I was informed that the place had been very gay "socially."
Some were in fine feather, others hopeful, and but few discouraged.

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 bull