"Circle was growing fast, they said, and steamers would be getting there from St. Michael by July, bringing grub for the miners and dropping off rich folks who could afford the all-water route. That's three thousand miles on an ocean steamer from Seattle to St. Michael, then another thousand up the river to Circle. If you wasn't lucky and got iced in on the lower Yukon, that trip might take a year. So most of the folks that wanted to run a sawmill or bake bread or sing and dance for gold dust came in over the passes, same as the miners.
"But people was getting to Circle one way or another, so log houses was going up every day, even though there ain't a tree within twenty miles of the Yukon Flats. Logs had to be dragged over the hills from Birch Creek, so they cost three times as much as logs at Fortymile. Best get down to Circle soon, the sourdoughs said, so you can earn enough wages to build a winter cabin and lay in some grub.
"Gig and Nokes and the Swedes spent a night at Fortymile, bought some smoked caribou meat, and then pushed off downriver to Circle. It's a hundred and seventy miles and a few days' drift to the head of the Yukon Flats, and there ain't much to catch your eye along the way. Not many islands, so the current stays strong, with hills rising from the banks and small creeks coming in fast on both sides. Better prospects for coal than gold on that piece of the Yukon. Captain Healy built the headquarters for his company on a bench above the river just past Fortymile, so you might see a NAT steamer tied up there during summer navigation.
"Downriver the trees give out to sand and limestone banks, so the next morning Nokes steered them ashore where a wooded creek come in from the west. By now they been three months on the trail from Dyea, so Gig and the Swedes is itching to get to Circle... ready for a haircut and a hot bath. But Nokes tells 'em they got to spend three days camped on the bank, fighting off mosquitoes and chopping down good-sized spruce. Then they got to saw off the tops and branches, drag the trunks to the river, and lash 'em together. Build a second raft they can float down to Circle behind the first one.
"Stripping and dragging trees rips up your muscles and hands, but a half-dozen decent trunks will build the walls and roof of a winter cabin at Circle, and without a cabin you freeze to death by November. Sell the biggest logs to the sawmill and they'll cut 'em into eight-inch planks for flooring. Sell whatever you got left from both rafts to the building crews. Now you can pay for a couple months of grub. Gig hated every minute of them three days in the woods, but it seemed reasonable when they poled two log rafts over to the bank at Circle and was met by half the town.
"It don't matter whether you step down from a stern-wheel steamer or paddle up to the dock in a bathtub, anybody new draws a crowd looking for news from the Outside. And while you're shaking hands, every dog in town is sniffing around your outfit looking for something to steal."
Zimmerman pulls the knife out of the table and advances it along the diagonal ribbon from Dawson to Circle, toward the head of the table and equidistant from us.
"So we made it to Circle, Owen," he says, jabbing the knife back into the scarred tabletop. "Cheers." He lifts his cup, swirls its contents, and knocks back a sip, then stares at me until I do the same.
The whiskey sears my chest as I exhale. "What month are we in?" I ask hoarsely.
"First week of July," he says. "1896."
Zimmerman wraps up the story of Garrett's journey Inside. Gig and Nokes and the Swedes divide up what's left of their outfit, disassemble the rafts, sell the usable logs, and split the proceeds. Everybody gets a hot meal and a bath and rests for a day or two, and then the Swedes pack out to Mastodon Creek, which by now is being worked by three hundred miners over its entire six-mile length. The Swedes stake two claims high on a Mastodon pup called Baker Gulch.
Nokes has a partner in Circle whose name Zimmerman can't remember, but he and Nokes have adjacent claims downstream from Mastodon on Mammoth Creek and are digging and sluicing them together. They have a dog team for hauling gear to their site, and the partner happens to be back in town buying food for the dogs when Nokes arrives, so he's one of the men that greets the newcomers at the dock.
Also shuffling onto the dock is a man who reached Circle ten days earlier. "Penson Wylie," Zimmerman says, "who come downriver on the scow. The feller who shot the Siwash dog sniffing around his tent on the Stewart River. Gig recognized him from Miles Canyon, where Wylie's partner drownded."
"You said Wylie was hallucinating," I remind Zimmerman, "about an Indian girl that he thought flipped his boat and tried to drown him.
Zimmerman shakes his head and his stained front teeth emerge in a smile. "I said Wylie was sane as you or me. He had a dream the Indian girl was trying to kill him. Told Gig about it at the canyon, and told me the same thing two years later in Dawson."
That doesn't sound right, I think. Zimmerman said earlier that Wylie told Gig the Indian girl was responsible for drowning his partner. I ignore the discrepancy and ask why Gig would have even noticed Wylie in the crowd on the dock, given the need to land their outfit and the fact that he'd only seen Wylie once, dripping wet and wrapped in a blanket many weeks earlier.
"Gig didn't notice Wylie right off," Zimmerman says. "But Wylie remembered Gig from the rapids and come up to him on the dock. Gig was still wearing the necklace with the wolf tooth and the rabbit's ear, and Wylie asked him where he got it. Gig told him it come from the Stick Indians that was packing their outfit back at Caribou Crossing.
"Wylie said he seen one like it once before and asked Gig if he could look at it up close, so Gig takes off the necklace and hands it to him. And while Gig is watching, Wylie pulls a jackknife out of his pocket and cuts the stitches on the rabbit's ear, which is folded over longwise with the fur on the outside.
"He unfolds the ear and looks inside, then shows it to Gig. Painted in black on the flesh is two eyes, and each of 'em is dripping a tear the color of blood.
"'That means she's coming for you,' Wylie says, and before Gig can say anything Wylie picks a stone off the dock, wraps the necklace cord around it until it's tight, and throws the stone and the necklace out into the river.
"'I don't want no part of her,' Wylie says, 'and you shouldn't neither. But so there's no hard feelings, I got something better for you. You can help me work a lay on Mastodon Creek.'"
Chapter 22
The headwaters of Birch Creek, Zimmerman tells me, lie about a hundred miles southwest of Circle City on the eastern flank of the Mastodon Dome, from which ridges descend, divide, and divide again. Birch Creek collects tributaries from the resulting gulches on its way down to the Yukon Flats, where it turns northwest and snakes parallel to the Yukon for two hundred more miles before the sinuous creek and the island-clogged river finally meet. The most important stream Birch Creek swallows back in the hills is Mammoth Creek, which along with its tributaries Mastodon Creek and Independence Creek was responsible for most of the gold that found its way down to the assayer's office in Circle.
With those three creeks staked from end to end, the Swedes settled for claims on a Mastodon pup called Baker Gulch. But Penson Wylie had managed to convince the owner of twenty-one above Discovery on Mastodon to offer him a lay. That meant Wylie could work the upper hundred feet of the claim at his own expense, give half of whatever gold he washed out to the claim owner, and keep the rest. Wylie realized that even if you were just working a lay, you still needed shelter, firewood, grub, tools, and lumber for sluice boxes, and all of those cost money. On his own he couldn't afford to work a lay, much less an entire claim, and that was the situation most miners faced after locating back on one of the creeks. Many were happy to sell their claims before they ever turned a shovelful of dirt, often to the first person offering a hundred dollars more than the recording fee the miner had already paid.
So it wasn't entirely surprising or altruistic that Wylie invited Gig to share his lay on Mastodon Creek. Gig could have found work building log houses in Circle for twelve dollars a day, but he hadn't traveled thousands of miles to work for wages. He still wa
nted a taste of the Yukon gold fields he'd read about, and even if Wylie could only offer him twenty-five percent of what they took out of a hundred-foot sliver, at least they'd be working rich ground. And with his share of the remaining outfit, the dwindling dollars he had left from Juneau, and his portion of the proceeds from selling the logs, Gig wasn't entirely destitute. So Wylie sized him up as someone worth approaching.
"Birch Creek run into the Yukon two hundred miles below Circle," Zimmerman says, "but the upper part of it is only six miles back across the headland from town. From there you tramp through meadows for fifty miles, then climb into the headwaters for another fifty. That's where Mammoth Creek come in, and that's where Gig and Wylie was headed, after they found Indians to pack their gear. Can't use sleds in the summer, so every dog carries a pack, but maybe only forty pounds, and that's why it costs more to carry outfits back to the creeks in the summer.
"Gig and Wylie climbed Mammoth up to Mastodon Creek and set up a tent on Wylie's lay toward the end of July. They started working where Wylie left off, shoveling out three or four inches a day on a cut between rim-rock and the creek. Sluice-box lumber was too expensive that far back in the hills, so they built a rocker, and they would shovel eight hours and rock out their diggings when they got tired."
I ask Zimmerman what a rocker is and he says it's "a poor man's sluice box" folded into a device the size of a wooden crate and set on wooden rockers, like a cradle. The box is separated into top and bottom compartments by a tin sheet with hundreds of small holes. A few shovelfuls of diggings are dumped on top of the sheet. Then the miner pours water from a half-gallon can onto the dirt while using a handle to rock the box back and forth. Dirt and small debris wash through the holes in the metal, while pebbles and nuggets are trapped above it.
Below the sheet, the debris-filled water falls onto an angled plank covered with a blanket, slides down the ramp, bounces off the back wall of the box, and washes out through a slit in the bottom into a bucket, so the water can be reused. Heavy grains and small nuggets of gold are trapped by the blanket. When the diggings have dissolved, any large nuggets are plucked from the metal screen. Then the blanket is carefully removed and washed in a different bucket, from which the collected gold dust is later panned. Rocking is much less efficient than sluicing, but it's the only practical way to wash out diggings at bench claims above the creek, or at claims without divertible running water.
"The pay-streak is gravel and gold," Zimmerman says, "a few feet wide, a few feet high, running for miles. It sits on bedrock, but bedrock is twenty-five feet down and two men can't dig that deep in one summer. Burn fires, sink a shaft, and you get water seeping in. Open a wide cut and the sun will melt the ground and suck up the water, but you won't get past fifteen feet. Half that far if you don't start until late July. So Gig and Wylie wasn't going to hit the pay-streak before the weather turned.
"If you can't sluice, you got to rock out enough dust to buy grub for the winter. And you got to find wood for your stove and your shaft, if you want to keep digging when everything's iced up. Birch Creek gold was seventeen dollars an ounce, and most men walk away from a claim that don't give an ounce to the shovel. That's an ounce of dust from what one man can shovel into the sluices in a day. You're better off working for wages on someone else's claim, or building cabins in town.
"Gig and Wylie got to that point by early September. They was shoveling mud and half-frozen muck and fighting off mosquitoes and rocking out their dumps until they was almost too tired to eat, but they was getting less than an ounce to the shovel. No sign of the pay-streak, and they wasn't sure where to sink a shaft when the surface froze up later that month. Made 'em think maybe the claim-owner knowed his ground wasn't rich, and that's why he wasn't working it hisself. And by September the days is getting shorter fast. If you ain't going to build a cabin and lay in grub and firewood for the winter, you better find shelter in town. So they quit digging, washed out the rest of their dumps, and headed back toward Circle with two pounds of dust between 'em. And they owed half of that to the claim owner.
"Coming down from the dome, Mastodon Creek run into Independence and the two of 'em together is called Mammoth Creek. You follow Mammoth downhill for ten miles before it gets lazy and turns horseshoes in the pastures and run into Birch Creek, which is what leads you back to Circle. Mammoth Creek was all staked when Gig and Wylie come by, and two of the claims near the top was being worked by Sam Nokes and his partner. Gig and Wylie stopped by to see how they was doing.
"Nokes and Gig seen about enough of each other coming all the way from Juneau, so they wasn't heartbroke about splitting up in Circle. But after a couple months sharing diggings and a tent with a different crew, you start to notice what's wrong with the new fellers and forget what was bothering you about the ones before. So Nokes didn't mind showing Gig what was coming out of the sluice boxes now that they reached pay-dirt. His partner got summer diggings going in May with a couple of hired men. Now they was building a winter cabin while the hired men was sluicing until the creek froze. With the grub and money Nokes brung in, they was getting ready for winter. They found the pay-streak and they wanted to sink shafts and drift along it.
"Gig told Nokes that he and Wylie was rocking out an ounce to the shovel up at Mastodon, but they was working a lay, so it wasn't enough. They was heading back to Circle to find work. Gig didn't say it but he was thinking maybe he could deal poker or faro at one of the saloons. Even a game of monte, since Circle was American territory with no Mounties to worry about."
To remind Zimmerman I'm still holding the Colt, I lay it flat on the table well beyond his reach, with my fingers resting on it. Then I pluck the knife from Circle and offer him the handle.
"Show me where they crossed the border."
He studies the ribbon line for a few seconds, then carves a north-south slash through it, about a fifth of the distance from Fortymile to Circle.
"Canada," he says, gesturing to the table on my side of the line. "Alaska," he says, pointing to his.
I rotate the gun barrel slowly toward him until he smiles thinly and jabs the knife back into the table at Circle.
"So Gig gave up prospecting and went back to dealing cards?"
"No," Zimmerman says, "Wylie went down to Circle by hisself. Got work sweeping a saloon in exchange for a bed in the back. Did some cabin-building when one of the crews was short-handed.
"Gig stayed up on Nokes' claim 'cause they needed someone to chop wood. You burn thirty cords working one claim for a winter, and Nokes and his partner was working two, with one shaft on each. So they offered Gig food, shelter, and eight dollars in gold dust a day and he took it. It wasn't the strike he was looking for, but he knowed them Mammoth Creek claims had a wide pay-streak, and he told me later he was hoping Nokes would let him work a lay on one of 'em. And if he spent the winter down in Circle, that means paying for a bunk and grub.
"Nokes and his partner could feed three hired men and five sled dogs, and the cabin they was building had an open back wall with a tent rigged against it, so you could sleep everyone close enough to the stove to stay warm. That ain't a big problem at first, but pretty soon it's getting toward zero at night. So you spend September laying in grub and wood and kindling for winter diggings, and by October you're burning fires in the shafts all night. They got a few cords of wood stacked before the snows come, and after that Gig went up into the hills chopping down trees. Might take a day to split up a spruce and two more with the dogs to sled the logs and kindling back to the claim. No trails on them hills, so you're trying to keep your sled out of the ditches and clear of the saplings.
"I cut enough spruce on Yukon creeks to know I'd rather be digging frozen dirt, and Gig was the same way about it, even though chopping wood is better in winter, when you got no mosquitoes buzzing around your head. Your hands take the worst of it. Mittens ain't no use with an axe and a saw, and all them green branches that you strip away leave sharp ends and sap on the pieces you pile on the sled.
By the end of the day your hands is scraped raw and curled into sticky claws. You got to soak 'em in a pail of water that's been heating on the stove before you can even use 'em to eat.
"Nokes and his partner paired off with a hired man in their shafts – one man digging and one working the windlass and the dump. Start the day by shoveling out the embers and end it by stacking wood at the bottom of the shaft. You got to heat up some green kindling on the stove every day if you want any chance to light that fire at night. And most afternoons you're melting creek ice in a bucket so you can pan out some of your diggings and pay the men in dust.
"There's always mercury near a gold mine, 'cause sourdoughs use it for sluicing and rocking. Spread some mercury on the riffles and it bonds with flour gold, so the gold don't wash out with the water. Then you heat it over a fire and the mercury melts away, leaves the gold in the pan. And mercury freezes at forty below, so if you got that and a few spirit bottles you don't need a thermometer. St. Jacob's Oil freezes at seventy-five below. Hudson's Bay Rum at eighty below.
"You know it's cold when you're checking them bottles, and that's how it was getting by December, when Nokes and his partner told Gig to sled the dogs down to Circle and bring back dried salmon and flour and beans. Soon as you go outside your breath freezes in the air. You keep your mouth closed and breathe through your nose, but your lips freeze together and the hairs inside your nose ice up. Every step on the snow squeaks like an old hinge. So even if you're going out with the dogs, you can't get on the sled 'cause the skin on your face will freeze solid and die. Got to start by running with the dogs for ten minutes, until your hands and feet and chest get warm.
"Gig was two days getting down to Circle with the dogs, though there ain't much to a day in December, so you're sledding by whatever light come off the snow, then sleeping for a few hours after you feed the dogs. Don't matter how cold it gets or how deep it snows, them Malamutes will stomp out a circle and curl up together, sleep right through a blizzard and wake up frisky. They'd be piled up before you got done laying a few branches of spruce or hemlock for a bed and wrapping yourself up in blankets and tent canvas. And that still ain't enough to stay warm, unless you was smart enough to get hold of a fur blanket. Rabbit or fox or lynx. It's worth its weight in gold in the Yukon, sometimes more, and it's the one good thing you want from trading with the Indians.
BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) Page 14