CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XII.SWIFTWATER BILL GATES is back.”One morning in Seattle months after Bera and I had set up a little housekeeping establishment in Seattle, I picked up the Saturday evening edition of The Times and almost dropped over in my chair when I saw headlines in the paper as shown in the foregoing.What had been Swiftwater Bill’s fortune in all those months, I knew not, but the fact as stated in the paper that he had returned from Alaska was sufficient for me.Bera said: “Mama, I don’t know any reason why you should fuss around about Swiftwater.”“Never mind me,” said I, “I’ll find him, my dear, just to see what he has to say for himself.”Down to the Hotel Northern, then the Butler, the Rainier-Grand and the Stevens and all the rest I went and searched the registers without avail. As I remember now, it took me the greater part of a day to cover all the ground.Finally, by a curious chance I located Swiftwater at the Victoria Hotel. I waited until the next morning and then went to the Victoria and asked for Gates.Swiftwater, the clerk said, was out—had not been seen but once since his arrival.I am not going to say whether or not it was the humor of the situation or the bitter resentment I bore toward him that led me to tramp up three flights of stairs to the little parlor on the landing close to Swiftwater’s room, and to wait there ten hours at a stretch—until 1:10 in the morning. Then I went home, only to return at 8 o’clock the next day.“Mr. Gates is in his room, but he is asleep,” said the clerk.“I am Mrs. Beebe, his mother-in-law, and I want to see him now and I shall go direct to his room. You can go with me if you desire,” said I. The little clerk scanned me carefully and then said, “Very well.” We went upstairs together.The clerk rapped on the door twice. There was no answer.“I guess he’s out,” said the boy.“Knock again—good and loud,” I commanded.The boy rapped and just then the door opened a tiny way—about an inch, I guess, but through that little crack I saw the eye and part of the curling black moustache of Swiftwater Bill.Then I threw myself against the door and walked in.“COME OUT OF THAT, BILL! I HAVEN’T GOT A GUN.”I wish I could tell you how funny was Swiftwater’s apparition, as, clad only in his white night robe, he jumped into bed, pulling the covers over his head.This was the first time that Swiftwater had seen me since he left me in Dawson alone and unprotected, to find means as best I could to provide shelter and sustenance for his little baby boy, Clifford.In spite of myself, I laughed, forgetting all of the long months that we had waited for some sign of Swiftwater and an indication of his desire to do what was right by his own two little babies.“Coward,” I said, still laughing. “You know you deserve to be shot.”No answer from Swiftwater, whose body was completely covered up by bed clothes.Now, most men and most women will admire a MAN, but a cur and a coward are universally despised.As I looked at that huddled up mass of humanity underneath the white bedspread, my heart rose in rage. The contempt I felt for him is beyond all expression.“Come out of that, Bill,” said I. “I have no gun!”After a while, Swiftwater poked his head from beneath the bed clothes and showed a blanched face covered with a three weeks’ old growth of blackbeard. I told him to dress and I would wait outside. In a few minutes Swiftwater emerged and there stood a man who had commanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in money and gold in Alaska, looking just exactly as if he had dropped from the brake-beam of a Northern Pacific freight train and had walked his way into Seattle. He was clad in a dirty sack coat, that shone like a mirror, with brown striped trousers, an old brown derby hat and shoes that were out at the sole and side.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater in a trembling voice, “I am all in. If you will not have me arrested, but will give me a chance, I’ll soon provide for the babies and Bera.”Swiftwater pleaded as if for his life. He said that he could get money in San Francisco from a man who had offered to back him in a new scheme in the Tanana country.There was I with the two little boys and Bera all on my hands. I told Swiftwater that I would do nothing for him, but that I would forego having him put behind steel bars until I had made up my mind just what course I should take.The next night, there was a knock at our door about 3 o’clock in the morning. Bera slept in the front room of our little two-room apartment and I in the other with the babies. I went to the door—there stood Swiftwater.“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “I have no place to sleep tonight. If you will let me lie down on the floor, so that I can get a little sleep, I will get up early tomorrow morning and not bother you.”I told Bera to come into my room and I let Swiftwater into the kitchen, where I gave him a comforter on which to lie. The next morning, after Bera had gone, I prepared Swiftwater’s breakfast. The man was in rags, almost. I made him take a bath, while I washed his underclothes, and then I went out and bought him a new pair of socks and gave him money with which to buy a new hat.The next day Swiftwater went to San Francisco on money I furnished him after I had pawned my diamonds with one of the best jewelry houses in Seattle.Why? Well, because Swiftwater had made me believe that he had another chance in the Tanana and that his friends in San Francisco, having faith in his judgment as a miner—whatever may be said of Swiftwater, he was known throughout the North as an expert miner—had raised a large sum with which to grubstake him.I will say this for Swiftwater: that he gave me a contract providing that he should pay what he owed me and give me an interest in such mines as he would locate in the Tanana country. And then he went away.CHAPTER XIII.SOMETIMES, when I recall the stirring events in Swiftwater Bill’s career, following the time he used the money I raised by pawning my diamonds and then went to California, I am tempted to wonder whether or not a man of his type of mental makeup ever realized that the hard bumps that he gets along the corduroy road of adversity are one and all of his own making. For, if one will but pause a moment and analyze the events in Swiftwater Bill’s melodramatic career, the inevitable result comes to him, namely, that the bumps over which Swiftwater traveled during all of those years, when, one day he was worth a half million dollars in gold, and the next was hiding in all manner of dark and subterranean recesses in order to avoid deputy sheriffs and constables with writs and court processes, were placed there by his own hands and as skilfully and effectively as if he had deliberately planned to cause himself misery.Swiftwater’s transformation from a broken down tramp of the Weary Willie order to a fine gentleman and prosperous business man, with new tailor made clothes, patent leather shoes and his favoredsilk tile, was rapid after he got his hands on the money I borrowed from the jewelers, with my diamonds as the pledge. The change in Swiftwater was simply marvelous. The day before almost, Swiftwater had stood before me, as I have told, without collar or tie, a dirty black growth of beard nearly an inch long on his unshaven chin and cheek, a dark frock coat of a nondescript shape that had seen better days and hung on Bill’s frame as though it might have been loaned to him by some friend; a pair of trousers of mediocre workmanship and his feet almost sticking out of his shoes.Then picture Swiftwater ready to board the steamer for San Francisco, where his friend Marks was waiting to grubstake him to the tune of $18,000, jauntily wearing his polished beaver on the side of his head, his black moustaches curled and waving in the breezes, his chin as smooth and immaculate as an ivory billiard ball and his air and manner that of a man who had absolute confidence in himself and his future.It is no wonder then, that when Swiftwater reached San Francisco outfitted as I have described, he found plenty of men, who, charmed by the magic of his description of the golden lure of the North and hypnotized into a state of enthusiasm by the halo of romance and river beds lined with gold attached to Swiftwater’s name, were willing toback him heavily for another venture in the North.By this time the Tanana District was becoming famous throughout the world and the town of Fairbanks had been located and Cleary had brought forth from the stream that bears his name thousands of dollars of virgin gold, thus proving beyond question the richness of the country.Now, I am ready to believe that most people will agree with me that Swiftwater was about as rapid and agile a performer as any of his contemporaries who occupy the hall of fame in the annals of Alaska. Because it was only a few short weeks until Swiftwater returns to Seattle with his pockets bulging with currency and prepared to leave for Fairbanks.Of course, I knew nothing of Swiftwater’s presence in Seattle, though it had been only a few short weeks since I had, with my own hands, in the kitchen in the little two-room apartment we occupied, washed his only suit of underclothes, so that he could go on the street without being annoyed by the police.The first I knew of Swiftwater’s return from San Francisco was when I read in the morning paper that “W. C. Gates, the well known and opulent Alaska miner,” had entertained a distinguished party of Seattle business men at a banquet at one of the big down town hotels. The cost of that feed,as I afterwards learned, was about $100—of Mr. Marks’ money. Be that as it may, before I could find Swiftwater and gently recall to him the fact that his wife and two little children were almost in absolute want in Seattle he had managed to board a steamer for the Tanana and was off for the North.Now, when I found that Swiftwater had gone, I was frantic with the desire to follow him up to Alaska. For the year and a half that I had remained in Seattle, waiting like Micawber for something to turn up, the fever to get back to Alaska seemed to be growing in my veins at a rate that meant that something had to be done. For, after Alaska has once laid her spell over a man or woman, in nine times out of ten, she will claim him or her from that time onward to the end of life as her devoted and always loyal slave. I know not, nor have I ever found any who did know, what it is that makes one who has ever lived in Alaska, and who has left there, unhappy and discontented until they go back once more to the land of gold.I have seen and talked with old “sourdoughs,” trappers and dog team freighters, and they all tell the same story. When the first big clean-up had been made in Dawson, I remember well, the winter following found a mob of big, boisterous, pleasure loving, money spending, carefree and happy heartedKlondike miners in the hotels of Seattle, San Francisco and New York. They lived on nothing but the choicest steaks and the richest wines, and the sight of a plate of beans would start a fight. Then they would all come back to Seattle in the spring, sick, feverish, unhappy, with a look in their eyes like that of a mother hungering for her lost babe. In Seattle they would spend a restless week, but when they struck the trail at White Horse just before the spring breakup in the Yukon every man jack of them was himself again—jolly, joyous, carefree, full voiced and filled with the enthusiasm of a two-year-old.Why, I have known more than one broad shouldered giant of the trail grow as sick and puny as a singed kitten while waiting in Seattle for his boat to take him, late in February or early in March, to Skagway. I knew one miner, who in health was six feet five inches tall, weighing two hundred and forty pounds without an ounce of fat on him, come within an ace of dying with quick consumption, which it afterwards proved was due to his longing for the biting wind that blows from the top of Alaska’s Coast Range and bears company with the wayfarer down in the valley of the Yukon past the lakes and into the gold camps of the Klondike.Well, all this came to me then as I realized that Swiftwater was gone North once more in searchof gold, but, with Bera in Seattle and the two babies, I was shackled as securely as any one of the wretches who walk the streets of this city with chains and ball working out a sentence for vagrancy.It is not a less remarkable thing to be told of Swiftwater that he turned Dame Fortune’s wheel once more with the dial pointing in his direction as quickly as he had raised the necessary money in San Francisco to make a new start in Fairbanks. To all who know of Swiftwater’s kaleidoscopic changes from rich to poor, and back again to rich, it seems as if the fickle Dame, carrying a magic horn spilling gold in all directions, followed Swiftwater wherever he went into Alaska and out again, down to the cities of the States and back again, and, if she seemed to lose him for a while, always to welcome him back with a winning smile.Of course, it is part of my story that after Swiftwater had amassed another fortune on Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, and his friend, Mr. Marks, who had grubstake him, sought to obtain his rights in the property, it was found that the contract between them written by Swiftwater was as full of holes as a sieve. Again the lawyers went to work earning big fees in the litigation which Marks brought to compel Swiftwater to do the honorable thing—to do that by him which any man in Alaska, at leastwhile he lived there, never failed to do—to divide with the man who grubstaked him.Now, Swiftwater, as my reader has by this time safely guessed, was made in a different mould. They used to say in the early days when the stories of the incredible richness of Eldorado’s gold lined bedrock were told on the “outside,” that when a man in Alaska drank the water of the country, the truth left him. I have never, for my own part, fully determined whether this is true, and I may frankly say that in some of my experiences, the opportunities for judging of the truth or falsity of this theory were limited, the reason being that most of the men drink something beside water in that country.As for Swiftwater Bill, he never did drink anything but water—I never knew him to take a drop of any intoxicating liquors or wine—so that if the water of Alaska had any demoralizing effect on Swiftwater, it must have been in the direction of his sense of business honor and integrity and a decent sense of his obligations as a husband and a father. And I am satisfied, too, that the water of Alaska, if such was the demoralizing agent in Swiftwater’s case, certainly worked terrific havoc.SWIFTWATER BILL GATES, FREDDIE GATES AT RIGHT, AND CLIFFORD GATES, AT BOTTOM.CHAPTER XIV.SWIFTWATER BILL had struck it again.On Number 6 Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, the man who gained his chiefest fame in the early days of Dawson by walking around the rapids of Miles Canyon, because he was afraid to navigate them, thereby earning his cognomen, “Swiftwater Bill,” had found another fortune in the yellow gold that lines countless tens of thousands of little creeks and dry gulches in that great northern country—Alaska.Swiftwater had obtained a big working interest in the mine on Cleary Creek, a stream that has produced its millions in yellow gold. And, after the first discovery of placer gold in paying quantities in the Tanana, the whole Western coast of the American continent knew the story. Like Dawson, the town of Fairbanks quickly sprang from the soil as if reared by the magic of some unseen genii of the Arabian Nights.Of course, the word came out to me in a letter from a friend at Fairbanks. And I sometimes think that, after all, I must have had a great many friends in Alaska who remembered the hard task that thefates had put upon me when they made me, through no wish of my own, the mother-in-law of Swiftwater Bill.As I remember now, the news that Swiftwater had struck another pay streak impressed upon me the necessity of immediate action. Swiftwater’s previous conduct, particularly that $100 dinner that he gave in Seattle a few months before, had taught me one thing, and that was that if Gates was ever to do the square thing by me and by Bera and the babies it would be only when some one with sufficient will power to accomplish the task would reach him and see that he did not forget his duty.Now, it is no May day holiday for a woman to “mush” over the ice from the coast of Alaska to the interior mining camps. First you have to get an outfit in Seattle, and by that I mean sufficient heavy underclothing, outer clothing, heavy boots, furs and sleeping bag and the like to make travel over the ice comfortable. Ten years ago any woman who made that journey—that is, from Dyea over the mountain passes covered with glaciers and thence down the Upper Yukon on the ice—was considered almost as a heroine and the newspapers were eager to print the stories of such exploits. When I determined to go into the Tanana to find Swiftwater mining gold on Number 6 Cleary there were few, if any, of the comforts of present-day winter travelon the Valdez-Fairbanks trail, such as horse stages and frequent road-houses.Consequently, I determined to follow the old route, and I went to Skagway, thence over the White Pass road to White Horse and, crossing Lake Le Barge on the ice, there to await the departure for Dawson of the first down river steamer.It was in the early spring of the year—that is, early for Alaska, although when I left Seattle the orchards were in bloom and lawns were as green as in mid-summer. Lake Le Barge was still frozen over, and the upper waters of the Yukon were beginning to show their first gigantic unrest of that spring—a mighty unrest that carries with it the movement of vast ice gorges down the canyon of the Upper Yukon to the Klondike, and which, if suddenly halted on its way to the sea by an unexpected drop in temperature, is likely to work havoc with men and property and sometimes human lives.The Yukon River is not like any other stream on the American continent with which you and I are familiar. It seems to be a thing alive when the spring sun begins to loosen the icy chains that bind it hard and fast to old Mother Earth through eight long and dreary winter months. No greater phenomena of nature, showing the change that spring brings to all forms of life—human, animal and plant—isto be found anywhere than the awakening of the Yukon River after her voiceless sleep.At White Horse the freight for Dawson and the Tanana mines was stacked twenty feet high in all directions when we boarded the first steamer and followed the ice jam down the river to Dawson. Eventually, on a little steamer that plied between Dawson and Fairbanks when the ice is far enough gone to make navigation safe, I made my way to the chief mining camp of the Tanana—Fairbanks, named after the vice-president, who visited the North when he was a senator from Indiana.I had no trouble in finding Gates.“Swiftwater,” I said, “I am here to have you provide for your wife and children, and to pay at least part of what you owe me.”Bill was courteous, suave, obliging and well mannered.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Bill, “at last I am fixed so that I can do the right thing by you and all others. As soon as I can make my last payment on my Cleary Creek property, I will square everything up, and give you plenty of money for Bera and the boys.”Now, I know that everyone who reads this little book will say to themselves:“If Mrs. Beebe don’t get her money now, she certainly is foolish.”Swiftwater, to be sure, saw that my hotel bills were paid and told me every day that in a short time he would clean up enough gold to make himself independent, and provide bountifully for Bera and the two boys—and I believed him.Swiftwater’s sister, the mother of Kitty, his polygamous wife, was, I quickly learned, living in a tent on Bill’s claim, waiting to lay hold of him and his money as soon as the clean-up was finished. Long before this he had deserted Kitty, and in all the turmoil and trouble that came after his bigamous marriage to his niece I had lost all track of that unfortunate girl.I remember now how odd it struck me that Swiftwater’s sister was there, living in a little white canvas tent, and enduring the privations which any woman must suffer in that country, while I, actuated by the same desire, was waiting for Swiftwater to finish washing up the dumps on his claims. And I recalled at the time that when Swiftwater mined thousands of gold from his claims in the Klondike he allowed his own mother to cook in a cabin of a miner on a claim not far from his own, and although rich beyond his fondest dreams had permitted that poor woman to earn her own living by the hardest kind of drudgery and toil.CHAPTER XV.SWIFTWATER’S clean-up on Number 6 Cleary Creek was $75,000 in gold. The summer was come to an end and there were signs on the trees, in the crackling of the frosted grass in the early morning and in the bite of the night wind from the mountain canyons that told of the quick approach of winter in the Tanana. Swiftwater had been more than usually fortunate. His mine on Number 6 Cleary had yielded far beyond his expectations. Swiftwater had every reason to believe his friends who told him that his luck was phenomenal.As there are compensating advantages and disadvantages in almost every phase of human life in this world, it may possibly be said that as an offset to Swiftwater’s phenomenal luck, he had two women, the mothers of his two wives, waiting patiently at Fairbanks for him to bring out enough money to properly provide for his families. I had told Swiftwater:“I am up here to take good care of you, Bill, and incidentally to see that you provide enough money to feed and clothe your children and your wife. Idon’t care anything about that other woman over there.”Bill laughed, and said it was probably a lucky thing for him that he had a mother-in-law to look after his welfare. But if Swiftwater’s mind ever hovered around the idea of criminal proceedings on the score of bigamy, he did not give voice to it. He merely went around in his cheerful way from day to day working vigorously with his men until, finally, early in September, the last of the pay dirt was washed from the dumps into the sluice boxes and the gold sacked and taken to the bank.Then Bill began paying off his debts. He settled with his partners, and then with a big chunk of bills and drafts in his inside pocket we started for Seattle.It was getting winter rapidly and we had no time to lose in order to catch the steamship “Ohio,” at St. Michael, for Seattle, before the winter freeze-up on Bering Sea.Swiftwater, while working on Number 6 Cleary, had been all business and activity. Now, he seemed on the little boat going down the Tanana to be his old self again—by that I mean that Swiftwater reverted to his conduct of early days, which had lead some people to believe that he was descended from the Mormon stock back in Utah. Why Swiftwater had never earned the title of the Brigham Young ofthe Klondike instead of the Knight of the Golden Omelette or just plain Swiftwater, I never could quite understand.At Fairbanks Swiftwater induced a woman, whose name I shall not give at this time, to board the steamer for the outside. A half day’s further ride took us to Chena, and there Swiftwater met another friend by the name of Violet—a girl who had worked as housekeeper and cook for a crowd of miners during the summer because her husband had deserted her and left her penniless in Fairbanks.This Violet was young and comely, and of gentle breeding. The hard life in the mining camps of the Yukon and the bitterness she had suffered at the hands of her truant husband had taken a little of the natural refinement from the girl and had probably shaped her life so that the better side could not be seen.Be that as it may, Violet came with Swiftwater, but, when she found on the steamship “Ohio” that Swiftwater had tipped one of the crew $100 so as to enable him to have a seat with a woman on each side of him at his meals, Violet refused to have anything to do with him.At St. Michael, when I found that Swiftwater thought more of the association of women and of having his kind of a good time than of providing for his wife and children, I made up my mind that therewould have to be a showdown of some kind. I telegraphed to Bera at Seattle:“Swiftwater is coming down on the Ohio. You had better see him now, if you want anything.”We were nine days making the trip from St. Michael to Seattle. When the crowd on the boat learned that Swiftwater Bill was on board, everybody looked for fireworks and a good time. The captain ordered notice put up in the dining room, reading:“Gambling positively prohibited on this boat.”Swiftwater saw that sign and gently laughed to himself.“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “I am going to have some fun with the boys. So if I come to borrow some money from you, don’t be foolish and refuse me.”Swiftwater had some few hundred in cash, but most of his money was in drafts, which he could not cash on the boat. When I found that the boys had started a little poker game, I expected Swiftwater to be coming to me for money in a little while, and sure enough he did.“Swiftwater,” I said, “as long as you play poker you can’t have any money from me, because you know you can’t play poker. But if you will start a solo game I will let you have a little change.”Now, Swiftwater swelled up visibly because heknew that I thought he was one of the best solo players in all the North, and I have to laugh even now to recall that after the first fifteen minutes of play at solo the men who had sought to fleece him of his money, found they had no chance and they all stopped the game.It was late Saturday afternoon when finally the Ohio poked her nose in front of one of the docks in Seattle. There was a strong ebb tide, and it was nearly an hour before the gang plank was run ashore. We docked jam up against a little steamer on our left, and Swiftwater, being in a hurry to get ashore, asked me if I would take his grip in the carriage to the Cecil Hotel and he would join me in a little while, after he could get a shave. With that Swiftwater jumped to the deck of the little steamer next to us and thence to the dock and was gone.I went direct to the Cecil Hotel, where Bera was waiting for me. Before I had been there a half hour the newsboys on the streets were crying the sale of the Seattle Times:“All about Swiftwater Bill arrested for bigamy.”I heard the shrill voices of the urchins from my window in the hotel and I said:“Bera, what have you done—had him arrested?”I rang the bell and told the bell-boy to bring up a copy of The Times. Sure enough, there was thewhole story of a warrant issued for Swiftwater Bill on the charge of bigamy and a long yarn about his various escapes in Alaska, including a recital of how he ruined the life of young Kitty Gates, his niece, by eloping with her and marrying her while he was still the lawful husband of Bera.Just about dusk—I think it must have been at 8 o’clock that evening—there came a knock at the door. I went to answer it, and there in the hall of the hotel stood a man who was an absolute stranger to me.“Mrs. Beebe?”“This is Mrs. Beebe.”“Swiftwater wants to see you. I am Jack Watson, who used to be with him in the north.”“Where is he?” I asked.“I can’t tell you where he is, Mrs. Beebe,” said the man, “but if you will go with me I can find him.”Five minutes later we were on First Avenue, which was crowded with thousands of sightseers, it being Saturday night, and everybody seemed to be out for a good time. Watson led me up Spring Street to the alley between First and Second Avenues and then went down the alley till, reaching the shadow of a tall building, he said:“Please wait here a minute, Mrs. Beebe.”I looked down at the brilliantly lighted street corneron First Avenue, where is situated the Rainier-Grand Hotel, and there I saw Swiftwater standing, smoking a cigar, while hundreds of people were passing up and down the sidewalk. He little looked as if the deputy sheriffs were after him.In a moment Watson had brought Swiftwater to me.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater, “what did you wire to Bera? Did you tell her I was coming out and to have me arrested?”“I certainly wired her,” said I, “and, Swiftwater, if she’s had you arrested that’s your business.”“Mrs. Beebe, you’ve been the only friend I’ve ever had and now you have thrown me down,” said the miner.Said I, “Swiftwater, I have not thrown you down, and it’s about time that you showed some indication of trying to do what is right by me and Bera and the babies.”“Here’s that $250 I borrowed from you on the boat,” said Swiftwater, “and I guess after all that you are really the only friend I ever had in this world. Won’t you tell me what to do now?”I hesitated a moment and then it seemed to me that there was little to be gained by having Swiftwater thrown into jail without any chance whatever to secure his release on bail. In spiteof all that I had suffered from him, and all the untold misery and humiliation that he had put upon my daughter Bera, I felt sorry for Swiftwater.“You had better take this $250 back,” said I, “as you may have to get out of town tonight. Have you any other money on you?”“Not a cent,” said he.“Very well, you can pay me that money you owe some other time,” I said.Then Swiftwater and I fell to talking as to what had best be done. He wanted very much to see Bera and the babies and begged me, if I thought it safe, to take him to the hotel. Finally, seeing the big crowd on the streets, I consented, and together we went to the Cecil, entered the elevator and then went directly to my rooms.Bera was there with the boy Freddie—the youngest. Swiftwater kissed Bera and the baby, but Bera turned away and went into another room, the tears streaming down her face.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater, “the penitentiary will be my fate unless this bigamy charge is withdrawn. You and Bera and the babies will lose if I go to state’s prison, and that is where Kitty Gates will send me unless Bera will get a divorce.”Just then there came a loud rap at the door, and without waiting for either of us to speak the door was opened and in walked two deputy sheriffs. They immediately placed Swiftwater under arrest.CHAPTER XVI.AS A VERACIOUS chronicler of the events, inexplicable and unbelievable as this story may appear, of the life and exploits of Swiftwater Bill Gates, I want to begin this chapter with the prefatory announcement that, all and singular, as the lawyers say, the statements herein are absolutely true and may be verified.I give this simple warning merely because, as I recall what happened the next two or three days after Swiftwater’s arrest, it seems to me that many of my readers will say, “These things could not have happened.”Swiftwater, calmly seating himself, in a big leather upholstered Morris chair, said, looking at the Sheriff; “Old man, I guess we can fix this thing up right here. Send for the judge and have him come down here quick.”The officer looked at me and smiled.“I don’t want to see Mr. Gates put in jail tonight” said I. “And if there is any way that this thing can be settled I am willing. More than that,” and here I looked at Swiftwater, “I think Bill will not make any attempt to escape, and if it is all right with you, I’ll go on his bond.”After more palaver of this kind, and here I am about to tell something about judicial processes that will surely cause a smile, a messenger was sent from the hotel to another hotel, where was stopping Judge Hatch, who was sitting on the Superior Court bench in King County, although he lived in another county down the Sound.Outside in the hall there were a score of people, waiting to see Swiftwater, and to learn what would be the outcome of the case. There was the sheriff, Lou Smith; two other deputies, a half dozen lawyers and the reporters for the Seattle newspapers—quite a colony altogether.After half an hour the judge came in the room, accompanied by another deputy sheriff.“We’d just as well have some of the lawyers in here,” said Swiftwater. “Ask Mr. Murphy and Mr. Cole to come in.”The door was opened and in came the attorneys and some others.“Will you please ring the bell, Mrs. Beebe?” said Swiftwater.I rang the bell, the boy came and Swiftwater ordered two pint bottles of wine.Now, this was Swiftwater’s way of dallying with justice. It was another exemplification of his idea—the mainspring in the man’s whole character—that money could do anything and everything.The wine came, two bottles at a time and then four, and then six. Every time the boy came up, Swiftwater borrowed money from me to pay the bill. Then Swiftwater did something that I never believed could happen. The National Bank at Fairbanks had, a few weeks before, issued its first currency—the first government bank notes in all Alaska. Swiftwater had a bunch of the new $20 bills and, wrapping in each a nugget taken from Number 6 Cleary, he presented one to each of his friends—that is, all who were present.“If Mr. Gates will deposit $2,250, as counsel for Mrs. Gates desires, which is to be applied for the maintenance of herself and children and for attorney’s fees, I think we may continue this matter until a later date,” said the judge.Swiftwater came over to me.“I’ve got a thousand dollar draft,” said he, “and if you will loan me $1,250 I’ll pay everything up Monday,” said Swiftwater.I have never yet fully made up my mind what led me to loan Swiftwater that money, unless it was that, like everyone else who knew of his wonderful capacity for getting money rapidly out of the North, I believed he would make good all of his promises. I gave him the money, and Swiftwater was a free man.Just then the sheriff himself opened the door and,noticing one of the lawyers holding a bunch of bills and drafts in his hand, said:“I guess I will take charge of this.”And so it came about that the money was deposited in the clerk’s office in the county court, and on Monday morning, before any of us were about, the lawyers for Bera, Murphy & Cole, appeared in the courthouse with an order signed by the judge to draw the money out. Bera got $750 of the $1,000 promised her for maintenance for herself and children and the lawyers got the remainder.Is it any wonder, then, that I have often thought it was the easiest thing in the world for Swiftwater to find a loophole in the meshes of the law by which he could escape, while I have never yet found a way to make the law give me just common justice?And now it was Swiftwater’s turn to act. In another day the newspapers had his story that he had been “held up,” and after that came a sensation in the Bar Association of Seattle the like of which is not on record. And while the lawyers were fighting over the spoils, Swiftwater cleverly enough, though haunted by the spectre of the state prison, and constantly pressed by Kitty Gates, his polygamous wife, began working on Bera’s sympathies. He came to the hotel and went to Bera’s room.“Bera,” he said, “unless you get a divorce from me, and do it at once, Kitty will send me to thepenitentiary; I will lose all my property in Alaska, and the boys and you will be everlastingly disgraced.”Bera listened. It is enough to say that with Swiftwater in the penitentiary, his mining interests in Alaska, which promised brighter than anything he had ever undertaken, and that means hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of Bera’s chance and mine to ever get a new start in life would have been wasted.Swiftwater daily said:“Bera, you certainly love the boys enough to save them the disgrace of having a felon for a father.”The argument was enough. Bera consented, and although, as I understand it, the law specifically prohibits a divorce where the parties agree in advance on the severance of the holy marriage tie, Swiftwater went away and Bera brought suit for divorce in the court of King County. And in time the decree was granted and is still of record in that county.A week later Swiftwater, as I afterwards found out, joined Kitty Gates in Portland and the two went to San Francisco. Thus can be turned into the basest uses the legal processes of our courts and, strange as it may seem, Swiftwater, after Bera’s divorce, legally married Kitty, then divorced her, and not later than two years afterwards he told thenewspapers in San Francisco, that having divorced all his other wives, he was looking for a new one.I want to ask now, is there no law to reach a monster of this kind? Are the laws so framed that men of Swiftwater’s type can go at large throughout the country ruining the lives of young girls, and, followed by a halo of gold and the fame that quick fortune making brings, claiming and receiving the friendship of their fellow men?CHAPTER XVII.I AM getting to the end of my story, and as the finish draws near, it seems to me, that I have not quite done justice by Swiftwater Bill, in at least one respect—and that is the activity and agility the man displays when events over which he might have had control, had he been on the square, crowded him so closely, that like the proverbial flea, he had to hike. And in telling of Swiftwater’s talent in this direction, I wish to be regarded as speaking as one without malice, but rather as admiring Swiftwater for trying, in so far as lay in his power, to make good his nickname of Swiftwater.In San Francisco, after Swiftwater had obtained a divorce from Kitty, he immediately announced his intention of getting another wife. For Swiftwater knew that the prison gates which once had yawned in his face were now closed, and, better even than that, was the thought that I—his loving mother-in-law—would no longer be interested in his future.It is undoubtedly true that in Swiftwater’s mental processes he regarded first, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold that lay in the pay streak on No. 6 Cleary, in the Tanana, and I can see Bill now in my mind’s eye, facing an array of cut glass decanters, embroidered table cloths, potted plants,orchestra and all that goes with the swell cafes of San Francisco, eating his dinner and rubbing his hands with glee as he remembered how easily he had obtained a fortune from me, which he sunk on Quartz Creek in the Klondike, and then slid out of paying his debt to me.The very next season found Swiftwater in the Tanana and this time, according to the best official records I could obtain, his clean-up was not less than $200,000. But I had not forgotten that Swiftwater had told me, first that Number 6 Cleary was a bigger proposition even than Quartz Creek, and that Gold Stream was one of the richest of all the undeveloped creeks in the whole Tanana.For this last information, I will say, I have always been grateful to Swiftwater, because his belief that the time would come when Gold Stream would be one of the best producers in all Alaska, led me to obtain several claims there. And now, let it be known, his prediction has been fully and completely verified.But, knowing nothing of Gold Stream, and remembering only that Swiftwater had added more than $1,000 to his already great obligations to me, and had provided nothing for his family, I journeyed once more across the Coast Range of Alaska.Crossing on the railway from Skagway to White Horse, I met a score or more of traders with theiroutfits of provisions and fresh vegetables, all hurrying to get into Dawson as soon as the ice broke up, to sell their wares to the miners of the Klondike at fancy prices. There were several women in the party, some of them bent on joining their husbands in Dawson.Three hours ride down the river on a scow, laden with freight of every character, we struck a sand bar and were compelled to spent the night in midstream, absolutely without even a crust of bread to eat, and heaven’s blue our only canopy. The grounding of freight scows in the upper waters of the Yukon in the spring is a common experience, and in those days little care was taken to protect the passengers from suffering hardship and real danger. That night the icy winds blew from the mountain ranges sixty miles an hour, and we suffered severely, not having a mouthful of food since the morning before.The captain of the scow, oblivious to his obligations to his passengers, had loaned the only small boat he had to a pair of miners the day before. We could do nothing until they returned. Finally, after we had been on the bar for more than twelve hours, the men came back with the boat and took us, two at a time, ashore.Then, guided by traders, the women in the party were told to walk down the stream fifteen miles towhere there was a camp. It was bitter cold and the trail was hard to walk. In the afternoon of the day following our shipwreck, we stopped and the men built a bonfire, while the poor women fell almost unconscious in front of it, completely exhausted for want of food, which we had not tasted for twenty-four hours.Two of the traders went down to the river’s bank and on the other side they espied a camp of a herder, beneath the shelter of an abandoned barracks. This was the only human habitation within miles. The traders procured a boat and took us women across the river. The herder had some bacon and some dry bread, which he cooked for us. Now, I want to say that never in my life have I ever eaten anything that tasted so good as that meal, consisting only of fried bacon strips placed with the gravy on top of two slices of cold dry bread, and a teacup of hot coffee to wash it down with.That day the scow came down the river and again we boarded it and finally reached Lake Le Barge. The lake was still frozen over and we started to cross its thirty miles of icy surface with horses drawing sleds. The ice was getting rotten and four times in as many miles, to my constant terror, the horses broke through the ice, threatening every minute to drag me with them. Becoming weary of this,I left the sled and hired a dog team and outfit to take me across the lake.At Clark’s road house, I remained a week and then boarded a scow and went through Thirty-Mile river to board the steamer Thistle for Dawson. Going down the river on a scow, one scow that was lashed to ours, struck a rock in midstream, a hole was knocked into our scow, which almost sunk. The bank of the river was lined with thousands of people camping or moving on towards the Klondike. These people came to our rescue and with ropes and small boats helped us off.In Fairbanks once more, I found Swiftwater. I had telephoned him of my coming, and in a day or two he came to my hotel.“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “here is $50 for your present hotel bills. I must go back to Cleary Creek at once, but I will be back again inside of a week, and then I will straighten everything up.”When Swiftwater told me that, I believed him—for the last time—for the next morning I found that he had left my room to board a train for Chena, on the Tanana, with a draft for $50,000 in his inside pocket, $10,000 more in cash and a ticket for Seattle.Swiftwater undoubtedly believed, that being without money I would be compelled to remain an unlimited time in Fairbanks. Not so. I still had a little jewelry left that he had not persuaded me topawn or sell for his benefit, and on this I raised enough money to buy a ticket to Seattle.Before I could get there, Swiftwater learned of my coming, and when I arrived on Elliott Bay, he had applied to the Federal Courts to be adjudged a bankrupt and had assigned to Phil Wilson all his interests in the Tanana, amounting to untold wealth.That case of Swiftwater’s is still pending in the Federal Court in Seattle, and no judge and no court has ever yet, up to this writing, consented to declare him a bankrupt, although he has successfully placed his property in the Tanana beyond the reach of the scores of men who have befriended him in the past without reward on his part.

CHAPTER XII.SWIFTWATER BILL GATES is back.”One morning in Seattle months after Bera and I had set up a little housekeeping establishment in Seattle, I picked up the Saturday evening edition of The Times and almost dropped over in my chair when I saw headlines in the paper as shown in the foregoing.What had been Swiftwater Bill’s fortune in all those months, I knew not, but the fact as stated in the paper that he had returned from Alaska was sufficient for me.Bera said: “Mama, I don’t know any reason why you should fuss around about Swiftwater.”“Never mind me,” said I, “I’ll find him, my dear, just to see what he has to say for himself.”Down to the Hotel Northern, then the Butler, the Rainier-Grand and the Stevens and all the rest I went and searched the registers without avail. As I remember now, it took me the greater part of a day to cover all the ground.Finally, by a curious chance I located Swiftwater at the Victoria Hotel. I waited until the next morning and then went to the Victoria and asked for Gates.Swiftwater, the clerk said, was out—had not been seen but once since his arrival.I am not going to say whether or not it was the humor of the situation or the bitter resentment I bore toward him that led me to tramp up three flights of stairs to the little parlor on the landing close to Swiftwater’s room, and to wait there ten hours at a stretch—until 1:10 in the morning. Then I went home, only to return at 8 o’clock the next day.“Mr. Gates is in his room, but he is asleep,” said the clerk.“I am Mrs. Beebe, his mother-in-law, and I want to see him now and I shall go direct to his room. You can go with me if you desire,” said I. The little clerk scanned me carefully and then said, “Very well.” We went upstairs together.The clerk rapped on the door twice. There was no answer.“I guess he’s out,” said the boy.“Knock again—good and loud,” I commanded.The boy rapped and just then the door opened a tiny way—about an inch, I guess, but through that little crack I saw the eye and part of the curling black moustache of Swiftwater Bill.Then I threw myself against the door and walked in.“COME OUT OF THAT, BILL! I HAVEN’T GOT A GUN.”I wish I could tell you how funny was Swiftwater’s apparition, as, clad only in his white night robe, he jumped into bed, pulling the covers over his head.This was the first time that Swiftwater had seen me since he left me in Dawson alone and unprotected, to find means as best I could to provide shelter and sustenance for his little baby boy, Clifford.In spite of myself, I laughed, forgetting all of the long months that we had waited for some sign of Swiftwater and an indication of his desire to do what was right by his own two little babies.“Coward,” I said, still laughing. “You know you deserve to be shot.”No answer from Swiftwater, whose body was completely covered up by bed clothes.Now, most men and most women will admire a MAN, but a cur and a coward are universally despised.As I looked at that huddled up mass of humanity underneath the white bedspread, my heart rose in rage. The contempt I felt for him is beyond all expression.“Come out of that, Bill,” said I. “I have no gun!”After a while, Swiftwater poked his head from beneath the bed clothes and showed a blanched face covered with a three weeks’ old growth of blackbeard. I told him to dress and I would wait outside. In a few minutes Swiftwater emerged and there stood a man who had commanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in money and gold in Alaska, looking just exactly as if he had dropped from the brake-beam of a Northern Pacific freight train and had walked his way into Seattle. He was clad in a dirty sack coat, that shone like a mirror, with brown striped trousers, an old brown derby hat and shoes that were out at the sole and side.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater in a trembling voice, “I am all in. If you will not have me arrested, but will give me a chance, I’ll soon provide for the babies and Bera.”Swiftwater pleaded as if for his life. He said that he could get money in San Francisco from a man who had offered to back him in a new scheme in the Tanana country.There was I with the two little boys and Bera all on my hands. I told Swiftwater that I would do nothing for him, but that I would forego having him put behind steel bars until I had made up my mind just what course I should take.The next night, there was a knock at our door about 3 o’clock in the morning. Bera slept in the front room of our little two-room apartment and I in the other with the babies. I went to the door—there stood Swiftwater.“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “I have no place to sleep tonight. If you will let me lie down on the floor, so that I can get a little sleep, I will get up early tomorrow morning and not bother you.”I told Bera to come into my room and I let Swiftwater into the kitchen, where I gave him a comforter on which to lie. The next morning, after Bera had gone, I prepared Swiftwater’s breakfast. The man was in rags, almost. I made him take a bath, while I washed his underclothes, and then I went out and bought him a new pair of socks and gave him money with which to buy a new hat.The next day Swiftwater went to San Francisco on money I furnished him after I had pawned my diamonds with one of the best jewelry houses in Seattle.Why? Well, because Swiftwater had made me believe that he had another chance in the Tanana and that his friends in San Francisco, having faith in his judgment as a miner—whatever may be said of Swiftwater, he was known throughout the North as an expert miner—had raised a large sum with which to grubstake him.I will say this for Swiftwater: that he gave me a contract providing that he should pay what he owed me and give me an interest in such mines as he would locate in the Tanana country. And then he went away.

SWIFTWATER BILL GATES is back.”

One morning in Seattle months after Bera and I had set up a little housekeeping establishment in Seattle, I picked up the Saturday evening edition of The Times and almost dropped over in my chair when I saw headlines in the paper as shown in the foregoing.

What had been Swiftwater Bill’s fortune in all those months, I knew not, but the fact as stated in the paper that he had returned from Alaska was sufficient for me.

Bera said: “Mama, I don’t know any reason why you should fuss around about Swiftwater.”

“Never mind me,” said I, “I’ll find him, my dear, just to see what he has to say for himself.”

Down to the Hotel Northern, then the Butler, the Rainier-Grand and the Stevens and all the rest I went and searched the registers without avail. As I remember now, it took me the greater part of a day to cover all the ground.

Finally, by a curious chance I located Swiftwater at the Victoria Hotel. I waited until the next morning and then went to the Victoria and asked for Gates.

Swiftwater, the clerk said, was out—had not been seen but once since his arrival.

I am not going to say whether or not it was the humor of the situation or the bitter resentment I bore toward him that led me to tramp up three flights of stairs to the little parlor on the landing close to Swiftwater’s room, and to wait there ten hours at a stretch—until 1:10 in the morning. Then I went home, only to return at 8 o’clock the next day.

“Mr. Gates is in his room, but he is asleep,” said the clerk.

“I am Mrs. Beebe, his mother-in-law, and I want to see him now and I shall go direct to his room. You can go with me if you desire,” said I. The little clerk scanned me carefully and then said, “Very well.” We went upstairs together.

The clerk rapped on the door twice. There was no answer.

“I guess he’s out,” said the boy.

“Knock again—good and loud,” I commanded.

The boy rapped and just then the door opened a tiny way—about an inch, I guess, but through that little crack I saw the eye and part of the curling black moustache of Swiftwater Bill.

Then I threw myself against the door and walked in.

“COME OUT OF THAT, BILL! I HAVEN’T GOT A GUN.”

“COME OUT OF THAT, BILL! I HAVEN’T GOT A GUN.”

“COME OUT OF THAT, BILL! I HAVEN’T GOT A GUN.”

I wish I could tell you how funny was Swiftwater’s apparition, as, clad only in his white night robe, he jumped into bed, pulling the covers over his head.

This was the first time that Swiftwater had seen me since he left me in Dawson alone and unprotected, to find means as best I could to provide shelter and sustenance for his little baby boy, Clifford.

In spite of myself, I laughed, forgetting all of the long months that we had waited for some sign of Swiftwater and an indication of his desire to do what was right by his own two little babies.

“Coward,” I said, still laughing. “You know you deserve to be shot.”

No answer from Swiftwater, whose body was completely covered up by bed clothes.

Now, most men and most women will admire a MAN, but a cur and a coward are universally despised.

As I looked at that huddled up mass of humanity underneath the white bedspread, my heart rose in rage. The contempt I felt for him is beyond all expression.

“Come out of that, Bill,” said I. “I have no gun!”

After a while, Swiftwater poked his head from beneath the bed clothes and showed a blanched face covered with a three weeks’ old growth of blackbeard. I told him to dress and I would wait outside. In a few minutes Swiftwater emerged and there stood a man who had commanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in money and gold in Alaska, looking just exactly as if he had dropped from the brake-beam of a Northern Pacific freight train and had walked his way into Seattle. He was clad in a dirty sack coat, that shone like a mirror, with brown striped trousers, an old brown derby hat and shoes that were out at the sole and side.

“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater in a trembling voice, “I am all in. If you will not have me arrested, but will give me a chance, I’ll soon provide for the babies and Bera.”

Swiftwater pleaded as if for his life. He said that he could get money in San Francisco from a man who had offered to back him in a new scheme in the Tanana country.

There was I with the two little boys and Bera all on my hands. I told Swiftwater that I would do nothing for him, but that I would forego having him put behind steel bars until I had made up my mind just what course I should take.

The next night, there was a knock at our door about 3 o’clock in the morning. Bera slept in the front room of our little two-room apartment and I in the other with the babies. I went to the door—there stood Swiftwater.

“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “I have no place to sleep tonight. If you will let me lie down on the floor, so that I can get a little sleep, I will get up early tomorrow morning and not bother you.”

I told Bera to come into my room and I let Swiftwater into the kitchen, where I gave him a comforter on which to lie. The next morning, after Bera had gone, I prepared Swiftwater’s breakfast. The man was in rags, almost. I made him take a bath, while I washed his underclothes, and then I went out and bought him a new pair of socks and gave him money with which to buy a new hat.

The next day Swiftwater went to San Francisco on money I furnished him after I had pawned my diamonds with one of the best jewelry houses in Seattle.

Why? Well, because Swiftwater had made me believe that he had another chance in the Tanana and that his friends in San Francisco, having faith in his judgment as a miner—whatever may be said of Swiftwater, he was known throughout the North as an expert miner—had raised a large sum with which to grubstake him.

I will say this for Swiftwater: that he gave me a contract providing that he should pay what he owed me and give me an interest in such mines as he would locate in the Tanana country. And then he went away.

CHAPTER XIII.SOMETIMES, when I recall the stirring events in Swiftwater Bill’s career, following the time he used the money I raised by pawning my diamonds and then went to California, I am tempted to wonder whether or not a man of his type of mental makeup ever realized that the hard bumps that he gets along the corduroy road of adversity are one and all of his own making. For, if one will but pause a moment and analyze the events in Swiftwater Bill’s melodramatic career, the inevitable result comes to him, namely, that the bumps over which Swiftwater traveled during all of those years, when, one day he was worth a half million dollars in gold, and the next was hiding in all manner of dark and subterranean recesses in order to avoid deputy sheriffs and constables with writs and court processes, were placed there by his own hands and as skilfully and effectively as if he had deliberately planned to cause himself misery.Swiftwater’s transformation from a broken down tramp of the Weary Willie order to a fine gentleman and prosperous business man, with new tailor made clothes, patent leather shoes and his favoredsilk tile, was rapid after he got his hands on the money I borrowed from the jewelers, with my diamonds as the pledge. The change in Swiftwater was simply marvelous. The day before almost, Swiftwater had stood before me, as I have told, without collar or tie, a dirty black growth of beard nearly an inch long on his unshaven chin and cheek, a dark frock coat of a nondescript shape that had seen better days and hung on Bill’s frame as though it might have been loaned to him by some friend; a pair of trousers of mediocre workmanship and his feet almost sticking out of his shoes.Then picture Swiftwater ready to board the steamer for San Francisco, where his friend Marks was waiting to grubstake him to the tune of $18,000, jauntily wearing his polished beaver on the side of his head, his black moustaches curled and waving in the breezes, his chin as smooth and immaculate as an ivory billiard ball and his air and manner that of a man who had absolute confidence in himself and his future.It is no wonder then, that when Swiftwater reached San Francisco outfitted as I have described, he found plenty of men, who, charmed by the magic of his description of the golden lure of the North and hypnotized into a state of enthusiasm by the halo of romance and river beds lined with gold attached to Swiftwater’s name, were willing toback him heavily for another venture in the North.By this time the Tanana District was becoming famous throughout the world and the town of Fairbanks had been located and Cleary had brought forth from the stream that bears his name thousands of dollars of virgin gold, thus proving beyond question the richness of the country.Now, I am ready to believe that most people will agree with me that Swiftwater was about as rapid and agile a performer as any of his contemporaries who occupy the hall of fame in the annals of Alaska. Because it was only a few short weeks until Swiftwater returns to Seattle with his pockets bulging with currency and prepared to leave for Fairbanks.Of course, I knew nothing of Swiftwater’s presence in Seattle, though it had been only a few short weeks since I had, with my own hands, in the kitchen in the little two-room apartment we occupied, washed his only suit of underclothes, so that he could go on the street without being annoyed by the police.The first I knew of Swiftwater’s return from San Francisco was when I read in the morning paper that “W. C. Gates, the well known and opulent Alaska miner,” had entertained a distinguished party of Seattle business men at a banquet at one of the big down town hotels. The cost of that feed,as I afterwards learned, was about $100—of Mr. Marks’ money. Be that as it may, before I could find Swiftwater and gently recall to him the fact that his wife and two little children were almost in absolute want in Seattle he had managed to board a steamer for the Tanana and was off for the North.Now, when I found that Swiftwater had gone, I was frantic with the desire to follow him up to Alaska. For the year and a half that I had remained in Seattle, waiting like Micawber for something to turn up, the fever to get back to Alaska seemed to be growing in my veins at a rate that meant that something had to be done. For, after Alaska has once laid her spell over a man or woman, in nine times out of ten, she will claim him or her from that time onward to the end of life as her devoted and always loyal slave. I know not, nor have I ever found any who did know, what it is that makes one who has ever lived in Alaska, and who has left there, unhappy and discontented until they go back once more to the land of gold.I have seen and talked with old “sourdoughs,” trappers and dog team freighters, and they all tell the same story. When the first big clean-up had been made in Dawson, I remember well, the winter following found a mob of big, boisterous, pleasure loving, money spending, carefree and happy heartedKlondike miners in the hotels of Seattle, San Francisco and New York. They lived on nothing but the choicest steaks and the richest wines, and the sight of a plate of beans would start a fight. Then they would all come back to Seattle in the spring, sick, feverish, unhappy, with a look in their eyes like that of a mother hungering for her lost babe. In Seattle they would spend a restless week, but when they struck the trail at White Horse just before the spring breakup in the Yukon every man jack of them was himself again—jolly, joyous, carefree, full voiced and filled with the enthusiasm of a two-year-old.Why, I have known more than one broad shouldered giant of the trail grow as sick and puny as a singed kitten while waiting in Seattle for his boat to take him, late in February or early in March, to Skagway. I knew one miner, who in health was six feet five inches tall, weighing two hundred and forty pounds without an ounce of fat on him, come within an ace of dying with quick consumption, which it afterwards proved was due to his longing for the biting wind that blows from the top of Alaska’s Coast Range and bears company with the wayfarer down in the valley of the Yukon past the lakes and into the gold camps of the Klondike.Well, all this came to me then as I realized that Swiftwater was gone North once more in searchof gold, but, with Bera in Seattle and the two babies, I was shackled as securely as any one of the wretches who walk the streets of this city with chains and ball working out a sentence for vagrancy.It is not a less remarkable thing to be told of Swiftwater that he turned Dame Fortune’s wheel once more with the dial pointing in his direction as quickly as he had raised the necessary money in San Francisco to make a new start in Fairbanks. To all who know of Swiftwater’s kaleidoscopic changes from rich to poor, and back again to rich, it seems as if the fickle Dame, carrying a magic horn spilling gold in all directions, followed Swiftwater wherever he went into Alaska and out again, down to the cities of the States and back again, and, if she seemed to lose him for a while, always to welcome him back with a winning smile.Of course, it is part of my story that after Swiftwater had amassed another fortune on Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, and his friend, Mr. Marks, who had grubstake him, sought to obtain his rights in the property, it was found that the contract between them written by Swiftwater was as full of holes as a sieve. Again the lawyers went to work earning big fees in the litigation which Marks brought to compel Swiftwater to do the honorable thing—to do that by him which any man in Alaska, at leastwhile he lived there, never failed to do—to divide with the man who grubstaked him.Now, Swiftwater, as my reader has by this time safely guessed, was made in a different mould. They used to say in the early days when the stories of the incredible richness of Eldorado’s gold lined bedrock were told on the “outside,” that when a man in Alaska drank the water of the country, the truth left him. I have never, for my own part, fully determined whether this is true, and I may frankly say that in some of my experiences, the opportunities for judging of the truth or falsity of this theory were limited, the reason being that most of the men drink something beside water in that country.As for Swiftwater Bill, he never did drink anything but water—I never knew him to take a drop of any intoxicating liquors or wine—so that if the water of Alaska had any demoralizing effect on Swiftwater, it must have been in the direction of his sense of business honor and integrity and a decent sense of his obligations as a husband and a father. And I am satisfied, too, that the water of Alaska, if such was the demoralizing agent in Swiftwater’s case, certainly worked terrific havoc.SWIFTWATER BILL GATES, FREDDIE GATES AT RIGHT, AND CLIFFORD GATES, AT BOTTOM.

SOMETIMES, when I recall the stirring events in Swiftwater Bill’s career, following the time he used the money I raised by pawning my diamonds and then went to California, I am tempted to wonder whether or not a man of his type of mental makeup ever realized that the hard bumps that he gets along the corduroy road of adversity are one and all of his own making. For, if one will but pause a moment and analyze the events in Swiftwater Bill’s melodramatic career, the inevitable result comes to him, namely, that the bumps over which Swiftwater traveled during all of those years, when, one day he was worth a half million dollars in gold, and the next was hiding in all manner of dark and subterranean recesses in order to avoid deputy sheriffs and constables with writs and court processes, were placed there by his own hands and as skilfully and effectively as if he had deliberately planned to cause himself misery.

Swiftwater’s transformation from a broken down tramp of the Weary Willie order to a fine gentleman and prosperous business man, with new tailor made clothes, patent leather shoes and his favoredsilk tile, was rapid after he got his hands on the money I borrowed from the jewelers, with my diamonds as the pledge. The change in Swiftwater was simply marvelous. The day before almost, Swiftwater had stood before me, as I have told, without collar or tie, a dirty black growth of beard nearly an inch long on his unshaven chin and cheek, a dark frock coat of a nondescript shape that had seen better days and hung on Bill’s frame as though it might have been loaned to him by some friend; a pair of trousers of mediocre workmanship and his feet almost sticking out of his shoes.

Then picture Swiftwater ready to board the steamer for San Francisco, where his friend Marks was waiting to grubstake him to the tune of $18,000, jauntily wearing his polished beaver on the side of his head, his black moustaches curled and waving in the breezes, his chin as smooth and immaculate as an ivory billiard ball and his air and manner that of a man who had absolute confidence in himself and his future.

It is no wonder then, that when Swiftwater reached San Francisco outfitted as I have described, he found plenty of men, who, charmed by the magic of his description of the golden lure of the North and hypnotized into a state of enthusiasm by the halo of romance and river beds lined with gold attached to Swiftwater’s name, were willing toback him heavily for another venture in the North.

By this time the Tanana District was becoming famous throughout the world and the town of Fairbanks had been located and Cleary had brought forth from the stream that bears his name thousands of dollars of virgin gold, thus proving beyond question the richness of the country.

Now, I am ready to believe that most people will agree with me that Swiftwater was about as rapid and agile a performer as any of his contemporaries who occupy the hall of fame in the annals of Alaska. Because it was only a few short weeks until Swiftwater returns to Seattle with his pockets bulging with currency and prepared to leave for Fairbanks.

Of course, I knew nothing of Swiftwater’s presence in Seattle, though it had been only a few short weeks since I had, with my own hands, in the kitchen in the little two-room apartment we occupied, washed his only suit of underclothes, so that he could go on the street without being annoyed by the police.

The first I knew of Swiftwater’s return from San Francisco was when I read in the morning paper that “W. C. Gates, the well known and opulent Alaska miner,” had entertained a distinguished party of Seattle business men at a banquet at one of the big down town hotels. The cost of that feed,as I afterwards learned, was about $100—of Mr. Marks’ money. Be that as it may, before I could find Swiftwater and gently recall to him the fact that his wife and two little children were almost in absolute want in Seattle he had managed to board a steamer for the Tanana and was off for the North.

Now, when I found that Swiftwater had gone, I was frantic with the desire to follow him up to Alaska. For the year and a half that I had remained in Seattle, waiting like Micawber for something to turn up, the fever to get back to Alaska seemed to be growing in my veins at a rate that meant that something had to be done. For, after Alaska has once laid her spell over a man or woman, in nine times out of ten, she will claim him or her from that time onward to the end of life as her devoted and always loyal slave. I know not, nor have I ever found any who did know, what it is that makes one who has ever lived in Alaska, and who has left there, unhappy and discontented until they go back once more to the land of gold.

I have seen and talked with old “sourdoughs,” trappers and dog team freighters, and they all tell the same story. When the first big clean-up had been made in Dawson, I remember well, the winter following found a mob of big, boisterous, pleasure loving, money spending, carefree and happy heartedKlondike miners in the hotels of Seattle, San Francisco and New York. They lived on nothing but the choicest steaks and the richest wines, and the sight of a plate of beans would start a fight. Then they would all come back to Seattle in the spring, sick, feverish, unhappy, with a look in their eyes like that of a mother hungering for her lost babe. In Seattle they would spend a restless week, but when they struck the trail at White Horse just before the spring breakup in the Yukon every man jack of them was himself again—jolly, joyous, carefree, full voiced and filled with the enthusiasm of a two-year-old.

Why, I have known more than one broad shouldered giant of the trail grow as sick and puny as a singed kitten while waiting in Seattle for his boat to take him, late in February or early in March, to Skagway. I knew one miner, who in health was six feet five inches tall, weighing two hundred and forty pounds without an ounce of fat on him, come within an ace of dying with quick consumption, which it afterwards proved was due to his longing for the biting wind that blows from the top of Alaska’s Coast Range and bears company with the wayfarer down in the valley of the Yukon past the lakes and into the gold camps of the Klondike.

Well, all this came to me then as I realized that Swiftwater was gone North once more in searchof gold, but, with Bera in Seattle and the two babies, I was shackled as securely as any one of the wretches who walk the streets of this city with chains and ball working out a sentence for vagrancy.

It is not a less remarkable thing to be told of Swiftwater that he turned Dame Fortune’s wheel once more with the dial pointing in his direction as quickly as he had raised the necessary money in San Francisco to make a new start in Fairbanks. To all who know of Swiftwater’s kaleidoscopic changes from rich to poor, and back again to rich, it seems as if the fickle Dame, carrying a magic horn spilling gold in all directions, followed Swiftwater wherever he went into Alaska and out again, down to the cities of the States and back again, and, if she seemed to lose him for a while, always to welcome him back with a winning smile.

Of course, it is part of my story that after Swiftwater had amassed another fortune on Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, and his friend, Mr. Marks, who had grubstake him, sought to obtain his rights in the property, it was found that the contract between them written by Swiftwater was as full of holes as a sieve. Again the lawyers went to work earning big fees in the litigation which Marks brought to compel Swiftwater to do the honorable thing—to do that by him which any man in Alaska, at leastwhile he lived there, never failed to do—to divide with the man who grubstaked him.

Now, Swiftwater, as my reader has by this time safely guessed, was made in a different mould. They used to say in the early days when the stories of the incredible richness of Eldorado’s gold lined bedrock were told on the “outside,” that when a man in Alaska drank the water of the country, the truth left him. I have never, for my own part, fully determined whether this is true, and I may frankly say that in some of my experiences, the opportunities for judging of the truth or falsity of this theory were limited, the reason being that most of the men drink something beside water in that country.

As for Swiftwater Bill, he never did drink anything but water—I never knew him to take a drop of any intoxicating liquors or wine—so that if the water of Alaska had any demoralizing effect on Swiftwater, it must have been in the direction of his sense of business honor and integrity and a decent sense of his obligations as a husband and a father. And I am satisfied, too, that the water of Alaska, if such was the demoralizing agent in Swiftwater’s case, certainly worked terrific havoc.

SWIFTWATER BILL GATES, FREDDIE GATES AT RIGHT, AND CLIFFORD GATES, AT BOTTOM.

SWIFTWATER BILL GATES, FREDDIE GATES AT RIGHT, AND CLIFFORD GATES, AT BOTTOM.

SWIFTWATER BILL GATES, FREDDIE GATES AT RIGHT, AND CLIFFORD GATES, AT BOTTOM.

CHAPTER XIV.SWIFTWATER BILL had struck it again.On Number 6 Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, the man who gained his chiefest fame in the early days of Dawson by walking around the rapids of Miles Canyon, because he was afraid to navigate them, thereby earning his cognomen, “Swiftwater Bill,” had found another fortune in the yellow gold that lines countless tens of thousands of little creeks and dry gulches in that great northern country—Alaska.Swiftwater had obtained a big working interest in the mine on Cleary Creek, a stream that has produced its millions in yellow gold. And, after the first discovery of placer gold in paying quantities in the Tanana, the whole Western coast of the American continent knew the story. Like Dawson, the town of Fairbanks quickly sprang from the soil as if reared by the magic of some unseen genii of the Arabian Nights.Of course, the word came out to me in a letter from a friend at Fairbanks. And I sometimes think that, after all, I must have had a great many friends in Alaska who remembered the hard task that thefates had put upon me when they made me, through no wish of my own, the mother-in-law of Swiftwater Bill.As I remember now, the news that Swiftwater had struck another pay streak impressed upon me the necessity of immediate action. Swiftwater’s previous conduct, particularly that $100 dinner that he gave in Seattle a few months before, had taught me one thing, and that was that if Gates was ever to do the square thing by me and by Bera and the babies it would be only when some one with sufficient will power to accomplish the task would reach him and see that he did not forget his duty.Now, it is no May day holiday for a woman to “mush” over the ice from the coast of Alaska to the interior mining camps. First you have to get an outfit in Seattle, and by that I mean sufficient heavy underclothing, outer clothing, heavy boots, furs and sleeping bag and the like to make travel over the ice comfortable. Ten years ago any woman who made that journey—that is, from Dyea over the mountain passes covered with glaciers and thence down the Upper Yukon on the ice—was considered almost as a heroine and the newspapers were eager to print the stories of such exploits. When I determined to go into the Tanana to find Swiftwater mining gold on Number 6 Cleary there were few, if any, of the comforts of present-day winter travelon the Valdez-Fairbanks trail, such as horse stages and frequent road-houses.Consequently, I determined to follow the old route, and I went to Skagway, thence over the White Pass road to White Horse and, crossing Lake Le Barge on the ice, there to await the departure for Dawson of the first down river steamer.It was in the early spring of the year—that is, early for Alaska, although when I left Seattle the orchards were in bloom and lawns were as green as in mid-summer. Lake Le Barge was still frozen over, and the upper waters of the Yukon were beginning to show their first gigantic unrest of that spring—a mighty unrest that carries with it the movement of vast ice gorges down the canyon of the Upper Yukon to the Klondike, and which, if suddenly halted on its way to the sea by an unexpected drop in temperature, is likely to work havoc with men and property and sometimes human lives.The Yukon River is not like any other stream on the American continent with which you and I are familiar. It seems to be a thing alive when the spring sun begins to loosen the icy chains that bind it hard and fast to old Mother Earth through eight long and dreary winter months. No greater phenomena of nature, showing the change that spring brings to all forms of life—human, animal and plant—isto be found anywhere than the awakening of the Yukon River after her voiceless sleep.At White Horse the freight for Dawson and the Tanana mines was stacked twenty feet high in all directions when we boarded the first steamer and followed the ice jam down the river to Dawson. Eventually, on a little steamer that plied between Dawson and Fairbanks when the ice is far enough gone to make navigation safe, I made my way to the chief mining camp of the Tanana—Fairbanks, named after the vice-president, who visited the North when he was a senator from Indiana.I had no trouble in finding Gates.“Swiftwater,” I said, “I am here to have you provide for your wife and children, and to pay at least part of what you owe me.”Bill was courteous, suave, obliging and well mannered.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Bill, “at last I am fixed so that I can do the right thing by you and all others. As soon as I can make my last payment on my Cleary Creek property, I will square everything up, and give you plenty of money for Bera and the boys.”Now, I know that everyone who reads this little book will say to themselves:“If Mrs. Beebe don’t get her money now, she certainly is foolish.”Swiftwater, to be sure, saw that my hotel bills were paid and told me every day that in a short time he would clean up enough gold to make himself independent, and provide bountifully for Bera and the two boys—and I believed him.Swiftwater’s sister, the mother of Kitty, his polygamous wife, was, I quickly learned, living in a tent on Bill’s claim, waiting to lay hold of him and his money as soon as the clean-up was finished. Long before this he had deserted Kitty, and in all the turmoil and trouble that came after his bigamous marriage to his niece I had lost all track of that unfortunate girl.I remember now how odd it struck me that Swiftwater’s sister was there, living in a little white canvas tent, and enduring the privations which any woman must suffer in that country, while I, actuated by the same desire, was waiting for Swiftwater to finish washing up the dumps on his claims. And I recalled at the time that when Swiftwater mined thousands of gold from his claims in the Klondike he allowed his own mother to cook in a cabin of a miner on a claim not far from his own, and although rich beyond his fondest dreams had permitted that poor woman to earn her own living by the hardest kind of drudgery and toil.

SWIFTWATER BILL had struck it again.

On Number 6 Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, the man who gained his chiefest fame in the early days of Dawson by walking around the rapids of Miles Canyon, because he was afraid to navigate them, thereby earning his cognomen, “Swiftwater Bill,” had found another fortune in the yellow gold that lines countless tens of thousands of little creeks and dry gulches in that great northern country—Alaska.

Swiftwater had obtained a big working interest in the mine on Cleary Creek, a stream that has produced its millions in yellow gold. And, after the first discovery of placer gold in paying quantities in the Tanana, the whole Western coast of the American continent knew the story. Like Dawson, the town of Fairbanks quickly sprang from the soil as if reared by the magic of some unseen genii of the Arabian Nights.

Of course, the word came out to me in a letter from a friend at Fairbanks. And I sometimes think that, after all, I must have had a great many friends in Alaska who remembered the hard task that thefates had put upon me when they made me, through no wish of my own, the mother-in-law of Swiftwater Bill.

As I remember now, the news that Swiftwater had struck another pay streak impressed upon me the necessity of immediate action. Swiftwater’s previous conduct, particularly that $100 dinner that he gave in Seattle a few months before, had taught me one thing, and that was that if Gates was ever to do the square thing by me and by Bera and the babies it would be only when some one with sufficient will power to accomplish the task would reach him and see that he did not forget his duty.

Now, it is no May day holiday for a woman to “mush” over the ice from the coast of Alaska to the interior mining camps. First you have to get an outfit in Seattle, and by that I mean sufficient heavy underclothing, outer clothing, heavy boots, furs and sleeping bag and the like to make travel over the ice comfortable. Ten years ago any woman who made that journey—that is, from Dyea over the mountain passes covered with glaciers and thence down the Upper Yukon on the ice—was considered almost as a heroine and the newspapers were eager to print the stories of such exploits. When I determined to go into the Tanana to find Swiftwater mining gold on Number 6 Cleary there were few, if any, of the comforts of present-day winter travelon the Valdez-Fairbanks trail, such as horse stages and frequent road-houses.

Consequently, I determined to follow the old route, and I went to Skagway, thence over the White Pass road to White Horse and, crossing Lake Le Barge on the ice, there to await the departure for Dawson of the first down river steamer.

It was in the early spring of the year—that is, early for Alaska, although when I left Seattle the orchards were in bloom and lawns were as green as in mid-summer. Lake Le Barge was still frozen over, and the upper waters of the Yukon were beginning to show their first gigantic unrest of that spring—a mighty unrest that carries with it the movement of vast ice gorges down the canyon of the Upper Yukon to the Klondike, and which, if suddenly halted on its way to the sea by an unexpected drop in temperature, is likely to work havoc with men and property and sometimes human lives.

The Yukon River is not like any other stream on the American continent with which you and I are familiar. It seems to be a thing alive when the spring sun begins to loosen the icy chains that bind it hard and fast to old Mother Earth through eight long and dreary winter months. No greater phenomena of nature, showing the change that spring brings to all forms of life—human, animal and plant—isto be found anywhere than the awakening of the Yukon River after her voiceless sleep.

At White Horse the freight for Dawson and the Tanana mines was stacked twenty feet high in all directions when we boarded the first steamer and followed the ice jam down the river to Dawson. Eventually, on a little steamer that plied between Dawson and Fairbanks when the ice is far enough gone to make navigation safe, I made my way to the chief mining camp of the Tanana—Fairbanks, named after the vice-president, who visited the North when he was a senator from Indiana.

I had no trouble in finding Gates.

“Swiftwater,” I said, “I am here to have you provide for your wife and children, and to pay at least part of what you owe me.”

Bill was courteous, suave, obliging and well mannered.

“Mrs. Beebe,” said Bill, “at last I am fixed so that I can do the right thing by you and all others. As soon as I can make my last payment on my Cleary Creek property, I will square everything up, and give you plenty of money for Bera and the boys.”

Now, I know that everyone who reads this little book will say to themselves:

“If Mrs. Beebe don’t get her money now, she certainly is foolish.”

Swiftwater, to be sure, saw that my hotel bills were paid and told me every day that in a short time he would clean up enough gold to make himself independent, and provide bountifully for Bera and the two boys—and I believed him.

Swiftwater’s sister, the mother of Kitty, his polygamous wife, was, I quickly learned, living in a tent on Bill’s claim, waiting to lay hold of him and his money as soon as the clean-up was finished. Long before this he had deserted Kitty, and in all the turmoil and trouble that came after his bigamous marriage to his niece I had lost all track of that unfortunate girl.

I remember now how odd it struck me that Swiftwater’s sister was there, living in a little white canvas tent, and enduring the privations which any woman must suffer in that country, while I, actuated by the same desire, was waiting for Swiftwater to finish washing up the dumps on his claims. And I recalled at the time that when Swiftwater mined thousands of gold from his claims in the Klondike he allowed his own mother to cook in a cabin of a miner on a claim not far from his own, and although rich beyond his fondest dreams had permitted that poor woman to earn her own living by the hardest kind of drudgery and toil.

CHAPTER XV.SWIFTWATER’S clean-up on Number 6 Cleary Creek was $75,000 in gold. The summer was come to an end and there were signs on the trees, in the crackling of the frosted grass in the early morning and in the bite of the night wind from the mountain canyons that told of the quick approach of winter in the Tanana. Swiftwater had been more than usually fortunate. His mine on Number 6 Cleary had yielded far beyond his expectations. Swiftwater had every reason to believe his friends who told him that his luck was phenomenal.As there are compensating advantages and disadvantages in almost every phase of human life in this world, it may possibly be said that as an offset to Swiftwater’s phenomenal luck, he had two women, the mothers of his two wives, waiting patiently at Fairbanks for him to bring out enough money to properly provide for his families. I had told Swiftwater:“I am up here to take good care of you, Bill, and incidentally to see that you provide enough money to feed and clothe your children and your wife. Idon’t care anything about that other woman over there.”Bill laughed, and said it was probably a lucky thing for him that he had a mother-in-law to look after his welfare. But if Swiftwater’s mind ever hovered around the idea of criminal proceedings on the score of bigamy, he did not give voice to it. He merely went around in his cheerful way from day to day working vigorously with his men until, finally, early in September, the last of the pay dirt was washed from the dumps into the sluice boxes and the gold sacked and taken to the bank.Then Bill began paying off his debts. He settled with his partners, and then with a big chunk of bills and drafts in his inside pocket we started for Seattle.It was getting winter rapidly and we had no time to lose in order to catch the steamship “Ohio,” at St. Michael, for Seattle, before the winter freeze-up on Bering Sea.Swiftwater, while working on Number 6 Cleary, had been all business and activity. Now, he seemed on the little boat going down the Tanana to be his old self again—by that I mean that Swiftwater reverted to his conduct of early days, which had lead some people to believe that he was descended from the Mormon stock back in Utah. Why Swiftwater had never earned the title of the Brigham Young ofthe Klondike instead of the Knight of the Golden Omelette or just plain Swiftwater, I never could quite understand.At Fairbanks Swiftwater induced a woman, whose name I shall not give at this time, to board the steamer for the outside. A half day’s further ride took us to Chena, and there Swiftwater met another friend by the name of Violet—a girl who had worked as housekeeper and cook for a crowd of miners during the summer because her husband had deserted her and left her penniless in Fairbanks.This Violet was young and comely, and of gentle breeding. The hard life in the mining camps of the Yukon and the bitterness she had suffered at the hands of her truant husband had taken a little of the natural refinement from the girl and had probably shaped her life so that the better side could not be seen.Be that as it may, Violet came with Swiftwater, but, when she found on the steamship “Ohio” that Swiftwater had tipped one of the crew $100 so as to enable him to have a seat with a woman on each side of him at his meals, Violet refused to have anything to do with him.At St. Michael, when I found that Swiftwater thought more of the association of women and of having his kind of a good time than of providing for his wife and children, I made up my mind that therewould have to be a showdown of some kind. I telegraphed to Bera at Seattle:“Swiftwater is coming down on the Ohio. You had better see him now, if you want anything.”We were nine days making the trip from St. Michael to Seattle. When the crowd on the boat learned that Swiftwater Bill was on board, everybody looked for fireworks and a good time. The captain ordered notice put up in the dining room, reading:“Gambling positively prohibited on this boat.”Swiftwater saw that sign and gently laughed to himself.“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “I am going to have some fun with the boys. So if I come to borrow some money from you, don’t be foolish and refuse me.”Swiftwater had some few hundred in cash, but most of his money was in drafts, which he could not cash on the boat. When I found that the boys had started a little poker game, I expected Swiftwater to be coming to me for money in a little while, and sure enough he did.“Swiftwater,” I said, “as long as you play poker you can’t have any money from me, because you know you can’t play poker. But if you will start a solo game I will let you have a little change.”Now, Swiftwater swelled up visibly because heknew that I thought he was one of the best solo players in all the North, and I have to laugh even now to recall that after the first fifteen minutes of play at solo the men who had sought to fleece him of his money, found they had no chance and they all stopped the game.It was late Saturday afternoon when finally the Ohio poked her nose in front of one of the docks in Seattle. There was a strong ebb tide, and it was nearly an hour before the gang plank was run ashore. We docked jam up against a little steamer on our left, and Swiftwater, being in a hurry to get ashore, asked me if I would take his grip in the carriage to the Cecil Hotel and he would join me in a little while, after he could get a shave. With that Swiftwater jumped to the deck of the little steamer next to us and thence to the dock and was gone.I went direct to the Cecil Hotel, where Bera was waiting for me. Before I had been there a half hour the newsboys on the streets were crying the sale of the Seattle Times:“All about Swiftwater Bill arrested for bigamy.”I heard the shrill voices of the urchins from my window in the hotel and I said:“Bera, what have you done—had him arrested?”I rang the bell and told the bell-boy to bring up a copy of The Times. Sure enough, there was thewhole story of a warrant issued for Swiftwater Bill on the charge of bigamy and a long yarn about his various escapes in Alaska, including a recital of how he ruined the life of young Kitty Gates, his niece, by eloping with her and marrying her while he was still the lawful husband of Bera.Just about dusk—I think it must have been at 8 o’clock that evening—there came a knock at the door. I went to answer it, and there in the hall of the hotel stood a man who was an absolute stranger to me.“Mrs. Beebe?”“This is Mrs. Beebe.”“Swiftwater wants to see you. I am Jack Watson, who used to be with him in the north.”“Where is he?” I asked.“I can’t tell you where he is, Mrs. Beebe,” said the man, “but if you will go with me I can find him.”Five minutes later we were on First Avenue, which was crowded with thousands of sightseers, it being Saturday night, and everybody seemed to be out for a good time. Watson led me up Spring Street to the alley between First and Second Avenues and then went down the alley till, reaching the shadow of a tall building, he said:“Please wait here a minute, Mrs. Beebe.”I looked down at the brilliantly lighted street corneron First Avenue, where is situated the Rainier-Grand Hotel, and there I saw Swiftwater standing, smoking a cigar, while hundreds of people were passing up and down the sidewalk. He little looked as if the deputy sheriffs were after him.In a moment Watson had brought Swiftwater to me.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater, “what did you wire to Bera? Did you tell her I was coming out and to have me arrested?”“I certainly wired her,” said I, “and, Swiftwater, if she’s had you arrested that’s your business.”“Mrs. Beebe, you’ve been the only friend I’ve ever had and now you have thrown me down,” said the miner.Said I, “Swiftwater, I have not thrown you down, and it’s about time that you showed some indication of trying to do what is right by me and Bera and the babies.”“Here’s that $250 I borrowed from you on the boat,” said Swiftwater, “and I guess after all that you are really the only friend I ever had in this world. Won’t you tell me what to do now?”I hesitated a moment and then it seemed to me that there was little to be gained by having Swiftwater thrown into jail without any chance whatever to secure his release on bail. In spiteof all that I had suffered from him, and all the untold misery and humiliation that he had put upon my daughter Bera, I felt sorry for Swiftwater.“You had better take this $250 back,” said I, “as you may have to get out of town tonight. Have you any other money on you?”“Not a cent,” said he.“Very well, you can pay me that money you owe some other time,” I said.Then Swiftwater and I fell to talking as to what had best be done. He wanted very much to see Bera and the babies and begged me, if I thought it safe, to take him to the hotel. Finally, seeing the big crowd on the streets, I consented, and together we went to the Cecil, entered the elevator and then went directly to my rooms.Bera was there with the boy Freddie—the youngest. Swiftwater kissed Bera and the baby, but Bera turned away and went into another room, the tears streaming down her face.“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater, “the penitentiary will be my fate unless this bigamy charge is withdrawn. You and Bera and the babies will lose if I go to state’s prison, and that is where Kitty Gates will send me unless Bera will get a divorce.”Just then there came a loud rap at the door, and without waiting for either of us to speak the door was opened and in walked two deputy sheriffs. They immediately placed Swiftwater under arrest.

SWIFTWATER’S clean-up on Number 6 Cleary Creek was $75,000 in gold. The summer was come to an end and there were signs on the trees, in the crackling of the frosted grass in the early morning and in the bite of the night wind from the mountain canyons that told of the quick approach of winter in the Tanana. Swiftwater had been more than usually fortunate. His mine on Number 6 Cleary had yielded far beyond his expectations. Swiftwater had every reason to believe his friends who told him that his luck was phenomenal.

As there are compensating advantages and disadvantages in almost every phase of human life in this world, it may possibly be said that as an offset to Swiftwater’s phenomenal luck, he had two women, the mothers of his two wives, waiting patiently at Fairbanks for him to bring out enough money to properly provide for his families. I had told Swiftwater:

“I am up here to take good care of you, Bill, and incidentally to see that you provide enough money to feed and clothe your children and your wife. Idon’t care anything about that other woman over there.”

Bill laughed, and said it was probably a lucky thing for him that he had a mother-in-law to look after his welfare. But if Swiftwater’s mind ever hovered around the idea of criminal proceedings on the score of bigamy, he did not give voice to it. He merely went around in his cheerful way from day to day working vigorously with his men until, finally, early in September, the last of the pay dirt was washed from the dumps into the sluice boxes and the gold sacked and taken to the bank.

Then Bill began paying off his debts. He settled with his partners, and then with a big chunk of bills and drafts in his inside pocket we started for Seattle.

It was getting winter rapidly and we had no time to lose in order to catch the steamship “Ohio,” at St. Michael, for Seattle, before the winter freeze-up on Bering Sea.

Swiftwater, while working on Number 6 Cleary, had been all business and activity. Now, he seemed on the little boat going down the Tanana to be his old self again—by that I mean that Swiftwater reverted to his conduct of early days, which had lead some people to believe that he was descended from the Mormon stock back in Utah. Why Swiftwater had never earned the title of the Brigham Young ofthe Klondike instead of the Knight of the Golden Omelette or just plain Swiftwater, I never could quite understand.

At Fairbanks Swiftwater induced a woman, whose name I shall not give at this time, to board the steamer for the outside. A half day’s further ride took us to Chena, and there Swiftwater met another friend by the name of Violet—a girl who had worked as housekeeper and cook for a crowd of miners during the summer because her husband had deserted her and left her penniless in Fairbanks.

This Violet was young and comely, and of gentle breeding. The hard life in the mining camps of the Yukon and the bitterness she had suffered at the hands of her truant husband had taken a little of the natural refinement from the girl and had probably shaped her life so that the better side could not be seen.

Be that as it may, Violet came with Swiftwater, but, when she found on the steamship “Ohio” that Swiftwater had tipped one of the crew $100 so as to enable him to have a seat with a woman on each side of him at his meals, Violet refused to have anything to do with him.

At St. Michael, when I found that Swiftwater thought more of the association of women and of having his kind of a good time than of providing for his wife and children, I made up my mind that therewould have to be a showdown of some kind. I telegraphed to Bera at Seattle:

“Swiftwater is coming down on the Ohio. You had better see him now, if you want anything.”

We were nine days making the trip from St. Michael to Seattle. When the crowd on the boat learned that Swiftwater Bill was on board, everybody looked for fireworks and a good time. The captain ordered notice put up in the dining room, reading:

“Gambling positively prohibited on this boat.”

Swiftwater saw that sign and gently laughed to himself.

“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “I am going to have some fun with the boys. So if I come to borrow some money from you, don’t be foolish and refuse me.”

Swiftwater had some few hundred in cash, but most of his money was in drafts, which he could not cash on the boat. When I found that the boys had started a little poker game, I expected Swiftwater to be coming to me for money in a little while, and sure enough he did.

“Swiftwater,” I said, “as long as you play poker you can’t have any money from me, because you know you can’t play poker. But if you will start a solo game I will let you have a little change.”

Now, Swiftwater swelled up visibly because heknew that I thought he was one of the best solo players in all the North, and I have to laugh even now to recall that after the first fifteen minutes of play at solo the men who had sought to fleece him of his money, found they had no chance and they all stopped the game.

It was late Saturday afternoon when finally the Ohio poked her nose in front of one of the docks in Seattle. There was a strong ebb tide, and it was nearly an hour before the gang plank was run ashore. We docked jam up against a little steamer on our left, and Swiftwater, being in a hurry to get ashore, asked me if I would take his grip in the carriage to the Cecil Hotel and he would join me in a little while, after he could get a shave. With that Swiftwater jumped to the deck of the little steamer next to us and thence to the dock and was gone.

I went direct to the Cecil Hotel, where Bera was waiting for me. Before I had been there a half hour the newsboys on the streets were crying the sale of the Seattle Times:

“All about Swiftwater Bill arrested for bigamy.”

I heard the shrill voices of the urchins from my window in the hotel and I said:

“Bera, what have you done—had him arrested?”

I rang the bell and told the bell-boy to bring up a copy of The Times. Sure enough, there was thewhole story of a warrant issued for Swiftwater Bill on the charge of bigamy and a long yarn about his various escapes in Alaska, including a recital of how he ruined the life of young Kitty Gates, his niece, by eloping with her and marrying her while he was still the lawful husband of Bera.

Just about dusk—I think it must have been at 8 o’clock that evening—there came a knock at the door. I went to answer it, and there in the hall of the hotel stood a man who was an absolute stranger to me.

“Mrs. Beebe?”

“This is Mrs. Beebe.”

“Swiftwater wants to see you. I am Jack Watson, who used to be with him in the north.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you where he is, Mrs. Beebe,” said the man, “but if you will go with me I can find him.”

Five minutes later we were on First Avenue, which was crowded with thousands of sightseers, it being Saturday night, and everybody seemed to be out for a good time. Watson led me up Spring Street to the alley between First and Second Avenues and then went down the alley till, reaching the shadow of a tall building, he said:

“Please wait here a minute, Mrs. Beebe.”

I looked down at the brilliantly lighted street corneron First Avenue, where is situated the Rainier-Grand Hotel, and there I saw Swiftwater standing, smoking a cigar, while hundreds of people were passing up and down the sidewalk. He little looked as if the deputy sheriffs were after him.

In a moment Watson had brought Swiftwater to me.

“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater, “what did you wire to Bera? Did you tell her I was coming out and to have me arrested?”

“I certainly wired her,” said I, “and, Swiftwater, if she’s had you arrested that’s your business.”

“Mrs. Beebe, you’ve been the only friend I’ve ever had and now you have thrown me down,” said the miner.

Said I, “Swiftwater, I have not thrown you down, and it’s about time that you showed some indication of trying to do what is right by me and Bera and the babies.”

“Here’s that $250 I borrowed from you on the boat,” said Swiftwater, “and I guess after all that you are really the only friend I ever had in this world. Won’t you tell me what to do now?”

I hesitated a moment and then it seemed to me that there was little to be gained by having Swiftwater thrown into jail without any chance whatever to secure his release on bail. In spiteof all that I had suffered from him, and all the untold misery and humiliation that he had put upon my daughter Bera, I felt sorry for Swiftwater.

“You had better take this $250 back,” said I, “as you may have to get out of town tonight. Have you any other money on you?”

“Not a cent,” said he.

“Very well, you can pay me that money you owe some other time,” I said.

Then Swiftwater and I fell to talking as to what had best be done. He wanted very much to see Bera and the babies and begged me, if I thought it safe, to take him to the hotel. Finally, seeing the big crowd on the streets, I consented, and together we went to the Cecil, entered the elevator and then went directly to my rooms.

Bera was there with the boy Freddie—the youngest. Swiftwater kissed Bera and the baby, but Bera turned away and went into another room, the tears streaming down her face.

“Mrs. Beebe,” said Swiftwater, “the penitentiary will be my fate unless this bigamy charge is withdrawn. You and Bera and the babies will lose if I go to state’s prison, and that is where Kitty Gates will send me unless Bera will get a divorce.”

Just then there came a loud rap at the door, and without waiting for either of us to speak the door was opened and in walked two deputy sheriffs. They immediately placed Swiftwater under arrest.

CHAPTER XVI.AS A VERACIOUS chronicler of the events, inexplicable and unbelievable as this story may appear, of the life and exploits of Swiftwater Bill Gates, I want to begin this chapter with the prefatory announcement that, all and singular, as the lawyers say, the statements herein are absolutely true and may be verified.I give this simple warning merely because, as I recall what happened the next two or three days after Swiftwater’s arrest, it seems to me that many of my readers will say, “These things could not have happened.”Swiftwater, calmly seating himself, in a big leather upholstered Morris chair, said, looking at the Sheriff; “Old man, I guess we can fix this thing up right here. Send for the judge and have him come down here quick.”The officer looked at me and smiled.“I don’t want to see Mr. Gates put in jail tonight” said I. “And if there is any way that this thing can be settled I am willing. More than that,” and here I looked at Swiftwater, “I think Bill will not make any attempt to escape, and if it is all right with you, I’ll go on his bond.”After more palaver of this kind, and here I am about to tell something about judicial processes that will surely cause a smile, a messenger was sent from the hotel to another hotel, where was stopping Judge Hatch, who was sitting on the Superior Court bench in King County, although he lived in another county down the Sound.Outside in the hall there were a score of people, waiting to see Swiftwater, and to learn what would be the outcome of the case. There was the sheriff, Lou Smith; two other deputies, a half dozen lawyers and the reporters for the Seattle newspapers—quite a colony altogether.After half an hour the judge came in the room, accompanied by another deputy sheriff.“We’d just as well have some of the lawyers in here,” said Swiftwater. “Ask Mr. Murphy and Mr. Cole to come in.”The door was opened and in came the attorneys and some others.“Will you please ring the bell, Mrs. Beebe?” said Swiftwater.I rang the bell, the boy came and Swiftwater ordered two pint bottles of wine.Now, this was Swiftwater’s way of dallying with justice. It was another exemplification of his idea—the mainspring in the man’s whole character—that money could do anything and everything.The wine came, two bottles at a time and then four, and then six. Every time the boy came up, Swiftwater borrowed money from me to pay the bill. Then Swiftwater did something that I never believed could happen. The National Bank at Fairbanks had, a few weeks before, issued its first currency—the first government bank notes in all Alaska. Swiftwater had a bunch of the new $20 bills and, wrapping in each a nugget taken from Number 6 Cleary, he presented one to each of his friends—that is, all who were present.“If Mr. Gates will deposit $2,250, as counsel for Mrs. Gates desires, which is to be applied for the maintenance of herself and children and for attorney’s fees, I think we may continue this matter until a later date,” said the judge.Swiftwater came over to me.“I’ve got a thousand dollar draft,” said he, “and if you will loan me $1,250 I’ll pay everything up Monday,” said Swiftwater.I have never yet fully made up my mind what led me to loan Swiftwater that money, unless it was that, like everyone else who knew of his wonderful capacity for getting money rapidly out of the North, I believed he would make good all of his promises. I gave him the money, and Swiftwater was a free man.Just then the sheriff himself opened the door and,noticing one of the lawyers holding a bunch of bills and drafts in his hand, said:“I guess I will take charge of this.”And so it came about that the money was deposited in the clerk’s office in the county court, and on Monday morning, before any of us were about, the lawyers for Bera, Murphy & Cole, appeared in the courthouse with an order signed by the judge to draw the money out. Bera got $750 of the $1,000 promised her for maintenance for herself and children and the lawyers got the remainder.Is it any wonder, then, that I have often thought it was the easiest thing in the world for Swiftwater to find a loophole in the meshes of the law by which he could escape, while I have never yet found a way to make the law give me just common justice?And now it was Swiftwater’s turn to act. In another day the newspapers had his story that he had been “held up,” and after that came a sensation in the Bar Association of Seattle the like of which is not on record. And while the lawyers were fighting over the spoils, Swiftwater cleverly enough, though haunted by the spectre of the state prison, and constantly pressed by Kitty Gates, his polygamous wife, began working on Bera’s sympathies. He came to the hotel and went to Bera’s room.“Bera,” he said, “unless you get a divorce from me, and do it at once, Kitty will send me to thepenitentiary; I will lose all my property in Alaska, and the boys and you will be everlastingly disgraced.”Bera listened. It is enough to say that with Swiftwater in the penitentiary, his mining interests in Alaska, which promised brighter than anything he had ever undertaken, and that means hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of Bera’s chance and mine to ever get a new start in life would have been wasted.Swiftwater daily said:“Bera, you certainly love the boys enough to save them the disgrace of having a felon for a father.”The argument was enough. Bera consented, and although, as I understand it, the law specifically prohibits a divorce where the parties agree in advance on the severance of the holy marriage tie, Swiftwater went away and Bera brought suit for divorce in the court of King County. And in time the decree was granted and is still of record in that county.A week later Swiftwater, as I afterwards found out, joined Kitty Gates in Portland and the two went to San Francisco. Thus can be turned into the basest uses the legal processes of our courts and, strange as it may seem, Swiftwater, after Bera’s divorce, legally married Kitty, then divorced her, and not later than two years afterwards he told thenewspapers in San Francisco, that having divorced all his other wives, he was looking for a new one.I want to ask now, is there no law to reach a monster of this kind? Are the laws so framed that men of Swiftwater’s type can go at large throughout the country ruining the lives of young girls, and, followed by a halo of gold and the fame that quick fortune making brings, claiming and receiving the friendship of their fellow men?

AS A VERACIOUS chronicler of the events, inexplicable and unbelievable as this story may appear, of the life and exploits of Swiftwater Bill Gates, I want to begin this chapter with the prefatory announcement that, all and singular, as the lawyers say, the statements herein are absolutely true and may be verified.

I give this simple warning merely because, as I recall what happened the next two or three days after Swiftwater’s arrest, it seems to me that many of my readers will say, “These things could not have happened.”

Swiftwater, calmly seating himself, in a big leather upholstered Morris chair, said, looking at the Sheriff; “Old man, I guess we can fix this thing up right here. Send for the judge and have him come down here quick.”

The officer looked at me and smiled.

“I don’t want to see Mr. Gates put in jail tonight” said I. “And if there is any way that this thing can be settled I am willing. More than that,” and here I looked at Swiftwater, “I think Bill will not make any attempt to escape, and if it is all right with you, I’ll go on his bond.”

After more palaver of this kind, and here I am about to tell something about judicial processes that will surely cause a smile, a messenger was sent from the hotel to another hotel, where was stopping Judge Hatch, who was sitting on the Superior Court bench in King County, although he lived in another county down the Sound.

Outside in the hall there were a score of people, waiting to see Swiftwater, and to learn what would be the outcome of the case. There was the sheriff, Lou Smith; two other deputies, a half dozen lawyers and the reporters for the Seattle newspapers—quite a colony altogether.

After half an hour the judge came in the room, accompanied by another deputy sheriff.

“We’d just as well have some of the lawyers in here,” said Swiftwater. “Ask Mr. Murphy and Mr. Cole to come in.”

The door was opened and in came the attorneys and some others.

“Will you please ring the bell, Mrs. Beebe?” said Swiftwater.

I rang the bell, the boy came and Swiftwater ordered two pint bottles of wine.

Now, this was Swiftwater’s way of dallying with justice. It was another exemplification of his idea—the mainspring in the man’s whole character—that money could do anything and everything.

The wine came, two bottles at a time and then four, and then six. Every time the boy came up, Swiftwater borrowed money from me to pay the bill. Then Swiftwater did something that I never believed could happen. The National Bank at Fairbanks had, a few weeks before, issued its first currency—the first government bank notes in all Alaska. Swiftwater had a bunch of the new $20 bills and, wrapping in each a nugget taken from Number 6 Cleary, he presented one to each of his friends—that is, all who were present.

“If Mr. Gates will deposit $2,250, as counsel for Mrs. Gates desires, which is to be applied for the maintenance of herself and children and for attorney’s fees, I think we may continue this matter until a later date,” said the judge.

Swiftwater came over to me.

“I’ve got a thousand dollar draft,” said he, “and if you will loan me $1,250 I’ll pay everything up Monday,” said Swiftwater.

I have never yet fully made up my mind what led me to loan Swiftwater that money, unless it was that, like everyone else who knew of his wonderful capacity for getting money rapidly out of the North, I believed he would make good all of his promises. I gave him the money, and Swiftwater was a free man.

Just then the sheriff himself opened the door and,noticing one of the lawyers holding a bunch of bills and drafts in his hand, said:

“I guess I will take charge of this.”

And so it came about that the money was deposited in the clerk’s office in the county court, and on Monday morning, before any of us were about, the lawyers for Bera, Murphy & Cole, appeared in the courthouse with an order signed by the judge to draw the money out. Bera got $750 of the $1,000 promised her for maintenance for herself and children and the lawyers got the remainder.

Is it any wonder, then, that I have often thought it was the easiest thing in the world for Swiftwater to find a loophole in the meshes of the law by which he could escape, while I have never yet found a way to make the law give me just common justice?

And now it was Swiftwater’s turn to act. In another day the newspapers had his story that he had been “held up,” and after that came a sensation in the Bar Association of Seattle the like of which is not on record. And while the lawyers were fighting over the spoils, Swiftwater cleverly enough, though haunted by the spectre of the state prison, and constantly pressed by Kitty Gates, his polygamous wife, began working on Bera’s sympathies. He came to the hotel and went to Bera’s room.

“Bera,” he said, “unless you get a divorce from me, and do it at once, Kitty will send me to thepenitentiary; I will lose all my property in Alaska, and the boys and you will be everlastingly disgraced.”

Bera listened. It is enough to say that with Swiftwater in the penitentiary, his mining interests in Alaska, which promised brighter than anything he had ever undertaken, and that means hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of Bera’s chance and mine to ever get a new start in life would have been wasted.

Swiftwater daily said:

“Bera, you certainly love the boys enough to save them the disgrace of having a felon for a father.”

The argument was enough. Bera consented, and although, as I understand it, the law specifically prohibits a divorce where the parties agree in advance on the severance of the holy marriage tie, Swiftwater went away and Bera brought suit for divorce in the court of King County. And in time the decree was granted and is still of record in that county.

A week later Swiftwater, as I afterwards found out, joined Kitty Gates in Portland and the two went to San Francisco. Thus can be turned into the basest uses the legal processes of our courts and, strange as it may seem, Swiftwater, after Bera’s divorce, legally married Kitty, then divorced her, and not later than two years afterwards he told thenewspapers in San Francisco, that having divorced all his other wives, he was looking for a new one.

I want to ask now, is there no law to reach a monster of this kind? Are the laws so framed that men of Swiftwater’s type can go at large throughout the country ruining the lives of young girls, and, followed by a halo of gold and the fame that quick fortune making brings, claiming and receiving the friendship of their fellow men?

CHAPTER XVII.I AM getting to the end of my story, and as the finish draws near, it seems to me, that I have not quite done justice by Swiftwater Bill, in at least one respect—and that is the activity and agility the man displays when events over which he might have had control, had he been on the square, crowded him so closely, that like the proverbial flea, he had to hike. And in telling of Swiftwater’s talent in this direction, I wish to be regarded as speaking as one without malice, but rather as admiring Swiftwater for trying, in so far as lay in his power, to make good his nickname of Swiftwater.In San Francisco, after Swiftwater had obtained a divorce from Kitty, he immediately announced his intention of getting another wife. For Swiftwater knew that the prison gates which once had yawned in his face were now closed, and, better even than that, was the thought that I—his loving mother-in-law—would no longer be interested in his future.It is undoubtedly true that in Swiftwater’s mental processes he regarded first, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold that lay in the pay streak on No. 6 Cleary, in the Tanana, and I can see Bill now in my mind’s eye, facing an array of cut glass decanters, embroidered table cloths, potted plants,orchestra and all that goes with the swell cafes of San Francisco, eating his dinner and rubbing his hands with glee as he remembered how easily he had obtained a fortune from me, which he sunk on Quartz Creek in the Klondike, and then slid out of paying his debt to me.The very next season found Swiftwater in the Tanana and this time, according to the best official records I could obtain, his clean-up was not less than $200,000. But I had not forgotten that Swiftwater had told me, first that Number 6 Cleary was a bigger proposition even than Quartz Creek, and that Gold Stream was one of the richest of all the undeveloped creeks in the whole Tanana.For this last information, I will say, I have always been grateful to Swiftwater, because his belief that the time would come when Gold Stream would be one of the best producers in all Alaska, led me to obtain several claims there. And now, let it be known, his prediction has been fully and completely verified.But, knowing nothing of Gold Stream, and remembering only that Swiftwater had added more than $1,000 to his already great obligations to me, and had provided nothing for his family, I journeyed once more across the Coast Range of Alaska.Crossing on the railway from Skagway to White Horse, I met a score or more of traders with theiroutfits of provisions and fresh vegetables, all hurrying to get into Dawson as soon as the ice broke up, to sell their wares to the miners of the Klondike at fancy prices. There were several women in the party, some of them bent on joining their husbands in Dawson.Three hours ride down the river on a scow, laden with freight of every character, we struck a sand bar and were compelled to spent the night in midstream, absolutely without even a crust of bread to eat, and heaven’s blue our only canopy. The grounding of freight scows in the upper waters of the Yukon in the spring is a common experience, and in those days little care was taken to protect the passengers from suffering hardship and real danger. That night the icy winds blew from the mountain ranges sixty miles an hour, and we suffered severely, not having a mouthful of food since the morning before.The captain of the scow, oblivious to his obligations to his passengers, had loaned the only small boat he had to a pair of miners the day before. We could do nothing until they returned. Finally, after we had been on the bar for more than twelve hours, the men came back with the boat and took us, two at a time, ashore.Then, guided by traders, the women in the party were told to walk down the stream fifteen miles towhere there was a camp. It was bitter cold and the trail was hard to walk. In the afternoon of the day following our shipwreck, we stopped and the men built a bonfire, while the poor women fell almost unconscious in front of it, completely exhausted for want of food, which we had not tasted for twenty-four hours.Two of the traders went down to the river’s bank and on the other side they espied a camp of a herder, beneath the shelter of an abandoned barracks. This was the only human habitation within miles. The traders procured a boat and took us women across the river. The herder had some bacon and some dry bread, which he cooked for us. Now, I want to say that never in my life have I ever eaten anything that tasted so good as that meal, consisting only of fried bacon strips placed with the gravy on top of two slices of cold dry bread, and a teacup of hot coffee to wash it down with.That day the scow came down the river and again we boarded it and finally reached Lake Le Barge. The lake was still frozen over and we started to cross its thirty miles of icy surface with horses drawing sleds. The ice was getting rotten and four times in as many miles, to my constant terror, the horses broke through the ice, threatening every minute to drag me with them. Becoming weary of this,I left the sled and hired a dog team and outfit to take me across the lake.At Clark’s road house, I remained a week and then boarded a scow and went through Thirty-Mile river to board the steamer Thistle for Dawson. Going down the river on a scow, one scow that was lashed to ours, struck a rock in midstream, a hole was knocked into our scow, which almost sunk. The bank of the river was lined with thousands of people camping or moving on towards the Klondike. These people came to our rescue and with ropes and small boats helped us off.In Fairbanks once more, I found Swiftwater. I had telephoned him of my coming, and in a day or two he came to my hotel.“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “here is $50 for your present hotel bills. I must go back to Cleary Creek at once, but I will be back again inside of a week, and then I will straighten everything up.”When Swiftwater told me that, I believed him—for the last time—for the next morning I found that he had left my room to board a train for Chena, on the Tanana, with a draft for $50,000 in his inside pocket, $10,000 more in cash and a ticket for Seattle.Swiftwater undoubtedly believed, that being without money I would be compelled to remain an unlimited time in Fairbanks. Not so. I still had a little jewelry left that he had not persuaded me topawn or sell for his benefit, and on this I raised enough money to buy a ticket to Seattle.Before I could get there, Swiftwater learned of my coming, and when I arrived on Elliott Bay, he had applied to the Federal Courts to be adjudged a bankrupt and had assigned to Phil Wilson all his interests in the Tanana, amounting to untold wealth.That case of Swiftwater’s is still pending in the Federal Court in Seattle, and no judge and no court has ever yet, up to this writing, consented to declare him a bankrupt, although he has successfully placed his property in the Tanana beyond the reach of the scores of men who have befriended him in the past without reward on his part.

I AM getting to the end of my story, and as the finish draws near, it seems to me, that I have not quite done justice by Swiftwater Bill, in at least one respect—and that is the activity and agility the man displays when events over which he might have had control, had he been on the square, crowded him so closely, that like the proverbial flea, he had to hike. And in telling of Swiftwater’s talent in this direction, I wish to be regarded as speaking as one without malice, but rather as admiring Swiftwater for trying, in so far as lay in his power, to make good his nickname of Swiftwater.

In San Francisco, after Swiftwater had obtained a divorce from Kitty, he immediately announced his intention of getting another wife. For Swiftwater knew that the prison gates which once had yawned in his face were now closed, and, better even than that, was the thought that I—his loving mother-in-law—would no longer be interested in his future.

It is undoubtedly true that in Swiftwater’s mental processes he regarded first, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold that lay in the pay streak on No. 6 Cleary, in the Tanana, and I can see Bill now in my mind’s eye, facing an array of cut glass decanters, embroidered table cloths, potted plants,orchestra and all that goes with the swell cafes of San Francisco, eating his dinner and rubbing his hands with glee as he remembered how easily he had obtained a fortune from me, which he sunk on Quartz Creek in the Klondike, and then slid out of paying his debt to me.

The very next season found Swiftwater in the Tanana and this time, according to the best official records I could obtain, his clean-up was not less than $200,000. But I had not forgotten that Swiftwater had told me, first that Number 6 Cleary was a bigger proposition even than Quartz Creek, and that Gold Stream was one of the richest of all the undeveloped creeks in the whole Tanana.

For this last information, I will say, I have always been grateful to Swiftwater, because his belief that the time would come when Gold Stream would be one of the best producers in all Alaska, led me to obtain several claims there. And now, let it be known, his prediction has been fully and completely verified.

But, knowing nothing of Gold Stream, and remembering only that Swiftwater had added more than $1,000 to his already great obligations to me, and had provided nothing for his family, I journeyed once more across the Coast Range of Alaska.

Crossing on the railway from Skagway to White Horse, I met a score or more of traders with theiroutfits of provisions and fresh vegetables, all hurrying to get into Dawson as soon as the ice broke up, to sell their wares to the miners of the Klondike at fancy prices. There were several women in the party, some of them bent on joining their husbands in Dawson.

Three hours ride down the river on a scow, laden with freight of every character, we struck a sand bar and were compelled to spent the night in midstream, absolutely without even a crust of bread to eat, and heaven’s blue our only canopy. The grounding of freight scows in the upper waters of the Yukon in the spring is a common experience, and in those days little care was taken to protect the passengers from suffering hardship and real danger. That night the icy winds blew from the mountain ranges sixty miles an hour, and we suffered severely, not having a mouthful of food since the morning before.

The captain of the scow, oblivious to his obligations to his passengers, had loaned the only small boat he had to a pair of miners the day before. We could do nothing until they returned. Finally, after we had been on the bar for more than twelve hours, the men came back with the boat and took us, two at a time, ashore.

Then, guided by traders, the women in the party were told to walk down the stream fifteen miles towhere there was a camp. It was bitter cold and the trail was hard to walk. In the afternoon of the day following our shipwreck, we stopped and the men built a bonfire, while the poor women fell almost unconscious in front of it, completely exhausted for want of food, which we had not tasted for twenty-four hours.

Two of the traders went down to the river’s bank and on the other side they espied a camp of a herder, beneath the shelter of an abandoned barracks. This was the only human habitation within miles. The traders procured a boat and took us women across the river. The herder had some bacon and some dry bread, which he cooked for us. Now, I want to say that never in my life have I ever eaten anything that tasted so good as that meal, consisting only of fried bacon strips placed with the gravy on top of two slices of cold dry bread, and a teacup of hot coffee to wash it down with.

That day the scow came down the river and again we boarded it and finally reached Lake Le Barge. The lake was still frozen over and we started to cross its thirty miles of icy surface with horses drawing sleds. The ice was getting rotten and four times in as many miles, to my constant terror, the horses broke through the ice, threatening every minute to drag me with them. Becoming weary of this,I left the sled and hired a dog team and outfit to take me across the lake.

At Clark’s road house, I remained a week and then boarded a scow and went through Thirty-Mile river to board the steamer Thistle for Dawson. Going down the river on a scow, one scow that was lashed to ours, struck a rock in midstream, a hole was knocked into our scow, which almost sunk. The bank of the river was lined with thousands of people camping or moving on towards the Klondike. These people came to our rescue and with ropes and small boats helped us off.

In Fairbanks once more, I found Swiftwater. I had telephoned him of my coming, and in a day or two he came to my hotel.

“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “here is $50 for your present hotel bills. I must go back to Cleary Creek at once, but I will be back again inside of a week, and then I will straighten everything up.”

When Swiftwater told me that, I believed him—for the last time—for the next morning I found that he had left my room to board a train for Chena, on the Tanana, with a draft for $50,000 in his inside pocket, $10,000 more in cash and a ticket for Seattle.

Swiftwater undoubtedly believed, that being without money I would be compelled to remain an unlimited time in Fairbanks. Not so. I still had a little jewelry left that he had not persuaded me topawn or sell for his benefit, and on this I raised enough money to buy a ticket to Seattle.

Before I could get there, Swiftwater learned of my coming, and when I arrived on Elliott Bay, he had applied to the Federal Courts to be adjudged a bankrupt and had assigned to Phil Wilson all his interests in the Tanana, amounting to untold wealth.

That case of Swiftwater’s is still pending in the Federal Court in Seattle, and no judge and no court has ever yet, up to this writing, consented to declare him a bankrupt, although he has successfully placed his property in the Tanana beyond the reach of the scores of men who have befriended him in the past without reward on his part.

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