40 Fish Stories 



room, so lie had the house cut apart, and spread, until the 

 house was large enough for the carpet. How Tagish Char- 

 ley became one of the generous rich, beloved of all men, 

 and how Siwash George deserted the woman who made his 

 fortune for a San Francisco actress — all these with the 

 spectacular career of Swiftwater Bill are known to every 

 one alive — ^to the gossip of the Smart Set of Caribou Cross- 

 ing, Seattle, and San Francisco. 



When Ogilvie told all this in Juneau the whole town re- 

 sponded. Juneau itself lies on the very frontier of adven- 

 ture, and here was something newer and greater, and only 

 two thousand miles or so futher up the gulch. 



So the gamblers and gold-seekers, the clerks and lawyers, 

 resigned their positions, threw up their jobs, in some way 

 or another made their way to the head of navigation, Dyea 

 or Skagway, and there struck the White Pass Trail. The 

 Bright Eyes Opera Company broke its engagement at Ju- 

 neau, and men and women started over the mountains to 

 Bonanza Creek. And after them came a most wonderful 

 migration, one of those movements which, if anything could, 

 lent " to the sober twilight of the present the color of ro- 

 mance." 



All the way southward the word went from Juneau. Cig- 

 arette young men, " dissolute, damned and despairful," who 

 had never done a man's day's work in their lives, crowded 

 the smoking-rooms in the Pullman cars, and pampered dogs 

 — St. Bernard, great Dane, mastiff — brought up in luxury, 

 and bought or stolen to do the work of a husky or Siberian 

 wolf dog, rode in the baggage cars. Along with the rest 

 came young women and old women, dainty Mercedes, silly, 

 pretty and whimsical, demanding the impossible; elderly 

 graduates of the cheap boarding-houses, with iron hand and 

 iron jaw, capable of making some sort of a way anywhere. 

 All were loaded down with all clothing and provision needed 

 for an Arctic winter. Most knew nothing of hardship, 

 nothing of dogs, nothing of trails over glacial mountains and 



