BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2)

by Edward A. Stabler

  Zimmerman says that even though Minook and its tributaries weren't as rich as the creeks in the Klondike and Indian River districts, Rampart had two compelling attractions. It was much closer to the coast, and therefore much easier to reach and re-supply by boat. And it was in Alaska, so no royalties were paid to the Canadian government. The miners on the Rampart creeks could keep all their hard-won gold.

  "Gig and me talked about it on the boat down from Dawson," Zimmerman says. "We reckoned that if there was gold for sure in the beach sands at Nome, every last greenhorn and gambler and confidence man would get there before the summer was out. All you need is a shovel, a rocker, and a bucket to work a claim on the beach.

  "The Snake River run into the Bering Sea at Nome, and some fellers was working the banks. Others was a few miles back from the river on Anvil Creek. But it was flat tundra everywhere and no trees, so it was easy to keep an eye on all the claims and see who was doing what.

  "Gig thought maybe Nokes figured out we was headed for Nome. And maybe Percy and Bill was just a day or two behind us on another boat. If Gig registered a claim in Nome, they could stop by the mining office and track him down in an hour or two. People was pouring in and hotels and cabins and saloons was going up fast, but it still wasn't easy to hide.

  "Maybe we could pull ten or twenty thousand in gold out of the beach sand, or maybe it wasn't so rich as the stories was saying. Or maybe before we found out, Percy and Bill would show up with a summons and walk Gig onto a boat for Skagway. And the creeks at Rampart might of been just as good a bet. There was a claim on Little Minook where miners took out two thousand dollars, just sinking their first shaft to bedrock and no drifting.

  "So we decided to split up. Gig got off at Rampart and I kept going downriver. I had three thousand dollars worth of dust and notes, and that was enough for me to catch a boat from St. Michael and get set up in Nome. If I staked a beach claim and Percy and Bill come by, I could send a letter up to Rampart telling Gig to stay away. If he ain't heared from me by September, he could catch one of the last boats down to St. Michael and get to Nome for winter diggings.

  "Gig was going to climb up Minook Creek and stake on one of the tributaries like Hoosier or Slate. He had twice as much money as me, but it was going to cost more to work a claim back in the hills. He reckoned he could buy a pack horse in Rampart City."

  "Show me where Rampart is."

  Zimmerman points to a spot on the etched line about a fifth of the way from the bend at Fort Yukon to its terminus at his edge of the table, where the Yukon empties into the Bering Sea. I stab the table at Rampart and leave the knife erect, wondering how he'll react. My left hand cradles the Colt in my lap, just in case.

  "You mean after spending his last year and a half in Dawson dealing cards and pouring whiskey, Gig decided to start working a claim again? In country that was rougher than the Klondike, but not as rich?"

  "Fellers was finding gold back on the creeks and selling claims for good money. Others was selling lots and building hotels in town. And there was two more reasons. First, there wasn't no Mounties. Rampart City was an Alaska mining camp with miners making the law. And no one there ever heared of Sam Nokes.

  "The other reason was something I didn't know when Gig got off the boat. He told me later, when he finally made it to Nome."

  Zimmerman stops for a sip of whiskey, and he glances quickly at the knife before leaning back from the table again. He wipes his mouth and smiles a crooked smile as he awaits my response.

  "What was the other reason?"

  "Gig wasn't going to be working by a claim by hisself. His old friend Wylie been up on Little Minook Creek since April."

  Chapter 44

  When Zimmerman mentions Wylie, I feel impelled to reach toward Fort Yukon and extract the knife from the table. I lay it flat on the headwaters of the Porcupine River, close to my edge and safely out of his reach. Something I can't identify troubles me about Wylie.

  "You said Wylie disappeared the night someone tried to strangle Alice Maine. That was in February. And you said he never came back to Dawson. How did he get five hundred miles downriver in the middle of winter?"

  Zimmerman raises his watery eyes to mine but doesn't answer.

  "You said he was working a claim in Rampart in April, but the Yukon stays frozen into May, so he didn't get there on a boat. Are you saying he got his hands on a dog team and sledded there by himself, without any time to put together an outfit?"

  "I ain't saying one way or the other," Zimmerman says. "I never knowed how Wylie got hisself to Rampart." He lifts his cup from the table for a sip, then lowers it to his lap and leans back against the aft wall. "It's just fifty miles from Dawson to Fortymile," he offers. "Could be he went there first, spent a couple of weeks scavenging grub and gear. Wasn't much left at Fortymile, but there was still a few miners working back on Birch Creek and a trading post and warehouse in town. You got plenty of empty cabins for shelter and firewood, and some of 'em might of had jerky or flour or cans of meat."

  My doubts seep through my skin in the form of sweat, which I wipe from my forehead with my sleeve. "Then Wylie managed to send word back upriver. After he staked a claim in April, but early enough for his message to reach Dawson before you and Gig left in July. And even though you saw Gig in Lousetown whenever you weren't packing, he never told you Wylie made it safely to Alaska and was working a claim on Little Minook Creek. He didn't even tell you he was going to join Wylie when he got off the boat in Rampart."

  Zimmerman turns his head and gives me a derisive look. "For a feller that wants to know the whole story, you sure got a pinholed way of seeing things."

  While wondering what that statement implies about Zimmerman's adherence to the truth, I can't think of an appropriate reply, so I answer with a quick tilt of whiskey. Its warmth floods my chest and radiates toward my fingers. I exhale deeply and try to set my reservations about Wylie aside for the moment.

  "You said Gig told you about Wylie when he got to Nome. When was that?"

  "A year later. Summer of 1900. By then Nome was ten times what it was in '99. It sucked all the prospectors out of Dawson and all the outlaws and con-men and whores out of every rat's nest in the world. Nome made Skagway look like Soapy Smith's garden party. So even though Gig got bigger problems than Sam Nokes by the time he left Rampart, no one was going to bother him in Nome. In that town there was wanted men standing on every street corner and drinking in every saloon."

  "What problem did Gig have that was bigger than Sam Nokes?"

  "He and Wylie got tangled up with a miner who jumped Gig's claim on Myers Gulch, and that man got killed. The other miners all come looking for Gig, but it was too late. He left on a boat for St. Michael. When Gig got to Nome, he told me Wylie done it on his own. And he said Wylie disappeared again, along with that feller's gold."

  I remember the rumor about Gig Garrett stabbing a fellow miner in Alaska, and a wave of recognition and doubt rises and falls inside me. Before tonight, nothing I'd heard about Garrett ever connected him with someone named Wylie, but Zimmerman says Wylie was responsible for Garrett's alleged crimes in the Yukon. It was Wylie who tried to strangle Alice Maine in Dawson, and Wylie who killed the miner in Rampart. If that's true, it's not surprising that Garrett's peers might find him complicit, since the two of them shared a tent in Lousetown, and the miner in Rampart was found on Garrett's jumped claim.

  Something seems discordant about Zimmerman's story now. I can't pinpoint it yet, but it must be why my pulse has quickened a few beats. I need to understand this claim-jumping conflict.

  "This miner Wylie killed. What was his name?"

  "Perlmutter," Zimmerman says, almost spitting the word. "A dairy farmer that quit dairying and was going to build a bible school in California with money from Yukon gold. Gig told me he was the kind of feller most sourdoughs got no use for. Thin and twitchy, all wrapped up in 'praise the Lord' this and 'we give thanks for' that. Short brown hair and a baby face that probably c
ouldn't grow whiskers. And eyeglasses he was always taking off and wiping clean."

  "You said he jumped Gig's claim on Myers Gulch. But earlier you said Wylie was working a claim on Little Minook Creek. So Gig and Wylie weren't working together?"

  "That last part ain't right. They was working together."

  "Where?"

  "On Little Minook Creek. Wylie staked two claims side by side. One for him and one for Gig."

  "I thought you couldn't stake for someone else."

  Zimmerman grins at my objection. "You can stake for whoever you want – just can't record a claim for someone else. And if you stake but don't record, some other feller can come along and take it. Cut your name off the stakes, carve his own, and pay the recording fee. Then it's his claim.

  "You ain't supposed to do what Wylie done, so most fellers don't. But nobody bothered him about it. When Gig got to Rampart, he went up to visit Wylie on Little Minook. Then he come back down to the Commissioner's office to record the claim Wylie staked for him."

  "So Gig and Wylie are staked and registered on Little Minook Creek, on adjacent claims. How did Gig get into trouble on Myers Gulch?"

  "It was only a couple weeks after he started working on Little Minook. They was running low on grub, so Gig took Wylie's pack horse down to town to stock up. Rampart City ain't far from their claims – just a couple miles west to Minook Creek, then five miles north to the river. When he got to the main trail, he passed two fellers heading upstream and carrying shovels, with pans strapped to their packs. A few minutes later three more come along, moving quick up the trail just like the others.

  "Gig asked 'em if they was stampeding, and they said there been a strike on one of the gulches above Slate Creek. So Gig turned around and went back up the Minook Creek trail, five miles south to the mouth of Slate. Then he gone west up the valley, following the fresh tracks in the mud. The walls is steep with spruce down near the creek, but they back off into meadows as you go higher up. About a mile up Slate Creek he come to the gulch where the stampeders was measuring off claims and staking. It was a cut into the north slope of the valley, maybe two hundred feet across and running uphill for almost a mile. Had a pup stream in the middle you could cross in three steps. There wasn't no name on it yet, but later it got called Myers Gulch.

  "Discovery was five minutes up the gulch, and the two claims below it was already staked. Gig tied up his horse near Slate Creek, took the rope and knife and hatchet out of his saddle bag, and climbed up the gulch past all the stakes. The last claim was 6 Above, and that was where the meadow rises into a stand of spruce that eases back to the base of a headwall. Gig measured off five hundred feet following the pup through the trees and staked 7 Above. He said there wasn't another full claim left before the pup come out of the wall at the top of the hillside, but before he finished carving his stakes, another feller was walking off 8 Above. And from 8 Above to 2 Below, that was Myers Gulch staked top to bottom.

  "Gig panned out colors from 7 Above, but some of the stampeders on the lower claims washed out a dollar to the pan. And Judah Myers, the feller who staked Discovery, showed Gig some twelve-dollar nuggets he found at rim rock. Them nuggets was what started the stampede."

  "Did Gig record his claim?"

  Zimmerman shakes his head. "He took the horse down to Rampart 'cause they still needed grub. Didn't get there until late at night. Stocked up the next day and come back to Little Minook."

  I remember something Zimmerman mentioned earlier. "He couldn't record, could he? Because it's one claim per mining district, and he already had a claim on Little Minook. Wylie did too, so neither of them could record on Myers Gulch."

  "Gig told me he wanted to see what prospects was on the gulch. If it looked rich, he was going to keep 7 Above and sell Little Minook. Folks already knowed what Little Minook was worth. Him and Wylie ain't started working Gig's claim yet anyway, just using it for sluice-water while they was digging a cut on Wylie's."

  "So they were breaking the rules again and hoping nobody noticed, like Wylie did when he staked for Gig on Little Minook."

  Zimmerman squints at me condescendingly. "Gig and Wylie was three years Inside by then. They seen and done everything twice on a Yukon placer mine. They knowed what they was doing, just like all the real sourdoughs on them Rampart creeks. But you can't say that for Perlmutter."

  Zimmerman says that two weeks after the stampede to Myers Gulch, a tenderfoot who said his name was Perlmutter came looking for Gig on Little Minook Creek.

  "Gig and Wylie figured he was right off a boat from the coast, 'cause his clothes looked new and his face and neck was red from mosquito bites and the sun. Looked like the kind of feller who learned everything he knowed about mining from a book.

  "Perlmutter said he been walking out to some of the new creeks and gulches, looking at claims that wasn't being worked and writing down names on the stakes. After a few days he gone back down to Rampart and spent two mornings in the Commissioner's office flipping through the register, checking to see what claims was recorded. Almost all of the ones he wrote down was in the book, but some wasn't, and one of 'em was Gig's claim on Myers Gulch.

  "Perlmutter tells Gig he'll offer him a hundred dollars for the 7 Above claim, and Gig says he couldn't keep hisself from laughing. Then he rubbed his whiskers and told Perlmutter if he was in a hurry to start digging, maybe Gig would let him work it on a lay. He could keep half of what he took out. If Perlmutter worked hard, maybe he could double his hundred dollars before the gulch froze up for the winter."

  "Wylie starts laughing too, but Perlmutter don't think it's funny and starts wiping off his eyeglasses. He says he seen Gig listed on the claim on Little Minook Creek, and that's how he found him. And he read the mining regulations, so he knowed that Gig can't have two claims in the Rampart district. Perlmutter says if Gig don't record his Myers Gulch claim in three days, he's going to cut his name off the stakes on 7 Above and record the claim hisself."

  "And Gig couldn't record on Myers Gulch," I add, finishing the thought, "without giving up his claim on Little Minook."

  "He wasn't walking away from Little Minook until he knowed Myers Gulch was better," Zimmerman says. "And he wasn't going to give away a claim he could sell."

  Chapter 45

  Zimmerman says Little Minook Creek began icing up ten days after Perlmutter's visit, so Gig and Wylie stopped sluicing summer diggings and started felling trees for a winter cabin. When Wylie took his horse down to Rampart for a load of oats and grub, Gig decided to visit Myers Gulch.

  "Sometimes a creek is staked top to bottom and only one claim gets worked," Zimmerman says, "until everybody knows the prospects and figures things out. Set up for mining, sell out, or walk away. Gig said he turned into Myers Gulch from Slate Creek and seen piles of stripped logs on 2 Below, and that told him nobody was walking away from claims on the pup. The first feller he seen was Judah Myers, cutting wood on 1 Below.

  "Gig asked if he was down to bedrock on Discovery, and Myers said yes. He bought 1 Below and was partnering with the feller on 1 Above. Myers said he hired three men and they dug a cut from rim-rock almost to the creek. The frozen muck is ten feet deep, but after that you got five feet of gravel and dust, and the pay-streak is wider than the cut. They wasn't going to sluice the diggings until next year, but they was washing out three-dollar pans and finding a nugget or two every day. For winter they was going to burn and drift on the other side of the creek. Myers said word was getting out that the gulch was rich ground.

  "So Gig climbed past 1 Above, and he seen signs of work on the next four claims. Trees cut down, dams and sluice channels, some bench diggings and a rocker. Didn't see miners on every claim, but all of 'em had tents pitched or a cabin going up. So Gig knowed what to expect when he got to his own claim. And sure enough, 7 Above was jumped. Someone cut Gig's name off the face and carved his own, on a stake Gig chopped and drove in hisself.

  "Perlmutter?"

  Zimmerman's lips curl as if he's t
asting something rancid while reciting the name. "Matthew B. Perlmutter. Faithful servant of our Lord. Gig said he mule-kicked the stake out of the ground."

  "Was Perlmutter there?"

  Zimmerman shakes his head. "There wasn't nobody on 7 Above – just stripped branches and stacks of cut logs. But up near the top Gig seen two fellers building a cabin on the next claim. He follows the path up to 8 Above, and the stake for that one says Perlmutter too. Gig spits on the name and goes over to talk to the fellers working on the cabin.

  "He asks if they's partners with Perlmutter, and they told him they was hired hands from Rampart. They said Perlmutter staked 7 Above and bought 8 Above for twenty-three hundred dollars, even though it was just a fraction. He was going to work both claims together.

  "Gig asked 'em where Perlmutter was and they said he was down in town getting a winter outfit together. And if Gig was looking to work, Perlmutter was paying fifteen dollars a day plus grub for winter diggings. They was planning to stay on.

  "Gig smiles and tells them he already got more work than he can handle. Says his name is Joe Murphy and he's working a claim on Little Minook Creek. When he ain't mining, he's a reporter for the Klondike Nugget in Dawson. He says the Nugget asked him to write about the news and prospects on the Rampart creeks. They was going to print it in the paper once a month and call it the Rampart Report. Gig said they was doing the same thing for the Indian River and Circle and Fortymile.

  "Then he tells Perlmutter's men he was hoping one of 'em might be able to stop by Little Minook whenever he was going down to town and report what was happening at Myers Gulch. It didn't have to be a big story, just what claims was being worked, who was digging or sluicing or cleaning up. Joe would sure be grateful, and he had some money from the Nugget to share with his sources, so he could pay 'em ten dollars a month if they come by to report the news.