Theodore Seixas Solomons

“ In winter, when Alaska coast towns are shrunk to their minimum population, when interests narrow, and every activity is keenly watched, no newcomer, as busy as Ticely, could escape the overtures of the alert and enterprising, once there had attached to his personality the flavor of whispered gossip and speculation. He met these overtures affably enough, for he was naturally and by cultivation “a good mixer.” He acknowledged he was arranging for the purchase and transport of a heavy outfit of mining supplies, and he made brief reply to the inquiries of his new acquaintances. ”

“ He was exceedingly unobtrusive, modest, talked little—even less in the presence of bystanders—and seemed, to the experienced eyes of the rapidly increasing number of persons who made it their business to gumshoe him about town, to wish, in every way, to avoid the suspicion of being a person in any wise out of the ordinary, or whose business was in any sense strange or mysterious. ”

“ There are men in every mining camp, as in every other community, who are cultivated parasites. They toil not, neither do they spin. But they seek to avail themselves of the luck or the industry of others. One or two of this ilk lodged at the Penny River Hotel, into which, at odd times, industrious little Othmer, the painter, dropped in, for a chat; and the circumstance of the queer-looking gold, which did not come from Candle, came up in conversation between Othmer and “Con” Redbank, who had seen Ticely pay for his lodgings in dust and had heard the brief colloquy concerning that dust. ”