Copyrighted 1908, by Mrs. Iola Beebe....

IT may seem odd to Alaskans, and by that I mean, the men and women who really live in the remote, yet near, northern gold country, that “Swiftwater Bill”—known to both the old Sour Doughs and the Cheechacos—should have asked me to write the real story of his life, yet this is really the fact. Bill Gates is in some ways, and indeed in many, one of the most remarkable men that the lust for gold ever produced in any clime or latitude. Remarkable? Yes—that’s the word—and possibly nothing more remark

A LITTLE, low-eaved, common, ordinary looking road house, built of logs, with one room for the bunks, another for a kitchen and a third for miscellaneous purposes, used to be well known to travelers in the Yukon Valley in Alaska at Circle City. The straggling little mining camp, its population divided between American, French-Canadians of uncertain pedigree, and Indians with an occasional admixture of canny Scotchmen, whose conversation savored strongly of the old Hudson Bay Trading Company’s da

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 w

SWIFTWATER has often told me that he never could quite understand why it was that the way to a woman’s heart, even his own way—Swiftwater’s—was so hard to travel and so devious and tortuous in its windings and interwindings. “Why, Mrs. Beebe,” Swiftwater used to say, “I should think a man could do anything with gold! And for my own part, I used to always figure that money would buy anything,” said Swiftwater, “even the most beautiful woman in the world for your wife.” Swiftwater’s mental process

IT HAS always seemed a standing wonder to me that when Swiftwater had separated himself from about $100,000 or more in gold dust with the Lamore sisters as the chief beneficiaries, and after he had been divorced from Grace, following her refusal to live with him in San Francisco, he did not finally come within a rifle shot of the realization of the real value of money. There is no doubt but that Swiftwater was bitterly resentful towards Gussie and Grace Lamore after they had both thrown him over

MAMA,” said Bera to me, “Mrs. Ainslee is not nearly so well today, and Mr. Hathaway said when he came down from the hospital this afternoon that she wanted to see you sure this evening about seven o’clock.” Mrs. Ainslee had been desperately ill at Providence Hospital for weeks and she was a woman of whom I had known in earlier days and whose sad plight—her husband was dead and she was alone in the world—had induced me to do all I could for her. It was scarcely more than a week following the even

“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “let us forget bygones. In another day or two I would have been over the Summit with my outfit. It is lucky that I am here, because possibly I can help you in some way.” I could do nothing more than listen to what Swiftwater said. There was no other hotel, or indeed any place in the town where I could get shelter for myself and my two girls. Knowing the black purpose in Swiftwater’s heart, I watched my girls Bera and Blanche day and night. My own goods were piled up unshel

HYDRAULIC mining in the Klondike country, by the time that Swiftwater had assembled his big outfit on Quartz Creek was in its very infancy, yet there were plenty of wise men in Dawson who knew that the tens of thousands of acres of hillside slopes and old abandoned creek beds would some day produce more gold when washed into sluice boxes with gigantic rams, than the native miner and prospector had been able to show, even with the figures, $50,000,000, output to his credit. The Canadian governmen

TO THE people of Dawson, in those days, starving through weary winter months for want of frequent mail communication with the civilized world, and hungering for the ebb and flow of human tide that is a natural and daily part of the lives of those in more fortunate places, the arrival of the first steamer from “the outside” in the spring is an event even greater than a Fourth of July celebration to a country town in Kansas. For days before our arrival down Indian River from Quartz Creek, the men

IT WAS pitch dark when I left the cabin and made my way directly, as best I could, to the town with its dimly lighted streets. It seemed to me that I had never had a friend in all this world. Friend? Yes, FRIEND. That is to say—a human being who could be depended upon in any emergency and who was right—right all the time in fair as well as in foul weather. There was only one thought in my mind—that was to find some man or woman in all that country to whom I could go for shelter and for aid. I kn

AS I write this chapter, which is to interest not only the friends and acquaintances of Swiftwater Bill, but which also may throw a new light on his character, and may even arouse a general interest in the odd freaks of human nature which one finds in the northern country, I am moved to wonder whether or not there is a human pen capable of portraying all of the many-sided phases of Swiftwater’s nature. The story in the Seattle paper merely gave an outline of Swiftwater’s escapade, when he ran aw

AS I look back on that day in Nome and recall the sensation created in the little mining camp when the paper containing the story of Swiftwater’s perfidy was circulated abroad among the people, I am tempted to wonder if the duplicate or parallel of Swiftwater’s enormities at this time can be found in all the annals of this great Northwestern country. The Times’ story seemed, even to those like myself, who knew something of Swiftwater’s character, to be almost incredible, and for my part it was s

Swiftwater, the clerk said, was out—had not been seen but once since his arrival. I am not going to say whether or not it was the humor of the situation or the bitter resentment I bore toward him that led me to tramp up three flights of stairs to the little parlor on the landing close to Swiftwater’s room, and to wait there ten hours at a stretch—until 1:10 in the morning. Then I went home, only to return at 8 o’clock the next day. “Mr. Gates is in his room, but he is asleep,” said the clerk. “I

SOMETIMES, when I recall the stirring events in Swiftwater Bill’s career, following the time he used the money I raised by pawning my diamonds and then went to California, I am tempted to wonder whether or not a man of his type of mental makeup ever realized that the hard bumps that he gets along the corduroy road of adversity are one and all of his own making. For, if one will but pause a moment and analyze the events in Swiftwater Bill’s melodramatic career, the inevitable result comes to him,

SWIFTWATER BILL had struck it again. On Number 6 Cleary Creek, in the Tanana, the man who gained his chiefest fame in the early days of Dawson by walking around the rapids of Miles Canyon, because he was afraid to navigate them, thereby earning his cognomen, “Swiftwater Bill,” had found another fortune in the yellow gold that lines countless tens of thousands of little creeks and dry gulches in that great northern country—Alaska. Swiftwater had obtained a big working interest in the mine on Clea

SWIFTWATER’S clean-up on Number 6 Cleary Creek was $75,000 in gold. The summer was come to an end and there were signs on the trees, in the crackling of the frosted grass in the early morning and in the bite of the night wind from the mountain canyons that told of the quick approach of winter in the Tanana. Swiftwater had been more than usually fortunate. His mine on Number 6 Cleary had yielded far beyond his expectations. Swiftwater had every reason to believe his friends who told him that his

AS A VERACIOUS chronicler of the events, inexplicable and unbelievable as this story may appear, of the life and exploits of Swiftwater Bill Gates, I want to begin this chapter with the prefatory announcement that, all and singular, as the lawyers say, the statements herein are absolutely true and may be verified. I give this simple warning merely because, as I recall what happened the next two or three days after Swiftwater’s arrest, it seems to me that many of my readers will say, “These thing

I AM getting to the end of my story, and as the finish draws near, it seems to me, that I have not quite done justice by Swiftwater Bill, in at least one respect—and that is the activity and agility the man displays when events over which he might have had control, had he been on the square, crowded him so closely, that like the proverbial flea, he had to hike. And in telling of Swiftwater’s talent in this direction, I wish to be regarded as speaking as one without malice, but rather as admiring

“What manner of man, in Heaven’s name, is this Swiftwater Bill Gates?” Yes, what manner of man, or other creature is Swiftwater? Perhaps some people will say that when Swiftwater Bill, down deep in his prospect hole on Eldorado, looked upon the glittering drift of gold that covered the bedrock, the glamor of that shining mass gave him a sort of moral blindness, from which he has never recovered. It is possible that the lure of gold, which he had seen in such boundless quantities, had so entered

MAMA, don’t you think you can have some fireworks on the Fourth of July and come out to the Brothers School so that we can celebrate?” Little Freddie Gates, Swiftwater’s youngest boy, looked up in my face with the dearest kind of a smile, and put his arm on my shoulder. The little fellow had just had his night bath in my room and had put on his fresh, clean, white pajamas, ready for bed. It was Saturday before the Fourth of July and Freddie knew that I might not be able to spend Sunday with him