[III]
BUNCH-GRASS BILL
Although I had often met him on the streets of Dawson in '98, I had not come into hand-shaking contact with Bunch-grass Bill until my first week at Nome. Of all the social orders whose members gathered together in clubs for humane work during the epidemic of typhoid fever, the first to organize, besides being the strongest and most active, was the Odd Fellows' Club. It was already organized when I arrived and, as I belonged to the order, I was present at the second meeting. The young lawyer who was president of the Club, taking me around the little circle of earnest men, brought me to a black-haired, black-eyed, sturdily-built and singularly handsome young Irishman by the name of Billy Murtagh.
"Billy owns and runs the 'Beach Saloon,' and goes by the name of Bunch-grass Bill," introduced our president. "I don't know how he got into the Odd Fellows, under rules which bar saloon-keepers and bad men. But he's in, and we'll not turn him out of the Club, at least so long as this distress continues."
Bill made no reply to this rather uncomplimentary introduction, but shook hands with Irish heartiness and looked at me with level gaze. "I've seen you in my saloon at Dawson," he said.
The others laughed, and the president chided, "You oughtn't to give a preacher away like that, Bill."
Taking a closer look at the young man, a scene at Dawson a year earlier flashed upon me. I was collecting money to pay the passage on the steamboat bound down the Yukon of some poor fellows who were broken and sick, and who must go "outside" or die. I made the round of the saloons and gambling halls, and going into one of these places was curtly refused by one of the partners. The other, who was this young man, came up and quietly said to the cashier, "Weigh him out two ounces ($32.00)."
"Oh, I remember you now, and your two ounces," I said to Bill; and to the others, "I can vouch for his knowing the Second Degree of the order, at least."
I was made chairman of the Relief Committee of the Club, and found work a-plenty cut out for me. Although the members of the Club did not look with indifference upon any case of distress, yet its prime object was to look up and help the sick Odd Fellows. I prepared a bulletin and tacked it up in the stores and saloons, directing that any cases of distress among the members of the order should be reported to the Committee. As the typhoid epidemic increased in virulence, the Club found its hands full.
A day or two after this first meeting, I was passing Bill's saloon when he called me in.