AS I look back on that day in Nome and recall the sensation created in the little mining camp when the paper containing the story of Swiftwater’s perfidy was circulated abroad among the people, I am tempted to wonder if the duplicate or parallel of Swiftwater’s enormities at this time can be found in all the annals of this great Northwestern country. The Times’ story seemed, even to those like myself, who knew something of Swiftwater’s character, to be almost incredible, and for my part it was several hours before I realized, in a dumb unfeeling sort of a way, that Swiftwater had absolutely stolen his own sister’s child—Kitty Brandon—a girl not more than sixteen years old, had eloped with her, committed bigamy by marrying her in Chehalis, Wash., and at the same time had deserted his wife and left her penniless in Washington, D. C.

It was long after nightfall as I sat in my room, the baby sound asleep in his little crib, the nurse gone for the night, and I had read The Times’ story about Swiftwater and Kitty over the twentieth time, that I felt the real force of the shame and scandal which the miner had placed about himself and Bera, and which did not even leave me and my little grandson, Clifford, outside of its dark and forbidding pall.

All that night I lay awake and wondered how in Heaven’s name I could get word to Bera—or if she had received a telegram from friends in Seattle and the blow had killed her—or whether she was then on her way West, or whatever fate had befallen her.

I knew little about Swiftwater’s business affairs just at that time except that he had gone to Washington in the hope of furthering his mining ventures in the North and had taken Bera with him. Then I remembered that in his letters to me and telegrams urging me to join him at Nome he had spoken about having raised considerable money and was able to pay his debt to me and lift me out of the mire of toil and drudgery in Alaska, in which I had sojourned for so many months.

All that night I neither slept nor rested. It seemed to me at times as if my head would split into a thousand pieces with the thought of Swiftwater’s treachery to Bera and myself. Then I realized the utter futility and helplessness of a woman situated as I was in Nome, absolutely unable to get a telegram or quick letter to Bera or to hear from her telling me of her condition. For aught I knew, she might have been deathly sick, cared for only by strangers or left destitute at some place in the East and without any means whatever of righting herself.

It seems to me, now when I think of that all night’s vigil in the little hotel in Nome, that Providence must have been watching over me, that I did not lose my reason. At last I found that unless I went to work doing something, I would sure go crazy, and then I started to get work, first borrowing some money, which I sent out by mail the next day to Bera at her last address.

While I worked and slaved in Nome trying to get a few dollars ahead so that I could care for the baby and make my way out to Seattle to help Bera, I finally got word that she had been left destitute in Washington, D. C. Swiftwater had furnished four nice rooms in an apartment house at Washington, and in their effects was more than $1,000 worth of rare curios and ivory from Alaska. Then came another letter that Bera, unable to pay for her care, food and medical attention—the second baby boy was born August 28th—had been put on board a train with a charity ticket, her ivories and curios sold for a trifle and had been started West for Seattle.

I need not dwell on how Bera, more dead than alive from five days traveling in a chair car from Washington to Seattle with her babe at her bosom and unable to sleep at all—with nothing to eat but a few sandwiches which they had given her at Washington—arrived in Seattle and was cared for by friends.

They took the girl, so weak she could hardly stand on her feet, to a restaurant and gave her her first hot meal in almost a week. Then Bera and her baby went to Portland to live with her grandma, while Swiftwater and Kitty Gates were touring the country.

And do you know that Swiftwater’s polygamous wife, Kitty Gates, was the girl who Bera one year before had fitted out with a nice outfit of clothes and had sent her to a convent school at Portland to be given a good education?

Yes, this is the truth, and this was Kitty’s gratitude to Bera and Swiftwater’s crime against the law and his own flesh and blood.

How we managed after I came to Seattle from Nome to live in a little room in a small old fashioned house on Fourth Avenue with barely enough to eat and scarcely enough clothes to cover ourselves need not be told here in detail. I sometimes wonder whether or not I have overladen my little narrative with grief and misery and crime against humanity and against human laws, as well as God’s. And then I wonder still more why it was that there were men in Seattle, in San Francisco and in Fairbanks in those days who were always ready to exalt Swiftwater and do him honor and take him by the hand, while the world would look askance at Bera Gates, his wife, whom he had so grieviously wronged.