The Floor of Heaven (37 page)

TWENTY-NINE

p north in the Canadian Yukon Valley, George Carmack led the two Indians away from Henderson’s camp. The encounter had left them dispirited; even in the wilderness it was impossible to escape the pettiness of men. They were a sullen procession as they trudged along the banks of Gold Bottom Creek and then headed up the steep side of the mountain they’d descended only hours ago.

There was no trail, and the climb was a challenge. Like Charlie Siringo during his race to Hood Bay, they had to struggle over fallen trees, through sharp, thorny devil’s clubs and thickets of underbrush. It was near the end of a long day, and by now their packs weighed heavy on their backs. George pushed himself forward. He kept telling himself, “A weakling has no business to play in this kind of game.” He was determined to prove that he possessed the grit to be a prospector in the Yukon. In that way, goading himself on, he made it to the summit.

They roasted bear steaks that night and drank tea. In the morning, George woke ready to put yesterday’s unpleasantness behind him. He weighed the two small pieces of gold they’d found in his hand, and he felt encouraged. A plan quickly formed: They’d return to the creek where they’d panned the specks of coarse gold. Jim and Charley agreed that it was a promising strategy.

With George leading the way, they began hiking down the south side of the mountain. He reckoned it’d be a waste of valuable time to backtrack along the trail they’d previously made from Rabbit Creek, as the stream would soon become known. He’d try a more direct route.

He went west, heading straight into the sun, and led them into a large swamp. Crossing was a nasty business. The only way through was to try to get a footing on the clumps of spongy green underbrush scattered like stepping stones across the thick glacial ooze. But jumping from one clump of vegetation to the next, then keeping balance once you landed, was tricky with a fifty-pound pack on your back. The swarms of attacking mosquitoes and gnats didn’t help matters.

The trio was nearly halfway across when George landed in the dark muck. He began sinking quickly. In seconds the ooze had climbed above his thighs. He was convinced he was about to go under when he felt two heavy hands grabbing his shoulder. As if he were hoisting a sack of flour, Jim pulled George out of the muck and gingerly deposited him by his side on a small island of green swamp fronds. George’s clothes were dripping and his moccasins were wet and slimy, but otherwise, he began to realize as he caught his breath, he was none the worse for the dunking. He exercised particular caution, concentrating on each step, as he made his slow way across the remainder of the swamp.

They came out on a rocky trail, and with their wet moccasins they had a difficult time getting traction. There were some hard falls, but luck was with them. They managed not to break any bones. In this stumbling, weary way they reached the headwaters of Rabbit Creek.

George decided they should press on, and soon they came to the fork they’d previously encountered. As before, George was pulled toward Eldorado Creek. This time he walked up about a quarter of a mile and tried a few pans. He didn’t see any colors, so for the second time he rashly decided that his instincts were misleading him.

With the two Indians following, he retraced his steps and went up the other fork. He panned here, too, but found nothing but black sand. Nevertheless, he hiked along this branch for another quarter of a mile or so, sticking close to the rocky banks as the stream rose up the hillside. As the creek climbed higher, its clear blue waters were reduced to a trickle. But along the way there were several small pools swarming with grayling. Tagish Charley’s hands were so swift that he could reach in and grab a squirming fish at will. They made camp on this high ground and roasted grayling over the fire.

George was exhausted, but he didn’t go straight to sleep. He lay awake for hours staring up at the big starry sky and listening to the scurrying and chirping noises that twisted through the wilderness at night. This was the land of the Great Spirit and he knew his dream had led him here for a purpose. At last he grew tired, and he fell asleep cushioned by a fine, deep peace.

THE NEW day was August 16, 1896. By midmorning they’d worked their way downstream, toward the fork. George had panned as they’d trudged along, and the results had been promising. There were traces of colors in many of the pans. That’d made George more careful in his prospecting. As he followed each new bend of the creek, he scouted for signs of bedrock. “Looking for gold, look for bedrock” was an old sourdough adage, and George took the wisdom to heart. He kept his eyes peeled.

About half a mile below the fork, Rabbit Creek broke off in a sharp bend to the right, and George stayed with this tributary. He marched up a steep bank. When he was about fifty feet from the water’s edge, he came to a halt. He looked down the bank and saw a strip of black bedrock. It must’ve been, he guessed, only a hundred feet long and just an arm’s length wide. But it was, he knew at once, “the very thing we were looking for.”

He waited until the two Indians caught up to him and then pointed excitedly at the dark streak cutting down the bank. “Look down there, boys,” he said. “We surely ought to find gold down there.”

Throwing off his pack, George scrambled down the bank of the creek. Something in the shallow water immediately caught his eye. It was shining out at him from the rim of the bedrock. Instinctively, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand; the moment seemed impossible, as if it were part of a world where salmon had twenty-dollar gold pieces for eyes. But this time when he reached down into the cool water, he didn’t abruptly wake up from a dream. He grasped a gold nugget as big as his thumb. Yet he still couldn’t believe it. To be sure, he put the nugget between his teeth and bit hard. The nugget bent. It wasn’t a yellow rock.

“Hi yu gold!” he bellowed to his partners. “Bring down the pan and shovel. Hurry!”

The gold lay in long flat slabs wedged into the crevices of rocks. It sparkled in the creek bed. It washed down in their pans. It was a treasure for the taking.

George flung his tin pan heavy with gold high into the air. A fine yellow shower rained down on him like a heavenly mist. And when the pan landed, he spontaneously broke into a dance. He was wild with delight. Jim and Charley joined in, too, the three of them dancing with abandon around the pan. What a time they had! Bursting with happiness, they improvised a war dance that, George would always remember with an unashamed grin, was part “Scotch hornpipe, Indian fox trot, syncopated Irish jig, and a sort of Siwash Hula-Hula.” They danced and danced with an unrestrained joy.

That night they gave thanks. The Indians sat around the fire smoking their pipes and gave praise to the Great Spirit. With blankets wrapped around their shoulders, Jim and Charley chanted in Tagish. They sang of the times that had led them to the Great Discovery, of hungry days, of silent, aimless trails, of failed hunts. They thanked the spirits for all the years of hardships because now they understood that these were part of one journey. The Wealth Woman had spoken to George, and the promise she had given him was their fulfilled blessing, too.

George’s gratitude ran a different course. He refused to look back at the past. To his mind, all that came before had in an instant been made irrelevant. With a pious conviction, George believed he had “unlocked a treasure chest” and he would show his thanks by freely enjoying what a fortune of gold could buy. All his life he’d run from civilization. There’d been a time when even Juneau had seemed too filled with city ways. His ideal had been sharing with Kate and Gracie a log cabin that faced the shimmering waters of the Dyea River. But wrapped in his blanket on that first night of his new life, he made a mental accounting of his new ambitions: “A trip around the world with a congenial companion. A beautiful home with well kept lawns, shrubbery and flowers. A sum invested in government bonds, the income of which would be sufficient to enable me to enjoy the good things of life in a decent way and keep me comfortable for the balance of my life.”

Then he fell into a dreamless sleep.

THEY WERE up at the break of day. George brewed coffee, and this morning, rather than complaining about having to take it without sugar or milk, he found himself thinking that he’d soon be sipping out of fine china cups. In high spirits, he took his hand ax and chose a small spruce tree standing in the center of the flat creek bank. He blazed the spruce on both the up-and the downstream sides. Then he wrote on the upstream side with a pencil:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

I do, this day, locate and claim, by right of discovery, five hundred feet, running up stream from this notice. Located this 17th day of August, 1896.

G. W. Carmack

Then he staked out his claim. Taking a fifty-foot tape line out of his pack, he measured five hundred feet upstream. The Klondike was in Canada, and under Canadian mining law this was the maximum length allowed for a claim, but it would straddle the creek from rimrock to rimrock. He made the calculations with great care. Every inch held treasure; the slightest error could lose him a fortune. He walked over rocks and flat land and along sandy banks. It was only a small strip of land, but he was convinced that it would allow him to purchase a kingdom.

Where his claim ended, he measured off another five hundred feet for Jim. Then he went back to the starting point and headed downstream. He measured off five hundred feet for Charley. The discoverer was allowed by law to make two claims on a single stream—all other prospectors were allowed only one—so he then marked off an additional five hundred feet downstream for himself. It was a long and meticulous process. It took hours.

Canadian law required that he register the sites he’d staked within sixty days; he’d need to go to the recorder’s office in Fortymile. George understood that even once this was done, his hold on the four specific claims still might be disputed. His survey, after all, was not very exact. And he’d only be able to enter an approximate location of the creek bed into the register. Still, George was confident that the NorthWest Mounted Police would enforce his rights; the Canadian Yukon was better policed than the nearly lawless American Alaska Territory. He also counted on the prospector’s code; it was unlikely that any of the old sourdoughs would pull up his wooden stakes and claim the creek bed for their own. But if there was a claim jumper, George was prepared to use his Winchester to settle any argument. He was still a good shot, and the two Indians would join in if things got rough. That was the way things were in the north, and it’d have to do, he told himself.

When he finished pounding in the boundary stakes, George was still not ready to leave. Ahead lay a difficult thirty-mile journey back to the Klondike River, where they’d beached their canoe. But there was one more thing he needed to do.

A tall birch tree stood on the bank above where he’d found the first gold nugget. With his ax, he cut off a piece of bark. Then he took his pencil and wrote on it: “I name this creek Bonanza. George Carmack.”

It was the name of the vision that had filled his head as a lonely shepherd in the California hills. It was the legacy he’d been destined to inherit from his father. And now he’d claimed it.

With the back of his ax head, he nailed the bark sign into the tree. He left a pan and shovel beside it, symbols of his achievement. Then he shouldered his pack, and the three men began the long hike to the Klondike.

THIRTY

n the days that followed the arrest of the two thieves, mine superintendent Durkin sent a special steam launch to Chieke Bay to retrieve the stolen gold. As Charlie supervised, a crew carted the bars from the Indian camp to the launch moored off the beach. The detective made sure the frying pan was taken along, too; after all, a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of gold coated the pan. Once the ship got under way, a burly retinue of armed guards, rifles cradled in their arms and six-guns on their hips, stood on deck. Now that Durkin had his gold back, he was determined not to lose it again.

Along with the marshal, Charlie and Billy accompanied the two prisoners on the commercial steamer Lucy to Juneau. On Charlie’s instructions, the thieves were kept apart, each at separate ends of the boat. Billy guarded a snarling Schell; the marshal stayed with a weepy Hubbard. Throughout the voyage Charlie stood on deck, keeping watch. His fear was that Schell had gotten word to his friend the Tlingit chief of the village. If the chief had been promised a cut from the hidden gold, he’d be mighty disappointed by now. So Charlie kept scanning the horizon, expecting to see a flotilla of birch canoes carrying an Indian war party. He’d fought in the bloody Red River Indian War when waves of Comanches allied with Kiowa-Apaches had charged with the murderous skill of trained cavalry brigades. The prospect of just two Pinkertons and a marshal holding off a mess of Indians, even if they weren’t on horseback, made sleep impossible. Charlie stayed at his post around the clock, and didn’t feel any ease until the Lucy docked in Juneau.

Raging with anger, fiercely unrepentant, Schell was led off to the jail in Juneau. But before the marshal took him away, Schell turned to confront Charlie. No jail will hold me, he promised. He’d break out and come looking for the detective. There was a score to be settled.

“I’ll be waiting,” Charlie said with conviction.

Hubbard wasn’t taken straight to jail. Charlie had other plans. Since the arrest, the thief had undergone a transformation. All his previous swagger had disappeared. He was no longer the snide gunny itching to show his prowess. Hubbard had sat hunched and mute in the cabin, sobbing from time to time with deep emotion. He’d barely touched his food. He knew he was facing a long stretch in the Alaska territorial penitentiary, and years in a frontier jail would be hard time. Of course, Charlie also reckoned, going days without a drink must be taking its toll, too. So Charlie decided he’d take advantage of Hubbard’s depressed state. He’d job him.

Instead of letting the marshal take Hubbard to jail, Charlie removed his handcuffs. Make a break for it, and I’ll shoot you down, Charlie warned. But you behave yourself, and you can stay with me for a spell. Hubbard nodded in resigned agreement; anything was better than jail.