HYDRAULIC mining in the Klondike country, by the time that Swiftwater
had assembled his big outfit on Quartz Creek was in its very infancy,
yet there were plenty of wise men in Dawson who knew that the tens of
thousands of acres of hillside slopes and old abandoned creek beds
would some day produce more gold when washed into sluice boxes with
gigantic rams, than the native miner and prospector had been able to
show, even with the figures, $50,000,000, output to his credit.
The Canadian government had given Swiftwater and his partner, Joe
Boyle, a princely fortune in the three mile concession on Quartz Creek.
So great was the reputation of Swiftwater Bill--so intimately was
his name linked with the idea of immense quantities of gold--and so
high was his standing as a practical miner, that Swiftwater was able
to borrow money right and left to carry on his work on Quartz Creek.
Thus it was that before anybody could realize it, including myself,
Swiftwater’s financial standing actually was $100,000 worse off than
nothing. This was about the amount of money that he used and in that
tidy sum was all the savings of my winter in Dawson and my dividends
from my hotel, which aggregated at least $35,000.
“When Joe comes in this spring from London,” said Swiftwater to me,
“we’ll have all the money we want and more, too, Mrs. Beebe. He has
cabled twice to Seattle that our money is all raised and we will have a
million-dollar clean-up on Quartz Creek this fall.”
As the spring came on and reports from the mines on Quartz Creek became
brighter, Swiftwater became more enthusiastic and confident. The fact
that his creditors were beginning to worry, and that there is a nasty
law in Canada which affects debtors who seek to leave the country in a
restraining way, did not seriously worry Swiftwater. He seemed to think
more of the coming of his child than anything else, next to the work on
Quartz Creek.
“That baby is going to be born on Quartz Creek, Mrs. B--” Swiftwater
said. “It is my determination that my first child shall be born where I
will make a greater fortune than anybody hereabouts.”
I told Swiftwater that he was talking arrant nonsense.
“It would be the death of Bera in her condition,” said I, “for her to
take the trip up there in this cold, nasty weather, with the roads more
like swamps than anything else and the hills still covered with snow.
More than that, there are doctors here in Dawson and on Quartz Creek we
would be thirty miles from the nearest human settlement.”
But nothing would deter Swiftwater. He set about rigging up a big sled
which could be pulled by two horses. It was made of heavy oaken timber,
and the long low bed was filled with furs, blankets, bedding, etc.
Swiftwater went to Dr. Marshall, our physician, when all arrangements
had been practically completed for the journey to Quartz. He had
effectually stopped my protests before he said to Dr. Marshall:
“I will give you $2,000 or more, if necessary, to take six weeks off
and go with me up to Quartz Creek where my child will be born. Just
name your figure if that is not enough.”
Bera was seventeen years old, immature and delicate, yet brave and
strong, and willing to imperil her own life to gratify Swiftwater’s
whim. So it finally came about that I was delegated to do the final
shopping in advance of our journey.
I went to Gandolfo’s and bought with my own money a case of oranges
and a crate of apples. Each orange cost $3 in dust and the apples about
the same. Next I ordered a barrel of bottled beer, for Swiftwater
wanted to treat his men with a feast when the baby was born and the
bottled beer was what he thought to be the proper thing. The barrel of
beer cost me close to $500 in gold.
[Illustration: BERA BEEBE GATES From a photograph taken at
Washington, D. C., where she was deserted by Swiftwater Bill.]
All this stuff was loaded on the sled. They started over the
twenty-eight miles of crooked, winding, marshy trail to Quartz Creek.
The journey was something terrible. The days were short and the wind
from the hills and gulches was wet with the thawing of the snow and so
cold that it seemed to make icicles of the drippings from the trees.
Bera, wrapped a foot thick in furs, seemed to stand the trip all right,
and in due time the baby was born and christened.
There was great rejoicing in the camp and Swiftwater weighed out $3,000
in dust to Dr. Marshall and sent him back to Dawson. A month afterwards
one of our men brought from Dawson the word that the mail had arrived
over the ice, but Swiftwater looked in vain for a letter from Joe
Boyle. He had confidently expected a draft for $50,000.
For two days Swiftwater scarcely spoke. The cabin in which we lived
was only a quarter of a mile from the nearest dump where the men were
working. I used to go out every once in a while and take up a few
shovels full of gravel which would wash out between $5 and $10 and if
I had had the good common sense which comes only after years of hard
knocks in this troublesome world, I could then and there have protected
myself against the bitter misfortunes which came to me in a few months
afterwards.
I was washing some of the baby’s clothes in the kitchen and drying them
on a line over the fire, when Swiftwater came in from the diggings,
clad in his rubber boots which reached to his hips.
The miner asked for some hot water and a towel and began to shave the
three weeks’ black growth from his chin.
“What are you going to do now, Swiftwater?” I asked.
“I’m going down to town.”
For two days the cabin had been without food except some mush and a few
dried potatoes and a can of condensed milk for the baby. Swiftwater had
sent a man over the trail to Dawson for food two days before.
“You’ll not go without Bera! You are not going to leave us here to
starve,” said I.
“Bera cannot possibly go,” said Bill.
I turned and went to Bera’s room and told her to dress immediately.
Then I washed the baby, put an entire new change of clothes on him,
wrapped up his freshly ironed garments in a package, got a bottle of
soothing syrup and a can of condensed milk.
It was always my belief and is now, that Swiftwater’s mind contained a
plan to abandon Bera, the baby and me, and to run away from the Yukon
to escape his troubles.
We got a small boat and filled one end of it with fir boughs, covered
them over with rugs, and put Bera and the baby there. Then Swiftwater
and I got in the boat and pushed off down stream.
Swiftwater confessed to me for the first time that he was in serious
trouble.
“There have been three strange men from Dawson out here on our claims,”
said Swiftwater, “and I know who sent them out. They are watching me.”
As I look back upon that awful trip down Indian River, with poor, wan,
white-faced Bera hugging the little three weeks’ old baby to her bosom,
so sick that she could hardly talk, I wonder if there is any hardship,
and peril, and privation, and suffering, a woman cannot endure.
The boat was heavy--terribly heavy. In the small stretches of still
water it was desperately hard, bone-racking toil to keep moving.
In the rushes of the river, where rapids tore at mill-race speed over
boulders and pebbly stretches, we were constantly in danger of being
upset. An hour of this sort of work made me almost ready for any sort
of fate.
Finally we struck a big rock and the current carried us on a stretch
of sandy beach. Swiftwater and I got out and waded up to our armpits
in the cold stream to get the boat started again. Then we climbed
aboard and once more shot down the rocky canyon to another stretch of
still water beyond. By nightfall we had reached an old cabin half way
to Dawson, in which the fall before Swiftwater had cached provisions.
The baby’s food was all gone, and Bera, in a fit of anger, had thrown
what little bread and butter sandwiches we had put up for ourselves,
overboard. I had not eaten all day, nor had Swiftwater.
It was growing dusk when we painfully pulled the boat on the bank at
Swiftwater’s cache. Gates went inside to get some grub and prepared to
build a fire. He came out a moment later, his face ashy pale, his eyes
downcast.
“They have stolen all I had put in here,” he said.
It seemed to me that night as if the very limit of human misery on this
earth was my bitter portion as we waited all through the weary hours in
the cabin huddled before a little fire, waiting (it is light all the
time in summer) to resume our journey to Dawson.
The next day we reached Dawson shortly after noon, famished, cold, and
completely exhausted. I actually believe the baby would have died but
for the bottle of soothing syrup and water which I had brought along.
Swiftwater took us to the Fairview Hotel and sent for the doctor for
Bera and the baby.