AS I look back on that day in Nome and recall the sensation created
in the little mining camp when the paper containing the story of
Swiftwater’s perfidy was circulated abroad among the people, I am
tempted to wonder if the duplicate or parallel of Swiftwater’s
enormities at this time can be found in all the annals of this great
Northwestern country. The Times’ story seemed, even to those like
myself, who knew something of Swiftwater’s character, to be almost
incredible, and for my part it was several hours before I realized, in
a dumb unfeeling sort of a way, that Swiftwater had absolutely stolen
his own sister’s child--Kitty Brandon--a girl not more than sixteen
years old, had eloped with her, committed bigamy by marrying her in
Chehalis, Wash., and at the same time had deserted his wife and left
her penniless in Washington, D. C.
It was long after nightfall as I sat in my room, the baby sound asleep
in his little crib, the nurse gone for the night, and I had read The
Times’ story about Swiftwater and Kitty over the twentieth time, that I
felt the real force of the shame and scandal which the miner had placed
about himself and Bera, and which did not even leave me and my little
grandson, Clifford, outside of its dark and forbidding pall.
All that night I lay awake and wondered how in Heaven’s name I could
get word to Bera--or if she had received a telegram from friends in
Seattle and the blow had killed her--or whether she was then on her way
West, or whatever fate had befallen her.
I knew little about Swiftwater’s business affairs just at that time
except that he had gone to Washington in the hope of furthering his
mining ventures in the North and had taken Bera with him. Then I
remembered that in his letters to me and telegrams urging me to join
him at Nome he had spoken about having raised considerable money and
was able to pay his debt to me and lift me out of the mire of toil and
drudgery in Alaska, in which I had sojourned for so many months.
All that night I neither slept nor rested. It seemed to me at times
as if my head would split into a thousand pieces with the thought
of Swiftwater’s treachery to Bera and myself. Then I realized the
utter futility and helplessness of a woman situated as I was in Nome,
absolutely unable to get a telegram or quick letter to Bera or to hear
from her telling me of her condition. For aught I knew, she might
have been deathly sick, cared for only by strangers or left destitute
at some place in the East and without any means whatever of righting
herself.
It seems to me, now when I think of that all night’s vigil in the
little hotel in Nome, that Providence must have been watching over me,
that I did not lose my reason. At last I found that unless I went to
work doing something, I would sure go crazy, and then I started to get
work, first borrowing some money, which I sent out by mail the next day
to Bera at her last address.
While I worked and slaved in Nome trying to get a few dollars ahead
so that I could care for the baby and make my way out to Seattle to
help Bera, I finally got word that she had been left destitute in
Washington, D. C. Swiftwater had furnished four nice rooms in an
apartment house at Washington, and in their effects was more than
$1,000 worth of rare curios and ivory from Alaska. Then came another
letter that Bera, unable to pay for her care, food and medical
attention--the second baby boy was born August 28th--had been put on
board a train with a charity ticket, her ivories and curios sold for a
trifle and had been started West for Seattle.
I need not dwell on how Bera, more dead than alive from five days
traveling in a chair car from Washington to Seattle with her babe at
her bosom and unable to sleep at all--with nothing to eat but a few
sandwiches which they had given her at Washington--arrived in Seattle
and was cared for by friends.
They took the girl, so weak she could hardly stand on her feet, to
a restaurant and gave her her first hot meal in almost a week. Then
Bera and her baby went to Portland to live with her grandma, while
Swiftwater and Kitty Gates were touring the country.
And do you know that Swiftwater’s polygamous wife, Kitty Gates, was
the girl who Bera one year before had fitted out with a nice outfit of
clothes and had sent her to a convent school at Portland to be given a
good education?
Yes, this is the truth, and this was Kitty’s gratitude to Bera and
Swiftwater’s crime against the law and his own flesh and blood.
How we managed after I came to Seattle from Nome to live in a little
room in a small old fashioned house on Fourth Avenue with barely enough
to eat and scarcely enough clothes to cover ourselves need not be told
here in detail. I sometimes wonder whether or not I have overladen
my little narrative with grief and misery and crime against humanity
and against human laws, as well as God’s. And then I wonder still
more why it was that there were men in Seattle, in San Francisco and
in Fairbanks in those days who were always ready to exalt Swiftwater
and do him honor and take him by the hand, while the world would look
askance at Bera Gates, his wife, whom he had so grieviously wronged.