Alaska (103 page)

”That's certain,' Tom said. 'In Dawson we never worried about our R&R money, and in the good days we had huge amounts. Superintendent Steele wouldn't allow theft.

Here? Everyone at the store sleeps with a gun.'

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'Would you use a gun?' Missy asked, and Tom replied: 'I'd avoid it as long as possible.

Even if the other man struck me, I'd still try to calm him down, but if it was hopeless'

'I'll tell you one thing Superintendent Steele would clear up,' Murphy broke in.

'What I know of Hoxey, he's got the claims in a real mess here. Three hundred men in town at the beginning, each allowed one legal claim, no proxies. But now they say that fifteen hundred claims were filed.'

'Impossible!' Venn cried, but Murphy insisted on his story. 'Fifteen hundred claim jumpers, and each one entitled to his day in court before Judge Grant.'

'This could go on forever,' Tom said, and Missy, knowing what she had seen in the two offices, said: 'That's what they intend.'

This further irritated Murphy, who broke in: 'You know how Superintendent Steele handled claim jumpers? I saw him in operation twice. A man near us on Klope's ridge had a perfectly good claim, but like us, no gold. When word circulated that gold was sure to be found on the ridge it never was this big, loud fellow from Nevada, I often wanted to punch him, he said he knew more about mining than anyone in Canada, he tried to jump our friend's claim. Superintendent Steele came up to settle the dispute, recognized the claimant, and said: ”Sir, I been watching you for seven months.

Even if your claim is valid, we don't want you in Dawson. It's half past two on Tuesday.

If you're in town this time Thursday, you go to jail, and if you want to make a move for your gun, just try it.”And he walked away.'

But then Murphy told a more representative story of how Steele operated, and how anyone like him could handle the situation in Nome: 'On the stream below us, Eldorado Nine Below,

a man had a placer that wasn't producing, and he dug deep, came up with a winter's load of gold-bearing muck that froze solid beside his cabin. One day when I was there, Superintendent Steele came by with surveying instruments: ”Sam, I got bad news for you. Your line's skewed. That portion over there's open for whoever claims it, and I've heard someone is going to file tomorrow. Wanted to warn you.”And Sam cries: ”Good God, sir, all my muck is on that property. Assayer said maybe thirty thousand.”And Steele said: ”You know the law. Muck'goes with the claim.”Sam grew so weak he had to sit down. A winter's work gone. The only strike he'd ever make. And all on somebody else's property: ”My God, sir, what am I goin' to do?”and the superintendent considered for a while and said: ”I'm supposed to have my office open at nine in the morning.

Tomorrow I'll open at seven. If you can find a friend you can trust, have him claim 624

on that piece and have him file early, because tomorrow afternoon will be too late.”With that, he stalked off, because he didn't want to know what kind of deal was made.'

'What happened?' Tom asked, and Murphy said: 'Sam looked around, saw only me, and in despair asked: ”Murphy, can I trust you?”and I said: ”You better,”and early next morning I was in Superintendent Steele's office and he took me to the registry and I claimed on

Eldorado Nine Below, False Portion and I got it and here's the paper to prove it,' and from his pocket he produced a sweat-stained paper which proved that Matthew Murphy, Belfast, Ireland, had a valid claim to

Nine Below, False Portion:

'I came to Canada to get me a mine, and by God's sacred word I did, and here's proof.'

'But what about Sam's muck?'

'I sold it to him for one dollar, but I kept the mine. His muck proved out at thirty-three thousand dollars and he gave me five percent. That's what Missy and I lived on when we couldn't get work in Dawson.'

'But your claim?' Tom asked. 'What about it?'

'It was only a tiny piece of land, covered with Sam's muck. On the stream, nothing.

Below, nothing. But I get great spiritual gratification from that certificate.'

'Why?'

'Fifteen hundred men left Edmonton to stake a claim doctors, lawyers, engineers and I'm the only one who staked his claim, and it was worth thirty-three thousand dollars . . . from seven in the morning one day till four that afternoon.'

'Why did Superintendent Steele protect Sam in that way? That illegal way, I might add.'

'When he handed me my certificate he said, off to one side: ”Glad it was you, Murphy.

Because the other claimant was a real swine.”'

'Like I said,' Missy concluded, 'one Superintendent Steele could clean up this town.'

IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 1900 IT SEEMED AS IF ALL NATURE had turned against the good people of Nome. Saddled with a corrupt judge, a cunning expropriator and rampant chloroform gangs, they looked with disgust as the wild summer drew to an end, for the experienced ones knew that with the arrival of the ice pack, they would be locked in with these criminals for eight or nine nearly sunless months. Their experience had been that as the sun receded and the roadstead iced in, the worst came out in what was already bad.

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Tom Venn, in the cramped office of his R&R store, felt that he would have enough food supplies for the winter if the large steamship Senator could break through the ice one last time and discharge the enormous shipment it was supposed to contain. It would require the R&R barges six days just to unload the supplies onto the shore, and then teams of horses would need another six days to haul them into the store and the nearby warehouses.

As one of the principal businessmen in town, and the leader of those who looked to Seattle for guidance in all things, Tom was no longer happy with the judge and the receiver the men in Seattle had sent to Alaska, for he had begun to see almost daily proof of their deceptive behavior. 'It isn't that Seattle sent them. Most of the men R&R send us form the backbone of our country,' Tom told Matt and Missy. 'It's just that in this case Seattle chose poorly.'

As the days shortened, Missy, in her work with the two miscreants, had redoubled proof of their iniquities. In recent weeks, as Hoxey took possession of the many mines Judge Grant placed under his protection, there had been so much paperwork that Missy had worked ten hours a day for Hoxey and rarely saw Judge Grant, although her salary was being paid by the government on his behalf. And although she did not yet wish to bring her little notebook to Tom Venn, she said to Matt: 'You know, almost everything they do is corrupt. Last week the judge had to settle a simple problem, the transfer of property belonging to the widow of that workman killed when the boom on that cargo ship broke. It was a simple matter, I could have handled it. But no, he had to involve Mr. Hoxey, and by the time they were through with their mumbo jumbo, eighteen hundred dollars of the widow's money had disappeared.'

'You know what I think, Missy? Somebody's going to shoot Mr. Hoxey. I see things that would curl your hair.'

'Don't you get mixed up with any shootings, Matt!' After months of struggle and deprivation, this hardworking, reliable pair had an income at last, but her work was beginning to sicken Missy: 'Matt, what would you say if we quit? Just quit and ask Tom Venn if he would take us on in some capacity?'

'What could we do? We need money.”

'I could keep records, honest ones, for Tom, and you could run the warehouse so the freight's not backed up on the beach. And we could sleep at night.'

'Do you lie awake?'

'I do.'

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'Jesus, Missy, a soul should never lie awake for what he done for someone else during the waking hours.'

'I'm scared, Matt. When the shooting starts, and it will, you might get hit. Or me.'

Her words were so solemn that half an hour after dawn on the tenth of September they were knocking on the door of Tom Venn's office: 'Tom, we want a job.'

'You have jobs. I went to a lot of trouble getting you those jobs.'

'We can't keep them any longer.'

'Why not?'

'Tom, do you remember what I said when you left us to go to work on your own for the first time? Up on Klope's ridge?'

Tom breathed deeply, then put his left hand over his mouth, then mumbled: 'You told me always to be honest.' He walked away from the pair, turned, and said: 'When I left Dawson last year to come down here, Mr. Pincus gave me those assayer's scales.

Told me to keep them burnished. Warned me they would rust if I ever did anything dishonest for R&R.' For some moments he walked back and forth, kicking up dust. Then he stopped abruptly and looked back over his shoulder: 'They're not very nice men, are they.'

'No, Tom, they are not,' Missy said heavily, and no more was said on that subject.

'Well,' Tom said brightly as he came forward as if meeting them for the first time, 'suppose I did have a pair of jobs. What could you do for me?'

'I could keep your records,' Missy said, and Matt chimed in: 'I could take charge of your goods coming in on the barges.'

Only Tom himself could assess how much he owed these two fine people, how deep his debt was to Missy, who had saved his family back in '93 and who had taught him on the Chilkoot Pass what courage was. Only he knew the subtle effect Matt Murphy had had with his lyrical Irish ways, his gentler view of life and his indomitable spirit.

Tom was beholden to Matt and Missy for the values which would guide him through life, and if they now needed jobs, he had no choice but to provide them, and then figure out how to explain it to his bosses in Seattle.

'You can't leave the judge and Mr. Hoxey in the lurch, you know. You'll have to give notice.'

'Of course,' Missy said. 'Would two weeks be honorable?'

'It would, and because it might look bad if you quit and then I hired you . . . What I mean, it might look as if I'd approached you. It will be better if I tell them myself. Lay my cards on the table.'

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And that morning, as soon as their offices opened, Tom went to Judge Grant and suggested that Hoxey be called. When the three were together eating doughnuts, Tom said: 'Gentlemen, when you came here I recommended two very old friends of mine, Missy Peckham and Matthew Murphy

Judge Grant leaned forward, made a lascivious gesture with his fingers, and asked: 'Are those two . . . ? I mean, is he diddling her?'

'I wouldn't know,' Tom said. He turned to Hoxey: 'Winter's coming and the Senator, your old ship, is arriving with a huge shipment, and I could certainly use their help.'

'That is, you want to hire them away from us?' Hoxey asked belligerently.

'Well, yes. I can find you other help.'

'The Irishman isn't worth a damn,' Hoxey snarled. 'Take him, and good riddance. The girl, well, she's something else.'

'I thought she worked for you, Judge.'

'After-hours she helps me,' Hoxey lied.

'You find you can't let her go?' Tom asked, and when Hoxey said: 'I'd take it most unkindly, most unkindly. And when I take something unkindly, I usually do something about it. I am very close to your superiors in Seattle, Mr. Venn, and I would take it most unkindly.'

So Tom had to report to his old partners that whereas Matt could start working for R&R at the end of two weeks, Missy would have to stay with the judge: 'I'm sorry, Missy, but I'm discovering that few people in this world are ever their own bosses.

Mr. Hoxey won't let you go.'

'If I could stand those rapids at Lake Bennett, I can stand Mr. Hoxey.' It was clear that she would be locked into her position during the interminable winter, and now as she worked she took even more careful note of all that he was doing. During the last two weeks when Matt would also be working for him, she queried Matt on every detail of the dealings at the mines. On the night of the thirteenth of September, she said to Matt: 'Remember that story you told us about Superintendent Steele protecting the miner who had his pile of muck on the other man's property? And the reason he gave for doing so, even though it was against the law, you might say?'

'Yes. Steele said: ”Because the other claimant was a real swine.”'

'These men we're dealing with are swine.'

On the fourteenth the Senator arrived in the roadstead off Nome with its huge cargo for R&R and the last batch of miners for the season. When the latter got ashore they would

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find all claims along the rich creeks taken and every inch of oceanfront bespoken, but ashore they would come, and by the end of the bitter winter, ten months off, they would have found some way to eke out a living. They would have survived, although not as they had envisioned.

They did not get ashore on the fourteenth, because a major storm brewing in the western half of the Bering Sea began to pile so much water against the Nome beaches that any lightering became quite dangerous, if not impossible. A picket boat did make it ashore with a ship's officer and an official from Ross & Raglan, but by the time they intended returning, the seas were so high that no one wanted to leave, they least of all.

They brought word that eight hundred and thirty-one newcomers were hankering to rush ashore and dig their millions: 'Some of them asked us to lay over three days so they could sail back to Seattle with their fortunes. One of our sailors made a tidy sum pointing out to them the choice spots along the beach all of them taken, of course.'

The R&R man brought two bits of good news: that Tom's entire shipping list had been forwarded and lay out there in the Senator awaiting the barges, and that his salary had been upped by seven dollars a week.

As he handed Tom the shipping list the man said: 'We're proud of the way you've handled things. Not many take charge as you have. And do you know what attracted major attention?

The way you sold those cans without labels for five cents. Our accountant screamed: ”Debit his account thirty cents a can. That's what they cost us.”And do you know what Mr. Ross said? ”Give the young feller a bonus. For the next forty years they'll talk about how generous R&R was with those perfectly good cans.”'