They were specimens of the many strange waifs
which ride the breast of a gold rush or come tailing along
behind.
Edwin Bentham and Grace Bentham were waifs; they were also
tailing along behind, for the Klondike rush of '97 had long since
swept down the great river and subsided into the famine-stricken
city of Dawson. When the Yukon shut up shop and went to sleep
under a three-foot ice-sheet, this peripatetic couple found
themselves at the Five Finger Rapids, with the City of Gold still
a journey of many sleeps to the north.
Many cattle had been butchered at this place in the fall of the
year, and the offal made a goodly heap. The three fellow-voyagers
of Edwin Bentham and wife gazed upon this deposit, did a little
mental arithmetic, caught a certain glimpse of a bonanza, and
decided to remain. And all winter they sold sacks of bones and
frozen hides to the famished dog-teams. It was a modest price
they asked, a dollar a pound, just as it came. Six months later,
when the sun came back and the Yukon awoke, they buckled on their
heavy moneybelts and journeyed back to the Southland, where they
yet live and lie mightily about the Klondike they never saw.
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