[Illustration]
IT WOULD be useless to encumber my story with a lengthy and detailed
narrative of Swiftwater Bill’s experiences in the first mad rush of
gold-seekers up the narrow and devious channels of Bonanza and Eldorado
Creeks. The world has for eleven years known the entrancing story of
George Carmack’s find on Bonanza--how, from the first spadeful of grass
roots, studded with gold dust and nuggets, which filled a tiny vial,
the gravel beds of Bonanza and Eldorado and a few adjoining creeks, all
situated within the area of a township or two, produced the marvelous
sum of $50,000,000 within a few years.
Swiftwater struck gold from the very first. He located No. 13 Eldorado,
and had as his neighbors such well known mining men as Prof. T. S.
Lippy, the Seattle millionaire, who left a poorly paid job as physical
director of the Y. M. C. A. in Seattle to prospect for gold in Alaska;
Ole Oleson; the Berry Bros., who cleaned up a million dollars on two
and a fraction claims on Eldorado; Antone Stander; Michael Dore,
a young French-Canadian, who died from exposure in a little cabin
surrounded by tin oil cans filled to overflowing with the yellow metal,
and others equally well known.
Swiftwater’s ground on No. 13 Eldorado was fabulously rich--so rich
that after he had struck the pay streak, the excitement was too much
for him and he forthwith struck out for the trail that leads to
Dawson. And now I am about to reveal to Alaskans and others who read
this little book a quality about Swiftwater of which few people had
any knowledge whatever, and this shows in a startling way how easy it
was in those halcyon days in the Golden Klondike for a man to grasp a
fortune of a million dollars in an instant and then throw it away with
the ease and indifference that a smoker discards a half-burned cigar.
Swiftwater, as may well be imagined, when he struck the rich layers of
gold in the candle-lit crevices of bedrock on Eldorado a few feet below
the surface, could have had a half interest in a half dozen claims on
each side of him if he had simply kept his mouth shut and informed
those he knew in Dawson of the strike, on condition that they would
share half and half with him. This was a common transaction in those
days and a perfectly legitimate one, and Swiftwater could have cleaned
up that winter beyond question $1,000,000 in gold dust, after paying
all expenses and doing very little work himself, had he exercised the
most common, ordinary business ability.
Instead, Swiftwater, when he struck Dawson, threw down a big poke of
gold on the bar of a saloon and announced his intention of buying out
the finest gambling hall and bar in town. Dawson was then the roughest
kind of a frontier mining camp, although the mounted police preserved
very good order. There were at least a score of gambling halls in
Dawson and as many more dance halls. The gambling games ran continually
twenty-four hours a day, and the smallest wager usually made, even in
the poorest games, was an ounce of gold, or almost $20.
When Bill laid down his poke of gold on the bar of a Dawson saloon--it
was so heavy he could hardly lift it--he was instantly surrounded by a
mob of thirty or forty men and a few women.
“Why, boys!” said Swiftwater, ordering a case of wine for the thirsty,
while he chose appolinaris himself, “that’s easy enough! All you’ve got
to do is to go up to Eldorado Creek and you can get all the gold you
want by simply working a rocker about a week.”
That settled the fate of Eldorado, for the next day before three
o’clock in the morning there was a stampede to the new find, and in
twenty-four hours the whole creek had been staked from mouth to source.
Comfortably enjoying the knowledge that he had $300,000 or $400,000 in
gold to the good, Swiftwater set about finding ways to spend it.
His first order “to the outside” was for a black Prince Albert coat and
a black silk top hat, which came in in about five or six weeks and were
immediately donned by Swiftwater. By this time he had become the owner
of the Monte Carlo, the biggest gambling hall in Dawson.
“Tear the roof off, boys!” Swiftwater said when the players on the
opening night swarmed in and asked what was the limit of the bets.
“The sky is the limit and raise her up as far as you want to go,
boys,” said Swiftwater, “and if the roof’s in your way, tear it off!”
Just about this time came the first of Swiftwater’s affaires d’l’amour,
because a day or two previously five young women of the Juneau dance
halls had floated down the river in a barge and gone to work in Dawson.
There were two sisters in the group. Both of them were beautiful women,
young, bright, entertaining and clever in the way such women are. They
were Gussie and May Lamore.
“I am going to have a lady and the swellest that’s in the country,”
Swiftwater told his friends, and then, donning his best clothes, the
costliest he could buy in Dawson, Swiftwater went over to the dance
hall, where the Lamore sisters were working, and ordered wine for
everybody on the floor.
Gussie was dancing with a big, brawny, French-Canadian miner. Her
little feet seemed scarcely to touch the floor of the dance hall as the
miner whirled her around and around. She was little, plump, beautifully
formed and with a face of more than passing comeliness.
You women of “the States”--when I say “the States” I simply speak of
our country as do all the old-timers in Alaska, and not as if it was
some foreign country, but as it really is to us, the home of ourselves
and our forebears, yet separated from us by thousands of miles of
iceclad mountain barriers and storm swept seas have no conception of
the dance hall girl as a type of the early days of Dawson. Many of them
were of good families, young, comely, and fairly well educated. What
stress or storm befell them, or other inhospitable element in their
lives drove them to the northern gold mining country, God knows it is
not my portion to tell. Nor could any one of them probably, in telling
her own life story, give the reasons for the appearance in these dance
halls of any of her sisters.
It is enough for you and me to understand--and it requires no unusual
insight into the human heart and its mysteries to do so--that when a
miner had spent a few months in the solitude of the hills and gold
lined gulches of the Yukon Valley, if he finally found the precious
gold on the rim of the bedrock, his first thought was to go back to
“town.”
Back to town? Yes, because “town” meant and still means to those hardy
men any place where human beings are assembled, and the dance hall, in
those rough days, was the center of social activities and gaieties.
The sight of little Gussie Lamore, with her skirt just touching
the tops of her shoes, spinning around in a waltz with that big
French-Canadian, set all of Bill’s amorous nature aglow. He went to the
hotel, filled his pockets with pokes of gold dust and came quickly back
to the dance hall, where he obtained an introduction to Gussie.
Bill’s wooing was of the rapid kind. Before the night was over he had
told Gussie--
“I’ll give you your weight in gold tomorrow morning if you will marry
me--and I guess you’ll weigh about $30,000.”
Pretty Gussie shook her head coquettishly. “We will just be friends,
Swiftwater, and I guess that’ll be about all.”
Of course, it was only a day or two before all Dawson knew of
Swiftwater’s infatuation. The two became fast friends and got along
beautifully for a week or two. Then came a bitter quarrel, and from
that arose the incident which gave Swiftwater Bill almost his greatest
fame--it is the story of how he cornered the egg market in Dawson in a
valiant effort to hold the love of his sweetheart, Gussie Lamore.
It was in the spring of 1898 and Dawson was very short of grub of
every kind. The average meal of canned soup, a plate of beans garnished
by a few slices of bacon or canned meat, with a little side dish of
canned or dried potatoes stewed, hot cakes or biscuit and coffee, cost
about $5 and sometimes more. The cheapest meal for two persons was $10,
and Bill had seen to it, while trying to win Gussie for his wife, that
she had the best there was to eat in Dawson.
The two were inseparable on the streets. Then came the quarrel--it was
simply a little lovers’ dispute, and then the break.
Swiftwater put in two days assiduously cultivating the friendly graces
of the other dance hall girls in Dawson, but Gussie cared not.
One night an adventurous trader came down from the Upper Yukon in a
small boat--there were no steamers then--and brought two crates of
fresh eggs from Seattle.
Swiftwater heard of this, and he knew that there would be a tremendous
demand for those eggs, as the miners usually made their breakfasts
of the evaporated article; so, shrewdly, he went immediately to the
restaurant which had purchased the crates and called for the proprietor.
Now, this worthy knew Swiftwater to be immensely wealthy and a very
good customer, so when the Eldorado miner demanded the right to buy
every egg in the house, which meant every egg in town, the restaurant
man stroked his chin and said:
“Swiftwater, those eggs cost me a big lot of money, and there hain’t no
more. You can have the hull outfit for three dollars an egg, in dust.”
There was just one whole crate left, and Swiftwater weighed out $2,280
in gold dust.
“Those eggs are mine--keep them here and don’t let anybody have any.”
Now, Swiftwater and Gussie had been in the habit of breakfasting on
fresh eggs some days before, when the first infrequent trader of the
season had managed, after enduring several wrecks on the upper river,
to reach Dawson. Fresh eggs were to Gussie what chocolates and bon bons
are to the average girl in the States.
The next morning Swiftwater arrived at the restaurant for breakfast,
a little earlier than usual, and in a few minutes the waiter placed
before him a steaming hot platter containing an even dozen of the eggs,
nicely poached and served on small strips of toast.
Just then Gussie came in for her breakfast and seated herself at the
other end of the little dining room. It was long after the usual hour
for breakfast, and they were the only two in the room. Without doing
Swiftwater the honor of passing so much as a glance in his direction,
Gussie said to the waiter:
“Bring me a full order of fried eggs.”
“We ain’t got no eggs, mum; they was all sold out last night,” said the
waiter.
Gussie’s face flamed with anger, but only for an instant. Then she
picked up her plate, her knife and fork and napkin and strode over to
the table where Swiftwater sat.
[Illustration: SWIFTWATER AND GUSSIE LAMORE ARE RECONCILED OVER A HOT
PLATTER OF FRESH EGGS, AT DAWSON.]
“I guess I’ll have some eggs, after all,” said Gussie, without looking
at Swiftwater, as she liberally helped herself from his platter.
Then both of them burst out laughing and peace reigned once more
between them.
Of course, Swiftwater figured that he had won a substantial victory by
reaching Gussie’s heart through her stomach. But, as a matter of fact,
we all figured that the laugh was on Swiftwater, and I think every
woman who reads this story will agree with me.