Biography of Goldie O'Gilt

How Goldie O'Gilt found herself in the Klondike is unknown. However, she came to own a saloon in Dawson in 1896, called the *Blackjack*, which quickly became the most popular saloon in town when the Gold Rush started. There, Goldie was not only the owner of the saloon, but also the main attraction, as she performed a rather risqué song-and-dance number on its stage; her most popular song was *After the Ball*.

A woman of questionable ethics, Goldie frequently invited successful prospectors to have a drink with her, spiked the coffee, and stole the gold, leaving the unfortunate gold-diggers to wake up penniless in the snow out of town. However, when she tried this trick on Scrooge McDuck (a then young prospector for whom Goldie had had a certain attraction from the beginning because he, unlike the other prospectors, almost never stopped by her saloon to gamble), Scrooge came back to Dawson immediately and wrestled all the patrons in the *Blackjack* to get to Goldie, whom he forcibly took away with him to his claim in White Agony Creek, forcing her to work in his mine for a month to teach her respect for a prospector's hard work. During this month, Scrooge and Goldie slowly fell in love, though neither admitted it to themselves, let alone each other. At the end of the month, Goldie proudly refused Scrooge's meager pay and walked away back to Dawson.

Throughout the rest of the Gold Rush, Scrooge and Goldie had several other romantic encounters, but they never went all the way; Scrooge was about to finally ask her to marry him in 1898 when his letter and present were engulfed in an ice crevice. Not feeling capable of writing the letter all over again, the bitter Scrooge finally gave up and decided to keep pursuing wealth beyond his current fortune of a million dollars. Goldie, never aware of this turn of events, simply came back to her dance-hall-girl lifestyle, though her month spent with Scrooge had changed her for the better and she no longer stole or swindled.

After the Gold Rush ended, the *Blackjack Saloon* lost most of its clients and Goldie had to abandon it. She took up gold mining herself for a while before retiring to Scrooge's quiet claim in White Agony Creek, which only she and Scrooge knew the location of; there, she found a pet in a grizzly bear called Blackjack, who became her bodyguard.

In 1951, Scrooge McDuck suddenly remembered that he had hidden some of his gold in White Agony Creek and never thought of retrieving it for all these years; this prompted him to go back to the Klondike. When he arrived in White Agony Creek, he was surprised (and terrified) that a squatter had apparently taken over his claim, one so fearsome they apparently had a grizzly bear at their beck and call. His attitude changed entirely when he discovered she was none other than Goldie herself. Secretly devastated of seeing Goldie reduced to a poor old woman living in a wooden shack, Scrooge arranged for her to find the hidden gold, which Goldie later used to turn the *Blackjack* into a hotel.

At some point, Goldie had an anonymous daughter. Her parentage has never been confirmed. Some have speculated that she was secretly fathered by Scrooge McDuck during the month Goldie spent in White Agony Creek. Others have suggested that Goldie was briefly married at some point between 1896 and 1951.  At any rate, this daughter married and had, herself, a daughter, Dickie Duck.