AN INTERESTING TRIO 309 



indeed beside himself, and if he doesn't make 

 up his mind soon and take unto himself a 

 wife, his loneliness may prey upon him so 

 hard as really to drive him insane.* 



"Yet ever in the far forlorn, by trails of lone desire, 

 Yet ever in the dawn's white leer of hate; 

 Yet ever by the dripping kill, beside the drowsy fire, 



There comes the fierce heart hunger for a mate. 

 There comes the mad blood clamour for a woman's 

 clinging hand. 

 Love — humid eyes — the velvet of a breast; 

 And so I sought the Bonnet Plumes, and chose from out 

 the band 

 The girl I thought the sweetest and the best." 



Now these three men, when they finished 

 their work with us and left us at White Horse, 

 took to the wilds their food supply and other 

 necessaries for the winter and settled down to 

 nine months of hard, slavish work in the gold 

 mine of which each man owns a third interest. 

 Here they work in the frozen ground, thaw- 

 ing it as they dig ever deeper. It's a hard 

 life and a lonely one, but to be a miner means 

 a hard life. 



* Since writing the above, Pete came to his home in Ohio 

 to see his parents and to hunt a wife, but the man who had 

 withstood the low temperature of ihe Yukon, took cold in 

 Ohio. Pneumonia developed and in a few days he was dead. 

 Thus passed away one of the most genial and loveable men 

 that ever came to the Yukon. 



