770 
FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Nov. 16, 1907. 


“Mitchell 
match. He 
other two 
up against his 
bushes, and the 
there was a 
storm coming told McCormick to 
the mines with him and he could 
sleep in the Wellington cook house. When they 
were about five miles from home, coming along 
the Mitchell trail, old Snow stepped on a loose 
saw that he 
went off in 
started for 
Snow 
was 
the 
home, as 
on. 
come in to 
Over he went, and when he tried to get 
up he found his leg was broken just above the 
ankle. He wanted McCormick to go right in 
to the mines and bring help. McCormick said 
he wouldn’t walk that road alone after dark for 
ten 
rock. 
thousand dollars. Money or coaxing would 
not bribe him; so they 
were until daylight. 
had to stay where they 
It was next spring before 
Snow could walk without crutches. 
“You wouldn’t think that any reasonable man 
would blame Mitchell for the accident, but .Snow 
had a lot of Gaelic-speaking workmen who were 
as superstitious as.they make them. There were 
one or two accidents round the mines shortly 
afterward, and Mary McCormick ran a fork into 
her foot and was sick with blood poisoning for 
two months. Word got round that Mitchell had 
‘overlooked’ Snow crowd, and people 
began to think there was some truth in it. Then 
Mitchell went to Sheet Harbor woods as cook 
for one of the camps. He was gone all winter 
and it was a good job for him that he went, for 
one day McCormick went to town to get some 
medicine for 
alive again. 
and his 
and he was never seen 
He passed through the mines late 
one afternoon. It was thawing fast, but all the 
frozen. That night it came round 
Then it snowed, and it was only 
by accident that the folks found out that Mc- 
Cormick was missing, and Mary lay sick in bed 
without anyone to help her. 
his wife, 
lakes were 
a cold spell. 
“Two women from the mines went over and 
nursed her, and over a hundred men turned out 
to look McCormick. They found neither 
hide nor hair of him. The magistrates reported 
the case to Halifax, and the government sent a de- 
tective to Sheet Harbor woods after Mitchell. 
The boss of his camp, and all the men in it swore 
that he’d never been two miles from camp since 
he moved in the late fall. When the detective 
was leaving camp Mitchell says to him, ‘You 
take my compliments to Mr. Snow, and tell him 
that his spy is under the ice in Mitchell’s Lake: 
Ask him how the logs his crowd stole from me 
are standing the “creep” that’s started in the 
hanging wall of the Dewar lead. Tell his men 
from me that they'll hear McCormick scream- 
ing for water in the east level of the Dewar pit 
almost any night they ‘choose to listen,’ 
“Now, they'd gutted the east 
workings of the Dewar mine so badly that the 
hanging wall began to close in on the foot wall. 
Snow put in heavy balks of timber, iron girders, 
and 
could 
for 
years before 

even stone and concrete, but nothing he 
put in would hold back the millions of 
tons of rock which were moving down and clos- 
ing the workings. My father says the workings 
closed at the rate of an inch a month at first. 
Then the creep became more rapid. 
beams were ground to powder, or 
tened like 
noise. 
As the great 
rather flat- 
mushrooms, made a horrible 
they 
“The detective carried the message to Snow, 
but Snow only laughed at it. It was quite dif- 
ferent with Mary McCormick, though. Her ill- 
ness had broken her down quite a bit. She aged 
more in the two months she lay in bed than 

she’d done in the ten years previous. The doc- 
tor said the blood poisoning had affected her 
brain in some. way or other. 
“When spring came and the ice went out she 
hunted the lake from end to end for McCor- 
mick’s body, but it wasn’t until August that it 
came ashore. They had a frightful gale that 
August. It was the same time Saxby foretold 
the high tide which broke the dikes all along 
the Bay of Fundy, and ruined so many people 
round Windsor, Horton and Grand Pré. Joe 
Demingues found him lying on McCormick’s 
Point. They recognized him by his clothes, his 
watch and the medicine bottle he had in his 
pocket. The coroner held an’ inquest on the 
shore of the lake, then they carried all that was 
left of him up to the shanty he and Mary lived 
in. There was no priest handy, so they buried 
him in the garden without any prayers. 
“Up to this time Mary had refused to believe 
that he was dead. She put in her bit of garden 
as welf as she could, and kept her shanty as 
clean as any house you’d want to see. After 
McCormick was buried she let everything go. 
She had some money saved; most of it was the 
money Snow. paid them for playing spy on Mit- 
chell. She let most all her garden grow up to 
weeds, keeping just enough ground to raise pota- 
toes for herself. She lived on them, what trout 
and eels she could catch out of the lake, and 
the rabbits she could snare. Then she started 
begging in Goldenville and Sherbrooke. Once 
a week, winter and summer, she'd tramp out to 
the mines, carrying a sack and a basket. The 
people pitied her, and she usually went home 
with all the broken victuals she could carry. 
All the rest of the time she was ranging the 
woods, looking for the place Mitchell found the 
gold in. From the time the snow went off until 
the ground froze up again she hunted and broke 
quartz. The boulders she smashed up between St. 
Mary’s River and Big Liscombe would keep a 
ten-stamp mill on the bound for a solid month. 
“After a while Snow sold out and moved back 
to the States. He came to the mines a very 
poor man, and he went away a rich one from 
our point of view. He and his wife were al- 
ways good to old Mary, and as long as he lived 
he always sent her a ten dollar gold piece for 
her Christmas. When Snow left the whole bot- 
tom seemed to drop out of the mines. An 
American company bought him out, but they 
made a mess of things. Three years after he 
left the whole place was in the tributor’s hands. 
Some of them did well for a while; most of them 
came to grief. About this time Mitchell saw 
fit to pull up stakes and get out. He had some 
trouble with his wife and her sons by her first 
husband. He had considerable many cattle. He 
sold them all, taking a note at four months for 
the money: He discounted the note with my 
father. When father paid him the money, he 
says to him, ‘Look here, Mitchell, there’s one 
thing you ought to do before you leave these 
parts. That poor old Mary Crusher believes 
you've “overlooked” her and her husband. She 
was talking to my wife about it last week. Now 
she’s an old woman, lame, half blind and deaf. 
You write her a note that you’re leaving these 
parts and that you've taken the spell off her. 
You know and I know that neither you nor any 
living man can “‘overlook” anyone else. Do 
this, and do it right now, and I’ll pay you back 
the discount I charged you on that note.’ 
“Says Mitchell, ‘If you’d give me everything 

_ Kentville. 




in your house, and give me a clear deed of the 
house as well, I wouldn’t do it. Her trouble: 
only just begun. Yours is coming too. You'l 
see sheep grazing where the Wellington engin 
is running now, and good miners thankful te 
work for fifty cents a day. Just as long as Mary 
Crusher is above ground these mines -won’t pay 
for the powder burnt in them or the fuel whicl 
keeps them pumped.’ 
“He went out and slammed the door behin« 
him, That night father was talking to the doc 
tor and told him about this. The doctor hearc 
what he had to say, then he says, ‘It’s an un 
fortunate thing that Snow happened to break hi: 
leg that night, as he was coming home, and ¢| 
still more unfortunate thing that old McCormicl 
chose to cross Mitchell Lake on thin ice. O}| 
course, Mitchell has no more power than you o}} 
I have. The only thing with ignorant peopl 
like McCormick and half-witted people like ol«| 
Mary is that he gets his work in by suggestion} 
Since Mary’s illness she’s been a good bit off| 
She’s been brooding over McCormick’s death anc; 
her own loss of sight and hearing. I woul 
like to send her to the poor house, as one 0; 
the harmless insane, but the county would kicl) 
about it if I did. Mitchell has very good de} 
ductive powers, and a great knack of acquiring; 
information. We both know that the mines can’} 
stand this new management. There’s bound ti 
be a smash, and then five hundred acres of th) 
best gold property east of the Rockies will g| 
into law. It’ll be rough on both of us. Mit} 
chell’s head was level when he sold out.’ } 
“Well, Mitchell’s words came true to the lets 
ter. The company failed, the mines closed downi 
and for two solid years no whistle blew and n«¢} 
gold worth mentioning was raised in Golden\ 
ville. Family after family moved away. House: 
that cost a thousand dollars to build were solc' 
for fifty dollars, and scores of miners’ house) 
were torn down and used for firing. You cai 
imagine how hard it was on the few families 
which were left. All the same old Mary Crushe} 
—for we had given up calling her McCormick—! 
managed to pick a living somehow or another] 
Poor devils who had nothing else gave her ii 
bite to eat and a shakedown by the stove whet) 
she wanted it. Snow died and Mary’s Christ} 
mas ten dollars stopped. All sorts of queer cattli 
moved into the empty houses the miners had lef} 
—Dutchmen who’d had to leave Lunenburg} 
Frenchmen who'd been kicked out of Chezen 
cook, Judiquers from Cape Breton, and deserter 
from the garrison at Halifax. Among them wa 
a family of Rayfuses who’d been kicked out o 
They were the worst gang, bar none 
that I’ve ever run across. They were mongre} 
Dutch, cowardly as coyotes, treacherous as In} 
dians, and worse than niggers. They were supert 
stitious, too, and it was this which got them inti! 
trouble with old Mary. Shortly after they move: 
in she went to their door one night and askei 
for supper and lodging. They didn’t know whi 
she was, and when they refused her and shi 
wouldn’t go away, they set their dog on her 
She beat the dog off with an axe handle sh} 
was carrying; then she cursed the whole family}! 
Mother happened along, took her in, gave hej 
some supper and a bed on the kitchen floor 
About ‘a week later one of the Rayfuse boy?! 
stole a box of dynamite caps from some mei 
who were prospecting. He got fooling with on\{ 
of them and blew his forefinger and thumb offi 
A few days later old man Rayfuse got drunlf 






























































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