BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (26 page)

"Where the Big Salmon come into the Lewes,
and then up toward Laberge where the Hootalinqua come in, the
water's moving fast and the ice don't get thick. You got to keep
your eyes open 'cause it can crack under your feet. Fall in and the
river pushes you under the ice before you can yell for help. That
happened to one feller while the Swedes was sledding out."

Something about Zimmerman's narrative has
been nagging me for a while, and now I realize what it is. "How do
you know what happened to the Swedes on their trip Outside? Gig
wasn't there. And in November '97, you were still stuck on the
coast somewhere."

Zimmerman inhales sharply through his teeth
and doesn't answer right away.

"I got over the pass that next summer," he
finally says. "Down to Dawson just ahead of the ice. Then the
Swedes come back Inside in the summer of '99, and I ran into 'em
with Gig, before we took the steamboat out of Dawson. Drank whiskey
with 'em and heared their story."

"You didn't mention earlier that you met the
Swedes. Only that you met Nokes in Dawson."

Zimmerman withdraws and watches his internal
projector. "That's right," he says, his face relaxing into
something like a smile. "Nokes showed up in Dawson too, about the
same time. He was one of the reasons we left."

I've been wondering if and when Nokes would
re-enter the story. But now Zimmerman says that was eighteen months
later, in the summer of '99. Almost a year after he reached Dawson
himself in the autumn of '98.

"So it's still November of '97," I say. "The
Swedes are sledding their gold out to the coast, and the cheechakos
that got stuck on the river are trying to make it to Dawson before
they starve. And most of the ones that did make it to Dawson have
pushed off for Fort Yukon so they don't starve. But the last time
you mentioned Gig and Wylie they were up on Eldorado back in
August, before the Swedes sold out."

"When the creek froze up near the end of
September, they was able to work that fifth shaft from the past
winter. The one that filled up with water in the spring. Alex
McDonald let 'em finish that drift on a lay. They hauled out
buckets for three weeks, then melted ice and rocked all the
pay-dirt. Washed out a few thousand dollars and gave McDonald half.
He might of let 'em keep working through the winter, but Gig and
Wylie wasn't going to spend three months chopping wood and burning
and drifting so they could split the clean-up with Alex
McDonald.

"By then they probably had fifteen or twenty
pounds of gold between 'em, with what was left from selling the
Skookum claims. Four thousand dollars don't go far in Dawson, but
if you ain't buying lumber and got no dogs to feed, it will get you
through the winter. Jack McQuesten and John Healy was honest men,
so even when the warehouses started rationing grub, they kept the
prices the same as before. And Constantine wouldn't of let 'em
charge ransom prices if they tried."

"So Gig and Wylie went down to Dawson?"

"Lousetown," Zimmerman says. "That's what
they was calling the riverbank just above the mouth of the
Klondike, where the Siwashes used to live. The hill come down
almost to the water, but there's a grass shelf big enough for
tents, and a bank below that where you could tie up a line of
boats. Gig and Wylie stripped some saplings for a frame and put up
their tent when there was still only about fifty boats tied up
along the Yukon. More tents went up that winter, 'cause a few
hundred people mushed into Dawson over the ice. Them with dogs
usually knowed to bring enough grub. When you got to feed the dogs,
that makes you think about feeding yourself. After the full
stampede showed up next June, it was hundreds of boats and tents
and a thousand cheechakos camped in Lousetown.

"Dawson is across the Klondike from
Lousetown, on a mud flat big enough for a real town. Runs a mile
and a half along the Yukon from the mouth of the Klondike to the
base of a mountain that slopes into the river. Ladue staked out his
town site in the middle of that flat in September '96. Then Arthur
Harper from the ACC staked out another alongside it in spring of
'97. Together they was maybe a hundred and sixty acres, and log
cabins and two-story buildings started going up right away. Kept
going up all year long. By the end of '97 there was maybe three
hundred of 'em in the middle of town, with all the saloons and
warehouses facing the Yukon on Front Street. Then you had Second
Avenue one street back, then Third, and Fourth. Got up to Eighth
Avenue, and by spring of '98 there was a suspension bridge over the
Klondike at the end of Eighth. But if you was camped in Lousetown
in '97 you poled or paddled over to Dawson or crossed the Klondike
on the ice."

"So Gig and Wylie pitched their tent in
Lousetown and watched some cheechakos straggle into Dawson, where
everyone was trying not to starve. Sounds like a grim winter."

Zimmerman shakes his head. "Getting rich can
help you forget about missing a meal. And no one starved to death
in Dawson that winter anyway. Maybe there wasn't enough food for
all the dogs, so some of them was shot and eaten. But if you got
dust in your poke and fellers to talk to, you can live with being
hungry. Sitting next to a warm stove and playing cards ain't like
burning a shaft to bedrock back on the creeks.

"Before the ice on the Klondike got too
thick, Gig and Wylie carried an axe upstream toward the mouth of
Bonanza. There was a deep pool along the bank where you could find
trout in the summer. They chopped through the ice and dropped in a
line with bacon fat for bait, pulled out three grayling in a couple
of hours. After fishing there once, they could go back every day or
two and chop that patch out in twenty minutes. Everywhere else the
ice froze too deep.

"When they had fish to fry for dinner, Gig
would put the heads and bones out on the Yukon ice below their
tent. Before he got under his blankets, he'd crack open the tent
flap for a look. Usually it was just ravens working the scraps, but
one time he heared a couple of 'em squawking and flying right over
the tent, and when he peeked out he seen a snow fox trotting up to
the bones. He reached for his rifle and got off a clean shot while
the fox was standing still. Clipped him in the front leg, and the
fox limps off across the river. Gig had to track him most of a mile
before finishing him off. Skinned him the next day and cut him into
chunks for stew. When the pelt dried out he traded it to a
sourdough coming in from the creeks who cached his outfit in town.
Got five pounds of canned peas."

Zimmerman tells me that Inspector Constantine
and his thirty or so constables had staked off a patch of rough
ground between the Dawson town site and the Klondike River to serve
as a military reservation. Constantine's Mounties erected log
buildings to serve as offices, a barracks, a courtroom,
storehouses, and a post office, and from that stronghold they
succeeded in establishing an orderliness in Dawson that surpassed
what was found in American mining camps like Circle, where any
sourdoughs who chose to attend a miners meeting could adjudicate a
disagreement and dispense justice in fifteen whiskey-lubricated
minutes. But toward the end of '97, the Mounties' grip on Dawson
was a work in progress, and Lousetown was a lesser concern.

"By December Gig was dealing faro," Zimmerman
says, "at the Palace Hotel on Front Street. Saloons in Dawson was
open all the time, so Gig might go over there in the morning and
deal until two o'clock, sleep in the bunkhouse the rest of the day,
then deal all night. Head back to the tent in the morning for a few
hours, then go up the Klondike with Wylie to fish or hunt.

"They kept an eye open for cheechakos coming
into Dawson over the ice, especially them with sleds and dogs. Most
of 'em couldn't afford lumber and hired hands for a cabin, so they
would pitch a tent in Lousetown or up on the hill behind Dawson.
Gig liked to stop by and meet anyone that just arrived, and most of
them cheechakos was happy to talk to a miner that knowed something
about the Klondike creeks. So Gig would tell 'em to come by the
Palace tomorrow at five, and he'd buy 'em a whiskey and introduce
him to some of the fellers. If there was two or three cheechakos in
the tent, he'd invite 'em all to come along.

"Then back in Lousetown Gig would tell Wylie
where the cheechakos' tent was pitched and what kind of outfit he
seen. When the fellers went to meet Gig at the Palace, Wylie would
slip into their tent and walk out with five pounds of bacon or a
few tins of evaporated milk. Not so much that they was going to
notice right away, especially when they was just trying to learn
the lay of the land. And Gig would pour enough whiskey into 'em at
the Palace to make sure they wasn't in a counting mood by the time
they got back to their tent. Sometimes he would get 'em into a card
game that first night.

"After a couple of days in Dawson most
fellers was sobered up. They knowed their way around and they
knowed who Constantine was. So Wylie only stole grub from the
newest cheechakos, and he never gone back to the same tent
twice."

Chapter 31

No one in the Klondike district starved that
winter, but most of its six thousand inhabitants survived on one
meal a day. Some on a single flapjack. Zimmerman says that the ACC
and NAT admitted customers to their Dawson warehouses one at a
time, and that purchasing a few days' worth of grub required an
interview with the manager. What helped preserve the inventory was
that dozens of sourdoughs had ordered winter outfits from both
companies, intending to purchase only one. So fifty-pound sacks of
flour and beans and tins of soup vegetables or condensed milk were
sold to hungry miners a few pounds and tins at a time.

"People in Dawson was nervous about getting
through winter," Zimmerman says. "But the main thing they talked
about was gold. Where was the next Eldorado? So when a rumor builds
up that someone struck it on a new creek, men that wasn't working
would rush off to stake. In February it was three hundred men
stampeding to Swede Creek, which come into the Yukon from the west,
five miles upriver from Dawson. Didn't matter that it was the
middle of the night and sixty below zero, the stampeders staked it
for fifteen miles. They found out later there was no gold on Swede
Creek. A couple of them fellers got back to Dawson with one foot
froze so bad it had to be sawed off.

"In April there was a stampede to Monte
Christo Island, twenty miles up the Yukon. But there's a thousand
islands on the Yukon, and none of 'em got more than flour gold on
the bars."

"Did Gig and Wylie go out on any of those
winter stampedes?"

Zimmerman shakes his head. "Gig knowed by
then that all the rich creeks in the Klondike – Indian district too
– had headwaters up on the ridge near King Solomon's Dome. Small
gulches running straight into the Yukon was a waste of time. And he
figured new pups and benches on both sides of the ridge would get
prospected in the spring. Fellers that found good indications might
stake and walk away from their claims on other creeks. So the thing
to do was keep an eye on the registry, and look for abandoned
claims on Klondike pups. Or on Indian River creeks like Ophir or
Dominion or Sulfur.

"What about Wylie?"

"He seen enough of the Indian River
district," Zimmerman says. "After falling into Quartz Creek."

"So Gig and Wylie are riding out the winter
in Lousetown," I say. "Fishing, dealing faro, and stealing food
from cheechakos. Did the Swedes make it back Outside with their
gold?"

Zimmerman nods. "Over Chilkoot Pass. The dogs
can climb to the pass from Crater Lake but you got to unhook 'em
and carry everything yourself. And between 'em the Swedes was
packing almost three hundred pounds of gold."

"By then the Mounties moved the border up to
Chilkoot and was checking outfits on anyone trying to cross. So you
got caches stacked everywhere on that level ground at the pass.
Tons and tons of gear, and more coming up every day, with a line of
stampeders climbing stairs they cut into the ice. Carrying their
outfits up that last pitch on their backs, a hundred pounds at a
time.

"The Swedes tied up their dogs at the pass,
and when they got the last of their gear up, they packed the bags
onto their sleds and dropped 'em straight down to The Scales. Then
they slid down pulling the dogs behind 'em."

"So they made it down to Dyea by year
end?"

"Sometime around then," Zimmerman says.
"There wasn't many coming back Outside that winter and the Swedes
might of been the first to haul out Klondike gold. Lindfors and
Ruud wasn't going to talk about how much they had, but all you had
to do was look at them fellers to know they seen everything on the
Yukon. There must have been a different greenhorn asking 'em
questions every five minutes on the way down to Sheep Camp."

"And from there it's an easy run down to
Dyea."

"Except for the canyon," Zimmerman says. "But
that don't look like much after what you come through already."

"So let's call it January of '98," I say,
seeing my chance to tie two threads together. "The Swedes sled
their gold into Dyea and head to the nearest saloon for a drink.
Maybe they run into a greenhorn who's been trying to assemble an
outfit so he can make it over the pass himself. He left Cabin John
a year and a half earlier when his friend sent him a book about the
Yukon gold fields. Now he wants to join the Klondike stampede and
meet Gig Garrett in Dawson."

While I say this, Zimmerman squints as if
he's concentrating, and the lines on his forehead narrow. His eyes
seem locked on the knife that still impales the Pelly River, and
his truncated left ring finger taps rhythmically against the
table.

To snap his focus, I extract the knife, then
take our empty cups to the cask and refill them halfway.