BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2)

by Edward A. Stabler

  "So it's still November of '97," I say. "The Swedes are sledding their gold out to the coast, and the cheechakos that got stuck on the river are trying to make it to Dawson before they starve. And most of the ones that did make it to Dawson have pushed off for Fort Yukon so they don't starve. But the last time you mentioned Gig and Wylie they were up on Eldorado back in August, before the Swedes sold out."

  "When the creek froze up near the end of September, they was able to work that fifth shaft from the past winter. The one that filled up with water in the spring. Alex McDonald let 'em finish that drift on a lay. They hauled out buckets for three weeks, then melted ice and rocked all the pay-dirt. Washed out a few thousand dollars and gave McDonald half. He might of let 'em keep working through the winter, but Gig and Wylie wasn't going to spend three months chopping wood and burning and drifting so they could split the clean-up with Alex McDonald.

  "By then they probably had fifteen or twenty pounds of gold between 'em, with what was left from selling the Skookum claims. Four thousand dollars don't go far in Dawson, but if you ain't buying lumber and got no dogs to feed, it will get you through the winter. Jack McQuesten and John Healy was honest men, so even when the warehouses started rationing grub, they kept the prices the same as before. And Constantine wouldn't of let 'em charge ransom prices if they tried."

  "So Gig and Wylie went down to Dawson?"

  "Lousetown," Zimmerman says. "That's what they was calling the riverbank just above the mouth of the Klondike, where the Siwashes used to live. The hill come down almost to the water, but there's a grass shelf big enough for tents, and a bank below that where you could tie up a line of boats. Gig and Wylie stripped some saplings for a frame and put up their tent when there was still only about fifty boats tied up along the Yukon. More tents went up that winter, 'cause a few hundred people mushed into Dawson over the ice. Them with dogs usually knowed to bring enough grub. When you got to feed the dogs, that makes you think about feeding yourself. After the full stampede showed up next June, it was hundreds of boats and tents and a thousand cheechakos camped in Lousetown.

  "Dawson is across the Klondike from Lousetown, on a mud flat big enough for a real town. Runs a mile and a half along the Yukon from the mouth of the Klondike to the base of a mountain that slopes into the river. Ladue staked out his town site in the middle of that flat in September '96. Then Arthur Harper from the ACC staked out another alongside it in spring of '97. Together they was maybe a hundred and sixty acres, and log cabins and two-story buildings started going up right away. Kept going up all year long. By the end of '97 there was maybe three hundred of 'em in the middle of town, with all the saloons and warehouses facing the Yukon on Front Street. Then you had Second Avenue one street back, then Third, and Fourth. Got up to Eighth Avenue, and by spring of '98 there was a suspension bridge over the Klondike at the end of Eighth. But if you was camped in Lousetown in '97 you poled or paddled over to Dawson or crossed the Klondike on the ice."

  "So Gig and Wylie pitched their tent in Lousetown and watched some cheechakos straggle into Dawson, where everyone was trying not to starve. Sounds like a grim winter."

  Zimmerman shakes his head. "Getting rich can help you forget about missing a meal. And no one starved to death in Dawson that winter anyway. Maybe there wasn't enough food for all the dogs, so some of them was shot and eaten. But if you got dust in your poke and fellers to talk to, you can live with being hungry. Sitting next to a warm stove and playing cards ain't like burning a shaft to bedrock back on the creeks.

  "Before the ice on the Klondike got too thick, Gig and Wylie carried an axe upstream toward the mouth of Bonanza. There was a deep pool along the bank where you could find trout in the summer. They chopped through the ice and dropped in a line with bacon fat for bait, pulled out three grayling in a couple of hours. After fishing there once, they could go back every day or two and chop that patch out in twenty minutes. Everywhere else the ice froze too deep.

  "When they had fish to fry for dinner, Gig would put the heads and bones out on the Yukon ice below their tent. Before he got under his blankets, he'd crack open the tent flap for a look. Usually it was just ravens working the scraps, but one time he heared a couple of 'em squawking and flying right over the tent, and when he peeked out he seen a snow fox trotting up to the bones. He reached for his rifle and got off a clean shot while the fox was standing still. Clipped him in the front leg, and the fox limps off across the river. Gig had to track him most of a mile before finishing him off. Skinned him the next day and cut him into chunks for stew. When the pelt dried out he traded it to a sourdough coming in from the creeks who cached his outfit in town. Got five pounds of canned peas."

  Zimmerman tells me that Inspector Constantine and his thirty or so constables had staked off a patch of rough ground between the Dawson town site and the Klondike River to serve as a military reservation. Constantine's Mounties erected log buildings to serve as offices, a barracks, a courtroom, storehouses, and a post office, and from that stronghold they succeeded in establishing an orderliness in Dawson that surpassed what was found in American mining camps like Circle, where any sourdoughs who chose to attend a miners meeting could adjudicate a disagreement and dispense justice in fifteen whiskey-lubricated minutes. But toward the end of '97, the Mounties' grip on Dawson was a work in progress, and Lousetown was a lesser concern.

  "By December Gig was dealing faro," Zimmerman says, "at the Palace Hotel on Front Street. Saloons in Dawson was open all the time, so Gig might go over there in the morning and deal until two o'clock, sleep in the bunkhouse the rest of the day, then deal all night. Head back to the tent in the morning for a few hours, then go up the Klondike with Wylie to fish or hunt.

  "They kept an eye open for cheechakos coming into Dawson over the ice, especially them with sleds and dogs. Most of 'em couldn't afford lumber and hired hands for a cabin, so they would pitch a tent in Lousetown or up on the hill behind Dawson. Gig liked to stop by and meet anyone that just arrived, and most of them cheechakos was happy to talk to a miner that knowed something about the Klondike creeks. So Gig would tell 'em to come by the Palace tomorrow at five, and he'd buy 'em a whiskey and introduce him to some of the fellers. If there was two or three cheechakos in the tent, he'd invite 'em all to come along.

  "Then back in Lousetown Gig would tell Wylie where the cheechakos' tent was pitched and what kind of outfit he seen. When the fellers went to meet Gig at the Palace, Wylie would slip into their tent and walk out with five pounds of bacon or a few tins of evaporated milk. Not so much that they was going to notice right away, especially when they was just trying to learn the lay of the land. And Gig would pour enough whiskey into 'em at the Palace to make sure they wasn't in a counting mood by the time they got back to their tent. Sometimes he would get 'em into a card game that first night.

  "After a couple of days in Dawson most fellers was sobered up. They knowed their way around and they knowed who Constantine was. So Wylie only stole grub from the newest cheechakos, and he never gone back to the same tent twice."

  Chapter 31

  No one in the Klondike district starved that winter, but most of its six thousand inhabitants survived on one meal a day. Some on a single flapjack. Zimmerman says that the ACC and NAT admitted customers to their Dawson warehouses one at a time, and that purchasing a few days' worth of grub required an interview with the manager. What helped preserve the inventory was that dozens of sourdoughs had ordered winter outfits from both companies, intending to purchase only one. So fifty-pound sacks of flour and beans and tins of soup vegetables or condensed milk were sold to hungry miners a few pounds and tins at a time.

  "People in Dawson was nervous about getting through winter," Zimmerman says. "But the main thing they talked about was gold. Where was the next Eldorado? So when a rumor builds up that someone struck it on a new creek, men that wasn't working would rush off to stake. In February it was three hundred men stampeding to Swede Creek, which come into the Yukon from the west, five m
iles upriver from Dawson. Didn't matter that it was the middle of the night and sixty below zero, the stampeders staked it for fifteen miles. They found out later there was no gold on Swede Creek. A couple of them fellers got back to Dawson with one foot froze so bad it had to be sawed off.

  "In April there was a stampede to Monte Christo Island, twenty miles up the Yukon. But there's a thousand islands on the Yukon, and none of 'em got more than flour gold on the bars."

  "Did Gig and Wylie go out on any of those winter stampedes?"

  Zimmerman shakes his head. "Gig knowed by then that all the rich creeks in the Klondike – Indian district too – had headwaters up on the ridge near King Solomon's Dome. Small gulches running straight into the Yukon was a waste of time. And he figured new pups and benches on both sides of the ridge would get prospected in the spring. Fellers that found good indications might stake and walk away from their claims on other creeks. So the thing to do was keep an eye on the registry, and look for abandoned claims on Klondike pups. Or on Indian River creeks like Ophir or Dominion or Sulfur.

  "What about Wylie?"

  "He seen enough of the Indian River district," Zimmerman says. "After falling into Quartz Creek."

  "So Gig and Wylie are riding out the winter in Lousetown," I say. "Fishing, dealing faro, and stealing food from cheechakos. Did the Swedes make it back Outside with their gold?"

  Zimmerman nods. "Over Chilkoot Pass. The dogs can climb to the pass from Crater Lake but you got to unhook 'em and carry everything yourself. And between 'em the Swedes was packing almost three hundred pounds of gold."

  "By then the Mounties moved the border up to Chilkoot and was checking outfits on anyone trying to cross. So you got caches stacked everywhere on that level ground at the pass. Tons and tons of gear, and more coming up every day, with a line of stampeders climbing stairs they cut into the ice. Carrying their outfits up that last pitch on their backs, a hundred pounds at a time.

  "The Swedes tied up their dogs at the pass, and when they got the last of their gear up, they packed the bags onto their sleds and dropped 'em straight down to The Scales. Then they slid down pulling the dogs behind 'em."

  "So they made it down to Dyea by year end?"

  "Sometime around then," Zimmerman says. "There wasn't many coming back Outside that winter and the Swedes might of been the first to haul out Klondike gold. Lindfors and Ruud wasn't going to talk about how much they had, but all you had to do was look at them fellers to know they seen everything on the Yukon. There must have been a different greenhorn asking 'em questions every five minutes on the way down to Sheep Camp."

  "And from there it's an easy run down to Dyea."

  "Except for the canyon," Zimmerman says. "But that don't look like much after what you come through already."

  "So let's call it January of '98," I say, seeing my chance to tie two threads together. "The Swedes sled their gold into Dyea and head to the nearest saloon for a drink. Maybe they run into a greenhorn who's been trying to assemble an outfit so he can make it over the pass himself. He left Cabin John a year and a half earlier when his friend sent him a book about the Yukon gold fields. Now he wants to join the Klondike stampede and meet Gig Garrett in Dawson."

  While I say this, Zimmerman squints as if he's concentrating, and the lines on his forehead narrow. His eyes seem locked on the knife that still impales the Pelly River, and his truncated left ring finger taps rhythmically against the table.

  To snap his focus, I extract the knife, then take our empty cups to the cask and refill them halfway.

  "What happens next, Henry?" I lay the knife flat and push his cup across the table. "It's your story now."

  ***

  Zimmerman swirls the whiskey in his glass and stares into the vapors before fixing his washed out eyes on mine. "I wasn't in Dyea when the Swedes come out," he says. "I was working in Skagway, a few miles down the Lynn Canal. Patching the trail up to White Pass. They was using pack horses and they needed men that knowed a diamond hitch."

  He fills in the missing time.

  "Gig sent me Veazie Wilson's book in February of '96. Guide to the Yukon Gold Fields. Wrote on the title page that he was going to Circle City, and there was more big discoveries coming on the Yukon. Told me to head out to Juneau and get an outfit, then sail up to Dyea and take the trail Inside. After I got through the first chapter, I was ready to go."

  Zimmerman says he left Williamsport in May of '96 with seventy-five dollars in his pocket and rode freight trains west until he reached San Francisco in July. That was around the time Gig and Nokes and the Swedes were paddling into Circle City. Carrying a short note of introduction written by two longshoremen he met in a Sacramento rail yard, he sought out a man named Beasley and was offered work sweeping the San Francisco docks. Within two months he was a longshoreman, and by November he'd saved enough for passage north and the rudiments of an outfit. His plan was to work in Juneau until he could afford everything he needed. While doing that, he hoped to join another party of miners heading Inside.

  Ten days before he planned to leave, Henry developed a nagging cough. He kept working, but a raw week on the waterfront led to a fever and night sweats. Soon he was confined to a YMCA infirmary bed, too weak to travel or work. It was February before he was ready to return to the docks, and then it took a few more months to restore his finances. He finally set sail for Juneau in mid-June of '97, from the same San Francisco wharf that welcomed the ACC's Excelsior and its Klondike Kings home from the Bering Sea a month later.

  And when Henry reached Juneau, stories about fabulous strikes on the Yukon had already seeped out. Any miner at Treadwell or Silver Bow who wasn't tied down by circumstance was making plans for the Klondike or had left already. There were vacated jobs to be filled, but Henry couldn't imagine being left behind in Juneau as the stampede got underway.

  He visited one of the well-known outfitters and bought cheese-cloth netting, gum boots, and a rabbit-fur robe, six by eight feet and lined with an Indian blanket. When the outfitter scribbled a list of what he would need for a year-long trip to the Yukon, Henry was stunned, both at the scope of the outfit and its estimated price. It would have taken him another six months of work in San Francisco, and in Juneau he had no idea how to amass that kind of sum.

  "That outfitter," Zimmerman says, "must have knowed what would happen when the Klondike news got down to the states. He asked me what kind of work I done, and I said longshoreman work. Before that three years in a railyard, and I growed up boating on the C&O Canal. He told me I was all right. Said to buy a tent and a stove and a few weeks of bacon and beans, then catch a boat up to Dyea.

  "Said he guessed there would be plenty of steamers coming along behind me, with cargo to move and horses to pack. And he told me that after a week or two in Alaska, some of them greenhorns would be ready to hop the next boat back to civilization and leave their Yukon outfits behind for a dime on the dollar."

  Chapter 32

  "The boat dropped us off in Dyea on the fourth of July," Zimmerman says. "You could see the place was just a tidal shelf where the Dyea River run into the head of the Lynn Canal. Across the meadow at the edge of the trees there was a few log buildings and tents, and some fellers back there was already lighting charges or shooting guns in the air to celebrate, even though it was still the middle of the afternoon. Maybe the Siwashes was celebrating too, 'cause none of 'em come up to meet the boat that day. Didn't matter. I didn't have much to carry and I didn't need help."

  Zimmerman says four young women got off in Dyea as well, and they had plenty to carry. They'd been planning to follow the Yukon trail to the dance halls in Circle City, but like everyone else had now recast their sights on Dawson. Three miners from Treadwell, a priest from Victoria, and a Western Union engineer were also on board, and Zimmerman joined them in helping the ladies haul their bags away from the beach.

  John J. Healy's North American Transportation and Trading Company had set up a post amongst the Indian huts in Dyea a decade ear
lier, and the trail to Chilkoot Pass led past that log building and through the trees flanking the Dyea River. When Zimmerman started down the trail, there may have been twice as many tents pitched alongside it as Gig saw eighteen months earlier. In another month there would be ten times as many.

  The dance-hall girls stopped at the NAT post to inquire after their guide, a Yukon veteran named Parsons who would lead them over the pass and hire Chilkoot Indians to pack their goods to Bennett Lake. Parsons had assured them he would hire a boatman to ferry them all the way from Bennett to Dawson.

  The Treadwell miners were going to rent a narrow dory and tow their outfit nineteen miles up the river to the head of canoe navigation. From that point, Sheep Camp was only five-hundred vertical feet and a couple of miles up the trail.

  "I never figured out what that telegraph engineer was doing in Dyea," Zimmerman says. "Maybe Jeff Smith sent him ahead to look things over."

  The NAT manager told Zimmerman the Dyea trail was busier than it had been in previous summers, with travelers similar to the ones he'd always seen. Sourdoughs from the California mining camps. Inveterate wanderers looking for the next frontier. Businessmen convinced they could be the first to bring a vital product or service to the growing Yukon mining camps. But like the outfitter in Juneau, the NAT manager wondered if the Klondike news might finally establish Dyea as the gateway to the Yukon in the minds of greenhorns back in the states.

  "He told me there was a man down at Skagway Bay who been saying the same thing for nine years, only he thought it was going to be Skagway instead of Dyea. It's three miles back toward the mouth of the Lynn Canal and the same kind of place. Skagway River come down through a valley and across a big tidal flat into the bay. But you can follow that valley up into the hills, climb a few ridges, and then cross White Pass and come down to the lakes.

  "That man was Captain William Moore, and he fought in Mexico in '48. Then he stampeded for gold for fifty years, California to Peru to the Cassiar Mountains. He come up to Alaska with his sons in '88, and when he heared about White Pass, he staked out a townsite on Skagway Bay and started telling people that was the way to get Inside."