The Kusko times., 1932-06-25

doWn rlVer. we OlQ not nave any trouble, as we all knew how to take care of ourselves.
 "We split. up at the Fortymile and went to mining. Twasn't very rich, but we made sufficient to keep going,
 and we took life easy. There was a
 fine bunch of men in the country at the time. All were law-abiding and the court of last resort was the miners meeting,' where JUSTICE, in capital letters, was dispensed. It was
 a court from which there was no ap-
 peal, and was never called upon to function unless miners arbitration committee failed to settle the dispute.
 ''In the fall of 1893 Peter Buckley, now 92 years young and enjoying life
 in California, and myself were in Jack McQuesten's store at the mouth of the Fortymile. Yes, his son, Jack
 Buckey, is U. s. deputy marshal at
 Fairbanks today. We'll, anyhow, we were loafing around the store when
 in came half-breed Russian named
 Seruskey and two Indians named
 Pitka and Minook. They tossed a
 poke of dust on the counter and asked
 McQuesten to weigh it up. It tipped the scales at a little more than $500,
 and they told us they had banned it from the bars of a creek in the Circle country where there were many birch trees. They also informed us that there was big country in there and all creeks banned little gold.
 Next morning Peter Buckley and myself started out for Circle, and found Birch creek. The first bar we banned on showed good values. We staked it and called it McLeod's bar. The boys from the Fortymile then started to come in, so we looked at adjacent creeks. With Missouri Bill McPhee and Johnny Cannon we To- cated and staked on Independence creek. Jack Gregor and Pat Kinnal- ley were the discoverers of Mastodon. Eric Herman and Missouri Bill were the original discoverers of Deadwood, and the following spring I located Eage creek. The sum total produc- tion of those creeks would run into the millions of dollars. In fact, I am given to understand that they will produce millions more.
 ''In the spring of '97 I beat it up to Dawson and took charge of operations on No. 23 Eldorado for Belcher. The following spring Fay Delzene, Andy Hart and myself prospected in the White River country for some time. We returned to Dawson and in the spring of '99 II read letter from friend, Col. Dick Richardson (then a captain), whose memory all of us revere, to the effect that Gabe Price had cleaned up the first $1O,OO0 from No. 8 Anvil creek, in the Nome |OuiiCI oO 1OAtuWltu We SeL OuL lOT Nome, where we arrived on July 8, 1899. It was but a small tent town in those days, with but one saloon, run by man named Parks. The day after our arrival was the Glorious Fourth. The committee had arranged a sports meet, and I won the pole vault. l was competing in the broad jump later that afternoon when Cap- tain Ferguson came up to me and said: Here, you Klondiker, I'll bet you $500 that you can't beat that last lump.' The young fellow who had just performed clipped off few inches over 20 feet. I knew that l could not | 10 any better, or even as good, so | thought l would run blu and said: Cap, I'm from Dawson, and I'll bet you $35,000 that I can outjump the pest man you have here.' He looked ne straight in the eye and said: