SWIFTWATER BILL had struck it again.
On Number 6 Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, the man who gained his
chiefest fame in the early days of Dawson by walking around the rapids
of Miles Canyon, because he was afraid to navigate them, thereby
earning his cognomen, “Swiftwater Bill,” had found another fortune in
the yellow gold that lines countless tens of thousands of little creeks
and dry gulches in that great northern country--Alaska.
Swiftwater had obtained a big working interest in the mine on Cleary
Creek, a stream that has produced its millions in yellow gold. And,
after the first discovery of placer gold in paying quantities in the
Tanana, the whole Western coast of the American continent knew the
story. Like Dawson, the town of Fairbanks quickly sprang from the soil
as if reared by the magic of some unseen genii of the Arabian Nights.
Of course, the word came out to me in a letter from a friend at
Fairbanks. And I sometimes think that, after all, I must have had a
great many friends in Alaska who remembered the hard task that the
fates had put upon me when they made me, through no wish of my own, the
mother-in-law of Swiftwater Bill.
As I remember now, the news that Swiftwater had struck another
pay streak impressed upon me the necessity of immediate action.
Swiftwater’s previous conduct, particularly that $100 dinner that he
gave in Seattle a few months before, had taught me one thing, and that
was that if Gates was ever to do the square thing by me and by Bera and
the babies it would be only when some one with sufficient will power to
accomplish the task would reach him and see that he did not forget his
duty.
Now, it is no May day holiday for a woman to “mush” over the ice
from the coast of Alaska to the interior mining camps. First you have
to get an outfit in Seattle, and by that I mean sufficient heavy
underclothing, outer clothing, heavy boots, furs and sleeping bag and
the like to make travel over the ice comfortable. Ten years ago any
woman who made that journey--that is, from Dyea over the mountain
passes covered with glaciers and thence down the Upper Yukon on the
ice--was considered almost as a heroine and the newspapers were eager
to print the stories of such exploits. When I determined to go into
the Tanana to find Swiftwater mining gold on Number 6 Cleary there
were few, if any, of the comforts of present-day winter travel on the
Valdez-Fairbanks trail, such as horse stages and frequent road-houses.
Consequently, I determined to follow the old route, and I went to
Skagway, thence over the White Pass road to White Horse and, crossing
Lake Le Barge on the ice, there to await the departure for Dawson of
the first down river steamer.
It was in the early spring of the year--that is, early for Alaska,
although when I left Seattle the orchards were in bloom and lawns
were as green as in mid-summer. Lake Le Barge was still frozen over,
and the upper waters of the Yukon were beginning to show their first
gigantic unrest of that spring--a mighty unrest that carries with it
the movement of vast ice gorges down the canyon of the Upper Yukon to
the Klondike, and which, if suddenly halted on its way to the sea by an
unexpected drop in temperature, is likely to work havoc with men and
property and sometimes human lives.
The Yukon River is not like any other stream on the American continent
with which you and I are familiar. It seems to be a thing alive when
the spring sun begins to loosen the icy chains that bind it hard and
fast to old Mother Earth through eight long and dreary winter months.
No greater phenomena of nature, showing the change that spring brings
to all forms of life--human, animal and plant--is to be found anywhere
than the awakening of the Yukon River after her voiceless sleep.
At White Horse the freight for Dawson and the Tanana mines was stacked
twenty feet high in all directions when we boarded the first steamer
and followed the ice jam down the river to Dawson. Eventually, on a
little steamer that plied between Dawson and Fairbanks when the ice is
far enough gone to make navigation safe, I made my way to the chief
mining camp of the Tanana--Fairbanks, named after the vice-president,
who visited the North when he was a senator from Indiana.
I had no trouble in finding Gates.
“Swiftwater,” I said, “I am here to have you provide for your wife and
children, and to pay at least part of what you owe me.”
Bill was courteous, suave, obliging and well mannered.
“Mrs. Beebe,” said Bill, “at last I am fixed so that I can do the right
thing by you and all others. As soon as I can make my last payment on
my Cleary Creek property, I will square everything up, and give you
plenty of money for Bera and the boys.”
Now, I know that everyone who reads this little book will say to
themselves:
“If Mrs. Beebe don’t get her money now, she certainly is foolish.”
Swiftwater, to be sure, saw that my hotel bills were paid and told me
every day that in a short time he would clean up enough gold to make
himself independent, and provide bountifully for Bera and the two
boys--and I believed him.
Swiftwater’s sister, the mother of Kitty, his polygamous wife, was, I
quickly learned, living in a tent on Bill’s claim, waiting to lay hold
of him and his money as soon as the clean-up was finished. Long before
this he had deserted Kitty, and in all the turmoil and trouble that
came after his bigamous marriage to his niece I had lost all track of
that unfortunate girl.
I remember now how odd it struck me that Swiftwater’s sister was
there, living in a little white canvas tent, and enduring the
privations which any woman must suffer in that country, while I,
actuated by the same desire, was waiting for Swiftwater to finish
washing up the dumps on his claims. And I recalled at the time that
when Swiftwater mined thousands of gold from his claims in the Klondike
he allowed his own mother to cook in a cabin of a miner on a claim
not far from his own, and although rich beyond his fondest dreams had
permitted that poor woman to earn her own living by the hardest kind of
drudgery and toil.