IT WOULD be useless to encumber my story with a lengthy and detailed narrative of Swiftwater Bill’s experiences in the first mad rush of gold-seekers up the narrow and devious channels of Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks. The world has for eleven years known the entrancing story of George Carmack’s find on Bonanza—how, from the first spadeful of grass roots, studded with gold dust and nuggets, which filled a tiny vial, the gravel beds of Bonanza and Eldorado and a few adjoining creeks, all situated within the area of a township or two, produced the marvelous sum of $50,000,000 within a few years.

Swiftwater struck gold from the very first. He located No. 13 Eldorado, and had as his neighbors such well known mining men as Prof. T. S. Lippy, the Seattle millionaire, who left a poorly paid job as physical director of the Y. M. C. A. in Seattle to prospect for gold in Alaska; Ole Oleson; the Berry Bros., who cleaned up a million dollars on two and a fraction claims on Eldorado; Antone Stander; Michael Dore, a young French-Canadian, who died from exposure in a little cabin surrounded by tin oil cans filled to overflowing with the yellow metal, and others equally well known.

Swiftwater’s ground on No. 13 Eldorado was fabulously rich—so rich that after he had struck the pay streak, the excitement was too much for him and he forthwith struck out for the trail that leads to Dawson. And now I am about to reveal to Alaskans and others who read this little book a quality about Swiftwater of which few people had any knowledge whatever, and this shows in a startling way how easy it was in those halcyon days in the Golden Klondike for a man to grasp a fortune of a million dollars in an instant and then throw it away with the ease and indifference that a smoker discards a half-burned cigar.

Swiftwater, as may well be imagined, when he struck the rich layers of gold in the candle-lit crevices of bedrock on Eldorado a few feet below the surface, could have had a half interest in a half dozen claims on each side of him if he had simply kept his mouth shut and informed those he knew in Dawson of the strike, on condition that they would share half and half with him. This was a common transaction in those days and a perfectly legitimate one, and Swiftwater could have cleaned up that winter beyond question $1,000,000 in gold dust, after paying all expenses and doing very little work himself, had he exercised the most common, ordinary business ability.

Instead, Swiftwater, when he struck Dawson, threw down a big poke of gold on the bar of a saloon and announced his intention of buying out the finest gambling hall and bar in town. Dawson was then the roughest kind of a frontier mining camp, although the mounted police preserved very good order. There were at least a score of gambling halls in Dawson and as many more dance halls. The gambling games ran continually twenty-four hours a day, and the smallest wager usually made, even in the poorest games, was an ounce of gold, or almost $20.

When Bill laid down his poke of gold on the bar of a Dawson saloon—it was so heavy he could hardly lift it—he was instantly surrounded by a mob of thirty or forty men and a few women.

“Why, boys!” said Swiftwater, ordering a case of wine for the thirsty, while he chose appolinaris himself, “that’s easy enough! All you’ve got to do is to go up to Eldorado Creek and you can get all the gold you want by simply working a rocker about a week.”

That settled the fate of Eldorado, for the next day before three o’clock in the morning there was a stampede to the new find, and in twenty-four hours the whole creek had been staked from mouth to source.

Comfortably enjoying the knowledge that he had $300,000 or $400,000 in gold to the good, Swiftwater set about finding ways to spend it.

His first order “to the outside” was for a black Prince Albert coat and a black silk top hat, which came in in about five or six weeks and were immediately donned by Swiftwater. By this time he had become the owner of the Monte Carlo, the biggest gambling hall in Dawson.

“Tear the roof off, boys!” Swiftwater said when the players on the opening night swarmed in and asked what was the limit of the bets.

“The sky is the limit and raise her up as far as you want to go, boys,” said Swiftwater, “and if the roof’s in your way, tear it off!”

Just about this time came the first of Swiftwater’s affaires d’l’amour, because a day or two previously five young women of the Juneau dance halls had floated down the river in a barge and gone to work in Dawson. There were two sisters in the group. Both of them were beautiful women, young, bright, entertaining and clever in the way such women are. They were Gussie and May Lamore.

“I am going to have a lady and the swellest that’s in the country,” Swiftwater told his friends, and then, donning his best clothes, the costliest he could buy in Dawson, Swiftwater went over to the dance hall, where the Lamore sisters were working, and ordered wine for everybody on the floor.

Gussie was dancing with a big, brawny, French-Canadian miner. Her little feet seemed scarcely to touch the floor of the dance hall as the miner whirled her around and around. She was little, plump, beautifully formed and with a face of more than passing comeliness.

You women of “the States”—when I say “the States” I simply speak of our country as do all the old-timers in Alaska, and not as if it was some foreign country, but as it really is to us, the home of ourselves and our forebears, yet separated from us by thousands of miles of iceclad mountain barriers and storm swept seas have no conception of the dance hall girl as a type of the early days of Dawson. Many of them were of good families, young, comely, and fairly well educated. What stress or storm befell them, or other inhospitable element in their lives drove them to the northern gold mining country, God knows it is not my portion to tell. Nor could any one of them probably, in telling her own life story, give the reasons for the appearance in these dance halls of any of her sisters.

It is enough for you and me to understand—and it requires no unusual insight into the human heart and its mysteries to do so—that when a miner had spent a few months in the solitude of the hills and gold lined gulches of the Yukon Valley, if he finally found the precious gold on the rim of the bedrock, his first thought was to go back to “town.”

Back to town? Yes, because “town” meant and still means to those hardy men any place where human beings are assembled, and the dance hall, in those rough days, was the center of social activities and gaieties.

The sight of little Gussie Lamore, with her skirt just touching the tops of her shoes, spinning around in a waltz with that big French-Canadian, set all of Bill’s amorous nature aglow. He went to the hotel, filled his pockets with pokes of gold dust and came quickly back to the dance hall, where he obtained an introduction to Gussie.

Bill’s wooing was of the rapid kind. Before the night was over he had told Gussie—

“I’ll give you your weight in gold tomorrow morning if you will marry me—and I guess you’ll weigh about $30,000.”

Pretty Gussie shook her head coquettishly. “We will just be friends, Swiftwater, and I guess that’ll be about all.”

Of course, it was only a day or two before all Dawson knew of Swiftwater’s infatuation. The two became fast friends and got along beautifully for a week or two. Then came a bitter quarrel, and from that arose the incident which gave Swiftwater Bill almost his greatest fame—it is the story of how he cornered the egg market in Dawson in a valiant effort to hold the love of his sweetheart, Gussie Lamore.

It was in the spring of 1898 and Dawson was very short of grub of every kind. The average meal of canned soup, a plate of beans garnished by a few slices of bacon or canned meat, with a little side dish of canned or dried potatoes stewed, hot cakes or biscuit and coffee, cost about $5 and sometimes more. The cheapest meal for two persons was $10, and Bill had seen to it, while trying to win Gussie for his wife, that she had the best there was to eat in Dawson.

The two were inseparable on the streets. Then came the quarrel—it was simply a little lovers’ dispute, and then the break.

Swiftwater put in two days assiduously cultivating the friendly graces of the other dance hall girls in Dawson, but Gussie cared not.

One night an adventurous trader came down from the Upper Yukon in a small boat—there were no steamers then—and brought two crates of fresh eggs from Seattle.

Swiftwater heard of this, and he knew that there would be a tremendous demand for those eggs, as the miners usually made their breakfasts of the evaporated article; so, shrewdly, he went immediately to the restaurant which had purchased the crates and called for the proprietor.

Now, this worthy knew Swiftwater to be immensely wealthy and a very good customer, so when the Eldorado miner demanded the right to buy every egg in the house, which meant every egg in town, the restaurant man stroked his chin and said:

“Swiftwater, those eggs cost me a big lot of money, and there hain’t no more. You can have the hull outfit for three dollars an egg, in dust.”

There was just one whole crate left, and Swiftwater weighed out $2,280 in gold dust.

“Those eggs are mine—keep them here and don’t let anybody have any.”

Now, Swiftwater and Gussie had been in the habit of breakfasting on fresh eggs some days before, when the first infrequent trader of the season had managed, after enduring several wrecks on the upper river, to reach Dawson. Fresh eggs were to Gussie what chocolates and bon bons are to the average girl in the States.

The next morning Swiftwater arrived at the restaurant for breakfast, a little earlier than usual, and in a few minutes the waiter placed before him a steaming hot platter containing an even dozen of the eggs, nicely poached and served on small strips of toast.

Just then Gussie came in for her breakfast and seated herself at the other end of the little dining room. It was long after the usual hour for breakfast, and they were the only two in the room. Without doing Swiftwater the honor of passing so much as a glance in his direction, Gussie said to the waiter:

“Bring me a full order of fried eggs.”

“We ain’t got no eggs, mum; they was all sold out last night,” said the waiter.

Gussie’s face flamed with anger, but only for an instant. Then she picked up her plate, her knife and fork and napkin and strode over to the table where Swiftwater sat.

“I guess I’ll have some eggs, after all,” said Gussie, without looking at Swiftwater, as she liberally helped herself from his platter.

Then both of them burst out laughing and peace reigned once more between them.

Of course, Swiftwater figured that he had won a substantial victory by reaching Gussie’s heart through her stomach. But, as a matter of fact, we all figured that the laugh was on Swiftwater, and I think every woman who reads this story will agree with me.