Part 54 (1/2)
Standing between cars, clinging to a rattling brake, I made the acquaintance of Cyanide Bill, and he told me about it.
”Tents!” said he. ”Did you say tents? Hunh! Why, lady, tents was as thick here in '97 and '98 as seeds on a strawberry. They was so thick it took a man an hour to find his own. Hunh! You tripped up every other step on a tent-peg. I guess n.o.body knows anything about tents unless he was mus.h.i.+n' around Lake Bennett in the summer of '97. From five to ten thousand men and women was camped here off an' on. Fresh ones by the hundred come strugglin', sweatin', dyin', in over the trail every day, and every day hundreds got their rafts finished, bundled their things and theirselves on to 'em, and went tearin' and yellin' down the lake, gloatin' over the poor tired-out wretches that just got in. Often as not they come sneakin' back afoot without any raft and without any outfit and worked their way back to the states to get another. Them that went slow, went sure, and got in ahead of the rushers.
”I wisht you could of seen the tent town!--young fellows right out of college flauntin' around as if they knew somethin'; old men, stooped and gray-headed; gamblers, tin horns, cut-throats, and thieves; honest women, workin' their way in with their husbands or sons, their noses bent to the earth, with heavy packs on their backs, like men; and gay, painted dance-hall girls, sailin' past 'em on horseback and dressed to kill and livin' on the fat of the land. I bet more good women went to the bad on this here layout than you could shake a stick at. It seemed to get on to their nerves to struggle along, week after week, packin'
like animals, sufferin' like dogs, et up by mosquitoes and gnats, pushed and crowded out by men--and then to see them gay girls go singin' by, livin' on luxuries, men fallin' all over theirselves to wait on 'em, champagne to drink--it sure did get on to their nerves!
[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by F. H. Nowell, Seattle
COUNCIL CITY AND SOLOMON RIVER RAILROAD--A CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE OF SEWARD PENINSULA]
”You see, somehow, up here, in them days, things didn't seem the way they do down below. Nature kind of gets in her work ahead of custom up here. Wrong don't look so terrible different from right to a woman a thousand miles from civilization. When she sees women all around her walkin' on flowers, and her own feet blistered and bleedin' on stones and thorns, she's pretty apt to ask herself whether bein' good and workin' like a horse pays. And up here on the trail in '97 the minute a woman begun to ask herself that question, it was all up with her. The end was in plain sight, like the nose on a man's face. The dance hall on in Dawson answered the question practical.
”Of course, lots of 'em went in straight and stayed straight; and they're the ones that made Dawson and saved Dawson. You get a handful of good women located in a minin'-camp and you can build up a town, and you can't do it before, mounted police or no mounted police.”
I had heard these hard truths of the Trail of Heartbreak before; but having been worded more vaguely, they had not impressed me as they did now, spoken with the plain, honest directness of the old trail days.
”If you want straight facts about '97,” the collector had said to me, ”I'll introduce you to Cyanide Bill, out there. He was all through here time and again. He will tell you everything you want to know. But be careful what you ask him; he'll answer anything--and he doesn't talk parlor.”
”The hards.h.i.+ps such women went through,” continued Cyanide Bill, ”the insults and humiliations they faced and lived down, ought to of set 'em on a pe-_des_-tal when all was said and done and decency had the upper hand. The time come when the other'ns got their come-upin's; when they found out whether it paid to live straight.
”The world'll never see such a rush for gold again,” went on Cyanide Bill, after a pause. ”I tell you it takes a lot to make any impress on me, I've been toughenin' up in this country so many years; but when I arrives and sees the orgy goin' on along this trail, my heart up and stood still a spell. The strong ones was all a-trompin' the weak ones down. The weak ones went down and out, and the strong ones never looked behind. Men just went crazy. Men that had always been kind-hearted went plumb locoed and 'u'd trample down their best friend, to get ahead of him. They got just like brutes and didn't know their own selves. It's no wonder the best women give up. Did you ever hear the story of Lady Belle?”
I remembered Lady Belle, probably because of the name, but I had never heard the details of her tragic story, and I frankly confessed that I would like to hear them--”parlor” language or ”trail,” it mattered not.
”Well,”--he half closed his eyes and stared down the blue lake,--”she come along this trail the first of July, the prettiest woman you ever laid eyes on. Her husband was with her. He seemed to be kind to her at first, but the horrors of the trail worked on him, and he went kind of locoed. He took to abusin' her and blamin' her for everything. She worked like a dog and he treated her about like one; but she never lost her beauty nor her sweetness. She had the sweetest smile I ever saw on any human bein's face; and she was the only one that thought about others.
”'Don't crowd!' she used to cry, with that smile of her'n. 'We're all havin' a hard time together.'
”Well, they lost their outfit in White Horse Rapids; her husband cursed her and said it wouldn't of happened if she hadn't been h.e.l.l-bent to come along; he took to drinkin' and up and left her there at the rapids.
He went back to the states, sayin' he didn't ever want to see her again.
”She was left there without an ounce of grub or a cent of money.
Yakataga Pete had been workin' along the trail with a big outfit, and had gone on in ahead. He'd fell in love with her before he knew she was married. He went on up into the cricks, and when he come down to Dawson six months later, she was in a dance hall. Dawson was wild about her.
They called her Lady Belle because she was always such a lady.
”Yakataga went straight to her and asked her to marry him. She burst out into the most terrible cryin' you ever hear. 'As if I could ever marry anybody!' she cries out; and that's all the answer he ever got. We found out she had a little blind sister down in the states. She had to send money to keep her in a blind school. She danced and acted cheerful; but her face was as white as chalk, and her big dark eyes looked like a fawn's eyes when you've shot it and not quite killed it, so's it can't get away from you, nor die, nor anything; but she was always just as sweet as ever.
”Two months after that she--she--killed herself. Yakataga was up in the cricks. He come down and buried her.”
It was told, the simple and tragic tale of Lady Belle, and presently Cyanide Bill went away and left me.
The breeze grew cooler; it crested the waves with silver. Pearly clouds floated slowly overhead and were reflected in the depths below.
The mountains surrounding Lake Bennett are of an unusual color. It is a soft old-rose in the distance. The color is not caused by light and shade; nor by the sun; nor by flowers. It is the color of the mountains themselves. They are said to be almost solid mountains of iron, which gives them their name of ”Iron-Crowned,” I believe; but to me they will always be the Rose-colored Mountains. They soften and enrich the sparkling, almost dazzling, blue atmosphere, and give the horizon a look of sunset even at midday. The color reminded me of the dull old-rose of Columbia Glacier.
Lake Bennett dashes its foam-crested blue waves along the pebbly beaches and stone terraces for a distance of twenty-seven miles. At its widest it is not more than two miles, and it narrows in places to less than half a mile. It winds and curves like a river.