A FULL thirty days after Swiftwater and Hathaway had left Seattle, following the affair on the decks of the steamer “Humboldt,” found the miner and his friend in Skagway. It was in the height of the spring rush to the gold fields, and there are undoubtedly few, if any, living today who will ever witness on this continent such scenes as were enacted on the terrible Skagway trail over the Coast Range of the Alaska mountains, which separated 50,000 eager, struggling, quarreling, frenzied men and women drawn thither by the mad rush for gold from the upper reaches of the Yukon River and the lakes which helped to form that mighty stream. No pen can adequately portray the bitter clash, and struggling, and turmoil--man against man, man against woman, woman against man, fist against fist, gun against gun, as this mob of gold-crazed human beings surged into the vortex of the Yukon’s valley and found their way to the new Golconda of the north. Skagway was a whirling, tumbling, seething whirlpool of humanity. Imagine the spectacle of a mob of 40,000 half-crazed human beings assembled at the foot of the almost impassable White Pass, with the thermometer 90 degrees in the shade at the foot of the range, and ten feet of snow on the Summit, three miles away. Then picture to this, if you can, the innumerable crimes against humanity that broke out in this mob of half-crazy, fighting, excited, bewildered multitude of men and women. There was no rest in the town--no sleep--no time for meals--no time for repose--nothing but a mad scramble and the devil take the hindmost. There was one cheap, newly constructed frame hotel in Skagway and rooms were from $5 to $20 a day. The only wharf of the town was packed fifty feet high with merchandise of every description--65 per cent. canned provisions, flour and dried fruits and the rest of it hardware, mining tools and clothing for the prospectors. Teams of yelping, snarling, fighting malamutes added their cries to the eternally welling mass of sound. And Swiftwater was there. Almost the first face I saw as I entered the hotel was that of Gates. “Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “let us forget bygones. In another day or two I would have been over the Summit with my outfit. It is lucky that I am here, because possibly I can help you in some way.” I could do nothing more than listen to what Swiftwater said. There was no other hotel, or indeed any place in the town where I could get shelter for myself and my two girls. Knowing the black purpose in Swiftwater’s heart, I watched my girls Bera and Blanche day and night. My own goods were piled up unsheltered and unprotected on the beach. Swiftwater, with all his cunning, could not deceive me of his real intent, yet my own perplexities and troubles made it easy for him to keep me in constant fear of him. “Mrs. Beebe,” he would say, “you can trust me absolutely.”