"Billy," I said, "I love you, but I don't like your business. It's a bad business. See what it has done to lots of good fellows around here. You are too big for that game. I wish you'd drop it and do something that's clean—that doesn't hurt anybody."
Bill made no reply, and I supposed my words had been fruitless. But in a few weeks one of my friends informed me that Bill had sold out and had gone to gold-mining.
"That's good!" I exclaimed. "Did he give any reason?"
"Yes," the man replied, "Bill said you told him to."
When I was returning to Alaska in 1901, I bought a nice buffalo smoking-set at the Pan-American Exposition and took it to Alaska for Bunch-grass Bill. I did not see him, as he was mining at a distance, but I heard of his pride and pleasure as he displayed the gift and talked affectionately of "Father Young." He left Alaska that summer, and I have heard vaguely of his presence in the Nevada gold-fields. But wherever he is, I pray that God may bless and save the Irish saloon-keeper, who loved me and saved my life.
[IV]
MY DOGS
Mushing with dogs in Alaska is the worst and the best mode of traveling in all the world—the most joyful and the most exasperating—according to the angle from which you look at it.