Alaska (97 page)

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The theft stood, and after days of fruitless appeal, he met with his two former partners, warning them: 'Me Russian ... pretty soon they do same to you Lapp, then you Norwegian,'

and seeing the reasonableness of his prediction, they began to carry guns and bought him one.

Sure enough, as soon as Horseface Kling had his possession of Seven Above digested, he began pestering folks in the Second Best Saloon with complaints against 'that damned Lapp, little better than a Russian, who came over here and stole our good claims.' This time he was arguing on behalf of his partner, one Happy Magoon, a big man who smiled constantly, and after another miners' meeting, Mikkel Sana was dispossessed of

Six Above,

and it was made pretty clear in the Second Best Saloon that the Norwegian Lars Skjellerup was going to be next.

It soon became apparent that Happy Magoon, now the owner of Six Above, was a stupid man not able to think clearly and that Horseface Kling had used him merely as a front for stealing a fine claim. When rumors started to circulate against 'that damned Norwegian,' Skjellerup and the three Swedes could see that they were going to be next, and that before long Horseface was going to be sole possessor of seven fine claims on Anvil Creek.

How could such flagrant lawlessness be tolerated? Because the United States Congress still refused to give Alaska a sensible government. The region continued to struggle along as the District of Alaska, but what it was a district of, no one could say, and it was still hamstrung by the old Oregon territorial law that had been outmoded at the time of its imposition. Had Congress said: 'Let Alaska have the same laws that pertain in northern Maine,' it might have made sense, for the two types of land and problems would have been roughly similar, but to equate Alaska with Oregon was preposterous. Oregon was an agricultural state with spacious fields; if there was any flat land in Alaska, it was probably terrorized by grizzly bears. Oregon had been peopled by God-fearing men and women who brought with them a New England Puritan dedication to organized life and work in settlements; Alaska, by drifters like John Klope from a rundown farm in Idaho and rascals like Horseface Kling from temporary mining camps. Oregon, in other words, was a beautifully controlled area which had aspired to be another Connecticut as soon as possible, while Alaska was determined to remain unlike any other American region as long as possible.

But you had to be on the scene to appreciate the real insanity of life in Alaska, and no better laboratory for analysis than Nome could have been found. Since the old Oregon

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territorial law had not provided for the establishment of new towns like Nome, the burgeoning boomtown could not elect a city government, and since the law did not provide for health services, none could be authorized in Nome; everyone in the town could throw his bathroom slops where he damned well pleased. Craziest of all was the circular insanity which still prevented courts from trying criminals. Oregon law clearly stated that no man could be a juror unless he proved that he had paid his taxes, but since there was no government in Alaska, no taxes were collected.

This meant that there could be no trial by jury, which meant that ordinary courts could not exist.

And this preposterous state of affairs meant that criminals like Horseface Kling could commit their thefts with impunity. The famous boast of frontier brawlers in times past, 'No court in the land can lay a hand on me,' had become a reality in Alaska. The stolen mining claims now belonged to Horseface, and their former owners had no court to which they could appeal.

However, justice of another kind was available, and had an impartial observer familiar with frontiers studied the Anvil Creek dispossessions, he might have warned: 'Of all the men in this corner of Alaska to steal from, those three have got to be the most dangerous!' and he would point to the dour, self-reliant Norwegian, the steel-sinewed Lapp and the wildly imaginative Siberian to whom anything was possible. He would point out: 'These men have traversed great distances unafraid, slept unprotected in blizzards at sixty-below, and saved Barrow. It seems highly unlikely that they will allow a braggart from Nevada to dispossess them of rights which they gained the hard way.' But less sagacious men in the Second Best would point out: 'In Nome there is no law.'

On 12 July 1899, Horseface Kling was found shot to death at the entrance to his mine Seven Above,

and shortly thereafter a grinning Happy Magoon was quietly told: 'You no longer own Six Above.'

No one discovered who had done the shooting, and no one really cared, for by this time it was clear that Horseface had intended sweeping up everyone's claim, so his death was not lamented. And when the industrious Lapp, Mikkel Sana, recovered his ownership of

Six Above,

no one protested, for it was now recognized that he had more than earned the right to hold that claim.

However, when the Siberian Arkikov tried to move back onto Seven Above, the original protests were revived, and in a raucous miners' meeting it was again decreed that no Russian could hold a claim on Anvil Creek, and he was once more evicted.

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This time the rugged fellow was completely distraught, and again he moved from bar to bar trying to elicit sympathy and support, but now a rumor started circulating: 'It was the Siberian who murdered Horseface,' and the very men who had applauded the death of the usurper resented the fact that a Siberian had slain an American, and he became something of an outcast. His two partners tried to console him with a promise that they would share their profits with him, but this did not pacify him, and he continued to rant about the fact that this should never have happened in America.

But he was at heart an incorruptible optimist, and after several days of venting his resentment, he grabbed his prospecting gear and started up the valley cut by the parent stream, Snake River, testing the gravel in even the tiniest tributary.

He found nothing, and as dusk approached on the third day he came back to Nome disconsolate and seething.

What happened next can be appreciated only by another miner, but Arkikov had his prospecting toolsa fifty-cent pan and a sixty-cent shovel he had plenty of time, and he certainly had a wild lust for gold, so with no further streams to prospect, he looked at the endless stretch of beach before him and he cried with the soul of a true miner: 'Whole goddamn ocean . . . me look.' And he began to sift the sands of the Bering Sea.

Such things had happened before. Some men, drifting down the Mackenzie from Edmonton, had prospected every creek along the way. Others, near death from starvation, had paused in the mountains to prospect some errant stream. And now the Siberian Arkikov was prepared to prospect the whole Bering Sea. It was irrational, but to him it made sense.

He did not have to move far along the empty beach, for in his second pan, there in the quiet dusk with curlews overhead, he came upon one of the strangest finds in the history of mining. His pan, when washed in seawater, showed colors, and not just flecks, but real, substantial grains of gold.

Unwilling to believe what he saw, he poured the gold into an empty cartridge, then dipped again and once more found colors. Again and again, almost insanely, he ran along the beach, dipping and testing and always finding gold.

July sunset at Nome in those days before time was fiddled with came at about nine-thirty, so all that evening, in the gray-silver haze while the sun toyed with the horizon, this wild Siberian ran along the beaches, dipping and testing, and when night finally fell he had a story to relate that would astound the world.

He whispered it first to his partners, at a table in the Second Best Saloon, for if they had been faithful enough to 591

promise him a share of their wealth, he must reciprocate: 'No look round. No speak.

Me find something.' Quietly he handed the cartridge to Skjellerup, who furtively inspected it, whistled softly, and passed it along to Sana, who did not whistle but who did raise his eyebrows.

'Where?' Skjellerup asked without changing expression.

The beach.'

These two tested miners were the first to hear that the beaches of Nome literally crawled with gold, and like everyone who followed, they disbelieved. Clearly, Arkikov's misfortunes had addled his brain, and yet. .. there was the gold, clean and of a high quality. He had got it somewhere.

They would mollify him, urge him to keep his voice down, and when he was tranquil they would ask: 'What stream did you find it in?' But even after they had tried this tactic, they received the same answer.

'You mean the beach? The sea? Waves?'

'Yes.'

'You mean some miner lost his poke on the beach and you found it?'

'No.'

'What part of the beach?'

'Whole goddamn beach.'

This was so incredible that the two men suggested: 'Let's go to our digs and talk this over,' and when they did, Skjellerup and Sana found that Arkikov was locked into his story that the common, ordinary beaches of Nome teemed with gold.

'How many spots did you try?'

'Many. Many.'

'And all gave colors?'

'Yes.'

The two men considered this, and although they were inwardly driven to reject the report as improbable, there in the cartridge rested a substantial amount of gold.

Putting half into his hand, Skjellerup held it toward the Siberian and asked: 'If the sands are filled with this, why hasn't anybody else found it?' and Arkikov gave the resounding answer that explained the mystery of mining: 'Nobody look. Me look.

Me find.'

It was now midnight, and since the sun would rise at two-thirty, Skjellerup and Sana decided to remain awake and go out in the earliest dawn to test the truth of their partner's implausible yarn. 'We mustn't work near each other,' Skjellerup warned, 'and don't let anyone see us actually panning. Pick up driftwood maybe.'

Arkikov said he would not join them. He was tired from 592

his days of prospecting and had to have sleep; besides, he knew the gold was there.

So the Norwegian and the Lapp eased themselves out of their bunks at quarter past two on the morning of 16 July 1899 and strolled casually along the beaches of Nome, stopping idly now and then to salvage driftwood, and at five in the morning Lars Skjellerup sat on a log, covered his face with his hands, and came as near to tears as he ever had: 'I am so happy for Arkikov. After what they did to him.'

Displaying no emotion, the two stragglers slipped back to their bunks and shook Arkikov: 'The beaches are full of gold,' and he said sleepily: 'Me know. Me find.'

That afternoon, following the most careful assessment of how the three partners could best protect their interests in this incredible find, Skjellerup called a miners'

meeting at which he spoke with great force: 'Gentlemen, you know my partner here, Arkikov, who you call ”that damned Siberian.”Well, he's made a discovery that's going to make all of you millionaires. Well, maybe not that much, but damned rich.

'Now there's no law in Nome, and there's no example that we can apply in handling this stupendous find. The usual claim size just don't pertain. So we'll have to work out special rules, which I believe we can do.'

A miner off to the right called impatiently: 'What did he find?' and Skjellerup took from his pocket the cartridge, holding it high in his right hand and allowing the golden particles, some of which he himself had picked up that morning, to float down through the afternoon air and into his left palm. Even the men in the farthest corners of the Second Best could see that this was what they had come so far to find, placer gold.

'Where?' voices shouted as men edged toward the door to be the first to claim on the subsidiary sites.

'Like I told you, there's never been a gold field like this one. We need new rules.

I'm proposing that each man gets... well, let's say ten yards to the side.'

This was so preposterously minute in relation to a normal claim five hundred yards along the stream and across the flow to the top of the first bench that the men howled.

'All right!' Skjellerup conceded. 'This is an organizing meeting and you set the rules. That's proper, so go ahead.'

'Like always, five hundred yards along the stream and bench to bench.'

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'But there are no benches. There is no stream.'

'Where in hell is it?'

'Tell them, Arkikov.' And the smiling Siberian, all his white teeth showing, uttered the unprecedented words: 'Along the beach. Whole goddamn beach. Me find.'

Before his last words were pronounced, men were bursting out of the saloon, and within a minute only the three partners and one bartender, the one with a bad leg, were left. The real gold rush at Nome had begun.

THE BEACH STRIKE AT NOME WAS UNIQUE IN MANY WAYS.

Because the gold was so readily available, prospectors who had missed earlier rushes now had a second chance; they had only to dig in the sand and take out ten thousand dollars or forty, and if they could devise some ingenious machine for sluicing large quantities of sand with seawater, they were in line to become millionaires. Also, the painful work that John Klope had had to do high on his unproductive ridge above Eldorado burrowing down forty feet, building fires to thaw the frozen muck and hauling it to the surface would be avoided at Nome, where a man could go out in the morning, test his luck through an easy day, and complain in the saloons that night: 'Today I panned only four hundred dollars.'

But there was a similarity between the two historic strikes. As on the Klondike, Arkikov made his discovery so late in the season that even though word did get to Seattle on the last ship south, the Bering Sea froze over before any other ship could come north. This meant that the relatively few men lucky enough to reach Nome before the freeze would have clear pickings from July 1899 through June 1900. But while they sieved, a tremendous backlog of would-be miners would be building up at San Francisco and Seattle, for word had swept the world that 'in Nome the beaches are crawlin' with gold,' and the handful of miners who went south on that last ship had pouches and bars to prove it. When the ice finally melted in the early summer of 1900, Nome's population was going to skyrocket to more than thirty thousand, and it would still be a city without laws.