by Tim Champlin
We discovered shortly after we settled in that the amount of gold in the stream would justify building a sluice box or rocker, but we had overlooked one vital ingredient—lumber. There were plenty of trees around, but we had no means of whipsawing them into green lumber.
"I for one am sure glad we forgot to get a saw," Wiley said when we discovered our problem. "Have any of you ever sawed a ten-foot log into planks?" he asked rhetorically, looking around at us. "Well, I have. And it's the most back-breaking, lung-searing, hand-blistering work you can imagine. The log is usually laid over a pit or across some kind of a brace above ground. The man on the lower end of the saw gets a face full of sawdust in addition to everything else. That work makes double-jacking contests look like playing fiddlesticks. Hell must be full of crosscut saws."
"Okay, you made your point." Curt grinned. "Why don't you take some of the dust we've accumulated and go into the sawmill in town and buy enough lumber for a good sluice and some nails to put it together? We'll need some heavy screen and other stuff. We've already got shovels. While you're there, why don't you see if you can pick us up another pack mule."
"And stay out of trouble," Cathy warned him as she saw her brother's eyes light up at the suggestion of returning to Deadwood.
But after some discussion, Curt decided he wanted to go back to town also. So, not wanting to leave Cathy alone, we all set out for Deadwood after breakfast one morning. The sun hadn't yet shown its head over the valley rim to melt off the frost that was now becoming a nightly occurrence.
It took us about three hours to reach town again. I don't know whether it was because I was becoming used to the solitude of Thunder Valley, but Deadwood seemed to be bursting with activity. The streets swarmed with people, and full stagecoaches were arriving and departing from both ends of town, at the Wells Fargo depot and the Northwestern Company office. More frenzied building was going on during every daylight hour. The saloons and gambling dens never closed their doors, and Main Street was ablaze with light all night as well as all day. Lusty miners and travelers paid their money and bedded the girls upstairs at the Last Chance, the Red Rooster, the Union Brewery, and at least two dozen other places, while more thick-rolled and discreet businessmen and citizens called at Myra's Golden Bell and one or two other houses in town that catered to a more select, and often-washed clientele. Burnett's Golden Eagle was one of several places that didn't have its saloon girls doing double duty with the customers in another part of the building.
The whole town reminded me of nothing so much as a swarm of flies at the end of summer, who instinctively know their end is near and become a buzzing, biting nuisance. Such was Deadwood just before winter closed it down and isolated it from the outside world for several months.
And, incongruously, coming and going in the midst of all this commotion was a constant stream of Chinese who operated the wash houses and several of the eating places. Theirs was a plentiful business, and they worked hard, but they never mingled with the strange Caucasians whose laundry they did. They came and went with their padded clothing and long queues, their smooth Oriental faces showing no emotion. I wondered what they thought about or talked about among themselves. Were they trying to earn enough to go back to China and retire? Were they trying to earn passage for relatives to join them here in this alien white civilization? The inscrutable faces and the language barrier hid the answers. Wiley and Cathy both told me they had seen them in many of the earlier boomtowns, including Virginia City. Many of them had been brought in to provide labor for the building of the Central Pacific Railroad in the sixties.
We tied our horse and our mule to a hitching rail in the middle of town, and before we could make a move in any direction or my ears become accustomed to the din, our attention was arrested by the shouting of a drummer haranguing a crowd some ways down Main Street. Since we were in no particular hurry, we drifted toward the sound.
When we reached the fringe of the crowd that was packed fifteen or twenty deep around him, we could hear and see the man who was standing on the tailgate of his wagon. The ornate wagon was drawn up near the side of the street to let traffic pass. The rig was tall and enclosed, with a sliding curtain screening the interior of the wagon as the salesman gave his pitch. He was a tall, well-built man who looked to be in his late forties. He wore a swallowtail coat of gray with a velvet collar, and a gaudy red vest strung with a heavy gold watch chain. He had laid aside his silk top hat, revealing a head of magnificent silver hair. It was swept back in waves that caught the sun, and was matched by a full, well-trimmed gray mustache that set off a somewhat florid complexion —a complexion that was made even redder by his exertions.
"—and so, ladies and gentlemen, in the absence of doctors and medical men, you need to take extra care of your health, especially here in this climate of changing extremes. Winter is coming on. The chill of exposure, getting rundown, perhaps not eating the proper food. In these crowds, no telling what types of diseases may be spread—" He swept his arms around as he spoke, his voice growing a little hoarse in his efforts to make himself heard above the street noise.
"Well, set your minds at ease," he continued. "I have here the elixir that will allow you to put the state of your health out of your minds and concentrate on what you came here to find. I have chosen this remote settlement to introduce to you men and women of the West the exact blend of herbs and secret ingredients that it took me, Doctor Floyd Mortimer, a doctor of the sciences, ten years to develop. It will not only prevent most illnesses by strengthening and enriching your blood, but will lessen the symptoms and promote quick recovery from biliousness, the grippe, ague, mountain fever, carbuncles and corns, disorders of the liver and stomach. It will invigorate bodies tired from toil and"—he winked broadly—"from too much play.
"The medical profession sought to induce me to keep this amazing tonic for the exclusive use of doctors. But I rejected their pleas. I have always had a compassion for the common man. Why should this elixir of life, which I, after years of experimenting, finally discovered, be secreted in the halls of medical science and hospitals? I ask you: Why not bring it directly to the people? Why not, indeed! Not only is my tonic effective, as a curative, but it is absolutely safe when taken as directed. It requires no physician to dispense it."
He held up a square, pint-sized bottle whose label was covered with printing.
"And so, it is with the greatest of pleasure in serving mankind, that I offer this to you today."
"How much?" someone in the crowd shouted.
"I'm coming to that, sir, I'm coming to that. Since this is the very first place in this expanding western country that I've offered my amazing tonic, I'm prepared to offer it to you for the absolutely unbelievable price of only two dollars per bottle. Think of it! Only two dollars to put you in the pink and to stave off all the many ailments that flesh is heir to—"
"The only thing that stuff will cure is your pocketbook, if you can sell enough of it!" a voice beside me shouted as the speaker paused to take a breath. It was Wiley. He grinned at my surprised look.
"Always did like to needle these snake-oil salesmen," he said.
"Ah, my young friend, you know not whereof you speak," the bombastic one continued smoothly. "The pharaohs, in all their wisdom, sought such a cure and failed. The medieval alchemists merely sought to change base metals into gold, and, of course, they failed. Even had they succeeded, mankind would not have benefited as much as it will now from this discovery. And discovery it is!" he shouted, regaining his volume. Rather than an invention. It was there in nature all the time, only awaiting the genius of the scientific mind to combine the right elements. It's an even greater discovery than the harnessing of steam for the good of all—"
"Will that stuff cure fatigue of the ears?" someone shouted. A ripple of laughter swept the assembly.
"You, sir, will you be the first to try a bottle?" the drummer shot back, singling out his heckler. The heckler dropped his eyes from the pointing finger and looke
d embarrassed. His friends laughed and shoved him forward.
"Come, come, sir, show these good people that you care more for your good health than you do for all their laughter. Distinguish yourself by being the first to purchase a pint of Doctor Mortimer's Elixir. And, sir, you look like a sporting man to me," the drummer yelled, moving in for the kill on the heckler, who was still being shoved forward in the crowd.
"Brother, is he a sporting man!" shouted one of his friends. "You oughta see him when he gits likkered up!" Another ripple of laughter.
"I'll make you a deal," the drummer was intoning. "If you try a bottle of this, and don't feel better in one hour"—he thrust up one forefinger for emphasis—"then you bring the empty bottle back to me and I'll give you not only your money back, not only double your money back, but triple your purchase price back—six dollars refunded! Now, sir, you can hardly beat a deal like that!" There was murmur of assent in the crowd, and by this time the heckler was at the tailgate of the wagon, digging in his pocket for money.
I edged around to the side a little so I could see the wagon. It was a lightweight rig pulled by a single sorrel stallion of beautiful proportions. The wagon was new, and the varnished spokes almost glistened under a light layer of dust. The wagon body and the enclosed upper portion were painted a deep maroon, and were inscribed with elegant gold letters which advertised DOCTOR FLOYD MORTIMER, D.S. of BOSTON, and went on to tout the curative towers of his "Elixir of Life," which, if one could believe the testimonials, had been the very savior of some of the titled heads of Europe, on whom it had evidently been tested.
"Well, he's got 'em suckered now," Wiley said as the curious crowd, now unafraid to be seen buying the stuff—since someone else had broken the ice—pushed up close to make their purchases.
"In order for him to make a guarantee like that, the stuff's probably half alcohol," Curt remarked as several eager customers were uncorking their bottles and sampling the contents.
"Easy now, folks, easy!" Mortimer yelled with a half-smile as he made change. "Read the instructions on the label, or it won't produce its most efficacious effects."
I got the distinct feeling he could not care less what was done with the medicine once it left his hands.
"You mean you're not going to buy a bottle?" Curt asked Wiley in mock seriousness as we drifted away.
"No, thanks. Burnett dispenses the only kind of medicine I'm interested in."
"Yes, and you're going to ruin your health drinking so much," Cathy said in a wistful, rather than a scolding, voice.
"Wiley works on the theory that if a little is good, then more is better," I offered, only half-jokingly.
"Okay, okay," Wiley answered. "A little nip of John Barleycorn now and then is good for the blood."
"A little, yes. That's what Doctor what's-his-name-Mortimer—claims for his elixir, too."
"Well, let's be after some wood and tools," Curt said, abruptly changing the subject. "We need to get that sluice box built and working; winter won't wait forever."
CHAPTER 9
In spite of the fact that Curt wanted to get back to the claim before dark, we were delayed at the mill getting our lumber—and further delayed at the hardware, where crowds of new prospectors were overwhelming the clerk's ability to wait on them. By the time we had finished and also bought another mule, the afternoon was far advanced, and Wiley argued successfully that we shouldn't start our long walk and ride back until the next morning. The rooms at the Merchants Hotel were all full, so we had to rent our lodgings from the International, a much more expensive hotel. Even at that, we were lucky to find a room at all, with the crowds of people in town. Apparently, the majority were either not staying in Deadwood, or the rooms were too high for most of the prospectors—who were fleeing the lingering effects of the Grant administration's financial panic.
I took advantage of the layover to take my watch, along with Curt's, to Rosenthal's Jeweler and Watchmaker, a new shop that had just opened since our last trip to town.
Wiley could hardly wait until supper was over to make a beeline for Burnett's place to wet himself down and to see Jenny again.
The days were growing rapidly shorter; the sun had long since disappeared behind the steep hills when we stepped out onto the boardwalk. It was almost dark. The traffic on the street was as heavy as it had been at midday, except that Floyd Mortimer's wagon was nowhere to be seen.
Wiley lighted a cigar and looked down the street at the two rows of lights that were glowing from the open doors of the saloons and dance halls like so many open furnaces.
"Gomorrah in the gulch," he remarked.
"An apt metaphor," Curt agreed.
The next day we were back on our claim in Thunder Valley, hard at work building our sluice. Even in a matter of a few hours the memory of the hive of Deadwood seemed somehow unreal.
"You feel okay, Wiley?" I asked as I came up to the creek bank where he was hammering the last nails into the side of the new sluice.
"A little rusty, but I'll be all right." He glanced at Curt and Cathy, who were preparing supper near our tent about fifty yards away. He didn't seem disposed to talk.
"Jenny's beautiful," I ventured, attempting to draw him into conversation. "She seems so young and innocent to be working in a saloon in a boom town like that."
"Yeah," he agreed. "But I'm wondering if she is."
"Is what?"
"Innocent."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Just some little hints and clues I've picked up. I'm sure she's not aware she's giving them to me. It's depressing, but I guess I'm naive to expect her to be different from those other saloon girls."
"You really like her, huh?"
"Yeah. That's the hell of it. I guess I was just hoping that… maybe she was different… you know. I got so depressed and frustrated, I got drunk and went down to Myra's place last night. Helped some, but now I feel worse than ever."
"I guess a man's conscience never takes a day off. Come on to supper."
For the next two weeks everything was driven from our minds except the sluice, the stream, and the gold we could strain from it. It was hard, wet, back-breaking work from dawn to dark, with hardly time out to eat while we could still see to work. We had set the new sluice box in the stream near the head of Thunder Valley, and began shoveling dirt and gravel into it. We gradually moved the box downstream after a few days in each spot, and the cleanup each evening began to increase—$1.50, $2.50, $4.00, $5.50, $8.00, $13.00, $27.50, $29.00, $34.50, and one memorable day when we cleaned $76 worth of pure gold dust and grains out of the tail of our sluice—almost four ounces in a ten-hour day. At this pace we would never be rich, but it was more than enough to make expenses, and, more importantly, it kept our interest at a high pitch.
One morning, sometime in late October, we came out of our tent to a cold overcast and a wind blowing out of the north. Shortly after noon, it began to snow and continued all afternoon. It was not bitterly cold, so we went on working, cleaning up over forty dollars' worth of gold before we knocked off for the night. That night the tent shook with the gusts of wind and the snow drifted up around the log base. Our sheet-iron stove was stoked to capacity, but there were so many air leaks around the tent that we were still cold in our blankets before morning.
The sky was clear next day, and the sun rising on the sparkling white world nearly blinded us. The air warmed up, and the six inches of white covering began to melt rapidly.
We worked like squirrels all that day, knowing we were in competition with winter for the gold remaining in our creek. The days were growing rapidly shorter, cutting down on the number of daylight hours we had to work. We cut out everything else and did nothing but work, pausing only before dawn and after dark to eat. Our sleep became exhausted oblivion. Carelessly, we kept no guards or watches, leaving the warning of any approaching danger to our two braying mules. It was probably a foolish thing to do, but we had to make our stake while we could. And, I'll admit, the yellow metal was beginning
to get a grip on my imagination and emotions. It was no longer just a practical thing with me, and I suspect the siren-like lure was affecting the others as well, although we never discussed it.
About ten days of Indian summer followed our first snow, and we took advantage of it. Our buckskin pokes began to swell with dust and small nuggets. It became a ritual every night by the light of our lantern for us to take turns hefting the small sacks and guessing their weight, trying to estimate how much they had gained since the day before, calculating in our heads their approximate value.
Our guesses had reached eighteen hundred to two thousand dollars before we got our second snowfall. It started as a light rain in mid-afternoon, and by dark was fine grains of snow. The wind was hardly blowing at all, but the air had a raw edge to it. We huddled in our tent that night, more silent than usual after supper, listening to the scratching of the half-frozen sleet pellets on the canvas. We hadn't bathed in over a week, begrudging the time away from our precious sluice, and we all looked dirty. Our faces were gaunt and our bellies flat from the many hours of manual labor we had been performing.
It was probably from being so run-down, and possibly from not having any of Dr. Mortimer's Elixir, that Wiley developed a hacking cough that night. When I woke up once to relieve myself outside, I could hear him tossing and turning in his blankets.