Within a few
weeks there were fifteen hundred homeless men in camp. Tiny and the
carpenter's wife began to cook for them, in a tent. The miners gave her a
building lot, and the carpenter put up a log hotel for her. There she
sometimes fed a hundred and fifty men a day. Miners came in on snowshoes
from their placer claims twenty miles away to buy fresh bread from her, and
paid for it in gold.
That winter Tiny kept in her hotel a Swede whose legs had been frozen one
night in a storm when he was trying to find his way back to his cabin. The
poor fellow thought it great good fortune to be cared for by a woman, and a
woman who spoke his own tongue. When he was told that his feet must be
amputated, he said he hoped he would not get well; what could a working-man
do in this hard world without feet? He did, in fact, die from the
operation, but not before he had deeded Tiny Soderball his claim on Hunker
Creek. Tiny sold her hotel, invested half her money in Dawson building
lots, and with the rest she developed her claim. She went off into the
wilds and lived on the claim. She bought other claims from discouraged
miners, traded or sold them on percentages.
After nearly ten years in the Klondike, Tiny returned, with a considerable
fortune, to live in San Francisco.
Pages:
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292