After that he located at
Sheep Camp, organized the professional packers, and jumped the freight
ten cents a pound in a single day. In token of their gratitude, the
packers patronized his faro and roulette layouts and were mulcted
cheerfully of their earnings. But his commercialism was of too lusty a
growth to be long endured; so they rushed him one night, burned his
shanty, divided the bank, and headed him up the trail with empty pockets.
Ill-luck was his running mate. He engaged with responsible parties to
run whisky across the line by way of precarious and unknown trails, lost
his Indian guides, and had the very first outfit confiscated by the
Mounted Police. Numerous other misfortunes tended to make him bitter of
heart and wanton of action, and he celebrated his arrival at Lake Bennett
by terrorizing the camp for twenty straight hours. Then a miners'
meeting took him in hand, and commanded him to make himself scarce. He
had a wholesome respect for such assemblages, and he obeyed in such haste
that he inadvertently removed himself at the tail-end of another man's
dog team. This was equivalent to horse-stealing in a more mellow clime,
so he hit only the high places across Bennett and down Tagish, and made
his first camp a full hundred miles to the north.
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