Incident at Twenty-Mile

by Треваньян

  I was going through the Destiny Tribune's account of Hibbard's arrival, when it suddenly struck me: Why did it take three days for Hibbard to get down to Destiny? Descending the thirty or so miles of serpentine railroad line-even a very cautious descent-shouldn't have taken more than one full day. After all, the snow hadn't started yet; and two months earlier Matthew had climbed up in a little over twelve hours.

  Then I realized that Hibbard couldn't have come down the tracks. The rock slide precipitated by the storm had already cut the line. What must have happened was this: after snatching up a few valuables from his depot, he must have started down the track in the storm, but when he came to the break in the line, he was obliged to return to Twenty-Mile, probably with the intention of slipping around the edge of town, crossing the donkey meadow, and working his way down the steep old access trail to Destiny, the same trail that was later used by the miners and townsfolk. If my calculations are roughly correct, he would have been hiding somewhere (perhaps in one of the abandoned buildings) when B. J., Matthew, and Frenchy were burying Coots.

  I find it distasteful to think of Reverend Hibbard peering out from his hiding place, watching the burial of Coots.

  It was from C. R. Harriman's interview with a"… redoubtable old soldier who, despite the loss of a leg in the service of his country, led the dangerous trek down to Destiny, guiding four others to safety," that I gleaned details of the ore-bearers' descent. But many particulars were vague because (as Harriman obliquely put it) "the fatigues of the colorful old soldier's journey did not prevent him from accepting bibulous congratulations proffered by gentlemen at the local oases."

  In a column headed "Dramatic Incident at Twenty-Mile," this soldier, who gave his name as Sergeant-Major Jefferson M. Calder, described the shoot-out between Matthew and the escaped madmen from the state prison. He told how the young boy had faced down the desperados, using tactics he'd learned from the old soldier himself. But the strain of this confrontation had"… pretty much gutted the kid. Made him go sort of simple. Shoot, he even started thinking he was the town marshal!"

  My debt to C. R. Harriman does not end with his interviews in the Tribune. A few years ago a colleague sent me a book he thought might interest me. When I unwrapped the package, the name C. R. Harriman on the cover immediately ignited my curiosity. It was a privately published account of his early years in Wyoming, concentrating on what the title called: The End of Destiny. Three hundred numbered exemplars of the book were printed in 1928, and I suppose that copy No. 132, which sits on my desk at this moment, is the only one extant, though I should be delighted to hear otherwise from a reader.

  After a lively anecdotal description of the birth and growth of Destiny, Harriman's book focuses on the six weeks between the arrival of the frozen, bone-weary miners who had threaded their way down the snow-clogged trail from Twenty-Mile, and the economic panic that led to Destiny's collapse.

  As soon as the miners had rested up, they were out roving the streets, creating a hectic holiday atmosphere. After drawing their wages from the mine's agent in town, they applied themselves diligently to joy-seeking, sure that their respite would be short, and that they would be back slaving in the mine as soon as the Boston owners repaired the collapsed rail line.

  Information concerning the broken line was indeed telegraphed back to Boston, and days of silence ensued while the company weighed the considerable investment necessary to repair the track against the return they could expect from the mine. Then instructions came to the company office: After detaching the Surprise Lode from its mother company so as to avoid further liability, the Boston owners declared it bankrupt, leaving the miners without jobs, and leaving Destiny's dozen or so small service enterprises with unpaid accounts. The town was staggered by the news, for this was before the legalized scam of "chapter 11" bankruptcy, back when avoiding one's debts was considered dishonorable, and men driven to bankruptcy were expected to-and often did-commit suicide. Having assured the angry townsfolk that the Boston owners were entirely sensible of their responsibilities, the company agent quietly locked the door of his office and took the 2 A. M. eastbound to avoid the unpleasant distinction of being tarred and feathered.

  Within weeks of the arrival of the miners and townsfolk from Twenty-Mile, the Destiny Bank and Trust had failed, and most of the merchants had sold out and departed, together with the doctor, the preacher, the lawyer, and the town's public girls; and what kind of a town is it where you can't get healed, saved, sued, or laid? Not long after, the undertaker left and the last bar nailed up its doors. And hey! If you can't even get drunk or buried…!

  But this collapse was totally unthinkable when Frenchy and her girls first emerged, randomly shod, from the harrowing back trail into a town echoing with the miners' holiday zeal. While the girls were recuperating from their trek in the Destiny Regal Hotel's tin bathtubs, Frenchy made arrangements with the biggest saloon, and C. R. Harriman tells us that within two days her "ladies of the evening" were lightening the hours of miners and townsmen alike. I shall quote from this reference to give you a sample of Harriman's sumptuous, if occasionally tangle-footed, frontier journalese: "The trio of rough-hewn odalisques was managed by one 'Frenchy,' an enterprising woman of decidedly Nubian inclinations.* This 'Frenchy' did not offer herself for sale-or, more precisely, for rent-and considering a rather off-putting faГ§ade resulting from the application of a broken bottle to her left cheek, it is not likely that she would have found many customers among the refined townsfolk, although rough-and-ready miners would doubtless overlook such superficial cosmetic nuances, But her troika of girls provided a variety calculated to tempt every appetite (save for the fastidious). There was 'Queeny,' a fullblown, full-blooded, full-voiced woman no longer burdened by the coy inhibitions of youth (or indeed those of middle age); and there was 'Chinky,' a shy, retiring visitor from the Celestial Kingdom; and finally there was the clear favorite, 'Goldy,' a brawny Viking girl of more-than-averagely plain features, but crowned with the luxuriant golden locks that inspired her sobriquet."

  * The reader is reminded that Mr. Harriman wrote long before political correctness became more important than Freedom of Speech.

  In an appendix to his book, Harriman recounts how he crossed the trail of one of Twenty-Mile's denizens through what he called "one of those 'wondrous' coincidences so common in our Nation of Drifters that the real wonder is that we continue to be amazed by them." A couple of years after he had left Destiny and found a post with a San Francisco daily, he was assigned to do a "color piece" on a community of outcasts living in a makeshift village across the bay, in the hills behind Oakland. There he found Reverend Hibbard, who had become the spiritual leader of a small band of fanatics who were convinced that the apocalyptic Second Coming would coincide with the arrival of the Twentieth Century. When that ominous date came and went without cataclysmic incident, Hibbard reexamined the texts of John and Daniel, and lo! he discovered an error of twenty-one years in their calculations-twenty-one being exactly the Trinity times the Seven Seals. So it now became obvious that the apocalypse would come on New Year's Eve, 1921, when Hibbard's followers would be wafted up to heaven, while the fornicators, the scoffers, the meat-eaters, the Darwinians, the blasphemers, and all the rest of us rubbish would be hurled, twisting and screaming, into eternal fires. While awaiting this gratifying spectacle, Reverend Hibbard commanded his followers to live in prayer, poverty, chastity, and grateful obedience to their leader. By the time a diminished handful of sect members stood in white gowns on their hilltop in the drenching rain, only to see the first dawn of 1922 appear with no greater catastrophe than half a dozen head-colds (and much ridicule and nose-thumbing from local flappers and cake-eaters), Reverend Hibbard had already preceded them to their reward, leaving behind a child he had begot upon the body of the thirteen-year-old daughter of a devoted follower. But Hibbard was not the first sin-merchant to cash in on America's penchant for wrathful, anti-intellectual fundamentalism and the addiction of its
Lost and its Damaged for the narcotic of cultism, nor, sadly, would he be the last.

  We learn little about Matthew, Ruth Lillian, and B. J. Stone from the Destiny Tribune beyond a mention of them as the last arrivals from Twenty-Mile, and two passing references to the shoot-out between Matthew and the prison escapees. I suppose it is only natural that the closure of the mine should occupy most of the newspaper's attention, considering the devastating effect it had on the town's prosperity. Records from the Destiny Bank and Trust show that Gerald (Doc) Kerry drew his savings out of the bank as soon as he got down to Destiny. He had always doubted the willingness of the Boston owners to provide additional investment, should something happen to the mine (as he told Matthew that night while they gobbled peaches and syrup on baking-powder biscuits). It can be inferred that Doc told B. J. Stone of his doubts, for the very next day B. J., Ruth Lillian, and all of Frenchy's girls withdrew their savings, and not a minute too soon, because two days later a rush on the bank forced it to shut down, never to open its doors again.

  I confess to feeling wickedly pleased when I discovered from the records that among the many savings wiped out by the bank's collapse was a small account in the name of Professor Michael Francis Murphy and a very considerable one in the name of Mrs. Sven Bjorkvist.

  Ruth Lillian must have been surprised to discover that her father had kept all his savings in her name, and that they amounted to a very tidy sum. From records of bank transactions, we discover that during Destiny's financial panic she (or rather, B. J. Stone operating as her agent) purchased the entire stock of two clothing shops, a hardware store, a notions shop, and a harness maker's, all at dirt cheap panic prices; and from railroad shipping invoices, we learn that this stock came with them when they left for Seattle.

  Evidently Frenchy read the writing on the wall too, for two days later she and her girls also bought tickets for Seattle, pursuing a clientele that was attracted to the Klondike Gold Rush, and my researches in Seattle turned up Frenchy's name (Marie-ThГ©rГЁse Courbin) on a lease for a "resort-hotel" on Skid Road (soon to be corrupted to "skid row" and applied to any area of down-and-outs).

  Because I've grown fond of them, it would be pleasant to confect happy futures for those four women. I can picture Frenchy returning rich to New Orleans and establishing herself in a fine old house from which she dominates local society through her generous support of the First American United Tabernacle of the Glorious Message of the Risen Christ, where none of the congregation even dares to comment on the succession of handsome, well-muscled young "nephews" she keeps in splendid clothes and expensive cigars. And Kersti? Well, I can envision Kersti using her professional nest egg to buy a fertile half-section where, with some full-blooded young man, she raises a clan of tow-headed rascals. Queeny? I can see Queeny winning the heart of some grizzled Klondike miner who, having struck it rich, opens a theater that features her performing her Famous Dance of the Seven Veils. Then, when finally her time comes, she dies of a sudden and painless heart attack while taking a seventh curtain call before a wildly appreciative audience. And Chinky? Poor Chinky, one of nature's victims, condemned to be used and discarded by a long parade of faceless, mean-hearted strangers. I'm afraid the best life I could reasonably project for Chinky would be a short one.

  But all this is fantasy. The fact is that after Frenchy signed that lease, she and her girls disappeared into the eddies of time without a trace. But at least we know that Frenchy set up shop in Seattle, where her girls could harvest Johns fresh off the ships, rather than being dragged through the rigors of the Chilicoot Pass to the gold fields, where they would have had to compete with those hard-faced, sapphomorphic professionals of the Yukon who serviced queues of prospectors with a production-line efficiency that would have impressed young Henry Ford.

  Following Ruth Lillian's trail in Seattle was not difficult, for she became a minor financial legend and, inevitably, the subject of an unpublished (indeed, unfinished) thesis. * I owe many details of Ruth Lillian's later life to this biography, where we learn that she, B. J. Stone, and Matthew Dubchek arrived in Seattle with three boxcar loads of tools, clothing, and other equipment just as thousands of men were amassing to try their luck in the Alaskan gold fields. It would appear that Ruth Lillian benefited from her father's story about the old Yankee peddler who said that the surest path to a fortune lay not in digging for gold, but in selling picks and shovels to the fools who did. Saved from the shriveling effects of grief and self-pity by having two young people to care for, B. J. Stone became the manager of Ruth Lillian's store, over which an ornately lettered sign proclaimed: Kane's Mercantile Emporium.

  * R. Lillian Marx: The Woman and Her Times: Michele Goldman-Harris.

  One can picture Matthew working happily in the Mercantile during its early, hectic, enormously profitable years. But later his activities seem to have been limited to gardening and doing odd chores around the house that Ruth Lillian had built only half a block from the store.

  Until 1917 most of the Mercantile's orders and sales records bear B. J. Stone's signature (although all legal and banking documents are signed by Ruth Lillian, who had by then become R. Lillian Kane). Then suddenly, we find Ruth Lillian's signature on everything, because B. J. died the year American doughboys surged up the gangways of troop ships to the tune of "Over There," on their way to die in the "war to end war."

  At the age of thirty-six, Ruth Lillian married David S. Marx, an earnest, hard-working rival whose mail-order business in outdoor supplies and work clothes ("Every Item Made in America by Americans!") had earned a reputation for quality throughout Alaska and the Northwest. It was both daring and canny of Mr. Marx to abandon his company's identity and unite their activities under the name of Ruth Lillian's store, recognizing that "Mercantile Emporium" lent their combined enterprise a nostalgic aura of reliability and honesty. He accented this image by using old-fashioned lettering on the cover of his catalogues, a practice continued by the multinational combine that owns the business today, although the target consumer has shifted from farmers and homesteaders to young urban dwellers eager to proclaim their concerns about ecology, and the American Past, and the Good Old Days, and… all that sort of thing. The clothing is now made by underpaid women in Asiatic sweatshops.

  It would appear that Mr. Marx accepted Ruth Lillian's moral obligations, for Matthew went with them when they moved into what is now on show as the Marx-Kane House (appointment required). This ornate pile in the parvenu "Timber Baron" style is one of the few houses to survive the Great Fire that left Seattle an architectural wasteland. Matthew was described by a neighbor as a"… jack-of-all-work around the house. He went about his chores with placid good humor, always wearing a six- pointed marshal's badge pinned to his jacket. He was well known in the Queen Ann Hill neighborhood, where he used to take long rambling walks every evening. Occasionally a badly brought-up child would follow him chanting 'moron' or 'Simple-Simon,' but a short, stormy visit from Mrs. Marx always sufficed to put an end to that."*

  * These details come from the Goldman-Harris biography where, in quoted interviews with an elderly Ruth Lillian, I also discovered her habit of describing persons and behaviors she disapproved of as small!

  Mr. Marx died at his desk from overwork a year after the Wall Street Collapse threatened not only their company's profits but the jobs of their expanded enterprise's four hundred employees, for they had only three years earlier bought out two of their principal suppliers.

  In 1931, American business's darkest moment, Ruth Lillian Marx became president of the Mercantile Emporium. By taking everyday management into her own hands and instigating more efficient practices, by declaring a moratorium on profits, by maintaining her company's reputation for high-quality goods even while prices plunged, and above all by tapping into the creativity of her work force, soliciting their suggestions and rewarding those accepted, she managed to navigate the treacherous waters of the Great Depression without having to fire a single person or reduce benefits. * Th
us, when the nation's entry into the Second World War lifted American business from the doldrums into soaring profits, the Mercantile Emporium's eleven outlets, its mail-order division, and its manufacturing activities enjoyed the commercial advantages of a strong reputation for quality and fair dealing, a faithful clientele, and a fiercely loyal work force.

  * It is difficult to avoid comparison of Ruth Lillian's treatment of her workers and colleagues with today's piratical practice of wringing every last cent of profit out of the work force, and "downsizing" to the point of hectic inefficiency, while denying workers the dignity that comes with civilized benefits and secure futures.

  During the second year of that war, when radios across the country were echoing the soldier's metaphorical plea that the girl back home refrain from sitting under the apple tree with anyone else but me, anyone else but me, anyone else but me. No! No! No!.. Matthew died in his sleep.

  The war ended, and Ruth Lillian retired from active leadership of her now-robust and profitable company, to become a stern and feared force in liberal politics, and a generous, if slightly scornful, supporter of what passed for culture. She was recognized on the streets by the gray-shot russet hair she wore piled up and held in place by antique silver combs, and by her outdated, handmade dresses, which were in disapproving contrast to the postwar "New Look" with its graceless calf-bisecting skirts.

  Full of years, Ruth Lillian Marx died in 1963. Seattle was surprised to learn that of the many millions of dollars she was reputed to be worth, all that remained was her rambling house on Queen Ann Hill, and even this was mortgaged down to the ashes in the fireplaces. It came out that all her money had gone to organizations seeking to combat what she held to be the greatest menace facing humankind: the worldwide population explosion. (It is sobering to realize that since Ruth Lillian's death world population has more than doubled, and will double again within the next twenty-seven years.)