bouncing her miniature
tress out of the seat.

She laughed, too, as she told me of the
ique way in which she obtained the
ney for shopping. “I just took a hammer

Telephone Parksville 211

Compliments of

Ge iran Beach
ste!

Mrs. F. George Walker, Manageress

QUALICUM BEACH
B.C.

Vancouver Island

SHADY REST INN
LICENSED PREMISES
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Official V.I.C.L. Bus Stop
Family-sized Cottages
Boats and Fishing Tackle

QUALICUM BEACH, B.C. Phone 361

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JAMES MURRAY, Proprietor
EXCELLENT MEALS
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BEVAN

BRITISH COLUMBIA

GORDON
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GENERAL |
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** 7

LAKE COWICHAN, B. C.

LONEY'S STORE

LIGHT LUNCHES CONFECTIONERY
DRY GOODS

e
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OURTEENTH EDITION

and knocked the gold loose in the cut,
caught it in a pan, and took it into town!

“But that was more work than a neigh
bour of ours had to do. Billy Detering—we
always called him Caribou Bill—was out on
the muskeg flats one day, where there had
been a landslide. He kicked a moss-covered
clump out of his way, and there, under-
neath, was a nest of nuggets, just like a nest
of eggs.

“He went around tearing up every clump
he could find, and when he had all his nests
of nuggets gathered up, he had two large
chests filled with pure, shining gold!”

“Wouldn’t you like to have some of those
nuggets now?” I asked, thinking how hard
it must be for her to make ends meet, what
with the cost of living rising from year to
year, and her small income failing to grow
in proportion. “I'd surely like to have a
few!”

“TI. could have had them all,” she an-
swered sadly. “Billy Detering offered them
to me. That was after—after Arthur went
to Fairbanks.

“T’ve heard about a fellow called “Lucky
Swede Charlie. Did you know him?”

“Oh, yes! That was Charlie Anderson!”
Then she laughed, mischief lurking in her
eyes. “I never think of Lucky Swede
Charlie without thinking of mules. You
know how mules are! Well, Charlie had a
mule, and when it got tired of carrying him,
it would try to buck him off. One time it
rolled him off right in front of our home on
the claim, then it jumped up and ran back
home, leaving poor Charlie to walk the
twenty miles back to his claim on Hunker
Creek.

“That was the first time I ever met
Charlie, but I'd heard all about him before.
Everyone had.”

HORSESHOE BAY INN

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EDW. HEMMINGSEN, Proprietor

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Excellent Rooms and Dining Room
Reasonable Rates

CHEMAINUS, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Charlie Anderson had been a common
miner, working for wages. He came into
town one day with about $800, which he'd
saved up to go back home. He was going
to leave on the next boat, but by the time
the river steamer was due to leave, Charlie
didn’t have a dime! Frank Clary and
another young hoodlum got him drunk one
night, and when he woke up next morning,
all he had was a blinding headache and a
scrap of paper saying he was the owner of
a certain staked claim on Hunker Creek,
some 28 miles from town.

Charlie was furious. He didn’t want any
mining claim. All he wanted was his $800,
so he could go back home. But there was
nothing he could do about it, because Frank
Clary and his partner in plunder had made
haste to leave town.

Feeling very disconsolate, Charlie at last
decided to go out and look over his un-
desired property. There was supposed to be
a shaft sunk on the claim, but he could
find no one on Hunker Creek who knew
of any such location. Finally one miner
volunteered:

“I saw a couple of fellas stakin’ a claim
over yonder a few days ago, but there’s no
work done on it. I don’t know what their
names were, but the discovery stake will
tell you.”

Charlie went “over yonder;” the claim

The trail to the Klondike, in “98, was massed with human beings and attended with almost incredible

hardships.

Over icy paths in sub-zero weather, thousands of stampeders dragged tons of supplies.

Around the few crude little grub shacks they congregated, and throughout the daylight hours a steady
stream toiled up over the snow-covered mountain passes.

—Photo by Mrs. J. B. Taylor.

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