ENROUTE TO THE HUNTING GROUNDS 



hire are considered, it doesn't take a lightning 

 calculator to figure out how very correct his 

 statement is. As an illustration of this condition 

 in that country: A fine, large cooking range that 

 would command $25 or 330 in town, even at 

 second-hand prices, lies unclaimed in the cabin 

 where we spent that night (only about seventeen 

 miles from McCarthy), for the simple reason 

 that it isn't worth the trouble and work of pack- 

 ing it in. 



Half concealed in the timber at the side of the 

 trail up the Nizina stood an old deserted cabin 

 (as all cabins are in this country). Some one 

 pointed it out to us as the roadhouse that was 

 run by B. S. Kelly during the Shushanna gold 

 rush in 1913. It is said of him that while running 

 this roadhouse he found himself on his "last 

 legs" financially. When a man called to get a 

 meal, Kelly would ask him if he had a frying pan 

 in his outfit. Of course every prospector travel- 

 ing thru at that time had a frying pan. The 

 next question asked was, "Have you some 

 grease?" This was another acquisition usually 

 found in the prospector's pack. Kelly would 

 then place the skillet on the fire and tell the 

 prospector to go out and kill a rabbit, remarking 

 that that would do for his dinner — for which a 

 charge of $1.50 was made. 



That night some long-distance world's records 

 were broken in the gabfest that followed after 

 supper, and if the shades of all the departed 



39 



