Charlevoix county herald., 1907-05-25

water sailor had finished his account
monkeys of a South sea island to
gather all the nuts under cover OF
darkness, thereby enabling the In
genious one to corner the market and
wax rich, locally, only in the end to
have his cinch exploded by dusky-
skinned and soft-eyed maiden-'it
don't make no difference how smart
chap is, it's all up with him soon as
he gets to foolin' round with a fe-
male girl, an the younger an all that
she is, the harder he's goin' to fall.
Wht< remarks has particular refer
ence to Dynamite Dick, which was the
sharpest musher that ever hit the
Dawson trail"
The old man leaned back in his
chair and watched the smoke from his
pipe as it drifted into the heat-draught
from the stove, and whirled suddenly
upward
These here incidents took place
before all you flatboat fellows made
the old Yukon looBTlike the Grand
canal. That winter there wasn't more
than 60 men on the upper river, an
one female girl. Pretty late-just
made it in time. Dick hits camp.
Il wasn't in just what you'd call
prime high favor in that camp, some
folks havin' said. whole lot mean
an emory, that there'd been too many
aces left in deck after l got through
nd
a-stayin on there was that I couldn't
get away. Dick hadn't been there
long before he comes round to my
shack one night. He didn't waste
no words in no prologue, but comes
right TO the point
Hows the supply of dynamite in
this here camp he asks. / didn't
just catch his drift, but 1 an
swered
Well says, it's kinder scarce
Most of the men is got enough to last
through till spring, if they're sparin
of it.
Huh! If they didn't have none
they'd pay pretty good prices for
blastin, wouldn't they?' he says, sort
er lnSlnuatln like.
"'You bet they would, I agrees;
that stuff is worth pretty near a mil
lion dollars In dust to this here
caIp.' You fellows built fire on
the ground to thaw your gravel, but
in them days we'd undercut a bank,
put in light charge of dynamite, an
break it up that way. l begin to see
his drift now. an so remarks:
THAT stuff is scattered through
the whole camp-each fellow has got
his in his own shack-it couldn't be
done nohow.'
Dick winks at me. I amt no or
binary miner, he says.
No, the boys lowed you was 4
fool miner, judgin' by your outfit,
tells him candid. 1t was the blamed.
est outfit you ever saw, too-mostly
wire netting.
That's all right, he says, unruf.
fed. If you want to go into this
thing, sight-unseen, shake on it, an
held out his paw. / didn't have moth
In to lose, so we gripped. Then he
set over closer, an unfolded his
scheme.
We'll, for smartness I'll back that
musher against anything that ever
happened, bar none. We set up tin
what ought to have been mornin', If
mornins had been comm in that re-
gion at that season, and fixed up the
whole programme. After that we
whirled in making rat traps out OF
that wire netting of his, but workin'
cautious, so as nct to let any of the
camp on to it. Dick gives it out
that he is inventin' new kind of eX.
plosive, made mostly Of pine bark.
This gives me a good excuse to go
off into the woods every day. 1t amt
bark I'm after though. 1t is to look
after those traps we'd made and set
to catch them big woods-rats. II
wasn't long before me had about 1000
of them.
You fellows know how daffy a rat
is after dynamite-blessed IL they
wouldn't gnaw into a bank vault to
get to it after havin' tasted it once.
Well, Dick started in to tame and
train them rats-an' he bein' an ami.
NAL trainer at one time he didn't have
no trouble at all-and soon as he got
them fairly trained and tanned, so
they'd come btck to our shack all
right, we'd let them out at night,
havin' first give each one little
lump of dynamite-just taste Then
off they'd go, an come back all stuffed
up. In few days some of the men
began to talk about how the rats was
eatin their blastin' stuff, an they
tried to catch them every way, but
Dick had taught them rats what a
trap was, an it wasn't any use. 1t was
a month maybe till the camp woke
up to the fact that there wasn't no
dynamite for blastin', and that the
trail was closed till spring. They
was most vida whole winter with
M work done would mean a terrible