BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (13 page)

"The Kid won ten dollars then lost it, won it
back and lost it again, before Gig asked if anyone else wanted to
play. Ruud was on it like a grizzly on a hive. He won twenty
dollars, then forty, then eighty, then doubled again and lost. Got
over his shock, pulled out another twenty, and lost again. By the
time Lindfors come back to the table, Ruud was down a hundred,
red-faced and sweating like he got stung by every bee in that hive.
Lindfors cussed him out in Swedish and dragged him from the
table.

"That was the last time Gig saw them Swedes
get near a card game, but just the start of his times with them.
Later that night he took a break from dealing and found a barstool
next to Ellis, who was still drinking off a choppy day on the boat
from Dyea. Gig was wondering how he rated Circle City against Forty
Mile and the other Yukon mining camps, and Ellis mentioned that the
dark-haired Swede been asking him a lot of the same questions. Said
they was already outfitted and heading to Dyea with a miner who
spent three seasons Inside. A no-nonsense oldtimer named Sam Nokes,
who'd drifted up to Alaska and down onto the Yukon after some years
prospecting in Colorado around Leadville and Creede.

"They had a fourth feller from Seattle named
Rasmussen who was going with 'em, but he took sick with pneumonia
after two months at the Treadwell mines. Now that the Swedes was
almost done outfitting, they didn't want to wait and decided to go
without him.

"Gig saw his chance right off and tracked
down Ruud and Lindfors at the docks the next day. Juneau was less
than a thousand people and twenty saloons back then, so it wasn't
hard to find someone who knowed the Swedes. Ruud got red when he
recognized Gig and remembered his troubles with monte, but Gig made
his pitch to Lindfors. Told him he was looking to join a party
heading Inside and heared they was down a man. Said he hadn't
bought an outfit yet but had the money to do it, and he knowed his
way around horses and boats from his canal days. If they let him
come along, he could buy whatever they still needed, then help with
packing gear over the pass or building a boat and steering it
downriver.

"Lindfors told him to go talk to Nokes. The
Swedes had worked it out with him: they and Rasmussen would buy six
months worth of grub for four men and Nokes would come up with the
rest of the gear. Two tents you could rig end to end, a stove and
pots for cooking. Saws, nails, and pitch to build a boat. Every man
would buy his own parka and wool clothes, boots and mittens. If it
took four months to reach Circle City, they should get there in
time to order more grub for the winter. The steamers coming upriver
from the Bering Sea to stock the camps usually made their last run
around the end of September. Nokes knowed how long it took to move
up and down the Yukon, so he was making the decisions."

Zimmerman pauses for breath and another sip
of whiskey and I use the moment to stand and stretch my limbs,
laying the pistol beyond his reach on my side of the table.

"Nokes," I say. "You ever meet him?"

He squints and takes a hissing breath through
his yellowed teeth. "I met him. Bow-legged guy with a bare scalp
and hands like a blacksmith. One of them sourdoughs that was sure
he knowed everything, even while the greenhorns all around him was
getting rich."

It strikes me as near miraculous that
Zimmerman can effortlessly summon names from three decades ago like
Lindfors and Ruud, Ellis, Rasmussen, and Nokes. Especially when
these were the men Garrett met on his way to the Yukon, not the
ones Zimmerman encountered on his own trip. Though Zimmerman has
just said he met Nokes himself, and he certainly had enough time
Inside with Garrett for the two of them to stew in the stories of
their respective journeys. Maybe he often thinks about those
days.

Zimmerman leans back against the wall and
lifts a leg clad in faded black trousers onto the edge of the
table, worn heel not far from the knife. I sit down and return the
pistol to my lap as he resumes his narrative.

"After he talked to Lindfors, Gig went to see
Nokes, who had his tent and stove in a spruce grove tucked against
the base of the mountain. Nokes didn't give him an answer right
away. Said they already figured how much grub they needed without
Rasmussen, then told Gig to come back the next day.

"The next morning Gig stopped by and Nokes
told him he could come along. It was getting toward the middle of
March, and Nokes said if they sailed up to Dyea and got onto the
Chilkoot Trail before the month was out, they could make it over
the pass and down through the lakes while they was still frozen. He
told Gig which outfitter would sell him a sled. Said to buy winter
clothes, keep a hundred dollars, and spend the rest on a hunting
rifle, a shotgun, cartridges, whiskey, and tobacco, then pack his
outfit in canvas bags.

"Nokes had a new plan, and they wasn't going
to have to whipsaw green timber for a boat. They was going to save
time and trade with the Indians."

Chapter 13

Ten dollars, Zimmerman tells me, was the fare
for steamboat passage from Juneau to Dyea for one man and his
outfit. And in March of 1895, Dyea was a Chilkoot Indian village a
hundred and ten miles north of Juneau at the apex of the Lynn
Canal, a long inlet that brought steamboats closer to the
mountainous divide than any other bay on the Alaska panhandle.
Flanked by steep mountains, the Lynn Canal resembles a windswept
fresh-water lake. At its head, where the Dyea River deposits
glacial melt after crossing an alluvial plain, Garrett, Lindfors,
Ruud, and Nokes were ferried ashore along with over two tons of
gear.

I let Zimmerman continue the story without
rushing him forward to Dawson, both because I hope he'll provide a
detail that gives me perspective and because he's describing a
journey into the Yukon before the stampede. Or maybe it's just
because the whiskey is making me open-minded.

"Tides are so big at Dyea they had to hump
their outfits a mile back from the beach before putting up their
tent. The Indians come at you like flies, soon as they seen someone
carrying packages and bags. It's maybe eighteen miles from the Dyea
trailhead up to the pass and eight more down to Lindeman Lake, and
the Chilkoots was packing outfits to the lake for seventeen cents a
pound. Least that's what they told you.

"But sometimes they drop your load halfway up
the mountain and go home if you don't pay twenty-five. Sometimes
they go back to the beach to meet another steamer. Or maybe it
starts raining and don't stop for a week, and they prop your bags
against a big rock and go down to the village to smoke their pipes.
They sure ain't going home to bathe, which is something I never
seen a Siwash do.

"It's a different story in the summer, but in
winter it ain't a bad idea to pay the Chilkoots, because the trail
run up the valley and they got sleds and dogs. First part of it
you're on the frozen river, walking between boulders big as houses.
Then two miles in a slippery canyon that's just fifty feet wide,
cliffs on both sides and water running too fast to freeze. So you
can pull your sled on the ice in some places, but you carry it
across the rocks in others.

"Past the canyon the climb opens up again and
you get to Sheep Camp at timberline. That's the last level place
and there's always groups camped there, sometimes for weeks. Good
water, enough spruce for firewood and shelter, some grazing. You
gone eleven miles and you're still only five hundred feet above the
beach. In the last four miles to the pass, you climb three
thousand.

"Gig and the Swedes and Nokes loaded the guns
and whiskey and some coffee and bacon and beans and pulled their
sleds up to Sheep Camp in two days, then waited for the Indians to
get there with the rest of their outfit."

While they waited, Zimmerman says, it started
snowing, and the snow fell at varying rates for almost a week. Past
Sheep Camp the trail rose into a valley framed by walls shrouded in
clouds and fog. The Indians refused to climb to the summit until
the weather cleared, so they stacked the bags and cases against a
flat-sided boulder near Nokes' tent, then retreated down the trail
to Dyea. There were another dozen parties headed to the pass on
their way Inside, but no one exchanged words, since all were
huddled under blankets in their tents.

When the clouds finally dissolved, there was
over a foot of new snow at Sheep Camp and the ridges and peaks
above them were shining white. Nokes said that they couldn't be
sure when the Indian packers would return to the job. It might be
today or it might be a few days from now. They had over two tons of
grub and supplies to carry up to the pass, and at seventeen cents a
pound it made sense for them to start moving loads up the trail
themselves. Ruud could go uphill with three fifty-pound canvas bags
strapped to his back, but the others struggled with two.

"Above Sheep Camp, you couldn't haul a sled,"
Zimmerman says, angling his hand at about fifteen degrees. "About
this steep for the first two miles, past the hanging glacier and up
to the Stone House, which is just a huge slab rock that's fell on
two other big boulders, so you can sit under it for shelter. That's
the last place you'll even see dead wood.

"You been following what's left of the river
up the valley, and in the next mile the trail swings right and gets
steeper." He angles his hand at twenty-five degrees. "Rock slides
on the walls and boulders as big as this room along the trail. When
Gig's group was going up, everything was covered with snow. Then
the valley ends and you got walls on three sides. They call that
place The Scales, 'cause there used to be a balance scale for
packers to weigh their loads before the last pitch.

"It's seven hundred feet." He tilts his hand
toward forty-five degrees. "From the bottom it looks straight up,
but there's a few benches between the steep spots. In summer you
grab onto rocks with your hands as you climb. In winter you follow
in the footsteps of the man in front, until the trail is like
stairs made of ice. If your foot slips, you fall thirty or forty
feet in the snow, maybe back the way you come or maybe sideways
into a crevice. Either way, it takes the spirit out of you just to
climb back to where you was.

"Drop your load at the pass, then you're
walking light, and I heared that some fellers would sit down at the
top, point their legs up, and ride the snow straight back down the
last pitch to The Scales. You might not be wearing your Indian
parka when you was climbing, but you still had extra canvas sewn on
your trouser seat, so that way always made sense to me. Took less
than a minute to come down what took an hour to go up.

"It was high clouds that first day climbing
out of Sheep Camp, so Nokes decided they should pack a load all the
way to the summit. When you're on top the ground behind you falls
off, and you can see the Lynn Canal again. Seems close and far
below you at the same time. Past that looking west is mountains and
glaciers all the way to the ocean.

"At the pass, the trail run level over dirty
snow, and plenty of other outfits was being stacked and piled along
it. Don't matter if you was gone for months, whatever you left
along the trail was safe. Nobody raided another man's cache, even
before the Mounties moved up to Chilkoot Pass. Nokes chose a flat
spot on the pass and they stacked their loads and started back
down.

"It was their first trip so they hadn't
figured out sliding yet. They was just picking the same footholds
and going slow, and Ruud was trailing when they saw a couple of men
climbing up. Anyone coming down got to move aside for climbers, so
the first three found a narrow bench and gone sideways off the
trail. Ruud was still too far above the bench, but there was a
ledge just ahead and he figured he could use it to get out of the
way.

"Only it wasn't really a ledge, just a lip of
windblown snow, so when he stepped down and sideways his foot went
through it and his leg got buried to the knee. The rest of him kept
going and he fell headfirst into deep snow, then rolled and slid
down to the bench level. Nokes and Lindfors helped him stand up,
and Ruud brushed the snow off his face and caught his breath. Said
he wasn't hurt but his snow goggles was gone. Lindfors started back
up to search for 'em, but the broken snow was too soft and steep,
so they all gave up and headed down.

"They humped one more load to the pass, slid
down to The Scales in a snow trench they seen others use, and then
followed the trail back to Sheep Camp. The next day was cloudy and
they got two more loads up to the summit.

"Third day was clear blue sky. Still no sign
of the Indians, so they started early up the trail. On their second
climb up that last pitch, Ruud started screaming in Swedish and
covered his face with his hands. He was snow-blind – and that feels
like someone put a branding iron against your eyes. You been
squinting in the sun and snow until your eyes are almost swollen
shut, then everything goes red. Lindfors had to lead him down to
Sheep Camp while Gig and Nokes carried the loads up.

"Nokes said Ruud would get his sight back in
three or four days, but he had to cover his eyes and stay in the
tent. Lindfors could go back down the trail to Dyea until he found
someone who could sell him snow goggles for Ruud. Their first day
at the pass they seen a couple of miners coming over from Inside,
and them fellers would have no use for goggles on the way home.
Maybe Lindfors could catch up with 'em.

"Lindfors packed a sled and headed down the
next morning, figuring he could pitch a sleeping bag on a cabin
floor in Dyea. He must of passed the Chilkoots, 'cause they showed
up at Sheep Camp a couple hours later, ready to work. Three of them
was just skinny kids, but the leader was a wrinkly brown feller
with big legs, big shoulders, and no front teeth.