BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (20 page)

"The pay-streak is gravel and gold,"
Zimmerman says, "a few feet wide, a few feet high, running for
miles. It sits on bedrock, but bedrock is twenty-five feet down and
two men can't dig that deep in one summer. Burn fires, sink a
shaft, and you get water seeping in. Open a wide cut and the sun
will melt the ground and suck up the water, but you won't get past
fifteen feet. Half that far if you don't start until late July. So
Gig and Wylie wasn't going to hit the pay-streak before the weather
turned.

"If you can't sluice, you got to rock out
enough dust to buy grub for the winter. And you got to find wood
for your stove and your shaft, if you want to keep digging when
everything's iced up. Birch Creek gold was seventeen dollars an
ounce, and most men walk away from a claim that don't give an ounce
to the shovel. That's an ounce of dust from what one man can shovel
into the sluices in a day. You're better off working for wages on
someone else's claim, or building cabins in town.

"Gig and Wylie got to that point by early
September. They was shoveling mud and half-frozen muck and fighting
off mosquitoes and rocking out their dumps until they was almost
too tired to eat, but they was getting less than an ounce to the
shovel. No sign of the pay-streak, and they wasn't sure where to
sink a shaft when the surface froze up later that month. Made 'em
think maybe the claim-owner knowed his ground wasn't rich, and
that's why he wasn't working it hisself. And by September the days
is getting shorter fast. If you ain't going to build a cabin and
lay in grub and firewood for the winter, you better find shelter in
town. So they quit digging, washed out the rest of their dumps, and
headed back toward Circle with two pounds of dust between 'em. And
they owed half of that to the claim owner.

"Coming down from the dome, Mastodon Creek
run into Independence and the two of 'em together is called Mammoth
Creek. You follow Mammoth downhill for ten miles before it gets
lazy and turns horseshoes in the pastures and run into Birch Creek,
which is what leads you back to Circle. Mammoth Creek was all
staked when Gig and Wylie come by, and two of the claims near the
top was being worked by Sam Nokes and his partner. Gig and Wylie
stopped by to see how they was doing.

"Nokes and Gig seen about enough of each
other coming all the way from Juneau, so they wasn't heartbroke
about splitting up in Circle. But after a couple months sharing
diggings and a tent with a different crew, you start to notice
what's wrong with the new fellers and forget what was bothering you
about the ones before. So Nokes didn't mind showing Gig what was
coming out of the sluice boxes now that they reached pay-dirt. His
partner got summer diggings going in May with a couple of hired
men. Now they was building a winter cabin while the hired men was
sluicing until the creek froze. With the grub and money Nokes brung
in, they was getting ready for winter. They found the pay-streak
and they wanted to sink shafts and drift along it.

"Gig told Nokes that he and Wylie was rocking
out an ounce to the shovel up at Mastodon, but they was working a
lay, so it wasn't enough. They was heading back to Circle to find
work. Gig didn't say it but he was thinking maybe he could deal
poker or faro at one of the saloons. Even a game of monte, since
Circle was American territory with no Mounties to worry about."

To remind Zimmerman I'm still holding the
Colt, I lay it flat on the table well beyond his reach, with my
fingers resting on it. Then I pluck the knife from Circle and offer
him the handle.

"Show me where they crossed the border."

He studies the ribbon line for a few seconds,
then carves a north-south slash through it, about a fifth of the
distance from Fortymile to Circle.

"Canada," he says, gesturing to the table on
my side of the line. "Alaska," he says, pointing to his.

I rotate the gun barrel slowly toward him
until he smiles thinly and jabs the knife back into the table at
Circle.

"So Gig gave up prospecting and went back to
dealing cards?"

"No," Zimmerman says, "Wylie went down to
Circle by hisself. Got work sweeping a saloon in exchange for a bed
in the back. Did some cabin-building when one of the crews was
short-handed.

"Gig stayed up on Nokes' claim 'cause they
needed someone to chop wood. You burn thirty cords working one
claim for a winter, and Nokes and his partner was working two, with
one shaft on each. So they offered Gig food, shelter, and eight
dollars in gold dust a day and he took it. It wasn't the strike he
was looking for, but he knowed them Mammoth Creek claims had a wide
pay-streak, and he told me later he was hoping Nokes would let him
work a lay on one of 'em. And if he spent the winter down in
Circle, that means paying for a bunk and grub.

"Nokes and his partner could feed three hired
men and five sled dogs, and the cabin they was building had an open
back wall with a tent rigged against it, so you could sleep
everyone close enough to the stove to stay warm. That ain't a big
problem at first, but pretty soon it's getting toward zero at
night. So you spend September laying in grub and wood and kindling
for winter diggings, and by October you're burning fires in the
shafts all night. They got a few cords of wood stacked before the
snows come, and after that Gig went up into the hills chopping down
trees. Might take a day to split up a spruce and two more with the
dogs to sled the logs and kindling back to the claim. No trails on
them hills, so you're trying to keep your sled out of the ditches
and clear of the saplings.

"I cut enough spruce on Yukon creeks to know
I'd rather be digging frozen dirt, and Gig was the same way about
it, even though chopping wood is better in winter, when you got no
mosquitoes buzzing around your head. Your hands take the worst of
it. Mittens ain't no use with an axe and a saw, and all them green
branches that you strip away leave sharp ends and sap on the pieces
you pile on the sled. By the end of the day your hands is scraped
raw and curled into sticky claws. You got to soak 'em in a pail of
water that's been heating on the stove before you can even use 'em
to eat.

"Nokes and his partner paired off with a
hired man in their shafts – one man digging and one working the
windlass and the dump. Start the day by shoveling out the embers
and end it by stacking wood at the bottom of the shaft. You got to
heat up some green kindling on the stove every day if you want any
chance to light that fire at night. And most afternoons you're
melting creek ice in a bucket so you can pan out some of your
diggings and pay the men in dust.

"There's always mercury near a gold mine,
'cause sourdoughs use it for sluicing and rocking. Spread some
mercury on the riffles and it bonds with flour gold, so the gold
don't wash out with the water. Then you heat it over a fire and the
mercury melts away, leaves the gold in the pan. And mercury freezes
at forty below, so if you got that and a few spirit bottles you
don't need a thermometer. St. Jacob's Oil freezes at seventy-five
below. Hudson's Bay Rum at eighty below.

"You know it's cold when you're checking them
bottles, and that's how it was getting by December, when Nokes and
his partner told Gig to sled the dogs down to Circle and bring back
dried salmon and flour and beans. Soon as you go outside your
breath freezes in the air. You keep your mouth closed and breathe
through your nose, but your lips freeze together and the hairs
inside your nose ice up. Every step on the snow squeaks like an old
hinge. So even if you're going out with the dogs, you can't get on
the sled 'cause the skin on your face will freeze solid and die.
Got to start by running with the dogs for ten minutes, until your
hands and feet and chest get warm.

"Gig was two days getting down to Circle with
the dogs, though there ain't much to a day in December, so you're
sledding by whatever light come off the snow, then sleeping for a
few hours after you feed the dogs. Don't matter how cold it gets or
how deep it snows, them Malamutes will stomp out a circle and curl
up together, sleep right through a blizzard and wake up frisky.
They'd be piled up before you got done laying a few branches of
spruce or hemlock for a bed and wrapping yourself up in blankets
and tent canvas. And that still ain't enough to stay warm, unless
you was smart enough to get hold of a fur blanket. Rabbit or fox or
lynx. It's worth its weight in gold in the Yukon, sometimes more,
and it's the one good thing you want from trading with the
Indians.

"When Gig got down to Circle and went
straight to one of the big saloons for a whiskey, miners there was
still talking about news that come over the ice by dogsled a month
ago. One of the ACC drivers brought a letter to Oscar Ashby from a
man up in Joe Ladue's new town called Dawson. By then a couple of
rumors about a Klondike strike made it downriver, but most of them
sourdoughs in Circle knowed enough about Lying George Carmack to be
sure the Klondike was a hoax. Probably Carmack and Ladue was just
trying to sell town sites and lumber in Dawson to hard-luck miners
that ain't found gold in Fortymile or Circle.

"This letter come into Ashby's saloon in
mid-November and got read aloud to seventy-five miners, and it gave
'em a good laugh. It said the Klondike was the richest strike in
the world, and there was no telling how much they was getting to
the pan. The writer said he saw a hundred and fifty dollars panned
out, and others seen a thousand dollars from a single pan. Keep in
mind ten cents to a pan is good, and a few dollars to a pan was the
best anyone ever seen until then. Them miners at Ashby's thought it
was crazy to write a letter like that. Might as well say you
climbed a ladder to the moon and found a mountain made of gold.

"But then another letter come down from
Dawson for Harry Spencer and Frank Densmore, who was successful men
with business prospects in Circle. That letter was from a trusted
friend and said the Klondike was real, so Densmore outfitted a sled
and took a dog team upriver to see for hisself. That happened two
weeks before Gig sledded down to Circle.

"Now there was some restless feet and hands
in the saloons, with fellers sensing maybe something big was
happening upriver. But the ones talking the loudest was still
saying they wouldn't cross the street based on anything they heared
from Lying George.

"Gig slept in a bunkhouse and took the sled
down to McQuesten's warehouse the next day. Bought dried salmon for
the dogs, beans and flour and bacon and sugar and coffee, and put
it all on Nokes' account. McQuesten would always grubstake a miner
who was working a real claim, and you would pay him on clean-up,
even if that was months away. When Gig was done he went looking for
Wylie and found him at the Pioneer Saloon.

"They told stories over a couple of whiskeys
and Gig said he was getting sour about his work at Mammoth Creek.
The claims was both good, but he didn't think Nokes would offer him
a lay, and he was tired of cutting and stacking cordwood. Wylie
told Gig about his work at the saloon, and Gig said maybe they
could work a monte game together there if he come down to Circle.
That's what they was talking about when Tom McPhee, who was the
owner of the Pioneer, busted through the front doors.

"'Bottoms up, men!' McPhee calls out. 'And
the last round is on me!' He grabs a bottle in each hand and walks
along the bar filling everybody up. 'Might as well finish it,
because we're closing down tonight, once and for all!' Then he
stands at the end of the bar and tells everyone that he just come
from the Gold Bar Hotel, where a sled team brought the latest mail
from the upriver camps. There was a letter from Dawson, by Frank
Densmore for Harry Spencer, and it said that all the rumors about
the Klondike was true.

"You never seen a stampede," Zimmerman tells
me, "but I seen a couple of small ones in Dawson, out to one new
creek or another, and that's how it starts. One man gets off his
barstool and heads for the door, then two more follow on his heels.
In an hour every man in town without something too good to leave
behind is scrambling to load a few weeks grub on a sled and harness
a dog-team. The first ones got some notion of where they's headed
and the rest are just following. Get to the Discovery creek, find
the last ground claimed, and stake off the next five-hundred feet.
Some fellers that was dead drunk ended up stampeding without even
knowing it... their friends put parkas and felt boots on 'em and
strapped 'em on a sled.

"Wait a few extra hours or days and there
might be no ground left to stake. And you ain't done when you carve
your name on a post – you still got to record your claim at the
district office. When the Klondike first hit, that was downriver at
Fortymile. By the time the news got to Circle, the Canadians opened
a registry in Dawson.

"Densmore's letter was proof that a man them
sourdoughs respected was going to walk away from bigger success in
Circle than most of 'em could hope for. He was going to try for
something better on the Klondike, even though hundreds of other
miners got there first. That was all them fellers needed to hear.
By morning, half of Circle was heading upriver, and it would of
been a lot more if there was enough dogs. Malamutes you could buy
for twenty-five or fifty dollars was selling for two-hundred fifty.
Some went for whatever the seller wanted. Five hundred. Fifteen
hundred.

"At the Pioneer, Gig and Wylie watched a
dozen men rush in and out through the saloon doors as they drank
the last of Tom McPhee's whiskey. By the time they was finished,
Wylie made his case. He had a little money and could leave right
away, and two men was faster than one driving a sled up the frozen
Yukon. Gig had five good dogs, dried salmon to feed 'em, and the
grub that Nokes sent him to Circle to buy.