"Eet may be so, mon pere," he made answer. "An' Ah t'ink Ah go
troo hell a-snappin', lak de hemlock troo de fire. Eh, mon pere?"
But all bad things come to an end as well as good, and so with
Black Leclere. On the summer low water, in a poling boat, he left
McDougall for Sunrise. He left McDougall in company with Timothy
Brown, and arrived at Sunrise by himself. Further, it was known
that they had quarrelled just previous to pulling out; for the
Lizzie, a wheezy ten-ton stern-wheeler, twenty-four hours behind,
beat Leclere in by three days. And when he did get in, it was with
a clean-drilled bullet-hole through his shoulder muscle, and a tale
of ambush and murder.
A strike had been made at Sunrise, and things had changed
considerably. With the infusion of several hundred gold-seekers, a
deal of whisky, and half-a-dozen equipped gamblers, the missionary
had seen the page of his years of labour with the Indians wiped
clean. When the squaws became preoccupied with cooking beans and
keeping the fire going for the wifeless miners, and the bucks with
swapping their warm furs for black bottles and broken time-pieces,
he took to his bed, said "Bless me" several times, and departed to
his final accounting in a rough-hewn, oblong box.
Pages:
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172