The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 21, 1900, Page 2

THE SUNDAY CALL. out tons of gold ful ardd leface lover her is now true fore r to as she ble mysterious lady. The kind that who always hap- from no one ks, t times some far-away These ladies, you must take but in return for to weave & rning them. it is the man or contend. 8an and Benito ack, the t 1d of the Kion- rge Carmack, according to the story wh & spe ng been clear, for she sh well and no one the uage of her lers about ce as her own. for divoree es not Indian s of equity comprehension. What e wants A be with her ce of her life the first white man to e Klondike, had lived Benito County, near nes of New Idria pour r furnaces. He formed a and with the instinct of ector went to look for gold t was known to be, but where He went to Alaska in 1, hunted and fished as all iite men of that country did, but always with eves and ears open for storfes th d that h& knew the Indians if they would. An Indian is he looks and his sllence fis, than we think, the reticence of rather than the dumbness of ms of qu could tell than ss often ¢ clearly and lightly foresaw what 1 if the white men found There would be an end to the the streams, the game and the fish. r things other than that the Indian The wild forest is their park, and you may well fancy that fhere are parks in the United States which the owners would not wish to see torn up and Cestroyed by strangers from across the scas, even if there was goid in them, 2 é es not care, her Tor MoNTH of animals to trap, and came upon the cheerless camp where the worn out pros- pector had made his last halt. A few morsels of bones chewed as though by a dog surrounded the spot where the fire b Every coal was dead and the fros d pound the ashes. i nder a little shelter of boughs the. sole beer occupant of the camp was sleeping. His e was drawn, white and hard. Hun- ger and suffering had marked it, vet he was handsome to her; the {deal for which she had waited. Perhaps it was her destiny or else just the regular, every day hankering alter the ypattainable that had made her scorn the advances of all the brown-faced ) SHE CAME EdCH DAY AND CARED That made 1t & long ana weary nunt ror the persistent Californian: On one of his ons through the interior the pro- visions of the porty gave out while.in the Yukon. One of them died, then another. Dying and desperats himself, Carmack lay in the ragged furs that were all his shelter, the end not far away. Indian Kite, then round-faced, bronzy, brown and laughing, found him. This is the only part of her story which £he tells with clearness, and upon the tell- ing and dwelling upon it has come to be all of her ife, for she has not grown men- tally in the legst from what she was as a wild forest child with the simple wants that & natural life creates. Now that her hustand, wealthy and strong, has grown beyond and away from her, she loves to tell of the time when he was poor and weak and suffering from hunger and cold, had crawled down by the river to dle, and was even thirsty in the freezing air that had locked all of the water of the river into an ice as enduring as rock. She, at home in the killing cold as much #s were the polar bears and white foxes, bad been down the river looking for signs OR il men of her tribe and sigh In her heart for the companionship of one of the tall, strong, active men of the south. She knew that there was no settlement nor camp of whites in traveling distance, and with Indlan ingtinct the whole stopy was told by the surroundings.’ She knew at once what was needed, Taking from a fur ‘bag slung over her shoulder .her two fire sticks, she began drilling rapidly with one upon the other, procured a tiny flame and lit a bit of gplintered pitch pine, upon. which she laid bits of bark, gathered’ hastfly from the trees. utes a roaring fire was going. She wak- ened the sleeper, and finding him'too thin- ly clad took off the fur jacket which she wore and vlaced 1t, warm with the heat of her body, upon him. He knew little of her languagefiand she none of his, but they were young; he was hungry, and she was 2 woman. He must be fed and that, too, for a long time, for he was then in no condition to travel, and the nearest whites were far away. A4 hér own' people had none too much food to carry them through the season, it' would In a few min- be useless for her to attempt to take him to their camp, for they would not consent to the added burden. And besides the medicine man af the tribé had a strange. strong * prescription for afling whites, which seemed to be too much for their weak constitutions. ~ For the present she had.with her the lunch which she had brought for herself and she&flared it with him liberally, leaving eflough far his supper, too. That night she ate sparingly and stowed away without exciting notice some portion of her supper. During the evening she made & rald upon the cache where the winter's provisions were stored, and also gathered up suth bits of furs and worn- out garments as could be taken away without being missed. ‘All of this was de- posited at a distance from camp during the darkness, unobserved. The next morning as usual she went out to visit her traps and taking the bundle, which she had ‘made up, carried it to a distant sheltered glen, which was un- frequented by the Indians. Here she made a camp of pine boughs and snow beneath the shelter of an overhanging rock. Gath- ering a lot of dry wood she built a fire where its flames would lick up against the side of the rock, heat it through and then through the night the place would be like an ‘gven. Having done this, she walked down the valley to where the rescued traveler was, at his old camp, awaiting her coming, and proudly introduced Him to his new quar- ters, where he was to stay secure from human observation, her prize. For months she came each day, shy and unwilling. - almost, only staying long enough to see that he was well and to leave the food which she had brought him, At last came the open season agaln, with the filsh, game and berries plentiful. The man had come to his strength and © SHOWED THE GOLD ©F v KLONDVKE TO GEORGE CARMACK Wwould 500N lea¥e sre nor mh merw Then with all her womanly arts she per- suaded him, for she had grown to love the life she had saved. Then they were wedded after the sim- ple manner of the Indians and her peo- ple became his people. Still always up- permost in {his mind was the quest for the gold thRgt he felt sure was not far away. Kate'saw that this would sooneF or later take her loved one from her, for with her young child she could not follow on all of the hard trips in search for the bits of metal that were her only rival in her husband's thoughts. ‘Why should she not tell him Wwhere:the creeks were that ran for miles over golden pebbles. It would make him happy and then, when he Wad all of it that he de- slred, he would stay contented at home With her and cedse those tiresome wan- derings for the metal whose lack made him so unhappy. Her brothers, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley, told her that it would not be so; that 1t was not for itself that he wished the'gold, but that he wanted it for what it would buy down in the sunland; that A 1 once he got enough of it he woud leave her and go away forever to his own people. But she loved him and that was enough. She could not see him unhappy, and.one day an excursion was planned that would lead them to the place where the mosses trafled over golden sands and the waters of the rippling creek looked like Chablis as they took alternately the color of the moss and gold on which they ran. That was an eventful day. Carmack Jooked at if one way, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley had a different view. They knew that now the greed of the white man would be limited only by the finding of the last grain of gold in the creeks; that the treasure house which would have lasted their moderate peopls unt{l the end of time would be rifled in the space of a few months or years, and that with it would go all of the food re- sources of the wilderness. Skookum Jim and Tagish Charley did not want to file claims. They felt that they owned the whole creek and did not care to be limited to the 500 feet that the law allowed, but Carmack saw that their rights were secured and then they began to scoop out gold. It was that creek by tons and the three ploneers got their share. . Carmack did not run away and leave his Indian wife as her brothers had told her he would. She was still pretty and like the smile—well, you her ' smi was ¥ know; the smile that a man gets from the woman who loves him. Then, too, she had saved his life and found him a fortune. So together the¥ went to the land of the sun; he, pleased to show her the. wonders which her simple languase could not describe; she, proud to be seen with her big Handsome white husband. Carmack was generous and good-heart- ed. He bought things until the salemen held their breaths. There was not an: thing good enough for Kate. A hundr dollar doll was good enough for the tie daughter Grafile, because any doll is good enough for a girl even If it is only a stick of wood with a shawl wrapped abaut it. But Carmack had too much money, and with that sense of honest generosity which is now so scarce he felt that it was his duty to act as distributor of the bless- ings which the treasure king of the north had showered upon him. He gathered his family about him at the hotel window in Seattle and threw money by the handful into the crowds below. That was a sig which made him laugh. Newsboys dropped papers in the mud and fought and clawed in the slime of the street as pigs grovel and root for corn in the barnyard Merchents left their shops, which might have been pillaged but that every as lfke themselves idst of the furious feootbal rush that ~urged, scratched and slid around like wolves over a bome. Motormen and con or as well as passengers jumped from the cars, which were left to stand while the five-dollar pieces and siiver colns fell fror The police who were sent to « e the crowd joined In the scramble and swelled the mob which they shoul have scattered. Men came out of that jam with suits destroyed and gold In thelr ght was well worth the money Carmack’s opinfon, but his timid brow wife was frightened to think of the awful power of the gold which she had shown to the palefaces: terrified by the for evil in that yellow metal which so prettily under the moss and yet the proud white man fight as her fa sled dogs fought over the dried s when the snow was on the ground in long night at home. TwWo years ago the momey from the Klondike bullt a pretty little cottage In the mountains of San Benito oa the Paicines road, and thers the Indian wife was left with a sister of the rich mmer and she and the child played under the sun. So affairs might have gone had it not been that one day came from the northe land stories that put peace to flight from the mind of placid Indian Kate. “Thers was & woman,” eta Also from the north; all the way from Dawson, came a strange lady, who took the affairs of Mrs. Carmack in ber hands and proceeded to assist her in putting the forces of the law in operation for the purpose of compelling George Carmack ta give one-half of his property to his wife, What the motive of the lady from Daw- son was she told no one, and the only clew to it is that she hes a grievance against a certaln woman in Seattls wha is pamed in the complaint for divorce as a corespondent. It is alleged by the lady from Dawson that a dlamond was stolen from her by this Seattle person, which shows that they have met befors, and there may be other reasons than that of the missing diamond which prompt her to make a 5000-mile trip for the purpose of taking such an active interest in fight- ing the battles of the lonely Indian who does not even realize what it is all about. In the meantime the sister of Mr. Car- mack, with whom his wife had been liw- ing. feels that she should not give shelter and comfort to the enemy, and has asked Indlan Kate to betake herself to other parts. Whether or not Kate understands, she at least does not obey, for all day 3. ltke a f dog, she hangs about the house where her daughter Graffle is still kept, and only leaw: when she s driven to go to a s to sleep. The child, too, with hap disposition wh persons of mixed race, ca mother wh adores her pleased to stay witk tives. The only pleasure left to I ] gave him the greatest kno And turning f addest th her little brew: of the father than P res the doe awa ing her fawn, ays about wh her d: e romance has only 14, but th e suit, be good mysterious ladies, tons of gold, abe Kate (