AGAIN it is spring, and I sit all alone in my room in Seattle, knowing
that the city is filled with miners, their faces set in the direction
of the Golden North, their hearts beating with high hopes, their
breasts swelling with the happy purpose of getting back once more to
the glacier bound, gold lined gravel beds of Alaska--the treasure land
of the world. I know that I cannot go with them, for Swiftwater has
robbed me of almost every farthing I ever possessed.
I read in the Seattle papers that scores of the old-timers are in the
hotels down town, laying up stores of supplies, mining outfits, etc.,
ready for a big summer’s season of work in the north, of digging far
below the surface to the eternally frozen bedrock, in search of the
only thing which is imperishable among all the perishable things of
this earth--GOLD. I can see them thronging the hotel lobbies, the bars,
and the cafes--great, burly, broad-shouldered, big-chested men of the
North--the bone and sinew of the greatest gold-producing country in the
world.
Many have bought their tickets and stateroom reservations for the
first Nome steamers, weeks in advance, unmindful of the fact that
their ship must plough her dangerous way through great icebergs and
ice floes in Bering Sea. Scores of others are planning to take the
first boats of the spring season, while yet winter lingers with heavy
hand on Alaska’s coast and inland valleys, on their way to Valdez and
thence over the ice to the Tanana, four hundred miles away. No thought
of cold, or hardship, or danger deters any of these men, and even
women, because they know at the end of the journey their mission will
not be valueless, and that for at least a great proportion of them
there will be a real shining pot of gold at the end of their rainbow of
hope--where’er they find it--even though they must needs go as far as
the rim of the Arctic Circle.
Many of my friends tell me that Swiftwater’s life story, as I have
set it down here, recounting only the facts, sparing nothing, adding
nothing, will be eagerly read by tens of thousands of Alaska people. If
this is true, then will Swiftwater be known in his true light to all
that multitude of adventurous men and women of the North, who come and
go through Seattle, fall and spring, spring and fall, like the myriads
of Alaska’s water fowl who seek the sunny South in October, to speed
their way north again in the spring, the moment the ice floes in the
headwaters of the Yukon are gone.
And now, as I survey my work, I am moved to ask all who read, if they
can answer this question:
“What manner of man, in Heaven’s name, is this Swiftwater Bill Gates?”
Yes, what manner of man, or other creature is Swiftwater? Perhaps some
people will say that when Swiftwater Bill, down deep in his prospect
hole on Eldorado, looked upon the glittering drift of gold that covered
the bedrock, the glamor of that shining mass gave him a sort of moral
blindness, from which he has never recovered. It is possible that the
lure of gold, which he had seen in such boundless quantities, had so
entered into his very soul that all sense of his duty and obligations
as a man may have been dwarfed or utterly eliminated.
Be that as it may, Swiftwater, after he had placed his properties
on Cleary Creek in the hands of Phil Wilson, so that his creditors
could not lay hands on any of his money or by any means satisfy their
just debts, went down into Nevada and plunged heavily in Rawhide and
Goldfield properties. Rumors reached me many times that Swiftwater has
made another fortune, and the San Francisco papers printed such stories
about him. His property on Number 6 Cleary is still a big producer of
gold, and it seems that by merely turning his hands, Swiftwater could,
within a few months, pile up enough money to make happy those who have
innocently suffered such grievous wrong at his hands. And here my heart
grows hard as I think of the farce of the law--how fine are its meshes
if an innocent person is taken--how wide are its loop holes when the
smooth and oily crook with money becomes entangled therein.
For why is it, that the courts will suffer a lecherous monster to go
abroad in the land, to marry and re-marry without paying the slightest
heed to the restrictions of the law; to abduct, seduce and then abandon
young girls and leave them penniless and deserted in unknown lands?
And, why is it that such men can, by using heavy tips of gold, weigh
down the hands of the sworn officers of the law, manage to slip
unharmed and unhampered through counties and states where the processes
in bankruptcy and in criminal proceeding, issued by the courts of law,
are out against them?
Why is it, then, that a man like Swiftwater could come to Seattle at
night locked in the drawing room of a Pullman car, be taken swiftly in
a closed carriage to a steamer bound for Valdez, and remain hidden in
his stateroom on board the boat for two days before the ship sailed,
while deputy sheriffs were scouring the town to compel him to provide
from the ample money he had, food and clothing for the wife and babies
he had deserted?
Perhaps, after all, Swiftwater’s belief that the power of gold is
omnipotent, may be the true and right one. Gold in the hands of such a
man is a monstrous implement of crime, of degeneration to women and to
innocent children.