Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (17 page)

“If I didn't know you to be the most honest judge in all of San Francisco, heck, in all of California, I'd swear what you're saying just can't be true.” The federal marshal tapped a forefinger against his tight-set lips, and shook his head.

“Oh, and if I didn't know you to be a lawman who'd seen more chicanery than most, I'd think you were buttering me up for something.” The judge winked and set his ebony fountain pen down neatly beside the sheaf of papers he'd just finished signing. He rubbed a thumb and forefinger along the bridge of his nose where his spectacles rested, then turned bleary eyes on the two marshals.

He sighed and scooped up the papers, handing them to the senior of the two. Not yet letting go of the documents, he said, “Never let it be said that the lowly Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is an impotent little setup.” As he said it he smiled, releasing his hold on the papers.

“We'll get that scoundrel McKenzie, judge. Or we'll . . .”

But the judge held up his hands. “I don't want to know about the execution of your task, I just want to be assured that you'll follow the letter of the law in doing so. We're closer than we've ever been to nailing his scurvy hide to the barn wall. We can't risk it going wrong now. And besides,” he fixed each of the men with a hard stare, “those miners are counting on us. Now, go arrest McKenzie and bring him back for trial. Good luck and God speed, gents. It's a long journey and you'll not have another chance to get a boat so late in the year. I assume you've made the necessary reservations to get you there?”

“Indeed we have, sir. We were able to book passage on the very last ship of the season heading north before ice-up. Our route takes us through Norton Sound to Nome.”

After the two eager lawmen left, the judge sat down heavily and stared at the closed door of his office. Forty-five hundred miles. He didn't envy those two men the trip they were embarking on. And with winter coming. But he knew they were up to the task. Any man with a sense of decency and justice would do the same.

He slowly filled the bowl of his favorite briar pipe, thumbed down fragrant flakes of tobacco, and set fire to it, drawing deeply several times, then puffing like a train on an uphill grade. He leaned back in his chair, smoking with closed eyes, and ruminated on the rascal who'd occupied much of his and his staff's time these last weeks.

Alexander McKenzie. Most folks knew of him or were affected by his machinations in one way or another, even if they were unaware of it. For all his powerful plays, the fat McKenzie had gone out of his way to place others in public office, preferring himself to remain in shadow, tugging strings and feathering his own ample nest with the gains of hardworking, innocent citizens.

The judge sent a blue plume of smoke billowing toward the ceiling. How was it a man could become so perverted? So consumed by a thirst for control and a craving for money that he would allow himself to ruin the lives of hundreds, likely thousands, in his quest. Those miners were wronged and the perverted political machine that McKenzie ran had overstepped itself for the last time. He ignored us once, flouting the law with his own handpicked judge and lawyer, but not this time. This time, thought the judge, we have risen to the bait and will drag McKenzie overboard when we tug that line.

The judge knew he had to believe that. Otherwise the ramifications would be severe and far-reaching. He didn't for one moment think that McKenzie's reach was limited. Rumor had it that even President McKinley was beholden to McKenzie.

“I'll be glad when we can get McKenzie in cuffs and hustle him southward to stand trial. This place might well be beautiful, but I am a California man and I have no intention of spending months on end socked in here until it thaws enough to let us leave.”

“Then we have just a few hours, if what the captain told me is correct. His is the last boat of the season headed southward. So let's go.”

“We know where he's holed up?”

His companion smiled, nodded. “Same place he is every day at this time. Captain told me.”

“Captain knows a lot, eh?”

“He does indeed.”

“So where are we headed?”

“The Golden Gate Hotel. Specifically, the dining room. He holds court there, and eats.”

“From what I've heard, that's one man who can eat.”

The two federal marshals asked for directions of a woman they passed on the sidewalk in the otherwise surprisingly quiet burg of Nome, Alaska.

“There he is,” said the younger marshal, glancing through the front window. They pushed through the big double doors and scanned the busy dining room. The air was thick with cigar and pipe smoke, but the din of chatting voices, of laughter, of clinks and clanks of glasses and china and cutlery abated somewhat as eyes turned to see who these two newcomers were who'd let in the draft of cold air.

The two men paid them no heed. They scanned the room and finally settled on the fat man seated alone at a large table in the back center of the room. He, too, met their stare. He mopped his mouth as he looked them up and down. The men approached, and as the older man in the lead took off his fur hat and reached with his other hand to unbutton his overcoat, McKenzie saw the glint of a badge.

The rage on the man's already florid face became even more evident the closer the two men drew to his laden table.

“I see you already ate,” said the marshal.

“Yes, indeed I have.” McKenzie balled up the voluminous napkin and threw it on the gristly remains of the steak on his plate. He belched once, his cheek fluttering, and guzzled a glass of wine. He belched again, then said, “And who are you two supposed to be?”

“We're not supposed to be anything, but we are your new escorts.”

“Escorts, eh?”

The older of the two lawmen leaned down, put both hands on the table, and said, in a lowered but level, menacing voice, “Listen, Mr. McKenzie, we can haul you out of here kicking and screaming and causing a big loud fuss, or you can go peacefully, even amiably. Same ends, so it doesn't matter to me.”

The portly diner glanced around at the dozens of faces of his fellow diners, all of whom were trained on him, unabashed. This was big news in Nome, and Lord knew when they might get another such round of excitement, given that the cold months were all but upon them.

“Do you have any idea who I am, lawdog?” McKenzie spat the words through clenched teeth. Hs jaw muscles jounced under their fat sags and he glowered at the men.

“Why, yes, Mr. McKenzie. You're the man we're here to arrest.” He slid a hand into an inner pocket and lifted free the neatly folded and signed warrant for McKenzie's arrest.

McKenzie made a lunge for it, but the marshal pulled back. “Ah ah, now, now, Mr. McKenzie. Remember what I told you about playing nice? I'll gladly let you see it when we're out of here, safe and sound away from prying eyes. And any hoodlums you may have in your employ.”

Minutes later they were standing outside, watching the fat man shrug himself into his tight wool overcoat. The younger of the lawmen made sure they were well away from the bright lights of the hotel's dining room. The windows cast wavering squares of gold light on the boardwalk as shadows of peeking heads thrust in and out of the light. “Looks like there are a whole load of folks in there just aching for a chance to see you hauled off in chains. Why do you suppose that is, Mr. McKenzie?”

“You two lawdogs will answer for this. Mark my words. I am a big wheel and not just in this two-bit town. I own half the Congress, I've made and broke more senators than you bumpkins will ever vote for, and I daresay you and your families will regret crossing. . . .”

“Now Mr. McKenzie,” said the older marshal, leaning close enough that his straight nose tip almost touched the fleshy bulb of McKenzie's. “You can tell us about your credentials all night long. I'm sure it will prove illuminating to the judge. But you dare not threaten my family or his, or there will be legal ramifications. Do you understand me?”

Once the federal marshals caught up with McKenzie in Nome, they forced him to open his vault and turn over the $600,000 in gold he had removed from the mines in the absence of their rightful owners. The mines and their earnings were eventually returned to those owners.

As for Alexander McKenzie, as with so many swindlers, he did not suffer horribly in the short or long term. He was convicted on conspiracy charges and sentenced to one year in prison. He served three months before President McKinley pardoned him in May 1901. He went on to amass even greater wealth and had two towns and a county in North Dakota named after him. Books, plays, and films have been made of Alexander McKenzie and specifically about his blatant, thieving ways in Nome at the turn of the century. He died a wealthy man in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1922. Who says crime doesn't pay?

T
his chapter could easily be titled “Beware Self-Proclaimed Authorities,” for they often know far less than they believe they do. During the early decades—the 1840s through the 1850s—of overland travel by masses of emigrants seeking better lives out West, there were precious few experts around, people who could claim to have made the trip West and come back to tell about it. Of the few who did, how many had the ability to re-create in a useful form, via maps and journals, the most viable routes through all manner of treacherous terrain?

Almost simultaneously with the hue-and-cry over the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, a flood of guidebooks poured out to the masses seemingly overnight with such fashionably windy titles as
California: Her Wealth and Resources
and
California, from its Discovery by the Spaniards to the Present Time, with a Brief Description of the Gold Region
.

The titles alone were barely able to contain the authors' zeal for the jaw-dropping wonders potential emigrants could expect should they venture westward. In truth, most of the guidebook authors were deskbound ink wranglers in cities back East, men who had never been west of their neighborhood bars. What they did do was rummage through newspaper files to pillage the few available verified reports from people who had actually traveled the overland trails to the West and back again.

The guidebook authors leaned heavily on accounts by the few men who'd been there and back, among them Colonel Richard Mason and Consul Thomas Larkin, and from legitimate travel journals by Richard Henry Dana and John C. Fremont.

But the facts they pulled from firsthand accounts paled on the page with their own fanciful fillers: baloney, fiction, balderdash, and chicanery—with added sprinklings of fact for flavor. A prime example is the bestselling
Emigrant's Guide to the Gold Mines
, whose author actually wrote of riverbeds “paved with gold to the thickness of a hand.” Of such ubiquitous California rivers, he went on to write that “twenty to fifty thousand dollars of gold” could easily be “picked out almost instantly.”

And if the journey was long and the information contained within those pages proved too tempting to buoy flagging spirits, publishers often included poems and ditties to be sung along the trail—all revolving around the wonders of California and its awaiting fortunes in gold. Who wouldn't want to head west, a copy of this guidebook tucked under one arm, leading an amiable mule towing an empty wagon ready to be filled with easily plucked riches?

It says something of the caliber of journalism of the day, and of the influence over the masses of the media (little seems to have changed), that one guidebook well regarded for its alleged allegiance to fact was the best-selling 1849
Emigrants' Guide to California
by Joseph E. Ware. At the time of its writing, the author had not actually been out West. In the publishing fashion of the times, the book bore the windy yet informative subtitle “Containing every point of information for the emigrant—including routes, distances, water, grass, timber, crossing of rivers, passes, altitudes with a large map of routes and profile of country . . . with full directions for testing and assaying gold and other ores.” No one could accuse the author of shirking on topics.