The Floor of Heaven (38 page)

With Charlie, the thief boarded the ferry to Douglas Island. Durkin had provided a cabin, and the two men shared it. They ate meals together. When Charlie opened a bottle of whiskey, he made sure to pour Hubbard a glass. And as he had done throughout the entire case, Charlie continued to act with restraint. At least once each day Durkin would sidle up to the detective and ask whether Hubbard had confessed—was he ready to testify against his partner? And each time Charlie would say he hadn’t discussed the matter with Hubbard. What the blazes are you waiting for? Durkin would shout. Charlie would answer in a calm, easy voice that the time wasn’t right.

After a week had passed and Hubbard seemed more accepting of things, Charlie asked him how they’d gotten the gold off the island. He posed the question matter-of-factly, as if he were simply curious.

There was no longer any point in keeping the secret; Hubbard would be going to jail no matter what. Besides, Siringo was his friend. Who else cared if he’d a taste when he felt the need? So Hubbard told him everything—about the blind in the woods, the warehouse lock, and the pipeline. When he finished, Hubbard said he felt proud of what he and Schell had managed to do. It’d been a damn ingenious caper.

Don’t blame you, Charlie said amicably. Then, as if it were an afterthought, Charlie asked Hubbard if he’d be willing to write it all down. Maybe put your signature on it, too, he suggested.

Can’t see why not at this point, Hubbard went along flatly.

Once Charlie was holding the signed confession, Hubbard was put back in handcuffs and taken to the Juneau jail. And Charlie booked passage on a steamer bound for Seattle.

It was a week’s voyage; the steamer stopped in Sitka first. On the trip Charlie had time to reflect on all he’d accomplished. He had hunted down the thieves and reclaimed the gold. He’d done what the Portland operatives had failed to do. He’d restored the honor of the Pinkerton agency. He’d kept his promise to McParland. And yet he knew the operation had not been a total success.

He’d decided to go off to Alaska with the hope that in the north, thousands of miles from Denver, the distance and the new surroundings would separate him from his memories. But this hadn’t happened. Mamie loomed in his mind at all times; and the nights alone too often held a more disquieting torment. However, in the course of this long adventure, he’d been able to make a truce of sorts with the demons that continued to rage within him. He no longer tried to escape from his memories. He embraced them. In that way Mamie stayed a part of all he did, and life had grown easier.

In fact, it gave him considerable pleasure to contemplate how Mamie would’ve enjoyed what happened on the steamer voyage. A German prince, Bismarck’s nephew, was on board; he had visited Alaska as part of a world tour. The prince strolled haughtily around the deck in a military uniform decorated with medals. He kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, refusing to look at the other passengers. He ate his meals at a separate table. His imperious attitude rankled Charlie’s Texas sensibilities. So whenever he encountered the royal personage on deck or in the dining room, Charlie made sure to greet him with a loud “Howdy, partner.”

The prince complained to the captain. “What does that bloody American mean by calling me partner?” he demanded.

The abashed captain explained that Mr. Siringo was a famous detective. He had captured the thieves who had made off with a fortune from Alaska’s largest gold mine.

That night the prince clicked his heels when he saw Charlie. He congratulated him for discovering gold in Alaska.

THIRTY-ONE

ow that George Carmack had staked his claims, he couldn’t wait to spread the news of his discovery. Along with the two Indians, George had retrieved the canoe and had poled only a short distance down the Klondike when he spotted four men towing a loaded boat in the opposite direction. The men were wading through the knee-deep shoreline mud, and it took some muscle to pull their boat upstream. George judged that they had the look and the tanned, bearded faces of longtime prospectors.

“Hello, boys,” George called as he steadied his boat with a pike pole. “Kind of wet traveling, ain’t it?”

“Well, it ain’t so dry as it might be,” one of them answered wearily. It was clear that he was exhausted.

George asked where they were bound for.

Dave McKay, the leader of the outfit, said they’d heard that a prospect had been found on some creek between the Klondike and Indian rivers. “We came around this way to have a look-see. Do you know anything about it?”

That was Henderson’s claim, George realized at once. “I left there three days ago,” he said.

“What’d you think about it?”

George gave an indulgent smile. “I don’t like to be a knocker, but I don’t think much of it,” he told them.

The prospectors’ faces fell in disappointment. Once again they’d gone off chasing a far-fetched tale. But it was still hard to give up. “Then you wouldn’t advise us to go up there?” Dan McGillivery, another of the crew, tried. He hoped George might change his opinion.

“I’ve got something better for you,” George declared with a big grin. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cartridge case, and emptied the contents into his hand. He held out a handful of golden nuggets.

The prospectors were stunned. George Carmack had accomplished what they’d been trying to achieve for a hard, frustrating decade.

They had a flurry of questions, and George, nearly preening with self-satisfaction, answered them all. Without prodding, he gave the astounded men directions to Bonanza Creek. Why not? he thought. He’d marked off his two five-hundred-foot claims, and under the Canadian regulations that was all he was allowed in a single mining district. The rest of the creek was free pickings, one mining site granted by legal right to any man who staked it and then filed. Besides, he knew he’d enjoy seeing the look on their faces once they heard his news.

Within minutes the four prospectors were on their way. They hurried upriver and now, George observed, “that old tow line was as taut as the E string on a violin.” As it happened, their chance encounter with George Carmack would change their lives. They staked four claims on Bonanza, and each of them would become millionaires.

George, meanwhile, continued on to his fishing camp at the mouth of the Klondike. He was sitting by his empty salmon racks, still feeling “as if I had just dealt myself a royal flush in the game of life,” when he noticed a small boat coming down the Yukon. The boat would’ve passed on by, but he was in no mood to let that happen. George hailed it, and two men paddled the boat to shore.

The men introduced themselves as Alphonse Lapierre and George Remillard. They were French-Canadians who’d spent the past eleven years up north searching for gold without anything much to show for it. Two days ago they’d finished off the last of their bacon and flour, and now they were on their way to Fortymile. They hoped McQuesten at the trading post would outfit them on credit, and then they’d head back out.

“If I were you boys I wouldn’t go any further,” George said mildly. “Haven’t you heard of the new strike?”

“Oh, yes, we know all about it,” Lapierre replied. “I tink hees wan beeg bluff.”

“How’s this for a bluff?” George said, bristling as if he’d been insulted. Then he reached into his pocket and held out the handful of gold nuggets.

The two men stared with silent awe. It was as if they were suddenly unable to speak.

“You can put your outfit on my cache and leave your boat here,” George went on easily. “You can ford the Klondike at the Bonanza. That’s what I’ve named the new creek.”

Within minutes their boat was unloaded and packs were hoisted onto their backs. They nearly ran across the flat ground, gesticulating to each other and talking at the same time in a rush of French and English. They were so excited that they’d forgotten to tie their boat. It would’ve floated downstream with the current if George hadn’t noticed and secured it. They, too, would stake claims on Bonanza and at last strike it rich.

But even as George prepared to go to Fortymile to record his claim, he still made time to spread the news. After supper he paddled across the river to the fishing camp of an old friend, Lou Cooper. Cooper was sitting around the fire with Ed Monahan, and they listened with fascination as George told the story of his great discovery. Monahan didn’t believe him. “You’re the biggest liar this side of hell,” he charged. Without saying another word, George produced the gold nuggets. The next day Cooper and Monahan headed for Bonanza Creek, and they would also stake claims.

Early the next morning, George told Jim to take a pack of provisions and his rifle and go back up to the creek. He reckoned the big Indian would be able to run off any claim jumpers. He’d join him after he recorded his discovery at the registrar’s office downriver.

George and Tagish Charley landed in Fortymile late that afternoon. The plan had been to go directly to the Canadian government post and make things official, but George couldn’t restrain himself. He wasn’t a drinking man, but he knew a crowd of miners would be in Bill McPhee’s saloon. It was the time of year when they’d be coming down from their camps at lonely, far-off places like Miller, Glacier, and Davis creeks to place orders for their winter outfit.

“Hello there, you damned old meat-eating Siwash,” a miner George knew only as Andy greeted him when he entered the dark one-room saloon. “Got any dried salmon to sell? I don’t get something to eat besides that damn yaller sow belly purty soon, I’ll sure be way-billed for Hell.”

The fish hadn’t been running this year, George said. He had no salmon to sell. “Have a drink anyway,” someone shouted.

The boys were pretty well lit up, so George reckoned he might as well join them. He’d earned himself a glass of hooch. One drink, though, led to another. George decided he’d better cut it out or he’d never get around to sharing the news. He took a moment to steady himself. Then he turned his back to the bar and held up his hand for quiet.

“Boys, I’ve got some good news to tell you,” he shouted. “There’s a big strike up the river.”

“Strike, hell!” yelled a husky miner sitting at the card table. “That ain’t no news. “That’s just a scheme being spread to start a stampede up the river.”

“That’s where you’re off, you big rabbit-eating malamute!” George snapped back. Then he reached across the bar for the “blower,” as the gold scales used to weigh a miner’s poke were known. Enjoying the moment, his face beaming with triumph, he dumped his gold nuggets onto the scale. “How does that look to you?” he challenged.

The big man strode up to the bar. There was no telling what sorts of stories a squawman like Siwash George would invent to get attention. He looked at the gold suspiciously. He poked at it with a thick forefinger. Its texture and shape and color were unlike any gold he’d ever seen before. He picked up a nugget and weighed it in his hand. It was heavy, too.

“Holy Makuluk, boys!” he shouted. “Put it there, George,” he said and began shaking George’s hand with fervor.

Now all the miners crowded up to the bar to see Carmack’s gold. And someone called out, “Say, if it ain’t asking too much, where in hell did you get it?”

“Listen, boys, and I’ll tell you,” George answered. In an instant, the saloon turned completely quiet and all eyes were fixed on George. And he began to tell the story of his great discovery.

By the next morning, when George registered his claim at the police post, Fortymile was a ghost town. The saloons and trading post were empty. The tent camps had vanished. The boats that had been moored on the beach were gone. Everyone had rushed off to the Klondike.

During the next two months, 338 claims would be staked along Bonanza and the nearby creeks. Yet as George continued to spread the news throughout the Yukon Valley, there remained one man he refused to tell. He was determined that Robert Henderson not hear a peep.

THIRTY-TWO

hile Charlie Siringo and George Carmack enjoyed their triumphs, Soapy Smith had moved on to Spokane, Washington, and established himself in the Owl Saloon. But this was a scaled-down operation. The folly of his Alaska trip had broken his ambitions. He no longer schemed up high-rolling plays. These days he earned what he could with a gaffed deck at the poker table.

Most of the old gang had moved on. He had no work to give them and, the real rub, his mind was not fixed on new schemes. He let them go with his blessings. “Keep in touch,” he told ’em as one by one they headed off to Denver or San Francisco or wherever they thought there were pockets ripe for the fleecing. Many of them would write, their letters reaching Soapy care of the Owl. They hoped that one day his bleak mood would lift, Soapy would be up to his old tricks, and then he’d summon them. Dutifully, Soapy answered their letters. He thought he owed them that much for old times’ sake. But he made a point not to mention anything about someday hooking up again. He didn’t want to encourage any hopes that things could ever be as they once were.

Oh, now and then he’d hunt up a chance to make some flash, and there’d be a glimmer of the old rascal Soapy Smith. He managed to con an inebriated Martin Murphy into signing over his one-eighth interest in a gold mine located about 150 miles north of Spokane. When a regretful Murphy sobered up, the document proved binding enough to impress a Spokane judge. A few weeks later, though, it was established that the mine itself was worthless. And when Soapy tried to grab title to a mine in Newlin’s Gulch, Colorado, with an unsigned check in the amount of $2,500, the check was promptly returned by registered letter “herewith for your signature.” They never heard from Soapy again.

These were hard times for Soapy, but he seemed resigned to them. He wrote to his old friend Bat Masterson—the very gambler who had gone after Charlie Siringo with a beer mug during a bar fight years ago in Dodge—and made no bones about the sad state of his life. Yet Masterson, who was suffering through his own troubles after a reform-minded Denver police board had come into power, could do no more than sympathize. “It would have pleased me much better,” he wrote back, “had you stated you were prospering.”