The Art of Love: Origins of Sinner's Grove (4 page)

Since leaving his family farm at sixteen, Gus had bounced around the country taking on any number of odd jobs: mule skinner, keelboat operator, bull whacker. He’d waited on ladies in a dry good store and proven his strength felling timber. He’d built houses by hand and even run cattle on one of the last big drives from Texas to Abilene. But at each job, it was just a matter of time before Gus started figuring out how it could be done better. Sooner or later he’d open his mouth, and nine times out of ten it ended badly. Only once had someone, a real estate developer, seen Gus’s potential and offered to teach him the ropes. Gus learned all he could, but quickly realized if he ever wanted to be a boss and not an employee, he’d have to come up with some capital of his own. So, for the better part of six years, with the exception of the winter he’d spent in Seattle wooing Mattie, Gus had been chasing the dream. Gold fever, they called it. Well, maybe so. He’d ridden the ups and downs of hope and disappointment more times than he cared to count, and yes, it did burn inside like a fever. But damn, he was getting tired, and he was only thirty-two.

Gus was in that frame of mind when he stepped into Bill McPhee’s saloon in Forty Mile on his way back from working the claim. Since no one waited for him at home, he often stopped by the bar to have a drink or two and chew the fat.

McPhee liked to hunt and it showed. Along one long, rough-hewn wall hung several sets of antlers—a few blacktails, some ten point caribou, and a couple of bull moose, one of whose racks spread nearly six-foot wide. On another wall, the saloon keeper had nailed up several beaver pelts along with his prize trophy: a big male grizzly hide.

It was not a place with a woman’s touch…unless you counted the life-sized, gilt-framed portrait of a French cancan dancer named CoCo that McPhee swore had fallen in love with him during the last opera season.

Several miners sat around scarred wooden tables, drinking and playing cards. Clarence J. Berry, known to all as C.J., was working the counter. The young miner was down on his luck, so McPhee had given him a job tending bar. C.J., it turned out, was damn good at it. He was a good-natured soul with a spunky little wife named Ethel, and he had a talent for making customers feel right at home. As soon as Gus stepped up to the bar, C.J. slapped a whiskey in front of him. “You look like you could use about a dozen of these,” he said.

“At least,” Gus replied, removing his dusty hat and running his fingers through his dark, stiff hair. “I think the claim’s a bust.”

“Yep, that’s what old Shorty said last week. He’s headed off to Butte Crick. Heard there’s some color floatin’ down thataway.”

“I figured as much. I haven’t seen him the past few days.” Gus thought about what Mattie had said about the old prospector. “How long’s Shorty been at this, anyway?” he asked.

“Nigh on forty years, I think he told me.” C.J. wiped the bar as he spoke. “Since before the war, so he said.”

Gus downed his shot and tapped the glass for another. “Hell of a long time to be playin’ with mud,” he remarked.

“Damn straight,” his friend agreed. “No way that’s going to happen with you and me, though, not with the little women a cacklin’ in our ears, eh?”

Gus nodded. C.J. was joking, of course. He was a newlywed and God knew he’d found a keeper in Ethel. Gus had met Mrs. Berry a few times and wished once or twice that Mattie would follow that sweet lady’s example. Ethel could shoot a rabbit or ride the rapids with the best of them, and she never seemed to complain, at least not that anyone ever gossiped about. Hell, she’d spent her honeymoon driving a team of sled dogs and hiking the Chilkoot Pass! But Ethel didn’t yet have kids, which is what Mattie would have said if he’d ever brought up the comparison, so he hadn’t bothered. He looked up at the jovial barkeep. “So, how long you going to stick it out, C.J.?”

“Don’t rightly know. As long as my missus is willin’ to stick by me, I guess. You?”

“No tellin’. My better half already packed our baby up and moved back to Seattle. Can’t say as I blame her. I’m supposed to follow her out at the end of the season.”

“Well, that don’t leave you too much—” C.J. was cut off by the arrival of a local named George Carmack. “Here comes Lyin’ George,” he murmured.

Carmack was a few years older than Gus, but he’d been traipsing around the Yukon Territory for a lot more years. Known as a “squaw man” because he’d taken a Native American wife, George eked out a living trading, trapping, fishing and, once in a while, prospecting. He had a reputation for telling tall tales, and wasn’t taken too seriously. But what he did next had Gus and everyone else in the saloon sitting up and paying attention.

“Drinks on the house, my good man,” George announced with a sweep of his hand. He stepped up to the bar next to Gus. “Good day to you, sir,” he said, bowing with mock formality. He was obviously in a good mood.

“Uh, George, you sure you got the coin to be doin’ that?” C.J. asked. “Get a good price on your pelts over at the trading post, did you?”

George shook his head and sighed. “Ah, ye of little faith. I ain’t got coin, but I assure you I got something much, much better.” With that he pulled a rifle shell out of his pocket, opened it and dumped the contents onto the bar. A dozen large, bright gold nuggets spilled out.

“Where’d you get those?” Gus and C.J. asked in unison.

George leaned over the bar and beckoned them closer. “I like you boys, so I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. No, not a little secret, a big,
big
secret. These here nuggets came from up on Rabbit Crick. Me and the missus and Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie got a tip to go a huntin’ over there, and ol’ Jim, he found a bit of bedrock with gold ‘shinin’ like cheese in a sandwich,’ was how he put it.” George chuckled. “And sure enough, that’s what he found.” George swallowed the drink C.J. had put in front of him and held up the empty glass. “Like I said, boys, ‘Drinks on the house.’”

It happened so fast, Gus had to hustle to keep up. Early the next morning he and C.J. and a host of other hopefuls poled their boats up the Yukon to where the Klondike River flowed into it. And up the Klondike they traveled until they reached the tributary known as Rabbit Creek where Carmack and his cohorts had staked their claims. Each man found a five-hundred-foot section of the river and staked it off, the claim stretching across the creek from rimrock to rimrock. Within a few days the entire creek was mapped out, the claims registered, and the trading began.

“I’ll take ten percent of your number Seventeen Above, for fifty percent of my number Fourteen Below.” “I’ll grubstake you to work number Forty-Five Above for a take of twenty-five percent.” “For five thousand dollars I’ll give you a lay of one hundred feet of Seven Below at fifty percent. I’ll throw in thirty-five percent of thirty-five feet of Twenty-Seven Eldorado Above, and a mortgage on Sixteen Eldorado for security.” And so it went, each miner weighing the chances of striking it rich against the need for what looked like easy, no-risk money. Fortunes were bought and sold without the miners even knowing what they had. Gus didn’t know if he’d lucked out either, but he aimed to be on the winning side whether he found gold or not.

Shorty Calhoun hurried back to Forty Mile, but was too late to claim any ground on what had quickly been renamed “Bonanza” Creek. Gus offered the old man a deal over a whiskey at McPhee’s.

“I think I’ve got a good spot on Bonanza,” he told Shorty. “Work it with me, hold it down, and I’ll cut you in. But that’s just the first part. You remember that claim I bought from Porter Wilson awhile back? That creek’s just above Bonanza and my gut tells me there’s gold there too. You and me both can add to it. We use our leverage to run the crews. I’ll look for deals. And I swear to you—” Gus raised his glass to tap to Shorty’s “—I’ll make you rich.”

Shorty scratched his perpetually scruffy beard. “I ain’t never worked with no partner before.”

Gus grinned. “Yeah, I can see that’s worked out real well for you.”

“Smart aleck.” Shorty grinned back, displaying his sparsely populated smile. “Still, I know you’s an honest sort, and I seen the way you treat your woman. Says a lot about a man. So I says ‘Why not?’ Let’s go get us some gold.”

CHAPTER THREE

B
y the third week of September, Gus had reached a crossroads. He’d promised Mattie he’d come out of the Yukon and back to Seattle by the end of the season. Now the short-lived Indian summer was drawing to a close and he could already feel the bite in the air. The
Alice
was moored at Fortymile Landing, about to make its last trip down the Yukon for the year. The river was already starting to freeze in places; even now the
Alice
ran the risk of getting iced in. When that happened, nobody went anywhere until the spring thaw.

Problem was, Gus and Shorty were sittin’ on what could potentially be a goddamn fortune. There was no way to know for sure until they got down to bedrock, and that could only be done in the winter when the frozen ground kept the shafts from caving in. But right now the most important thing was staking the claims, protecting them, and settin’ up the crews. No way could he leave Shorty to handle all that by himself.

Shorty understood the problem. “I heared Ed Barlow’s headin’ back down Seattle way,” he said. “He’s a good man. Not a real hard worker, but mebbe that’s why he’s headin’ down. Cain’t take it no more.”

“What’s Ed got to do with me going to Seattle?” Gus asked.

“Nuthin’, only I been told he’s lookin’ to make a few bucks by actin’ as courier. Says he’ll take letters and small packs and stuff…for a fee, of course,”

“Of course.” Still, it was a good option as long as the man could be trusted. “I don’t know him. You sure he’s a good man?”

Shorty shrugged. “Cain’t look into his heart, but as far as I know he is. We been acquainted awhile. I ain’t heard nothin’ shifty about him, anyways, and you know how word gets around.”

“Any idea where he might be?”

“Probably over at McCraig’s. He likes the tables over there. He’s a gamblin’ man, more so than the rest of us. But as far as I know he’s honest.” Shorty aimed for a nearby spittoon. “Course that’s probably why his gamblin’ don’t pay off.”

“You’re a cynical old coot,” Gus said.

“You been around as long as I have, you git that a way.”

Gus paid for their drinks and stood up. “We’d best get back at it. I’m gonna talk to Porter, see if I can do some business. Then I’ll head over to McCraig’s.”

Gus’s instinct about the creek above Bonanza was looking good; early tailings promised even bigger payouts than Carmack’s discovery. The new name for the creek, “Eldorado,” said it all: “the golden one.” Gus, Shorty, and Porter had all staked claims on Eldorado; no telling yet if any of them would strike it rich. Still, there was an awful lot of hope in the air.

Gus and Shorty had put together a couple of crews and promised to pay them a percentage of the take on the claims they worked. Gus had turned around and negotiated a percentage of Porter’s new claim in exchange for providing the miners to work it. Using his claim on Bonanza as collateral, Gus had also borrowed money to negotiate a slew of side deals that entailed down payments and hefty interest rates. In a matter of weeks he owed more money than he could ever hope to repay in his lifetime…unless one of his claims paid off big.

But it still wasn’t enough. Experience had taught Gus the fickle nature of a gold rush; he had a lot more in mind than digging down through permafrost and working a sluice box.