BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (22 page)

"But after most of town cleared out, there
wasn't much Nokes could do. Jack McQuesten was still at the ACC
warehouse, and he was the type that would sell Nokes a full winter
outfit on credit, to be paid back on clean-up in the spring, even
if Gig just charged an outfit to Nokes a month ago.

"Nokes and his partner was doing what you
needed to do in the Yukon before the Klondike changed everything:
they was taking dust out of the ground a little faster than they
was spending it on supplies and grub. But losing the dogs and a few
hundred dollars must have stung 'em hard, especially when Nokes was
the one that helped Gig get Inside.

"With no dogs, Nokes and his partner wasn't
going to stampede two hundred and twenty miles over the ice to
Dawson, even if they was interested, which they probably wasn't.
But they still had to drag sleds and supplies a hundred miles back
to Mammoth Creek in the coldest part of winter.

"Nokes might of been wondering what they was
missing on the Klondike, or he might of been figuring out how to
replace the dogs and still work their claims. But I reckon he saved
a little time to think about getting even with Gig."

Chapter 25

Before tonight I had an impression of Gig
Garrett that served me well for twenty-two years. Deceitful,
jealous, quick-tempered, dangerous. After hearing that as a boy
he'd impaled Henry Zimmerman's hand with a frog gig, I added
misanthropic to the list. And as Zimmerman unspools the story of
Garrett's time in the Yukon, he's fleshing out my skeletal sketch
in a way that validates its bones. We may be here until sunrise,
but by time I leave I'll know my brother's killer far better than I
did before, and his terminal act of violence may fit his life like
the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle pressed home.

But exhuming Gig Garrett won't help me assess
my own culpability for Drew's death, so that's not why I arranged
tonight's meeting. To come to terms with my failure that night, I
need to understand the man in front of me.

If Zimmerman's version of his visit to the
cabin is true – if he planned to help Drew bring Garrett to the
sheriff's office for fingerprinting – then my absence was fatal,
because three of us should have been able to subdue a man who
wasn't expecting us.

If Zimmerman is lying – if he led Drew into a
trap – then my presence probably wouldn't have mattered. I'd have
been shot along with Drew. And if that's what happened, then
Zimmerman might as well have pulled the trigger himself, even if he
left the cabin before the shooting started. Even if – as I think
about it now – he fled before they reached the front door, or
contrived some last-minute rationale to send Drew into Garrett's
cabin alone.

Zimmerman has turned quiet for a moment, as
if he's watching a moving picture projected against the inner
surfaces of his eyes, trying to see or remember what happens next.
The light from the oil lamp across the room exaggerates the sagging
contours of his face as he slumps back against the wall. I can
sense his mental gears still spinning, but as Garrett's story rolls
forward, Zimmerman himself seems to recede. He said he was in
Juneau when word about the Klondike reached the Outside and the
stampede began in earnest. So when does he join Garrett in Dawson,
and when do the events that determine his stance toward Garrett
begin?

"That something you been thinking about for a
while, Owen?" His internal projector has clicked off and Zimmerman
turns to lock his eyes on mine.

"Thinking about what?"

"Getting even."

Caught off-guard, I consider his last
sentences and realize he's comparing Nokes and Garrett to the two
of us.

"Based on what you told me earlier, I don't
have a score to settle. Drew sent you out from the cabin to find
me, and then he and Garrett shot each other."

"That's right," he says, managing a jaded
half-grin. "But maybe that ain't what you want to hear." His eyes
drift toward the knife that still stabs the table at Circle. "And
everyone got a score to settle."

I stretch deliberately toward the knife and
extract it, then lay it flat next to the pistol to my right, out of
his reach.

"That may be," I say. "But you can't settle
something you don't understand." And as I speak it occurs to me
that even though Zimmerman hasn't appeared in his Yukon saga yet, I
can still gain insight from the way he describes Garrett's
attitudes and actions.

"We left Gig and Wylie in a Dawson saloon.
What happens next?"

Zimmerman tilts his cup toward me so I can
see it's empty. I use the Colt to wave him toward the cask on the
front-wall shelf. He smiles enough to show his yellowed teeth, then
swivels onto his feet and shuffles to the cask, both our cups in
hand.

When he sits down he waits until I've had a
sip before resuming his story, and this time the whiskey burns my
whole chest and makes my eyes water as a drop of sweat slides down
my temple. My heart thumps hard enough to catch my attention.

"Gig and Wylie knowed they was too late to
stake on Bonanza or Eldorado," Zimmerman says. "So they went to the
commissioner's office to check the claims on the newer creeks. Bear
and Hunker was mostly staked too, and Gold Bottom, but some of the
other Hunker pups was still open. Of course, that makes you wonder
if them pups was worth anything. That's the way it is with
stampedes... a creek can sit unstaked for months while miners walk
past it every day, then some morning a feller washes out a
fifty-cent pan and that creek gets located end to end by
sunset.

"In any Yukon district, you can buy or trade
for as many claims as you want, but you can only stake one
yourself, so Gig and Wylie wasn't sure what to do right away. Stake
on some little pup and you might miss out on the next big strike.
Or maybe when the surveyor got there, he'd release some fractions
on Bonanza or Eldorado. You might see a hundred-foot piece come
loose after a claim got cut down to regulation size, and only
fellers that hadn't located yet could stake it. A hundred feet on
Eldorado might be worth more than some entire creeks.

"They was still flipping the register pages
and thinking it through when they saw something that probably made
Gig's hair stand up. The owners of 48 and 49 Eldorado was his old
Swede friends Erik Lindfors and Arnold Ruud.

"Gig and Wylie couldn't believe it at first,
'cause the last they knowed the Swedes was back at Circle, working
their claims on a Mastodon Creek pup called Baker Gulch. It turns
out the Swedes traded one of the Baker Gulch claims for ground on a
Miller Creek pup they never laid eyes on yet. I can't remember the
creek, but the feller that owned that claim showed up at Baker
Gulch, and the Swedes talked to him and reckoned it made sense to
spread their bets on different creeks, one at Circle and one at
Fortymile.

"So back in August, Lindfors took a steamer
upriver to Fortymile to record the trade, then headed out to his
new claim for a look. While he was back on that Miller Creek pup,
George Carmack come into town talking about the Klondike and
Bonanza Creek and showing off his shotgun-shell full of gold.

"By the time Lindfors come in from the
creeks, most of the men in Fortymile was off to the Klondike.
Lindfors figured out that Bonanza was Rabbit Creek, and that he
already walked most of it with Nokes. He wanted to know was Carmack
lying, or where did he find the gold? So in September Lindfors
caught the last upriver steamer of the year, and now that the
Klondike news was spreading down the Yukon, that boat was stopping
in Dawson.

"Like them miners that left Fortymile ahead
of him, Lindfors strapped a mining pan and some grub on his back
and headed straight for Carmack's claim, only he followed the trail
from town instead of paddling up the Klondike to the mouth of
Bonanza. The trail goes up over a high ridge and back down to the
creek, over loose rock and deadfall and swamp, and it makes you
forget the gold and remember all the ways your body can hurt.

"He come down to the valley and followed it
up to Discovery, where Carmack and Skookum Jim and some Indians was
working, other miners coming and going, all of 'em saying that
Bonanza was the biggest thing they ever seen. Some claims was
washing out five dollars to the pan on surface diggings, and who
knows what when they got to bedrock. But Bonanza was already staked
into the 90s above and the 70s below, so Lindfors got to wondering
about the large pup he remembered from the summer. The one that run
into Bonanza where the valley swings east, where Gig took a shot at
the bear and Nokes said both creeks was worthless.

"That pup was just a half mile above
Discovery, and when Lindfors got there someone told him it was
called Eldorado, and it was staked into the 40s. There's no
discovery claim on a pup – you just number up from the bottom. No
one knowed how rich Eldorado was, but some fellers had cut their
names off their Bonanza stakes so they could find out.

"Lindfors turned his back on Bonanza and
headed up the Eldorado trail to the last claim, then measured five
hundred feet along the creek for himself and another five hundred
for Arnold Ruud, cut boundary stakes and carved their names, and
started back on the trail to Dawson.

"You ain't supposed to locate or record a
claim for someone else, but that's what happens when a new district
is opening up and things ain't settled down yet. Plenty of fellers
tried to stake for a friend and had those claims jumped when the
friend didn't show up after a few weeks. And if you didn't start
working your claim in sixty days, the law said it was abandoned and
someone else could record it.

"Lindfors sent a letter down to Ruud at
Circle on that same steamer that brought him to Dawson, after it
turned around at Stewart River and was headed back to St. Michael.
Ruud left Baker Gulch and made it up to Dawson over the ice, about
a month before Gig and Wylie got there."

***

"When they seen the Swedes listed on the
Eldorado register, Gig and Wylie knowed that was the place to
start. Will Scouse and his brothers just reached bedrock on 14
Eldorado and they was taking out pans you couldn't believe. Two
hundred dollars... some said five hundred dollars. Lindfors and
Ruud was going to need help, and almost everyone coming in and out
of Dawson was busy, either trying to stake new ground or lay in
more supplies for the winter. Gig and Wylie still had a sled and a
few weeks worth of grub. And even with prices rising, Gig had
enough dust in his poke from selling the dogs to buy some canned
meat and a few hundred pounds of beans and flour and coffee and
oats. That would get them through the winter, and the Swedes could
pay 'em when they started cleaning up the winter dumps.

"So Gig and Wylie bunked in a tavern for the
night, then pulled their sled a few miles on the Klondike ice and
turned up into the Bonanza drainage. Made it up to 48 Eldorado by
the end of the second day, and the Swedes was as surprised to see
Gig as he was seeing their names in the register."

"What kind of reception did they get?"

"Gig told me Lindfors was cagey but Ruud was
friendly."

"So the Swedes hired them?" I ask.

Zimmerman nods. "Gig and Wylie come to
Eldorado at the right time, and they was bringing a winter outfit
and ready to work. The Swedes didn't know how many shafts it would
take to find the pay-streak... maybe one or two, maybe more. In the
Yukon the creeks freeze in September, and whatever gold you ain't
washed out of the diggings by then gets iced up for another nine
months. So the Swedes needed help if they was going to work two
claims."

"I guess they hadn't heard what happened to
Nokes."

He cracks a smile. "Both of 'em left Circle
before Gig and Wylie, so they didn't know nothing about the dogs,
and I don't think Gig mentioned it."

"Did they remember that Gig wanted to leave
them behind at Sheep Camp when Ruud was snow-blind?"

He wags his head dismissively. "Maybe there
was some disagreeable times on that trip, but that happens to
everyone heading Inside together. The main thing was they all made
it from Juneau to Circle, like they planned."

"Thanks to Nokes," I add.

"Sam Nokes was a born loser," Zimmerman says
with an edge to his voice. "He was standing at Grand Forks, where
the two richest creeks in the world come together, and he says he'd
trade 'em both for a couple of bullets and some fish."

Chapter 26

"Lindfors was up on Eldorado full-time by
October and Ruud got there six or eight weeks later, but at first
they was just cutting and stripping trees on the hillsides above
their claim. You need big logs for a cabin, small logs for ten foot
of crib-work under your windlass, and thirty cords of firewood to
burn one shaft through the winter. So by the time Gig and Wylie
showed up, the Swedes still ain't started digging.

"Back on the creeks in January, it's fifty
below zero and snowing most days, windy all the time. You got to
melt ice for drinking water and to clean pots and pans, so that
means a fire in the stove. But you can't start a fire unless you
got dry kindling from the night before, and you end up chopping
branches every day.

"Things that might take you a few minutes to
do in the summer ain't so easy when you got bear-skin mittens on
your hands and heavy gum-boots on your feet. Take your mittens off
for a few minutes and your fingers are like claws. Don't bother to
shave and your beard turns into a block of ice. You're wearing
seal-skin trousers and a buckskin shirt over two layers of wool,
but your breath freezes into coats of ice on your clothes. That's
one reason you got to wear a parka like the Indians – you can shake
the snow and ice right off. Got sleeves and a hood and goes down to
your knees... no buttons, just pull it over your head. The Siwash
parkas is fur on the inside, but miners get by with fur trim on the
hood.