Читать книгу Trails and Tales in Cobalt - W. H. P. Jarvis - Страница 5

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Being a newcomer in camp and as yet unestablished with associates, I was suffered to take temporary possession of a small “A” tent lying across the trail from the Bank of Commerce and adjoining that of the “Sourdough Quartette.” In fact, the tent was under the patronage of these gentlemen, and an old acquaintance with “Dick,” the most convivial spirit of the whole, won me the favor. As Dick was the life of his party, so that party was the life of all Cobalt. “Them Klondike fellows do drink a lot of booze, an’ they do raise a row o’ nights,” was the remark of one of Cobalt’s citizens.

Dick was a winner; he had a laugh that had won him a place in the hearts of many men and more women years ago. In fact, the number of daintily colored and sweetly perfumed letters that had come to Dick’s address for years after his advent to Dawson was there a subject of remark among his fellows, notwithstanding that the atmosphere of the Klondike capital was conducive of nothing so much as making people interest themselves only in such matters as concerned themselves.

Dick had been rated a millionaire in Dawson once, and many were the congratulations he received as such. He and two others had become possessed of a claim in one of the Klondike creeks. The three friends had taken another “partner,” who was to be the practical man, and who, in due course, began to work the property. Soon after operations were commenced the bed-rock began to yield big pay. A porphyry dike was found running across the creek, constituting the best kind of bed-rock. Six feet of this bed-rock would yield ten dollars to the pan, and so it was a simple matter to calculate half a dozen millions within the boundaries of the claim.

The sequel—alas! it is always such. The news was heard in Dawson one day that the operating head of the lucky group had disposed of his holdings. Then there came to be less said about the great Bonanza claim, and, finally, with returning summer, the results were attained. After running expenses were paid and mortgages disposed of, Dick and his friends had nothing, but the chap who sold had got a handsome profit in hard cash.

The intrinsic head of the “Sourdough Quartette” was the Colonel. The Colonel owned the tent, the blankets, the stove, and the dishes. He likewise owned the major portion of the grub. The Colonel’s hospitality was excessive. “Any d—— man could have any d—— thing he wants in the layout,” was the ever-recurring remark of the host. “Have a drink and a cigar,” was his invitation to me on being introduced.

The Colonel had a history. At the time when the Nome diggings had been discovered, and the socially putrid, fretting under the restraint of the authorities in Dawson, had left that city by all or any means for the new camp in “God’s country,” the Colonel had joined the rush. His abilities and accomplishments soon won him a place, and he was taken into the civic government of Nome as treasurer. This constituted a graft of great potentiality, and the Colonel prospered.

“Whenever I would get cleaned out playing the wheel or ‘Bank,’ I’d just go up to the City Hall and open the safe, and take what I wanted to keep going,” was the Colonel’s description of the happy circumstances under which he thrived in the halcyon days when chaos reigned over society in that great Mecca of avaricious and adventurous souls.

Prom Alaska the Colonel had visited Nevada, and then drifted to Cobalt. “Never carry a gun unless you carry it loaded, and never draw unless you intend to shoot, and never shoot unless you shoot to kill, for then your side tells the story.” This was the Colonel’s maxim, and it is eminently strong.

The third in the party of Klondikers was Teddy. Teddy was of manner soft and unassertive. Teddy had seen Dawson when wine cost $15.00 per bottle and flowed like water; when the camp currency was counted in ounces of gold dust, pennyweights, and grains; when the dance halls were in the height of their glory and crowded nightly with a populace astounding in its complexity. But Teddy never spoke to the multitude, and seldom to an individual. He only smiled.

The fourth of the “Sourdough Quartette” was the “Cap.” The “Cap” was not properly a sourdough; he had never seen the Yukon’s mighty flood heave its winter’s ice to the sea. In fact, he had never been in the Yukon at all, but had been in South Africa. He had seen things, and the same liberal courtesy that breeds the proverbial Kentucky colonel had embraced the “Cap” to his three companions to make the four. The “Cap” was a mining engineer, at least, if not in fact, by courtesy.

“This camp upsets all previous theories of mining. What do I know about these ores and where to find them?” No person could answer the question, so the Captain’s deprecation of self was allowed to pass, but not without duly impressing such members of the common herd unto whose ears it reached.

Conviviality was the characteristic of the “Sourdough Quartette,” and to the aid of this spirit was called an abundance of whiskey. Several satellites were at hand who constituted ready messengers to Haileybury. Whiskey was purchased by the half-dozen bottles in Haileybury and carried to the “Sourdoughs” in Cobalt.

After I had dined at Cobalt’s most fashionable restaurant, I, in due course, lay down to sleep in the little tent. I had no sooner got settled than the flap was lifted, and a voice inquired how many were the inhabitants. I remarked that I was the limitation, with the consequence that I soon had a bedfellow.

My bedfellow was from British Honduras, an American by birth, an M.D. by profession. He had a claim and a camp in Frog Swamp, with a big bull moose as a neighbor. He thought he had a good prospect, and had got his claim recorded.

As my new acquaintance told me his history, at least that which conveyed the above-mentioned information concerning him, conversation among the “Sourdoughs” became vigorous.

“You know the ‘Oregon Mare’ who used to dance in Miller’s on Front Street?” interrogated the Colonel. “Well, she hit the trail from Dawson in December, and mushed right through to Nome in six weeks.”

“Yes, and there was ‘Gumboot Kitty’; she was one of the worst grafters in Dawson. She would take a man down the line for every cent he owned,” assented the mirthful Richard.

High revelry was being held in the tent of the “Sourdoughs,” and the singing of the clan’s favorite song was frequently indulged in by Dick:

“Oh, de Irish dey was full of de booze,

An’ dey said, Come along an’ we’ll kill all de Jews,

An’ we’ll put old Dawson City on ze bum.”

With reflections on the number of wild jamborees those accents and words had been heard at in the glitter of the Klondike capital at its zenith, I again settled down to rest.

“Oh, yes; the ‘Nigger Jim’ stampede. I was on that. Me and another fellow started from Dawson with two pair of blankets, and three cans of beef extract for grub, and there were hundreds of other fellows just like us. The thermometer stayed around fifty for the next week, and nearly every fellow was frozen more or less. Some got frozen to death.”

It was the Colonel who spoke. Here, where had been found wealth greater than that of the great Golden Yukon, were being recounted the tales of hardships of those subarctic regions.