A FULL thirty days after Swiftwater and Hathaway had left Seattle,
following the affair on the decks of the steamer “Humboldt,” found the
miner and his friend in Skagway. It was in the height of the spring
rush to the gold fields, and there are undoubtedly few, if any, living
today who will ever witness on this continent such scenes as were
enacted on the terrible Skagway trail over the Coast Range of the
Alaska mountains, which separated 50,000 eager, struggling, quarreling,
frenzied men and women drawn thither by the mad rush for gold from the
upper reaches of the Yukon River and the lakes which helped to form
that mighty stream.
No pen can adequately portray the bitter clash, and struggling, and
turmoil--man against man, man against woman, woman against man, fist
against fist, gun against gun, as this mob of gold-crazed human beings
surged into the vortex of the Yukon’s valley and found their way to the
new Golconda of the north.
Skagway was a whirling, tumbling, seething whirlpool of humanity.
Imagine the spectacle of a mob of 40,000 half-crazed human beings
assembled at the foot of the almost impassable White Pass, with the
thermometer 90 degrees in the shade at the foot of the range, and ten
feet of snow on the Summit, three miles away. Then picture to this, if
you can, the innumerable crimes against humanity that broke out in this
mob of half-crazy, fighting, excited, bewildered multitude of men and
women.
There was no rest in the town--no sleep--no time for meals--no time for
repose--nothing but a mad scramble and the devil take the hindmost.
There was one cheap, newly constructed frame hotel in Skagway and rooms
were from $5 to $20 a day. The only wharf of the town was packed fifty
feet high with merchandise of every description--65 per cent. canned
provisions, flour and dried fruits and the rest of it hardware, mining
tools and clothing for the prospectors. Teams of yelping, snarling,
fighting malamutes added their cries to the eternally welling mass of
sound.
And Swiftwater was there. Almost the first face I saw as I entered the
hotel was that of Gates.
“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “let us forget bygones. In another day or two I
would have been over the Summit with my outfit. It is lucky that I am
here, because possibly I can help you in some way.”
I could do nothing more than listen to what Swiftwater said. There
was no other hotel, or indeed any place in the town where I could get
shelter for myself and my two girls. Knowing the black purpose in
Swiftwater’s heart, I watched my girls Bera and Blanche day and night.
My own goods were piled up unsheltered and unprotected on the beach.
Swiftwater, with all his cunning, could not deceive me of his real
intent, yet my own perplexities and troubles made it easy for him to
keep me in constant fear of him.
“Mrs. Beebe,” he would say, “you can trust me absolutely.”
With that, Swiftwater’s face would take on a smile as innocent as
that of a babe. There was always the warm, soft clasp of the womanish
hand--the low pitched voice of Swiftwater to keep it company.
And now, as I remember how innocent Bera was, how girlish she looked,
how confiding she was in me, yet never for a moment forgetting,
perhaps, the lure of the gold studded gravel banks of Eldorado which
Swiftwater held constantly before her, it seems to my mind that no
woman can be wronged as deeply and as eternally as that woman whose
daughter is stolen from her through guile and soft deceit.
We had been in Skagway but a trifle more than a week, when, one
evening, returning to the hotel, I found my room empty and Bera missing.
“I have gone with Swiftwater to Dawson, Mamma. He loves me and I love
him.” This was what Bera had written and left on her dresser.
That was all. There was one chance only to prevent the kidnaping of
Bera. That was for me to get to the lakes on the other side of the
mountains, at the head of navigation on the Yukon and seek the aid of
the Canadian mounted police.
At White Horse, there was trace of Swiftwater and Bera, but they had
twenty-four hours the start of me and, when I finally found that they
had gone through to Dawson, I simply quit.
Down the Upper Yukon there was a constant stream of barges, small boats
and rafts. Miles Canyon, with its madly rushing, white-capped waters,
extending over five miles of rock-ribbed river bed and sand bar, was
scattered o’er with timbers, boards, boxes and casks containing the
outfits and all the worldly possessions of scores of unfortunates.
“On, on, and ever and eternally on, down the Yukon to Dawson!”
That was the cry in those days and it bore, as unresistingly and as
mercilessly as the tide of the ocean carries the flotsam and jetsam
of seacoast harbors, the brave and the strong, the weak and crippled,
the wise and the foolish, in one inchoate mass of humanity to that
magic spot where more gold lay underground waiting for the pick of the
poverty-struck miner than the world had ever known of--“The Klondike.”
All things finally come to an end. I was in Dawson. At the little
temporary dock on the Yukon’s bank, stood Bera and Swiftwater. The
miner did not wait till I landed from the little boat. He went up the
gang plank and grasped me in his arms.
“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “we’re married. Come with us to our cabin. We
are waiting for you, and dinner is on the table.”
Swiftwater during all that summer and winter in Dawson was the very
soul of chivalry and attention both to Bera and myself. There was
nothing too good for us in the little market places at Dawson and a box
of candy at $5 a box just to please Bera or to satisfy my own taste for
sweetmeats was no more to Swiftwater than the average man spending a
two-bit piece on the outside.
As the spring broke up the river and then summer took the place of
spring in Dawson, the traders from the outside brought in supplies of
fresh eggs, fresh oranges, lettuce, new onions--all the delicacies
greatly to be prized and more esteemed after a long winter than the
rarest fruits and dainties of the States.
When summer came, Dawson got its first shipment of new watermelons
from the outside, Swiftwater bought the first melon he could find and
paid $40 in dust for it, and brought it home, simply to please Bera and
to make his home that much happier.