BURYING ZIMMERMAN (The River Trilogy, book 2) (38 page)

Zimmerman says that two weeks after the
stampede to Myers Gulch, a tenderfoot who said his name was
Perlmutter came looking for Gig on Little Minook Creek.

"Gig and Wylie figured he was right off a
boat from the coast, 'cause his clothes looked new and his face and
neck was red from mosquito bites and the sun. Looked like the kind
of feller who learned everything he knowed about mining from a
book.

"Perlmutter said he been walking out to some
of the new creeks and gulches, looking at claims that wasn't being
worked and writing down names on the stakes. After a few days he
gone back down to Rampart and spent two mornings in the
Commissioner's office flipping through the register, checking to
see what claims was recorded. Almost all of the ones he wrote down
was in the book, but some wasn't, and one of 'em was Gig's claim on
Myers Gulch.

"Perlmutter tells Gig he'll offer him a
hundred dollars for the 7 Above claim, and Gig says he couldn't
keep hisself from laughing. Then he rubbed his whiskers and told
Perlmutter if he was in a hurry to start digging, maybe Gig would
let him work it on a lay. He could keep half of what he took out.
If Perlmutter worked hard, maybe he could double his hundred
dollars before the gulch froze up for the winter."

"Wylie starts laughing too, but Perlmutter
don't think it's funny and starts wiping off his eyeglasses. He
says he seen Gig listed on the claim on Little Minook Creek, and
that's how he found him. And he read the mining regulations, so he
knowed that Gig can't have two claims in the Rampart district.
Perlmutter says if Gig don't record his Myers Gulch claim in three
days, he's going to cut his name off the stakes on 7 Above and
record the claim hisself."

"And Gig couldn't record on Myers Gulch," I
add, finishing the thought, "without giving up his claim on Little
Minook."

"He wasn't walking away from Little Minook
until he knowed Myers Gulch was better," Zimmerman says. "And he
wasn't going to give away a claim he could sell."

Chapter 45

Zimmerman says Little Minook Creek began
icing up ten days after Perlmutter's visit, so Gig and Wylie
stopped sluicing summer diggings and started felling trees for a
winter cabin. When Wylie took his horse down to Rampart for a load
of oats and grub, Gig decided to visit Myers Gulch.

"Sometimes a creek is staked top to bottom
and only one claim gets worked," Zimmerman says, "until everybody
knows the prospects and figures things out. Set up for mining, sell
out, or walk away. Gig said he turned into Myers Gulch from Slate
Creek and seen piles of stripped logs on 2 Below, and that told him
nobody was walking away from claims on the pup. The first feller he
seen was Judah Myers, cutting wood on 1 Below.

"Gig asked if he was down to bedrock on
Discovery, and Myers said yes. He bought 1 Below and was partnering
with the feller on 1 Above. Myers said he hired three men and they
dug a cut from rim-rock almost to the creek. The frozen muck is ten
feet deep, but after that you got five feet of gravel and dust, and
the pay-streak is wider than the cut. They wasn't going to sluice
the diggings until next year, but they was washing out three-dollar
pans and finding a nugget or two every day. For winter they was
going to burn and drift on the other side of the creek. Myers said
word was getting out that the gulch was rich ground.

"So Gig climbed past 1 Above, and he seen
signs of work on the next four claims. Trees cut down, dams and
sluice channels, some bench diggings and a rocker. Didn't see
miners on every claim, but all of 'em had tents pitched or a cabin
going up. So Gig knowed what to expect when he got to his own
claim. And sure enough, 7 Above was jumped. Someone cut Gig's name
off the face and carved his own, on a stake Gig chopped and drove
in hisself.

"Perlmutter?"

Zimmerman's lips curl as if he's tasting
something rancid while reciting the name. "Matthew B. Perlmutter.
Faithful servant of our Lord. Gig said he mule-kicked the stake out
of the ground."

"Was Perlmutter there?"

Zimmerman shakes his head. "There wasn't
nobody on 7 Above – just stripped branches and stacks of cut logs.
But up near the top Gig seen two fellers building a cabin on the
next claim. He follows the path up to 8 Above, and the stake for
that one says Perlmutter too. Gig spits on the name and goes over
to talk to the fellers working on the cabin.

"He asks if they's partners with Perlmutter,
and they told him they was hired hands from Rampart. They said
Perlmutter staked 7 Above and bought 8 Above for twenty-three
hundred dollars, even though it was just a fraction. He was going
to work both claims together.

"Gig asked 'em where Perlmutter was and they
said he was down in town getting a winter outfit together. And if
Gig was looking to work, Perlmutter was paying fifteen dollars a
day plus grub for winter diggings. They was planning to stay
on.

"Gig smiles and tells them he already got
more work than he can handle. Says his name is Joe Murphy and he's
working a claim on Little Minook Creek. When he ain't mining, he's
a reporter for the
Klondike Nugget
in Dawson. He says the
Nugget
asked him to write about the news and prospects on
the Rampart creeks. They was going to print it in the paper once a
month and call it the Rampart Report. Gig said they was doing the
same thing for the Indian River and Circle and Fortymile.

"Then he tells Perlmutter's men he was hoping
one of 'em might be able to stop by Little Minook whenever he was
going down to town and report what was happening at Myers Gulch. It
didn't have to be a big story, just what claims was being worked,
who was digging or sluicing or cleaning up. Joe would sure be
grateful, and he had some money from the
Nugget
to share
with his sources, so he could pay 'em ten dollars a month if they
come by to report the news.

"The younger feller asked if his name would
get in the newspaper, and Gig told him the
Nugget
would list
all the Rampart reporters once a year. The feller started grinning
and said he always wanted to see his name in the paper, so he
shakes Gig's hand and his nose starts twitching like he was a
rabbit. Gig never told me the feller's name, just called him
Rabbit, and he said the feller done just what Joe Murphy asked for,
through winter diggings and into the spring."

"So Gig used him to spy on Perlmutter?"

"Didn't hurt him none. Rabbit got ten dollars
every time he gone two miles up Little Minook to talk to Joe Murphy
about Myers Gulch. Whenever he come by, Gig brung him into the tent
and gave him a taste of whiskey. Then he took out his notebook and
wrote down the news, but he always made Rabbit start with what
Perlmutter was doing. Gig said it was Wylie's idea, so sometimes he
sat in with Gig and Rabbit."

"Why did Wylie care about Perlmutter? He
never had a claim on Myers Gulch."

"Wylie and Gig was partners," Zimmerman says,
looking at me as if I'm slow-witted. "What was good for one was
good for the other."

"Until Wylie killed Perlmutter," I say. "How
did it happen?"

Zimmerman says Perlmutter and his men dug
three shafts that winter, and the first missed the pay-streak, but
the next two drifted along it. Through the winter he only washed
out enough gold from the dumps to pay his men. In May they left the
remaining pay-dirt in piles and began digging a cut that overlapped
the two claims, and in late July they stopped digging and started
sluicing.

Shortly afterward, Rabbit stopped by Little
Minook and told Gig that his work on Perlmutter's claims would end
in mid-August. Perlmutter was going to clean up all the gold and
exchange it for bank notes in Rampart. Then he would try to find
someone willing to work his claims on a lay until next summer. He
planned to book passage downriver to St. Michael and then on to
California, so he could spend the winter in Oakland building his
bible school.

Gig told Rabbit the
Nugget
would miss
his faithful reporting and reminded him to come by Little Minook
again on his last trip down from Myers Gulch.

"So Rabbit come back two weeks later on his
way to Rampart, and Gig gave him an extra ten dollars and wished
him well. Rabbit said Perlmutter was up on the claims by hisself
for a couple of days. He said maybe a feller named Tom on 4 Above
could bring Gig the news from now on. Gig said he'd be sure to go
visit Tom as soon as he could.

"The next morning, Gig and Wylie was on the
Minook Creek trail before dawn. They took their Winchesters and
made it up Slate Creek to the mouth of Myers Gulch before the
mosquitoes was rising. Up at 8 Above, they waited on the path until
they seen Perlmutter come out of the cabin carrying an empty
bucket. He was going to his dammed-up sluice pond, so they follow
him over, moving quiet. On the other side of the cabin they gone
past a log corral where Perlmutter got his horse penned up, but the
horse didn't mind 'em none.

"Gig said him and Wylie come up behind
Perlmutter when he's bending down to fill his bucket. Then Wylie
pumps his rifle once and Perlmutter jerks back so fast he drops the
bucket in the pond. He spins around crab-like and looks back and
forth from Gig to Wylie like he's trying to reckon if he knows 'em.
Then he holds his palms out to show he ain't armed and stands up
slow. Takes off his eyeglasses and wipes 'em off, then puts 'em on
again, but he still don't know who's on his claim.

"'When a rat crawls into a snake burrow,' Gig
says, 'he better make sure the snake is moved out or dead. You
jumped my claim even though you knowed I wasn't neither.'

"Perlmutter looks at Gig like he recognizes
him now. He says 'I just followed the rules. You had a chance to
record it yourself. If you done that, I would of moved on to
another claim.'

"Gig points at the slope above him and waves
his arm across to the hills on the far side of Slate Creek.
'There's pups and benches all the way up this valley and over the
divide to the next one, and the one after that' he says. 'Hundreds
of miles of creeks just waiting for someone to find prospects and
stake discovery. But you ain't been ten minutes in the Yukon and
you start taking what another man found. Like a rat that can't dig
its own burrow.'

"Perlmutter points to his cut with a line of
sluice-boxes running down it and a pile of tailings at the bottom
and tells Gig he been digging his own burrow for almost a year.
Said he was a feller that don't mind living by the sweat of his
brow.

"Wylie says 'Well you ain't sweating now, and
I don't see nobody else hoisting a shovel, so you must be done
sluicing. How much did you clean up?'

"Perlmutter sneaks a look at his cabin, then
looks back at Wylie. He pushes his eyeglasses up his nose but don't
say nothing, just shakes his head a little.

"Gig says 'That don't matter. We ain't here
to rob you. I just want a fair share of what was mine before you
come along.'"

"That's a thin argument," I say. "I guess the
Winchesters made his case more persuasive."

"Gig told me they was pointing their guns at
the ground. He said Perlmutter asked him what he wanted and Gig
said fifteen percent. Perlmutter says he been working 8 Above and
the top three hundred feet of 7 Above. The bottom two hundred feet
ain't been worked yet. He says he'll sell Gig that piece of 7 Above
for a thousand dollars, due on clean-up.

"So now Gig knows Perlmutter got to answer
Wylie's question, 'cause you can't tell what the bottom part of the
claim is worth if you don't know what come out of the top.

"'How much did you clean up?' Gig says, and
this time Wylie raises his rifle to his hip.

"'About eleven thousand,' Perlmutter says.
But he says some of it come from 8 Above.

"Gig says he'll take the fraction for five
hundred and pay on clean-up. Maybe Perlmutter don't care about the
money or maybe he ain't happy with the look of Wylie's gun, but he
says he'll settle for five hundred. Says he'll go into the cabin
and write up a notice of sale and sign it and give it to Gig. He's
packing out to Rampart the next morning and he'll meet Gig at the
Commissioner's office at four to record the sale.

"So Gig nods and Wylie lowers his shotgun to
his side and Perlmutter goes into his cabin, then comes out a few
minutes later and hands Gig a sheet of paper that says Notice of
Transfer of Deed across the top. Gig seen it says two-hundred feet
on 7 Above Myers Gulch for five-hundred dollars on clean-up, so him
and Wylie turn back toward the trail.

"After a couple steps Gig looks back at
Perlmutter and says 'if you don't show up tomorrow at four, you'll
get a visit from the snake.' And Wylie still got his shotgun
pumped, so he can't help hisself. When they walk past the stake for
8 Above, he points the muzzle at Perlmutter's name on the face and
pulls the trigger."

Chapter 46

I reach for my cup but it's empty, so I snare
Zimmerman's along with it and stand up. The cabin seems to list a
bit. My vision steadies as I cross to the counter. To fill the cups
halfway I have to tilt the cask. Back at the table I slide
Zimmerman his whiskey, and he keeps his eyes on me while he drinks.
My sip flares into a mental image of the claims on Myers Gulch.

Zimmerman said 8 Above was a fractional
claim, and Perlmutter bought it for twenty-three hundred. But 7
Above was a full claim, and Perlmutter sold Gig almost half of it
for five hundred. So he was being generous, even though he didn't
owe Gig anything. I point this out to Zimmerman and ask him what
went wrong.

"Far as Gig knowed, things went wrong when
Perlmutter didn't make it to Rampart. Gig was at the Gold
Commissioner's office at four, and he showed 'em the paper he got
from Perlmutter. The clerk gave him a claim-sale form and he signed
it and waited. When Perlmutter ain't come in by five, Gig stopped
in at a few saloons, but no one seen him. So Gig went back to the
office and told the clerk he'd bring Perlmutter in tomorrow to sign
the form.