The Daily Alaska empire., 1936-09-16

GHoSTsOF, OLD
 NOME. STALKS.
 AB0UT,SEATTLE

HDUUIgCEHIlLl Rex Beach, who arrived in Ju- neau yesterday, received the follow ing write-up by Paul ONeil in the Seattle Times, prior to sailing north: 's Remember a girl names Cherry Malotte? A lean, oad-shouldered man named Glenister? Struve, a crooked lawyer? And the book "The Spoilers in which they lived and loved according to the code of the Alaskan gold stampede? Remember how Rex Beach, the books writer, blazed into prom thence in 1906 when the volume came off the press?
 The ghosts of his old characters If such flight of imagination may be licensed-strode into room at the Olympic Hotel today, flannel shirts and muddy boots, carmined .ips, puffed sleeves and all
 Rex Beach, gray-haired, broad shouldered man who has become many things since he sat down to record the roar of the gold rush, met his old Alaskan partner in Seattle today for the first time in twenty-five years.
 The author, who will sail for AL aska Saturday, answered a rap on his hotel room door. A minute later he was still shaking hands with white-haired Jack Leedy, 3816 East ern Avenue, with whom, in 1900, he labored on claim near Nome.
 The two men began to talk, and gradually time faded away and Beach was the kid" who had gone to Alaska in 1897, one of the first to toll in the search for yellow metal.
 Good Windlass Man
 Remember the shaft we sunk outside of Nome?" asked Leedy. "One hundred and ten feet down, with us working the two-man wind lass and an Irishman on the bot tom"
 T was a pretty good man on a windlass, too," said Beach. And I could dance all night in my rubber boots, and still be pretty good man the next day"
 And you still can," said Leedy.
 Not me-" said Beach. I'm get ting old"
 Me, too, guess" said Leedy.
 They sat, silent, for a moment.
 Remember the pie-eating con- test?" asked Leedy.
 Beach leaned back and laughed
 Pie-Faced Indian
 There was an Indian in Cor dova," the author began, who was a famous pie-eater He always won the Fourth of July pie-eating con- tests, but he was sensitive about his art, and didn't like to be kidded about it. So for week, everyone told him that I was the champion pie-eater of New York a great paleface pie-eating center.
 He finally agreed to a match. He was really built to eat pies. He had mouth a foot wide. Putting a pie into it was just like showing a razor blade through a slot in a mailbox
 He ate three pies without talk ing a breath, and then looked around and discovered that was just standing there grinning at him. He let out roar and threw the rest of the pies at the audience"
 Leedy leaned forward tnd said: You know, I have always tried to get Rex to write stories-he could tell them so well, but he never would" ft
 So He Wrote Story
 Beach grinned, T never thought of writing until after I left the North" he said. q was in Chicago, wondering where I was going to get job, when a friend of mine, who worked on a trade journal, told me he had sold a story about Alaska. That wasn't so interesting, but he also said he had been paid S10 for it.
 T wondered how long that had been going on. The idea of making $10 without carrying something heavy was new to me-, So I sat down and wrote a story.
 Been at It Ever Since
 "It was called The Mulel Driver