BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (29 page)

"One time I seen Jim Foster and the Hotcakes
Kid fleece a cheechako named Davis that just come in from San
Francisco. Tommy Santoro interviewed him on the dock, and Davis was
bringing six pack horses, boat lumber, and a hundred books. He was
going to strike it big on the Klondike and open a library in
Dawson. He was from Sacramento, and Tommy reckoned he was rich
already. Introduced him to Jim Foster, who said he would take Davis
down to the Motherlode Saloon to meet Old Man Tripp later that
afternoon. Old Man Tripp knowed more about getting to the Klondike
than any man in Skagway.

"When Jim Foster come to fetch Davis from the
hotel, he made sure to walk him down Third Street past the Skagway
Telegraph Office. I was sitting on a bench out front of the office
that day, and Tommy Santoro was standing nearby talking to another
feller. When he seen Foster and Davis coming down the street, Tommy
knocks three times on the door. Then the Hotcakes Kid busts out of
the office just as Foster and Davis get there, and the Kid looks
pale-faced.

"'What's the matter, Kid?' says Tommy.

"'I got a telegram from my mother in
Placerville,' the Kid says, loud enough so Foster and Davis hear
every word, 'and there was an earthquake in Sacramento last night!
Half her house fell down! She's all right, but now I'm worried
about her catching cold!'

"Davis looks agitated, 'cause his family
lives in Sacramento. He told that to Tommy on the dock. 'How bad
was the damage in Sacramento?' he says to the Kid.

"Foster points to the office and says 'why
not contact your wife to make sure she's safe?'

"So Davis rushes into the office and sends
his wife a telegram asking about the earthquake and if she and
little Stanley is all right.

"Then Foster and Davis go to the saloon and
meet Old Man Tripp, who asks Davis what kind of boat lumber he's
packing. Davis says pine, and Tripp shakes his head and says the
lakes is full of sap-sucker fish that will dig their teeth into the
bottom of a pine boat. Cut holes right through the hull in a week,
unless you treat the lumber with humpback wax, and there's an
outfitter in town named Brubaker who can sell him just the right
amount.

"After a few whiskeys Foster takes Davis back
to the telegraph office, where they already got a reply from
Sacramento. His wife is all right and the house ain't damaged, but
little Stanley's bed fell apart when the house started shaking, and
he broke his arm and now it's in a cast. Can Davis send two hundred
dollars for the doctor?

"Lucky for him there's a Western Union desk
right there in the telegraph office, so Davis hands over two
hundred dollars and spells out his wife's name and address.

"The next day he gets a telegram from his
wife saying she got the money and Stanley is feeling better, but
she found cracks in the foundation, and can he send another three
hundred.

"So Davis gives the Western Union man three
hundred. Then afterward he's so upset that his boy is hurt and his
house might fall down that he goes to see Brubaker the outfitter
and says he's catching the boat back to San Francisco and wants to
sell his outfit. Of course Brubaker works for Jeff Smith and he
already heared Davis was coming.

"Brubaker says he understands and wants to
help. He says he'll send a couple of men and a wagon to pick up the
outfit and another to tend the horses. And then he asks Davis his
name and address and writes it down in his ledger book. Opens his
cash drawer and hands Davis a hundred dollars, says he'll put the
outfit on consignment and mail him the rest when it sells.

"There's a steamer leaving for Seattle the
next day, and Davis decides to take it, figuring he can get a boat
to San Francisco from there. Maybe on the trip home he might of
thought it was funny that the two men Brubaker sent to pick up his
outfit was Ross and Joe, who helped him with his bags the first
day, and that Tommy Santoro was there on the dock to shake his hand
and wish him well.

"And maybe he even met someone on that boat
who knowed what most folks in town was afraid to tell you. The
Telegraph Office and the Western Union desk was run by Jeff Smith's
gang, and there wasn't no telegraph line within a thousand miles of
Skagway."

Chapter 34

"Jeff Smith and his Denver gang come into
Skagway in August of '97," Zimmerman says, "and they was dug in
deep by the end of the year. That winter there was holdups every
day in town, men found robbed and shot every week on the Skagway
Trail. But mostly they liked to cheat you out of your money, if you
was a stampeder passing through.

"If you ran a business or worked in Skagway,
you was safe. Better than safe, maybe you was on the payroll. If
your cabin burned down, Jeff might buy you lumber for a new one,
and if you got sick and died broke, he'd pay for your funeral. Get
into a fight in a saloon and shoot someone, there might be a lynch
mob coming, but Jeff would jump in front of you and tell the mob to
stand aside, 'cause the people of Skagway wasn't going to tolerate
vigilante justice. From the stories you might think he was a
red-eyed mountain-man, but he dressed like a gentleman and had a
soft way of talking and a silver tongue. Plenty of people in
Skagway loved Jeff Smith, and even them that saw the truth about
him figured he was above the law.

"And that wasn't just 'cause he bought a
couple of judges or inspectors. It was 'cause he had an army. Two
hundred strong, with guns. He called it the Alaska National Guard,
and told people they was training to fight in the Philippines.
Everyone was still up in arms over the sinking of the Maine, so
Jeff opened his recruiting tent in Skagway in April of '98, when we
gone to war with Spain.

"Then on May first, Jeff leads his militia
through town. There's flags and banners and a brass band, and a
thousand people cheering on both sides of the street. In front of
his saloon on Third Street he got a stage set up, and when the
parade gets there he gives a patriotic speech and burns a dummy of
the Spanish governor in Cuba. Then he leads the whole regiment into
his saloon, where there's extra casks of whiskey and eight
bartenders ready to take money from thirsty men.

"I was packing up on the trail that day, but
when I heared Jeff was marching with his private army, I knowed
some kind of showdown was coming. There was still plenty of people
that seen Skagway as the gateway to the gold fields and was trying
to make an honest profit. Maybe they was running a restaurant or a
blacksmith shop or helping build the toll road, and they didn't
like the reputation Skagway was getting from all the cheating and
stealing and shooting. If stampeders got scared away from Skagway,
they was going to lose everything they been working for.

"I wasn't ready to head Inside myself – only
had half an outfit – but I decided that day it was time to take my
horses down the Lynn Canal to Dyea."

Nine weeks later, Zimmerman says, a miner
named Stewart crossed White Pass and descended the trail to Skagway
with twenty-eight hundred dollars worth of hard-earned Klondike
gold, and within hours his entire poke was stolen by the Smith
gang. Stewart reported the theft to the U.S. deputy marshal in
Skagway, but the officer was on Smith's payroll and said nothing
could be done. When a judge visiting from Dyea appealed directly to
Smith to return Stewart's money, Smith replied heatedly that it was
lost in a fair game of chance.

That was the last straw for the honest
businessmen of Skagway. As word of the theft spread throughout
town, dozens gathered to discuss how to respond. They sent an
emissary to Smith's saloon to demand that Stewart's money be
returned in full by the following afternoon. By the time the
deadline passed, the entire town was on edge and Smith had been
drinking for hours. He set out across town with his rifle to
confront and intimidate his detractors, who had gathered at the
waterfront. By then the meeting had grown into a mob.

Town surveyor Frank Reid barred him from the
dock, so Smith leveled his gun at Reid's head. Reid grabbed the
barrel with one hand, pulled a pistol with the other, and shot
Smith in the heart, but not before the surprised villain could
return fire. The legendary Soapy Smith died minutes later where he
fell, while Reid succumbed to his wounds after a few days.

"That was the story we heared up on the Dyea
Trail," Zimmerman says. "I remember it was just past the fourth of
July, and I already been in Dyea and Skagway a year."

Zimmerman says that by the time he headed
back to Dyea in June, he had half an outfit and four horses, the
sum of which he purchased for almost nothing.

"Them first few months there was plenty of
men that got stuck on the Skagway Trail. Maybe their horses broke
down or died, or maybe they got sick of the struggle, but they
didn't make it up to the pass and they couldn't pack their way out.
So they was selling their outfits for ten cents on the dollar or
just leaving bags by the side of the trail. When I was building
corduroy bridges I didn't get more than a couple bags of flour, but
when I worked for the packers I got beans and tinned meat and oakum
and nails. Cached what I could get my hands on when I was heading
up the trail, then loaded it onto my horses on the way down. That
was all before the snow got deep.

"When the snow come in, men was packing to
the foot of the hill and then turning their horses loose and
carrying their outfits up to the pass and down to the lakes on
their backs. So Skagway was full of used up horses. Some of 'em
could pull wagons or carriages in town, but the ones no one wanted
got shot, and some probably got ate by dogs. Maybe even by men.

"By May I been working in Skagway for the
best part of ten months, saving most of my money. The grub and
tools I got didn't cost much, so I had some left over for horses
and feed. I quit working and spent a week looking at horses.
Reckoned I could make a team pay for its keep on the Dyea Trail up
to Sheep Camp. From my canal days I was partial to mules, but the
onliest one I found was a one-eyed mule named Dottie that a packing
company didn't trust no more on the Skagway Trail. Bought her for
thirty dollars.

"Then I got an old burro named Clyde and two
horses I figured I could mend – a gray gelding with sores on his
legs and back and a sorrel mare that was starving to death. Them
four was my team, and for a couple weeks I let 'em rest. Fed the
mare as much hay and oats as she wanted and treated the gelding's
sores with salt water and lard. Bought nails and a couple dozen
shoes from a trader in town. He got hundreds of shoes from a kid
that was working the trail the first few months, prying 'em off
dead horses."

Almost a year after he first disembarked,
Zimmerman led his pack team onto a steamer and headed back downwind
to the apex of the Lynn Canal. It was June of '98, five months
after the Swedes made it Outside with their Klondike gold, and the
Dyea Trail was choked with stampeders, with pack trains led by
Indians, and with businesses catering to both. Even Soapy Smith's
con men were working the trail up to Chilkoot Pass, dealing crooked
games of monte and faro at the places men found to rest along the
trail.

"The Siwashes was charging seventeen cents a
pound to pack outfits from Dyea to Lindeman Lake," Zimmerman says.
"They had horse trains going up to Sheep Camp, and from there it
was on their backs, up over the pass and down to the lakes. Even in
the summer there's snow on the pass, so the Chilkoots paint their
faces black to save their eyes, and it makes 'em look like the
devil's own disciples.

"I was packing outfits up to Sheep Camp for
five cents a pound, working for tenderfeet coming off the boats.
Took care of my team and that's how I kept 'em on the trail. Shook
out their blankets every night, washed their backs and legs. If my
mare lost a shoe fording the river, I'd stop and unload her, then
hammer on a new one.

"It's eleven miles to Sheep Camp, and it
didn't look nothing like what I seen in July '97. By June '98 there
was hundreds of people moving up and down every part of that trail.
Mostly men, but women too, even some children. Hotels and
restaurants and saloons opening up at the canyon and Finnegan's
Point and Sheep Camp. Up at the Scales you got steam-powered cables
hauling loads up that last pitch, one with a dozen small buckets
that hold a hundred pounds and one with a couple of big ones
hauling five hundred.

"A feller named Wallace hired men to put a
cable lift straight up to the pass from Canyon City, and that's
fourteen miles. It ran on steel wheels mounted on thick concrete
towers. They started building in '97 and finished a couple weeks
before I was on the trail with my team. Would of finished sooner
but there was a blizzard in early April and then a snow slide on a
wall above the trail between Sheep Camp and the Scales. Snapped the
cable and destroyed a tower, and seventy people near the Stone
House was buried ten feet deep. A thousand fellers scrambled up
from Sheep Camp to dig, but it just takes a few minutes for that
wet snow to set like cement. They said you could hear voices
calling out from under the snow, and then they went quiet one by
one. Only a few of them buried was pulled out alive.

"I spent six weeks coming and going between
Dyea and Sheep Camp, and that lift was broke down half the time,
but when it was running it was a hell of a sight. Buckets carrying
three hundred pounds going by a hundred feet over your head, one
every minute. You could see which way the tide was turning, and
there wasn't going to be much use for packers once they got that
cable running steady. By the end of summer, half the Chilkoot pack
trains was just bringing supplies up to the restaurants. Beans and
pork and milk, and fish they netted out of the Dyea River."