Gold Diggers

by Charlotte Gray

  The men hurried on as the weather worsened. “Snowing, Blowing and Cold all day, could not stir out,” recorded Fred Thompson on October 1. Time was running out. The hundreds of stampeders waiting to cross Marsh Lake all knew that the icy wind presaged freeze-up: they had to get across the lake. If they didn’t, they would be stuck in the makeshift camp all winter, hoping their rations would last. It took six days for Jack’s group in the Yukon Belle to get across, but they finally made it and rowed into the upper Yukon River. Now they faced the most feared section of the water journey, Miles Canyon and White Horse Rapids, where Bill Haskell and Joe Meeker had almost lost their lives fifteen months earlier and had watched as most of their outfit was swept away. Since then, Belinda Mulrooney had made it safely through the miles of white water, whirlpools, rock reefs, and sandbars, but at least nineteen large boats had capsized in White Horse Rapids, and no fewer than 200 eager gold seekers had drowned. Graves marked by crooked crosses lined the riverbank.

  Jack prepared to steer his heavily laden vessel through the turbulent waters of Miles Canyon, while over a thousand spectators fringed the brink of the cliffs that towered above him. Seconds later, all he could see were “rock walls dashing by like twin lightning express trains.” Three miles farther on, but only two minutes later, the menacing white waters of the White Horse Rapids beckoned. Thanks to Jack’s nautical skills, the Yukon Belle survived the dangers.

  Now they could cross Lake Laberge, then float along in the river’s swift current, alert for sandbars and ready for the Five Finger Rapids and Rink Rapids. Each day, more slush ice swirled into the Yukon from its tributaries, and the ledges of ice protruding from the bank crept outward.

  At three o’clock on Saturday, October 8, Jack London, Fred Thompson, Merritt Sloper, and Jim Goodman arrived at a flat, sandy island in the mouth of the Stewart River, about eighty miles south of Dawson City. There were several old but habitable log cabins here, the remnants of a trading post. Thompson noted in his diary, “This is a good place and we think shall make it our headquarters.” They had heard that food, cabins, and fuel were all in short supply in Dawson City, and they realized that once the Yukon was frozen they could reach Dawson more easily over the ice. What’s more, the Stewart River itself was reckoned by several old-timers to be a good bet: gold had already been located on a couple of creeks, and there were plenty more to explore. The men unloaded their boat, unpacked their goods, and studied the information about the Stewart in Jack’s handbook.

  Three days later, Jack London set off with four companions to explore Henderson Creek, a stream that flowed into the Yukon a couple of miles downriver. This was Jack’s first experience of panning, but he would quickly master both the techniques and the words with which to describe the thrill: “Earth and gravel seemed to fill the pan. As he imparted to it a circular movement, the lighter, coarser particles washed out over the edge . . . The contents of the pan diminished. As it drew near to the bottom . . . he gave the pan a sudden sloshing movement, emptying it of water. And the whole bottom showed as if covered with butter. Thus the yellow gold flashed up as the muddy water was flirted away. It was gold-dust, coarse gold, nuggets, large nuggets. He was all alone. He set the pan down for a moment and thought long thoughts . . . It was beyond anything that even he had dreamed” (Burning Daylight, published in 1910). In October 1897, neither Jack nor his companions were sure whether the glittering gravel at the bottom of their pans was the real stuff. But it was good enough, and Jack’s head was full of dreams of what lay waiting for him—gold, gold, gold. He was convinced his claim would make him rich. The next step was to register his Henderson Creek claim with the Canadian mining recorder, and that meant several days’ journey to the place he hungered to see: Dawson City.

  CHAPTER 9

  Starvation Rations, October-December 1897

  BILL HASKELL HAD KNOWN for weeks that the township was unprepared for winter. He had nothing but contempt for cheechakos who had “made no preparation”: in his opinion, most of them “would have difficulty in taking care of themselves anywhere.” In Dawson City during the long summer days of the building boom, jobs had been plentiful “so everything looked rosy to many who were so constituted.” Newly arrived carpenters relished earning twenty dollars a day when the average wage in American cities was two dollars. Laborers who had scrambled for employment in the flagging economies back home picked up twelve dollars a day, usually in the form of three-quarters of an ounce of gold dust.

  It was easy for beginners to assume that survival through the winter would be simple with wages so high. They reveled in Dawson’s frontier lifestyle: girls in the dance halls, fish in the river, raconteurs in the bars, game in the hills. Could life get any better? The newcomers had no idea that within a few weeks it would hurt to fill their lungs, and gold would be useless because there would be nothing to buy. But old-timers like Bill thought back to the previous February and shivered as they recalled the sound of wind snarling down the creeks and the bite of bitter cold when they ventured out.

  As early as mid-August, Bill started buying provisions for his and Joe’s second winter on the claim. He had heard rumors that the two trading companies had got together to work out what Dawson would need to survive the winter. There were about 5,000 people in the town, hundreds more on the creeks, and most had no provisions. In addition, about twenty eager gold diggers arrived each day through September, and still more were heading north across the St. Elias Mountains, or traveling upriver from St. Michael. There wasn’t enough food in Dawson’s warehouses to feed them all through the months ahead. But the managers didn’t increase their food orders to match the expected demand. They certainly didn’t reduce their liquor orders to make space for solid provisions, because they made twice as much money on liquor as on flour and beans. In the last few days of the shipping season, 3,000 gallons of rye whiskey were brought in, and the saloons did not run dry all winter. Instead, the merchants raised prices for bacon, beans, flour, and other staples, and tried an informal rationing system. “When the last two steamers arrived from St. Michael, bringing about a thousand tons of provisions,” recalled Bill in his memoirs, “the rush to get them resembled the opening of a box-office sale for some great theatrical attraction.” Hundreds stood in line for hours around the commercial companies’ warehouses, begging for a chance to buy anything. One man told Bill that he had waited for three hours before he was able to get his order in, but even after he had handed over his money he did not receive his goods. He was simply told that another steamer would be arriving shortly, and then his order would definitely be filled.

  Summer drew to a close, and the birches and aspens on the steep bank behind Dawson turned brilliant yellow. Each morning, fallen leaves were crisp with frost. As the sun lost its warmth, anxious men pulled their shabby coats around them and huddled on the waterfront. “The toot of a steamboat whistle would have brought the whole population to the river bank, eager to welcome the arrival of much-needed supplies,” recalled Bill. Yet after the middle of September, the trees were bare and there were few whistles. Plenty of heavily loaded vessels had left St. Michael at the mouth of the Yukon, but the river was unusually low and they were all stuck on the sandbars below Fort Yukon, in American territory. In the Pioneer saloon, Bill watched prospectors quell their fears at the bar. “Men who had been exulting in their success, and were counting upon returning [from the creeks] in the spring with sacks of gold, suddenly realized that to remain till then they must run the risk of starvation.” Bill and his partner Joe began to discuss their own winter plans. Could they really face another winter digging on the claim? Did they have enough food? Or should they sell their claim and supplies for a tidy profit and walk south once the river was frozen?

  Sixteen miles outside town at Grand Forks, Belinda Mulrooney also knew what lay ahead. Like Bill, she had been quietly stockpiling what she might need. Most of her neighbors lacked the means and the foresight to stock up, and were likely to crowd into her roadhouse when the
going got tough. She and Sadie, accompanied by the faithful Nero, walked down to Dawson City in late summer to see what was going on. Only a thin trickle of water ran through Bonanza Creek, and when Nero startled a ptarmigan in the undergrowth, the women noticed that white plumage was already replacing its brown feathers. Once in town, Belinda strolled down to the riverbank to watch men catching grayling and saw two men poling a small boat against the current. She hailed them to ask what was up. They were exhausted and frustrated, she learned: the steamboat owned by one of the men had given them nothing but trouble on the journey upriver, and now it had broken down just beyond the Moosehide Slide. The crew was refusing to refloat it unless the owner paid their wages. But he had no money.

  Belinda smelled business. The steamer carried close to $50,000 worth of supplies, and she told the owner that she would buy the lot. She needed a few hours, though: “I can’t handle it myself, but I can get people to go in it with me.” Then she considered which Klondike King would be a trustworthy partner. Immediately, Alex McDonald came to mind, “Big Honest Alex—so deeply saturated in religion,” as Belinda put it, “that everyone looked forward to doing what he did, he was held so high as an example.” Big Alex now owned interests in twenty-eight claims (making him, according to Bill Haskell, “rich beyond the dreams of avarice”) and had a large workforce that he had to feed through the winter. She sent Sadie off to find the Nova Scotian, and within the hour two figures could be seen locked in negotiation—Alex, the soft-voiced giant, speaking to short, peppery Belinda. “I’ll take a third,” Belinda told her new partner. “I can’t handle all of it, so we’ll divide it. You stay right here and I’ll go up and get the currency for the owner.” Soon she had raised the cash and drafted a crude contract. She had a side deal with the captain that he would give her all the mattresses off the steamer. In return, she would find him enough passengers for the outward journey, “and they’ll have their own bedding.”

  It looked like such a sweet deal. While the steamer’s cargo was unloaded into a warehouse, Belinda hurried back up Bonanza Creek to Grand Forks to get more bunks built for the mattresses. On her return to Dawson, she passed several packers loaded with bags of flour and other provisions, heading for Big Alex’s claims. But it wasn’t until she returned to the warehouse that she realized what her partner had done. Alex had taken all the food staples—the provisions she wanted for her hotel’s customers throughout the next six or eight months. All that was left for her were rubber boots, tobacco, underwear, socks, dried onions, a couple of sacks of river-soaked beans, dozens of candles, and fifty barrels of liquor.

  Belinda strode up to Big Alex. “Where’s my part of the provisions?” she demanded. The miner flinched at her tone. “You have one outfit allowed, and Sadie has one outfit, and there are a couple of sacks of flour,” he told her in his quiet Cape Breton lilt, as he rubbed his bristly chin. “Of course, if you run short I’ll provide for you, but I have so many men to feed.” Outraged, Belinda explained she needed the supplies for her hotel: you couldn’t cook rubber boots. But Big Alex was a teetotaler and hadn’t been anywhere near her hotel. He probably assumed Belinda wanted goods for her trading post and would be just as happy with boots and long johns as beans. Anyway, he was far too old-fashioned to imagine, let alone approve of, a woman in the roadhouse business. “Hotel?” he said, surprised. “You couldn’t run a hotel.” Then he stooped, looked into her face, put a meaty hand on her shoulder, and whispered innocently, “You’re not mad at me?”

  Belinda Mulrooney stared at him coldly. She was absolutely not going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He had cheated her. “No,” she snapped, “only you better not let me meet you anywhere after dark.” She was as angry with herself as with Alex. She prided herself on being a good judge of character, too smart to let anybody take advantage of her. Convinced that the “big stiff of a Nova Scotian cod fish [had] put something over” on her, she stalked back into the empty warehouse and had a full-voltage temper tantrum. Sadie stared in dismay at the sight of her employer beating her fists against the wall so hard that she knocked a plank askew. When Belinda finally calmed down, she remarked ruefully, “I guess my guardian angel let go of my hand for five minutes . . . I feel as if I had been caught swimming without my clothes on.” She started to plan her revenge. But first, like everybody else, she had to get through the winter.

  Famine looked inevitable. Fear brought the worst out in everybody. Destitute men started raiding private food caches and the companies’ stores. Inspector Constantine decided that the Canadian government must assert some authority—which meant, in practice, he had to act. He had already informed Ottawa on August 11 that “the outlook for grub is not assuring [given] the number of people here,” especially because Dawson’s population consisted, in his estimate, of about “four thousand crazy or lazy men, chiefly American miners and toughs from the coast towns.” In late September he had put the Mounties on half rations; now he swore in special constables to stand guard over the company stores. Superintendent Sam Steele, in charge of the North-West Mounted Police posts at the head of the Chilkoot and White Passes, had already decreed that any stampeder admitted into Canadian territory had to carry a full year’s supply of solid food. On September 30, Constantine and Thomas Fawcett, the Canadian government’s gold commissioner, posted a notice on Front Street outlining the ghastly truth: “For those who have not laid in a winter’s supply to remain here longer is to court death from starvation, or at least a certainty of sickness from scurvy and other troubles. Starvation now stares every one in the face.” At the same time, an Alaska Commercial Company official raced through town, telling any men he found loitering on street corners or clumped in bars, “Go! Go! Flee for your lives!”

  The warnings had some effect. In the few days before the Yukon River froze solid, a couple of hundred men left town for camps downriver in the same homemade boats and scows they had arrived in. Constantine also managed to evict from Dawson 160 members of what he described as “the unprovided and bum class”—the same slackers for whom Bill Haskell had such contempt. The captain of the steamer Bella, the Alaska Commercial Company’s paddle-wheeler, agreed to take them downriver on condition the government would pay for any ice damage to his vessel, and the passengers would cut the wood required to keep the Bella’s boiler fed and paddles churning. On October 1, under a leaden winter sky, a stubble-chinned army of vacant-eyed, hungry men straggled up the gangplank. Chunks of ice, swept along in the Yukon current, grazed the Bella’s hull as the boat cast off and headed north toward Circle City and Fort Yukon. The Bella was one of the last boats out of Dawson. Enough people had left town that Inspector Constantine began to hope famine might be averted.

  Those who remained hurried about their business. Snow lay ankle deep on the smoothly beaten streets and on the roofs of buildings. Smoke curled upward from stovepipes in the roofs of tents and cabins. Outside every building, dogs lay about sleeping or stood in strings of two or ten, harnessed to sleds piled high with carefully guarded provisions for prospectors on the creeks. There were still crowds of men on the streets, or warming themselves at the stoves in saloons and stores. You could tell sourdoughs from cheechakos by the state of their clothing. Old-timers wore beat-up twill parkas, fur-lined moosehide mittens, mukluks, and shaggy lynx-fur hats; newcomers were clad in mackinaws, leather boots, and heavy cloth caps, as advertised by Seattle outfitters. In the Alaska Commercial Company store, little was on the shelves other than ax handles and sugar, and the shelves of the North American Transportation and Trading Company store were bare. You couldn’t buy flour for love nor money, and there were plenty of rumors that the companies were stockpiling stuff in their warehouses for a few chosen customers. Dread stalked the town.

  By the fall of 1897, all the trading companies were running out of goods.

  Freeze-up was particularly poignant for Father Judge. After seven years in the North, he had known enough to buy supplies for winter while they were still available. St. Mary’s Ho
spital was now complete, and two large stoves had already been installed in his half-built church to warm the congregation. There were more than enough stampeders either with Irish Catholic roots or from French-speaking areas of Canada to fill the church on Sundays: his congregation often topped 100 people. But the Jesuit priest had longed for the arrival of the three Sisters of St. Ann to help him nurse the sick. The Order of the Sisters of St. Ann had well-established missions in Alaska, at Holy Cross, Akulurak, and Nulato. Their practical aid would be invaluable, but Judge was even hungrier for their spiritual companionship. He had plenty of acquaintances in Dawson—Big Alex McDonald regularly attended Mass, and when Belinda Mulrooney saw the stooped priest on the street, she gave him a respectful nod. But there were no soul mates, nobody to share daily prayers and nursing duties with. He frequently couldn’t even find volunteers to help dig graves in the rough ground behind the hospital. When he knelt at the altar he had carved with his own penknife to say his evening prayers, he said them alone. The nuns would create an intimate religious circle within the den of thieves.

  The sisters never arrived. With the water level so low in the Yukon River, their steamer had got stuck halfway through the voyage upriver and they had been forced to return to Holy Cross. The priest faced another winter of isolation amid his gold-obsessed neighbors.