Jackson Gregory

“ For here is a land of fierce, iron-boweled mountains, of tangled brush which grows thick and defies the traveler, of long reaches, of lava-rock and granite, of mad, white, raging winters.
“Leave it alone,” men say down in Belle Fortune and up in Ruminoff. “It’s No-Luck Land. Many a poor devil’s gone in that never came out. And never a man brought a show of color out of it.”
Since Belle Fortune had dropped one day behind him, it had all been new country to Sheldon. Although summer was on its way, there had been few men before him since the winter had torn out the trails. ”

“ And there is nothing in all the world like the deepest solitude of the woods to take out of a man’s heart the bitterness of revenge. Sheldon was a little ashamed of himself. He wanted to forget gold and the seeking thereof. And therefore, perhaps, his fate took it upon herself to hide a certain forking of the trails under a patch of snow so that he turned away from French Meadows and into the Sasnokee-keewan. ”

“ Men have found gold on Gold River, where the Russian camp of Ruminoff Shanty made history half a century ago; they have taken out the pay-dirt at Belle Fortune. Between the two points they have made many trails during fifty years, trails which invariably turn to east or west of the Sasnokee-keewan. ”