BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (35 page)

"Then he told me about his dream, where he's
out on the Yukon ice and there's open water on both sides and his
ice floe sinks until the river closes over his head. He looks up
toward the surface and she's staring down at him, glowing like the
sky we seen above the Yukon that night.

"Wylie is telling me this like there ain't
nothing strange about it. Like it's as true as saying there's fish
in the rivers and bears in the woods. And Gig ain't arguing. I
reckoned he heared it all before. Or maybe he believed what Wylie
said."

"Or maybe he saw the girl himself," I
add.

Zimmerman looks at me but doesn't reply, and
his pale eyes seem focused on something far beyond the confines of
the scow.

Chapter 41

Zimmerman says he found steady packing work
through the winter, but whatever dust he earned slipped through his
fingers as he fed and shod his team and bought grub for himself.
Dawson might be a good place to get rich, but it was an unforgiving
place to be poor.

"Gig and Wylie still had some money from
selling their Skookum Gulch claims, and Gig was dealing faro and
whiskey, bringing home bacon and beans. Don't know how much Wylie
made with Alice, but it must of been more than that.

"It seemed like they was trying to save
enough so they could work a claim, next time they got a chance. Buy
wood and tools and sluice-boxes, then hire men for wages, the way
the Klondike Kings was doing it. Just from hauling out to the
creeks I started seeing what it took, and I knowed that four pack
horses wasn't going to bring me that kind of money. It seemed like
the easiest way was to catch the next stampede. Stake a claim on
some new creek and let other fellers dig their shafts. If the
prospects was rich, you could sell out for twenty or thirty
thousand. Maybe five times that, if you got another Eldorado on
your hands."

Zimmerman says he ran into Rafferty in Dawson
in late January, and he was building cabinets with his son for one
of the new hotels. They were still living in their tent at the foot
of the mountain on the north side of town. Orrie had gone up the
Klondike valley to Hunker Creek to work as a hired hand on one of
Alex McDonald's many claims. Like most of the greenhorns who
reached Dawson in '98, Rafferty and Orrie were both keeping their
ears open for word of strikes on new creeks.

"In late February," Zimmerman says, "I packed
lumber to a high claim on Gold Bottom Creek, and got caught in a
snow storm on my way back. Spent the night trying to build a fire
and stay warm, so I was ready to put my feet up in Dawson for a day
or two. Have a soak somewhere and rest my team. It was getting dark
when I made it back to the tent, and Gig was out, but he showed up
when I was brushing down my horses.

"He says Wylie is gone. Two Mounties come by
the tent the day before looking for him, but Gig told 'em Wylie
ain't been around for a couple of days, and it looks like he took a
bag of clothes and gear with him. Gig asks the Mounties what they
want with Wylie, and they said it was about a young woman who was
attacked in her cabin. They wouldn't tell him who she was, but they
said the cabin was on Paradise Alley, so Gig knowed it was Alice
Maine.

"Gig asked 'em how bad was she hurt and they
said she was in the infirmary but she wasn't going to die. She got
sore ribs and a bump on her head, but she was awake now and pulled
her wits together. Her throat took the worst of it, so eating was
hard and she could barely whisper. Alice told the Mounties she
don't know what man tried to strangle her, but whoever he was let
go and run off when her elbow caught him in the groin. And one of
her neighbors said she seen Wylie stumbling out of Alice's crib
that night.

"The Mounties said if Wylie come back, Gig
should tell him to go to the Superintendent's office to answer
questions. If he don't show up in a day or two, they was going to
put out a warrant for him."

"So was it Wylie who attacked her? Why would
he try to strangle the golden goose?"

Zimmerman shakes his head. "I never knowed
the truth about that, and Gig wouldn't say what he thought. But he
told me the next day that Wylie was gone for good. Some spare tent
canvas and a stove box was missing. And Gig said he heared from a
bartender at the Palace that Wylie bought a sled and five dogs from
a trader in Dawson, on that same morning the Mounties come looking
for him in Lousetown. Wylie probably drove his dogs straight to the
ACC warehouse and loaded up his sled with dried fish."

"Where was he going in the middle of
winter?"

Zimmerman twists on his stool and leans back
against the wall. "I don't know. I never seen him again after that
night."

"So the Mounties didn't pursue him? They let
him go?"

"They put a notice in the
Nugget
and
the
Midnight Sun
saying he was wanted for questioning. But
they didn't send nobody out looking. Alice started getting better,
and her voice come back in a week or so. Then she told the Mounties
it wasn't Wylie that strangled her. Said she didn't see the man,
but when he talked it was someone else's voice."

"Maybe one of the men Alice and Wylie robbed?
If she never saw him, then it couldn't have been someone she was
bringing home. She must have been alone, with the attacker hiding
inside and waiting for her. Then maybe Wylie came up to the window,
heard something happening, and ran away, and the neighbor saw him
running. If so, Wylie was a gutless weasel."

Zimmerman inhales through his teeth. "I still
think Wylie done it."

"That would explain why he fled. But why
would he try to strangle her? And why wouldn't Alice accuse
him?"

Zimmerman looks at me like I'm dim-witted,
and I realize that as a gold-thieving prostitute in law-abiding
Dawson, Alice probably had little to gain and much to lose by going
to the mounted police to tell her story about Wylie. Even if he ran
off with all her gold.

"Did Gig ever see Wylie again?"

"That come later. After we left Dawson."

"You said you and Gig left the Klondike
together."

He nods. "July of '99. By then I knowed it
was time to try somewhere else."

"So you never even staked a claim in the
Klondike?"

"That ain't what I said." He reaches for his
cup and finishes what's left. "There was a stampede in early May. I
was talking to some fellers outside the post office when the word
got out about a strike on Ensley Creek. That creek come into the
Yukon from the east, between the Klondike and the Indian. No one
that prospected it got lucky before, but this time someone found
sixty cents to the pan. You can get to the mouth of Ensley by
working fifteen miles up the east bank of the Yukon, or you can
find the headwaters by following Bonanza up to Adams Gulch, then
climbing over the hill and down into the drainage. That last way is
how I done it. Went straight back to Lousetown and rigged a pack,
tied on my pan and shovel, and started walking. Left the horses
behind 'cause I moved faster uphill without 'em."

Zimmerman says about seventy men and women
reached Ensley Creek before him, so he staked in the mid-thirties
above Discovery.

"I panned out colors from an eddy. Took a few
pans from rim-rock and the best was ten cents. But I liked the look
of that creek, and maybe the pay-streak was rich, so I walked off
my five hundred feet, cut stakes, and carved my name on 'em. Until
you done that, you ain't really had your chance to roll the dice.
When I got back to Dawson I went straight to the Gold
Commissioner's office. Paid my recording fee and watched the clerk
write my name in the ledger. That was when I felt like I finally
got what I been working for, three years after I left home."

"You staked in May and you left the Klondike
in July. It doesn't sound like you bothered to work your
claim."

Zimmerman holds out his cup and cocks it side
to side to show me it's empty. Having demonstrated his motive, he
stands up, plucks my cup from the table, and shuffles to the cask.
I hold the Colt in my lap with my left hand and cover the knife on
the table with my right while he's up. When he sits down and pushes
my half-filled cup toward me from across the table, the cabin feels
uncomfortably warm. I unfasten the shirt button just above my
sternum and fan myself briefly with my hand.

"I never worked it," he says. "Like most of
them that staked, I was waiting for someone to dig to bedrock and
find the pay-streak. If the prospects was good there was going to
be plenty of work on Ensley Creek. The trail over the ridge from
the top of Bonanza would get tramped down enough for horses, and
the miners was going to need grub and lumber and tools. I figured I
could start laying in supplies on my claim while I was running pack
trips for others.

"But the only claim that got worked on Ensley
that summer was Discovery, and the two fellers digging got into a
dispute before they got down to bedrock. One of 'em left and the
other went back to Dawson to look for an investor. So it was
halfway into July and nobody knowed for sure what the prospects was
on that creek. And by the end of that month, nobody would of
cared."

"Why not? Did someone find the next
Eldorado?"

"Nobody found another creek like Eldorado or
Bonanza," he says. "Not to this day. But they found something as
big as the whole Klondike, and you didn't have to tramp through
niggerhead swamps and burn shafts into frozen muck to get to it.
The best part was that it was across the border, in Alaska. By late
July thousands was leaving Dawson on steamers and heading
downriver."

Having dangled the hook, Zimmerman waits for
me to take the bait. I watch him knock back a sip and wipe his
mouth. His eyes water as he cracks a lopsided smile.

"Where were they going?"

"Out through the Yukon delta," he says, "and
a hundred miles north on the Bering Sea. To the mouth of the Snake
River on Cape Nome. You can walk the beach for twenty miles in
either direction, and all the sand you're kicking is mixed with
gold."

Chapter 42

"Word about Nome was on the rise in Dawson
that summer. We already heared about the strike on Anvil Creek in
the fall of '98, but when the news come in about the beach sands,
that got people's blood flowing. Fellers with no prospects in the
Klondike started to think about getting a jump in a new district. I
was hoping Ensley Creek would prove out and Gig was still dealing
at the hotel, so we wasn't talking much about Nome. Wylie been gone
for months.

"Ten days into July, I was in Lousetown
between trips, cleaning pots and stacking wood outside the tent. It
was about eight in the morning, but you can't really tell that time
of year, 'cause it barely never gets dark. Gig already been gone a
couple hours, up the Klondike to a fishing hole with one of my
horses.

"Three men come up the path and stop nearby,
looking back and forth at the tent and my horses tied to the
hitching rail. One feller had a drooping mustache and hair like a
beaver pelt, running gray at the temples. He was smiling like
someone just invited him over for breakfast. The second was young
and thin, with wavy hair and blue eyes, and when I got closer I
seen a faded scar running from the bottom of his ear down across
his neck. Both of 'em was tall and weather-beaten, like they been
on a trail for a few weeks.

"The third feller was shorter, with a bald
head and dark circles under his eyes. When I turned toward the
path, he seemed surprised to see me and said something to the
pelt-haired feller. Then he come over my way with bow-legged steps,
holds out his hand, and says his name is Sam Piper.

"I say I'm Henry Zimmerman and we shake
hands. His grip feels like it could crush a stone. He says 'these
two fellers are looking for an old friend of theirs. I don't know
the man, but I thought I could lead 'em to the right place.' He
backs away and the pelt-haired feller steps forward and tips his
hat. Says his name is Percy Johnson and the young feller is Bill
Jones, and I shake hands with both of 'em.

"Percy must of figured out by now that I
ain't serving him breakfast, but he still got a smile and a glint
in his eye. Says he and Bill just come into Dawson yesterday, and
they was trying to find their old friend Gig Garrett, who they
knowed from Colorado City. Percy and Bill wanted to share a bottle
with Gig and hear what he thought about prospects in the Klondike
and down the Yukon.

"From the moment I seen 'em, something didn't
look right to me. Percy and Bill was wearing old boots and faded
hats and looked like they spent most of their nights outside. They
didn't have miners' hands, but that wasn't bothering me. Sam looked
more like the sourdoughs you seen in the Klondike camps, and that
was all right too. Separate there was nothing special about 'em,
but the three of 'em together didn't add up.

"Percy asked me if Gig Garrett lived here,
and I guessed they might already know that. If I said no, someone
in the next tent might say yes. So I pointed to the hitching rail
and said Gig took one of the horses and rode out to Grand Forks for
the night. From there he was going up Eldorado and over the divide,
then down into the Indian River district. He was thinking about
buying into a claim on Ophir Creek and wanted to take a look. After
he done that, he was visiting another claim on Nine-Mile Creek. I
said he left yesterday afternoon and should be back in four or five
days.

"Sam screwed up his face a little but didn't
say nothing. Percy nodded and said 'Much obliged. We don't know our
schedule just yet, but please tell Gig that Percy and Bill look
forward to visiting with him.' Guess he wanted to leave me thinking
they was all great friends.

"I gave 'em fifteen minutes headstart, then
saddled up my roan mare and rode down the path toward Dawson. Ain't
seen 'em when I passed the shortcut to the Grand Forks trail, so I
was hoping they turned onto it. I was trying to keep 'em away from
the Klondike.