"We struck out from West Kootenay an' hit the trail for Six Mile Creek, near Kicking Horse Pass, in Upper East Kootenay. We stayed there a while, but some one, who had a grudge agin the Mormons, pulled his gun on Father. A 'forty-niner' ain't apt to be lazy on the shoot, an' Father's gun spit first. We didn't wait for the funeral, but moved on, an' lively, at that, strikin' for the Fraser."
"Good thing for you the N. W. M. P. (North West Mounted Police), didn't strike your trail!" commented Owens.
"It was a straight-enough deal," protested Jim, "an' the N. W.'s ha' got plenty o' sense. But that wasn't no reason for hangin' around, lookin' for trouble. We thought the Fraser'd be healthier. As it turned out, it wasn't.
"The Fraser boom was dead. The shacks in the ol' minin' camps was rottin' to ruin. The machinery—what little there was of it—was lyin' there, rustin'. The sluices had all fallen to bits, except on Hop Rabbit Creek. A couple o' hundred men was there still, workin' over the tailin's, but they was all Chinamen. Up the creek a ways some o' them was pannin'.
"Second day we was there, a big Chink comes up to me, an' says, very quiet like,
"'You plenty sabbee? Run away quick!'
"It didn't look that way to me, for I don't take to orderin'. I was good an' ready to drop that Chink in his tracks, but I did a little thinkin' first. Two hundred agin two is big odds. I nodded, an' the big Chink turns away.
"I didn't say nothin' about the warnin' to Father, for he was that stubborn he'd ha' waded right in an' tried to clean up the whole camp. He wouldn't ha' had the chance of a rat in a trap. He'd ha' got himself carved up in little slices an' that was about all. So I jest told him that one o' the Chinks had reported there was a new strike on the Cassiar. Father took the bait like a hungry trout an' we was off in an hour."
"But I always thought Chinamen were such a peaceful lot!" exclaimed Clem.
"If a Chink comes into a white camp, he's willin' to sing small an' do what he's told. But in a boom camp that white folks have given up an' quit, if Johnny Chink comes in, he won't let nary a white come back. I know! One o' my pardners was in the massacre o' Happy Man Gulch in '87. That's a yarn worth hearin'! I'll tell it you, some time.