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Show ROMANCE OF CLARA LABI PATHETIC TALE OF A BUTTE PIONEER'S WRECKED LIFE. While of Unsound Mind He Sold Mining Property Worth' Millions For a Song. In a recent issue of the Portland Ore-gor.ian Ore-gor.ian P A. O'Farrell writes from Eutte telling f tho bitter right in the Montana courts between the Boston & .Montana aiul the Butte & Bos-ton Mining Min-ing companies for possession to disputed dis-puted ground of enormous value and for recovery of worth cf ore extracted. Lately the Sm homish and Tramway claims, through which the Anaconda-St. Anaconda-St. Lawrenee-Rarus lode run.s, has cut quite an important figure in this great litigation. Five years ago an. interest in the" Snohomish and the Tramway were bought from James- Larkin, an old timer in Butte, by the Butte & Boston company for a mere trifle compared w it'll their real value. The story of Larkin's connection with the case, his misspent life, the long search fcr his only heir, a. daughter, and the prospect of her coming into possession of the wealth that belonged to -her dead father, a pathetic tale interestingly in-terestingly told by Mr. O'Farrell, who writes: "When the Butte & Boston acquired Larkin's interest in the Snohomish and Tramway, tho loafers around town rejoiced. re-joiced. For Larkin would be generou-3 while his dollars lasted. But, a. little later, poor "Jim" was sent to the insane in-sane asylum, as a hopeless lunatic, and when the Bostnnlans- made war, August Heinze, the audacious young copper mine opertaor of Montana, recollected all about Larkin and resolved to get the deed. He immediately bought the other interests, and then hunted up the heirs of Larkin. LARKIN'S DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. "Heinze discovered that Larkin. be- fore coming to Butte, had married a . dancehall girl at Silver City, Ida. Bish- ! op Gloria had celebrated the marriage, i and a girl was the fruit thereof. After I Larkin's advent in Butte, he supported for a time his wife and child, but as his love for whisky waxed strong, his ' remembrance of them waned. The wife grew tired of waiting for him, so she got a divorce and married a man ' named Hess. Hess and the wife of Larkin's child then disoppared, as completely com-pletely as if the earth had swallowed ; them. But Heinze resolved to find the j girl, and he sent detectives to chase her from Mexico to the Klondike. "The story of the hunt for Clara Lar- j kin is a comedy in itself. A dozen times ! he had telegrams announcing success, ; and then ethers would follow declaring : it was the wrong girl. Finally one of Heinz's sleuth hounds swooped down on a lonely ranch in southeastern Oregon, Ore-gon, where one Clara Larkin had taken up a homestead. This place was nearly j 200 miles from a railroad and close to the California line, and at the other side of that line., was another ranch, owned by Hess and. Larkin's former wife. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. "And so there, in one of the loneliest cpots cf the continent, the child of pcor 'Jim' Larkin had grown' up. Had her father let the demon drink alone tlr:3 young girl would have been reared in affluence and luxury and would have been the heiress to a great estate. He might have had the smiles, the caresses and the love cf his child, as she grew from infancy to womannrvoa, Dut ne chose the oarousal and. debauch. The curse of his race had set an impassable impassa-ble gulf between them; and while he burned out the little spark of life left him as a hopeless lunatic, his child grown to vigorous womanhood, was creating cre-ating a home for herself in the wilderness, wilder-ness, utterly ignort-nt of the fate of the man who was the author of her being. There, in the bright and sunny regions cf southeastern Oregon, she would have lived and died had not August Au-gust Heinze needed her to deal a deadly j blow at his foes. THE HEIRESS IN COURT. j "Miss Larkins was brought to the ' smoky city of Butte, there to listen to hundreds of witnesses, telling the story of her father's ruined life. He had : died while she was en route, and all ' she ever saw of him was his wasted remains, ere they were consigned to . their last resting place. And for this ! she was torn from solitude and placed upon a stage, to be gossiped about and gazed at, and to listen to the story of her father's folly and shame. All this trgeday, for tragedy it is, is played, because be-cause C. S. 'Batterman, an attorney in the case, .was ambitious and fond of evolving theories. "Of all the scenes in the varied drama which is being played here, the appearance ap-pearance of this young girl appears to me to be the most dramatic in its strangeness and its pathos. If she wins her suit for the annulment- of her father's deed, on the ground that insanity in-sanity rendered him incompetent, she will become an heiress and a woman of importance. But she will never again taste happiness like that which she left behind in the solitudes of her Oregon home. If the deed be annulled, the Boston companies will lose a. half-interest in a mine worth many millions." |