One of the characters then at Nome, known and unmistakable from the Klondike down, was "Mother" Woods, in her sunbonnet, abbreviated skirts, and "mukluks" or native sealskin boots. A woman of middle age, she had participated in almost every gold stampede, enduring as much as a man; and she swore like a trooper. But in the winter she had nursed and cared for the sick and frozen with the greatest tenderness, it was said; in recognition of which a voluntary contribution had been made to enable her to appeal a case which in the court below had gone contrary to her mining interests. I had, of course, heard of "Scotch verdicts"; but during the winter months the Nome public had coined an expression new to me in referring to the "Scotch whisky decisions"; and, without regard to the possible ancestry of the learned court, it was a lamentable fact that its Scotch had been potent in making a rye business of justice.
W---- was heading for Solomon River,--about thirty miles distant on the coast east of Nome,--and, believing that he had a good opportunity to reach it with some friends on the _Ruth_, a steam-schooner, he gladly pulled out from Nome on the 27th of June, while we wished him the wealth of "King Solomon's mines."
The days passed by; the inhospitable weather continued; and still there was no certainty of getting into Golovin Bay to travel up the streams to Council City. It was becoming a rather serious matter, and it would have been natural for my partner to suppose that I either had been prevented from coming altogether or had been indefinitely delayed by some mishap. I had seen all the people I cared to see, was heartily sick of the town, and the Gold Hill Hotel, thinly partitioned and put up on the cardboard plan, was not running a very effective heating-plant.
One day there shuffled uninvited into the room, a trifle in his cups, a miserable-looking individual who announced that he was "Uncle Billy" and that everybody knew him, and then proceeded to jabber his tale of woe. He didn't explain how or why it had happened, but merely whimpered that he had been "shot to pieces" during the winter. By way of illustration, and to prove this statement, after pointing to one useless arm he went down into his pocket, and pulling out a "poke" (miner's pocket-book), emptied from it a large-sized bullet and a considerable piece of bone, adding, with attempted humor, that it wasn't everybody who carried his bones about with him in that way. It seemed that he was being made to do menial work in the kitchen, whereas he was really a millionaire, to substantiate which this delightful person again resorted to his wardrobe and drew forth a number of crumpled and dirty mining papers. Appearing on the scene soon after I had finished reading in "The Crisis" of "Uncle Billy" (General Sherman), this pitiful result of one battle made an impression by contrast.