Trails and Tales in Cobalt E-Book

William H.P. Jarvis

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

When I first met “Pard” he was on ground belonging to the Nipissing Mining Company, on the trail between Cross Lake and Cobalt Station. The fact that he was on this company’s property and in this locality bespoke him a stranger, for the ground in the vicinity had all been staked. Evidently he had just arrived in camp and was establishing himself that he might “get located.”
That he was a stranger was endorsed by the new tin pail which flashed back the sunlight in silvery splendor from the bundle of blankets which, with a tent, constituted the pack, engirthed by a pack-strap and lying where it had been flung on the ground. To this bundle there was a frying-pan attached, also new. With a small axe, such as prospectors use, he was clearing away the underbrush. There was nothing in his dress to denote the veteran, save that the hat he had was a well-worn Stetson, such as the tenderfoot is wont to affect, and the prospector and plainsman of the West ever chooses because it suits him best. The man’s movements were deliberate, but he never wasted an effort.

Leseprobe

Trails and Tales in Cobalt

William H.P. Jarvis

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385748364

PREFACE

Let not the reader think that these stories, which I have tried to tell in truth of color, are all fiction; in fact, they are, many of them, true, while the thread that binds the tales, namely, the story of the prospecting trip in Cobalt, is true almost to the point of being history.

As for the tales which tell of mining, they are written with the greatest fidelity the writer can command; and the fact that he was in Rossland at the time of the ever-memorable War Eagle slump, which ruined so many fortunes in Eastern Canada, and also has spent five years in the mining camps of Alaska and the Yukon, prospecting and mining, will assure the reader as to the local color being genuine.

While the writer has tried to make his little work an exposé of mining promoters’ methods, and has sought to tell the “dear old public” how they are robbed, he does not wish to be thought to say that the honestly promoted mining company does not exist, but how are the widow and the orphan to discriminate when the highest art in newspaper advertising is employed to bring about their entrapment?

One thing, perhaps, has been omitted, and that is a compliment justly due Premier Whitney for the honesty of the administration of Cobalt camp by his Government, and the integrity of his officers in the field; but this has been apparent to all.

Popular prejudice ever has pictured the Western prospector of a certain type, and the majority of writers have pandered to this prejudice. The writer has attempted to present a true picture, notwithstanding the maxim of the great Barnum, who said “the public likes to be fooled.”

W. H. P. J.

Ottawa, March, 1908.

Trails and Tales in Cobalt

I.

When I first met “Pard” he was on ground belonging to the Nipissing Mining Company, on the trail between Cross Lake and Cobalt Station. The fact that he was on this company’s property and in this locality bespoke him a stranger, for the ground in the vicinity had all been staked. Evidently he had just arrived in camp and was establishing himself that he might “get located.”

That he was a stranger was endorsed by the new tin pail which flashed back the sunlight in silvery splendor from the bundle of blankets which, with a tent, constituted the pack, engirthed by a pack-strap and lying where it had been flung on the ground. To this bundle there was a frying-pan attached, also new. With a small axe, such as prospectors use, he was clearing away the underbrush. There was nothing in his dress to denote the veteran, save that the hat he had was a well-worn Stetson, such as the tenderfoot is wont to affect, and the prospector and plainsman of the West ever chooses because it suits him best. The man’s movements were deliberate, but he never wasted an effort.

I was hot from my climb from the shores of Cross Lake, and I was generally tired. I sat down upon a log and began to size up the stranger, and made the summing-up above recorded. He never paid me the slightest attention, as is the code of his “brethren.”

“Making camp?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, without lifting his eyes.

“Trying to get located, I suppose, before you go and see if you can strike anything?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Ever do any prospecting before?” I asked.

He lifted his eyes until they rested on me, just for a second or two; then his face was again hid behind the broad rim of his hat, and after the lapse of several more seconds he replied:

“Yes, but not in this country. The last place I prospected in was the Fort Steele country, looking for copper or lead. Been East visiting my folks, and thought I would like to come up here and see what was doing. I suppose the country is staked from ‘hell to breakfast’?”

“Yes,” I said, “pretty near, but you can’t chase these fellows out of Cobalt. They walk out every morning with a tomahawk and carrying a lunch, and expect to find a mine.”

I then told him of general conditions, and that I thought the most likely place of striking anything would be either to the north-west or the south-east of the main area, also that I had been away to the east that day in Lorrain township, and that there were very few prospecting in that district, and that I thought it held possibilities as great as any. I finally ventured the suggestion that he and I join forces and work as “partners” so far as camping and living together went.

I knew the class to which he belonged, and I liked his fellows. Schooled to generosity by the hardships of the mountain trails and the dangers of a frontier life, these men never seek to give their companions the greater burden on the trail, nor take to themselves the larger portion when the grub-pile runs low.

“Good-bye, Pard,” I said, as I left him, with his promise to think things over while he got acquainted; “I’ll see you on Monday.”

I continued my journey to Cobalt, feeling pleased that I had fallen in with a partner who was an experienced prospector. I could not guess that my new acquaintance—I did not yet know his name, but such knowledge was not necessary to an acquaintance between Western men—was one of the most celebrated trappers and hunters in the Kootenays, and likewise a raconteur of adventures such as the writer of short stories dearly loves to know. Of this I was ignorant, but what I had gained was sufficient to inspire new hope. Indeed, a change in method was necessary, for trying to prospect with Cobalt Station as a base was a poor business.

With these thoughts I had come to the collection of tents and shades which has since given place to the town of Cobalt. Eminently the place gave evidence of rush and excitement, and an atmosphere of a haste for wealth pervaded. It was not essentially different from towns set down in like conditions through like circumstances in the West, wherever Nature is overcome and yields a secret to the insatiate void in humankind. Here a rough board shack bears the sign “Cobalt Bloom and Soft Drinks.” “Cobalt Bloom” is the nearest approach to spirituous liquors openly sold in Cobalt. The product is not standardized, and public speculation is wild as to what constitutes its “dope.”

Surrounded by stumps, sticks, and stones, a tent, advertised by a big sign as the “Canadian Bank of Commerce,” stands on the hill just back of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway station. Facing it is a grocery store of rough lumber, and the camp stretches away in tents, log cabins, and rough board shacks, in the acme of disorder scattered over a topography rough and broken, asserting their existence in the face of endless stumps, logs, stones, and general rubbish.

The camp was engaged in cooking its evening meal, and the open fire or the little tin stove set outside the tent was the orthodox means. The frequent laughter, the coarse exclamations, and the loud oaths spoke of the restraints of civilization being absent. The gaiety was that of hearts without a care, the stimulation of the glory of autumnal air and weather, the reflection of the colorings of the forest on the surrounding hills.

II.

Being a newcomer in camp and as yet unestablished with associates, I was suffered to take temporary possession of a small “A” tent lying across the trail from the Bank of Commerce and adjoining that of the “Sourdough Quartette.” In fact, the tent was under the patronage of these gentlemen, and an old acquaintance with “Dick,” the most convivial spirit of the whole, won me the favor. As Dick was the life of his party, so that party was the life of all Cobalt. “Them Klondike fellows do drink a lot of booze, an’ they do raise a row o’ nights,” was the remark of one of Cobalt’s citizens.

Dick was a winner; he had a laugh that had won him a place in the hearts of many men and more women years ago. In fact, the number of daintily colored and sweetly perfumed letters that had come to Dick’s address for years after his advent to Dawson was there a subject of remark among his fellows, notwithstanding that the atmosphere of the Klondike capital was conducive of nothing so much as making people interest themselves only in such matters as concerned themselves.

Dick had been rated a millionaire in Dawson once, and many were the congratulations he received as such. He and two others had become possessed of a claim in one of the Klondike creeks. The three friends had taken another “partner,” who was to be the practical man, and who, in due course, began to work the property. Soon after operations were commenced the bed-rock began to yield big pay. A porphyry dike was found running across the creek, constituting the best kind of bed-rock. Six feet of this bed-rock would yield ten dollars to the pan, and so it was a simple matter to calculate half a dozen millions within the boundaries of the claim.

The sequel—alas! it is always such. The news was heard in Dawson one day that the operating head of the lucky group had disposed of his holdings. Then there came to be less said about the great Bonanza claim, and, finally, with returning summer, the results were attained. After running expenses were paid and mortgages disposed of, Dick and his friends had nothing, but the chap who sold had got a handsome profit in hard cash.

The intrinsic head of the “Sourdough Quartette” was the Colonel. The Colonel owned the tent, the blankets, the stove, and the dishes. He likewise owned the major portion of the grub. The Colonel’s hospitality was excessive. “Any d—— man could have any d—— thing he wants in the layout,” was the ever-recurring remark of the host. “Have a drink and a cigar,” was his invitation to me on being introduced.

The Colonel had a history. At the time when the Nome diggings had been discovered, and the socially putrid, fretting under the restraint of the authorities in Dawson, had left that city by all or any means for the new camp in “God’s country,” the Colonel had joined the rush. His abilities and accomplishments soon won him a place, and he was taken into the civic government of Nome as treasurer. This constituted a graft of great potentiality, and the Colonel prospered.

“Whenever I would get cleaned out playing the wheel or ‘Bank,’ I’d just go up to the City Hall and open the safe, and take what I wanted to keep going,” was the Colonel’s description of the happy circumstances under which he thrived in the halcyon days when chaos reigned over society in that great Mecca of avaricious and adventurous souls.

Prom Alaska the Colonel had visited Nevada, and then drifted to Cobalt. “Never carry a gun unless you carry it loaded, and never draw unless you intend to shoot, and never shoot unless you shoot to kill, for then your side tells the story.” This was the Colonel’s maxim, and it is eminently strong.

The third in the party of Klondikers was Teddy. Teddy was of manner soft and unassertive. Teddy had seen Dawson when wine cost $15.00 per bottle and flowed like water; when the camp currency was counted in ounces of gold dust, pennyweights, and grains; when the dance halls were in the height of their glory and crowded nightly with a populace astounding in its complexity. But Teddy never spoke to the multitude, and seldom to an individual. He only smiled.

The fourth of the “Sourdough Quartette” was the “Cap.” The “Cap” was not properly a sourdough; he had never seen the Yukon’s mighty flood heave its winter’s ice to the sea. In fact, he had never been in the Yukon at all, but had been in South Africa. He had seen things, and the same liberal courtesy that breeds the proverbial Kentucky colonel had embraced the “Cap” to his three companions to make the four. The “Cap” was a mining engineer, at least, if not in fact, by courtesy.

“This camp upsets all previous theories of mining. What do I know about these ores and where to find them?” No person could answer the question, so the Captain’s deprecation of self was allowed to pass, but not without duly impressing such members of the common herd unto whose ears it reached.

Conviviality was the characteristic of the “Sourdough Quartette,” and to the aid of this spirit was called an abundance of whiskey. Several satellites were at hand who constituted ready messengers to Haileybury. Whiskey was purchased by the half-dozen bottles in Haileybury and carried to the “Sourdoughs” in Cobalt.

After I had dined at Cobalt’s most fashionable restaurant, I, in due course, lay down to sleep in the little tent. I had no sooner got settled than the flap was lifted, and a voice inquired how many were the inhabitants. I remarked that I was the limitation, with the consequence that I soon had a bedfellow.

My bedfellow was from British Honduras, an American by birth, an M.D. by profession. He had a claim and a camp in Frog Swamp, with a big bull moose as a neighbor. He thought he had a good prospect, and had got his claim recorded.

As my new acquaintance told me his history, at least that which conveyed the above-mentioned information concerning him, conversation among the “Sourdoughs” became vigorous.

“You know the ‘Oregon Mare’ who used to dance in Miller’s on Front Street?” interrogated the Colonel. “Well, she hit the trail from Dawson in December, and mushed right through to Nome in six weeks.”

“Yes, and there was ‘Gumboot Kitty’; she was one of the worst grafters in Dawson. She would take a man down the line for every cent he owned,” assented the mirthful Richard.

High revelry was being held in the tent of the “Sourdoughs,” and the singing of the clan’s favorite song was frequently indulged in by Dick:

“Oh, de Irish dey was full of de booze,

An’ dey said, Come along an’ we’ll kill all de Jews,

An’ we’ll put old Dawson City on ze bum.”

With reflections on the number of wild jamborees those accents and words had been heard at in the glitter of the Klondike capital at its zenith, I again settled down to rest.

“Oh, yes; the ‘Nigger Jim’ stampede. I was on that. Me and another fellow started from Dawson with two pair of blankets, and three cans of beef extract for grub, and there were hundreds of other fellows just like us. The thermometer stayed around fifty for the next week, and nearly every fellow was frozen more or less. Some got frozen to death.”

It was the Colonel who spoke. Here, where had been found wealth greater than that of the great Golden Yukon, were being recounted the tales of hardships of those subarctic regions.