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Chapter Seventeen
Klondike Capers
1898
Dawson under the light of the Aurora Borealis.
(Courtesy of the Sisters of St. Ann Archives, British Columbia)
Nellie set off to find the well-known Jesuit missionary, Father William Judge, who
ministered in Dawson. After the challenge of the Chilkoot, she needed an anchor. The
Sisters of St. Ann had told her he had served in the Forty Mile Area north of Dawson for
a long time and was an excellent scout. Father Judge sounded like her kind of person.
Baker/Toughnut Angel /17
Though she enjoyed the dance of the green and red lights of the Aurora Borealis while
she fell asleep on the trail she’d need an inside dwelling place in Dawson. She hoped
Father Judge could direct her.
An honest-looking bearded man helped lug a log down Front Street. She walked
along beside him. “Excuse me, sir. And would you know where I could find Father
Judge?”
He waved one arm at a steeple she glimpsed over the rooftops and spoke in a
gruff voice. “Hospital and church stand in the same place. You’ll find him up there
somewheres.”
(Courtesy Sisters of St. Ann Archives, British Columbia)
2
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Nellie found the thin, graying man who wore wire-rimmed glasses, inside his log
hospital. He moved from bed to bed to nurse
patients, and she had to follow at a fast pace to
speak to him. Man after man had typhoid
fever. Some suffered from accidents on the
creeks.
“Father, my name is Nellie Cashman.
I’m just in from the Chilkoot Trail. Could you
be giving me information on where I might
find a reasonable dwelling? And if you’d allow,
Courtesy Sisters of St. Ann
Archives, British Columbia
I’d like to help with your hospital.”
Father Judge glanced at Nellie’s miner clothing. “The river isn’t open. How are
you in from the trail? And by the way, are you the one the miners call the Angel of the
Cassiar?” They moved on to the next patient.
She handed the father the pitcher of water from the stand next to the patient and
smiled. “To your first question, we climbed over the ice and shot the rapids. And to your
second, yes, Father, but I am not an angel. Obedience is not my strong suit. I do what is
needed. That is what happened in the Cassiar.”
He glanced at his patient, a dark-haired young man who suffered with scurvy. The
Father appeared to think, since he did not respond. Then he spoke while he bathed sweat
from the forehead of the miner. “My child, the businessmen of Dawson have turned the
town into a beehive of construction since they heard of the thousands of you ready to
pour in on us from Lake Bennett. I’m sure you heard the hammers pound out on the
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streets, and saw the frames rise. You being ahead of most of the rest, I should think it will
be easy to find a comfortable lodging. You could speak to Belinda Mulrooney. She’s a
dark-haired Irishwoman like yourself, who’s found success in both business and gold
mining here.”
The father held a cup of water to the patient’s dry lips. “On the other hand, you
could inquire with Arizona Charlie Meadows, the owner of the Opera House, or any of a
number of others. They all look to make money from the new arrivals. Arizona Charlie
has a big dark mustache, and can be found in the Opera House, day or night. Ask on the
street for either Belinda or Arizona Charlie.”
He gave his patient a stern look. “I know it hurts, Jack, but you must drink more
water.”
Next, he removed gauze from the man’s arm, and spoke again to Nellie. “As for
me, our hospital is too small, cold, and ill-equipped. I knew George Carmack’s discovery
of gold out there on Bonanza Creek would fill this area with stampeders. So I arranged to
purchase these three acres for a hospital and church. Sure enough more humanity rushes
into Dawson daily.” He opened his young patient’s mouth to examine his teeth. “Now
there’s an even bigger gold strike on El Dorado. LaDue built this town on ground where
the permafrost lurks only two feet down. I’m sure he never imagined 8,000 people would
live here. The town freezes in the winter, then floods in the spring and degenerates into a
mud hole. Mosquitoes as big as hummingbirds thrive in the summer and disease pursues
the miners. They get typhoid fever. Sometimes the lack of food results in scurvy, like Mr.
London here has. Young Jack writes as well as mines, Miss Cashman.”
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The poor sick man on the bed lifted his hand in acknowledgement of Nellie’s
greeting.
She smiled at him and then looked at Father Judge. “I believe I have lime juice
left in my sled. Do you need it?”
“Indeed! Bring it.”
When Nellie returned, she indicated with her hand that Jack London should open
his mouth. “This will hurt like ever-loving fury, but you must allow it. It could save your
life.”
He opened his cracked lips and she dribbled the life-saving juice over his blistered
tongue, as he gasped in agony. She saw the holes where he had already lost a couple of
teeth. She felt the sides of her neck tingle with the thought of vomiting, and closed her
eyes for a moment.
Father Judge smiled, but his eyes looked sad. “We need more medicine, space,
beds, medical staff and lay people to help nurse the sick and injured.”
He turned to a Nulato Indian who attended him. “John, I need more towels.”
John disappeared out the door.
The Father replaced the wet cloth on London’s forehead. “I expected the good
Sisters of St. Ann in on the last steamer before the freeze in the fall to do the nursing.”
Nellie wiped lime juice off London’s chin. “I know them. Superior women.”
Father Judge nodded. “However, the Yukon ran low, one Sister fell ill, and they
had to turn back. Now I must wait for the thaw before they’ll arrive. Anything you could
do would be a help to us.”
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Nellie felt sorry for him. His weary face made him look much older than his
years. She dared to touch his arm. “I will do all I can to help you. And thank you for your
advice. I’ll be going, then.”
“And God go with you.”
“And with you.”
Out in the town again, Nellie greeted fur-coated miners she’d known from earlier
days as she strode along. She heard several versions of, “And a good mornin’ to ya’ Miss
Nellie. Come by me claim and have a meal with us.”
Suddenly she halted. A woman, clothed about the same as she was, yelled at a
man who beat his Malamute with a tree branch. The woman attempted to hold his left
arm that wielded the branch. The dog cringed, bloody, at the man’s feet.
Nellie walked up beside the woman. “Do you need help here?”
The woman turned from the man, on whose arm she kept a firm grip, and yelled.
“This dog is beating this animal for grabbing a piece of meat he dropped. As I see it,
someone ought to beat him!”
The livid man wrenched his arm from the woman’s grasp. “My dog, my
punishment!” His voice reminded Nellie of the spit of a snake.
Nellie knelt down by the dog, petted his head, and scratched his ear. “How much
you take for him?”
“Twenty-five bucks. He’s a good lead dog.”
“Sold.” Nellie dug inside her macintosh pocket and handed him the money. He
handed her the rope, and sauntered away with a wicked grin on his face.
Nellie turned back to the woman. “Need a dog?”
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“No, it wasn’t that. I couldn’t abide that he hit him and hit him. And I think you
just got took.”
Nellie nodded toward Ned and her dogsled. “I suppose so. I can use him.
Everything I have is on that dog sled, and Ned’s my only dog. Sure and he’d like a
partner.” She gave a light tug on the beaten dog’s rope. He pulled against it, still afraid.
The woman scratched Ned’s ear. “My name’s Georgie Osborne.”
Nellie knelt by her new dog and held her palm out for him to smell. She kept her
eyes on the dog, and spoke to Georgie. “And I would be Nellie Cashman. I have just
arrived in Dawson from the Chilkoot this very day.” The dog licked her palm. “I went to
see Father Judge first, to see if he could recommend a place to stay. That man needs
assistance, or I’m not Irish.” This time when she tugged her rope, the dog followed.
“What do you think of Yukon as a name for my new dog?”
Georgie turned and locked her elbow in Nellie’s. “A fitting name, I’d say. Come
with me. I have a comfortable room on the second floor of a general store. There’s
another room, just built and empty. Once we get you settled, I’ll show you around.”
Nellie put her finger in the air to signal a stop and shed Georgie’s elbow. Then
she led Yukon over to Ned. They growled at each other. She frowned at Ned. “No.” He
stopped.
Yukon circled Ned, sniffing. Ned watched Nellie. Then to her amazement, Yukon
lay down in the snow on the side of the street, turned his belly to the sky, and whined.
She looked at Georgie and they both shrugged their shoulders. Nellie tied
Yukon’s rope to her sled. “Let’s go see your room, then.” They headed up Front Street.
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“Georgie, what do you say we make a trip up Bonanza Creek and then El Dorado
and ask the boys to help Father Judge any way they can?”
“What, and you haven’t had enough travel on the Chilkoot?”
“He can’t take care of all those patients alone.”
Georgie laughed, and clapped Nellie’s shoulder. “And Who would it be who
elected you his angel?”
Nellie laughed, too. “I believe you’d be knowing the answer to that. Let’s get me
settled, and then we’re for the creeks.”
They walked together past a saloon from where they heard a woman’s voice
singing Old Maid in the Garrett.
I was told by my aunt,
I was told by my mother
That going to a weddin'
Is the makings of another.
And if this be so then
I'll go without a biddin',
Oh kind providence
Won't you send me to a weddin'
Chorus
And it's Oh Dear Me! How will it be,
If I die an Old Maid in the Garret?
Before the Yukon River opened on May 17th Nellie made plenty of trips up the
creeks to solicit funds for Father Judge.
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On one of them, she
bought out the miner who
owned Number 19 below
Bonanza.
Courtesy Sisters of St. Ann
Archives, British Columbia
But on the day the ice
began to crack on the Yukon,
Nellie and Georgie joined everyone as they rushed down to the river to watch and listen.
The giant chunks crashed
into each other with
thunderous roars, built
dams, then ground and
squealed, broke again and
careened down the river.
Courtesy Sisters of St. Ann
Archives, British Columbia
In short order, the water behind the ice flooded the Dawson waterfront and the
permafrost began to thaw. Men and horses trudged up to their knees in mud. Wagons
sank up to their wheel hubs. Nellie was glad she lived on the second floor.
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(Courtesy Sisters of St. Ann Archives, British Columbia)
The citizens dug trenches to release the water from the town. Giant mosquitoes,
quiet during the freeze, began to test their wings. And Nellie, who was a sourdough by
some people’s definition before, felt proud that she’d become an official Yukon
sourdough because she’d seen the ice go out.
With the Yukon open, stampeders arrived in droves. River boats again made their
way up and down. One of the first days they sailed, Nellie saw Jack London haul himself
into a small boat bound for California. She’d heard that he’d kept a journal of his time in
the Klondike, and she noted he had it under his arm as he boarded the boat.
Edward Morgan, the stampeder who’d let her hook onto his sled for a bit on the
Chilkoot, came up to her as she walked along. “Hello, Miss Nellie.”
She stopped and shook his gloved hand. “Good to see you made it in fine form.”
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He smiled. “And you look well, also.”
“Do you need work, then?”
“No, I hope to stake a claim of my own.”
“Too bad, I need more good men. I snowshoed up and made a claim on No. 19
Below Bonanza. It brings a good profit. Look me up if you change your mind. Say, by
the way, there’s a hospital here in Dawson that needs contributions. And I’m sure you’d
like to donate.” Nellie held out her hand.
Morgan dropped in a few coins. “You may meet the end of my stash if I give you
more, Miss Nellie.”
Nellie put the coins in her pocket. “You’ll need that hospital one day, and be glad
you contributed.”
Morgan clapped her on the back. “Well, thank you for the opportunity.”
“You’re welcome.” She nodded her head and continued her walk up the
waterfront.
Nellie and Georgie went up the creeks again right after the Yukon opened. At
each claim they explained Father Judge’s needs at the hospital. While the miners plopped
coins and gold nuggets in their hospital bag, Nellie talked with them of their own needs.
Every miner at every claim worked hard. One stoked the boiler that melted the frozen
gravel. Another worked the winch at the top of the ground to drill the shaft through the
frozen muck, then gravel, to look for the gold-bearing sand. Two more went down the
shaft about six feet to shovel the sand where the gold was to be found.
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After their return from the creeks, Nellie opened her short order restaurant called
the Can Can. As usual, when a miner came in without money, she fed him. Before long
she bought out some Cheechakos and opened a grocery store.
Belinda Mulrooney, whose pluck Nellie appreciated, came for dinner at the Can
Can one evening. The miners admired her as one of the richest among them. She had
come to the Klondike as soon as she heard of the strike and filed claims on several
creeks. Nellie sat down to catch up with Belinda, who pushed her wire-rimmed spectacles
back up her nose every now and then while she finished her dinner. “You know Nellie, I
just realized the Fairview will be the tallest building in Dawson once she’s finished. And
I don’t care what Bill Leggett says.”
Nellie removed her plate. “Three stories. The people on the top floor should be
able to see almost to the coast, or at least a good ways down the Yukon. Belinda, don’t
mind Bill. And we all know him to be a blowhard. Want dessert, then?”
“No, but sure and I would like to see the windows for the top floor of the hotel
float down the Yukon.”
Nellie laughed. “And you will figure it out.”
“Yes. I will have to, will I not?”
Nellie now owned and mined four claims in partnership with men on Bonanza
Creek. She’d begun to build a cabin there because that’s where she spent most of her
time. She and the boys made her cabin furnishings from resources they had at hand. A
spruce frame with green moose hide stretched between the poles, the fur side up, served
as her bed. The more the skin dried the more it shrunk to make it more springy. She
surrounded the bed with mosquito netting so that the mosquitoes didn’t eat her alive.
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At last, T.J. strode up to Number 19 Below one day in summer.
When she recognized him, she screamed and threw the gold in her hand back
down in the sluice. “And I thought you would never get here!”
He had grown into a muscled man, and picked her up and whirled her around.
“Me, too.”
“T.J., you are a sight for sore eyes. How long have you been here, then?”
“Just arrived on a steamer today.”
“Hungry?”
“Nope. Stopped at the Can Can to look for you, and ate while I was there. They
directed me out here.”
“Then I’ll show you Little Skookum. It needs a supervisor, the devil take it. I
cannot be there all the time.”
“I’m right behind you.”
She could crush rocks herself, but she most often gave other miners work. The
new ones tried to take the tools out of her hands, and that irritated the snot out of her.
The boys at the claim she had in mind for T.J. fought over boundaries with the boys on
the claims next to them or wasted time trying to decide who was top dog. Now T.J. would
be top dog.
When she and T.J. walked up, she looked over Sam’s shoulder. He sat reading
“The Spell of the Yukon,” Robert W. Service’s poem, while he ate his lunch. He took his
hat off and rubbed his hair. “I don’t know how this feller would know this, since he ain’t
been up here.” Nellie wondered how Service found time to write poetry. Stampeders kept
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too busy to write anything but letters home. She managed a letter now and then, and that
was it.
Sam pointed at the page. “Can I read you some, Miss Nellie?”
“Sure, read away.”
He began,
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a
Fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth – and I’m one.
She agreed with the part about not trading it for any land on earth.
“Sam, this is T.J., my nephew. He’ll run Little Skookum from now on.”
“Good. We need a final word.”
She educated T.J. on the division of mines as she showed him around. “We
miners spend more time than we want in court to protect our claims since there are only
so many miles of pay dirt to mine regardless of the number of miners.”
She opened the door of a cabin she’d had built to use when the weather kept her
on the creek. “We call the first claim on the creek Discovery, and then the next one up the
creek is #1 above discovery, the next one down the creek #1 below, and so on.”
She pointed. “Put your pack on that bed. When the Canadians measured the
claims, some weren’t the full measure and some were too big. When the claim was too
small, the miner just had to live with it. When they were too large, the Canadians took
them apart, so that one is a whole claim, and the other they call a fraction with the same
number as the larger claim it came from.” When T.J. didn’t have any more questions, she
left him at Little Skookum
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Little Skookum continued to have boundary problems, though. Nellie had heard
that Belinda Mulrooney and Captain Norwood, one of the mining inspectors, were in
cahoots on several claims. The laws kept changing about whether the Canadian
inspectors could own claims themselves. Nellie wondered whether she could influence
Norwood to lean her direction in the dispute on Little Skookum if she gave Belinda a part
of it. The Fairview was open, and Belinda’s office was at the top of the stairs that led to
the second floor.
“I’d like to offer you a quarter of my Little Skookum claim then, Belinda. Perhaps
you could follow up my conversation with Captain Norwood.”
“I’ll think on it.” Belinda threw the paper in her safe.
Not long after that, miners in Dawson complained to the Canadian government
that the inspectors acted illegally, and Nellie joined them because of Little Skookum. It
took a long time for them to respond to the complaint, and by the time they did she had
fallen ill. Too much cold weather, she guessed. At any rate, she lay in a friend’s cabin
getting well when someone knocked on the door. The friend opened to Land
Commissioner William Ogilvie.
He removed his macintosh. “Miss Cashman, could you talk to me about the affair
regarding your Little Skookum claim?”
She hadn’t intended to give the details of what she had believed or how she had
handled it. “Oh that affair is over, Commissioner.”
“I’d like to hear your side of it, at least.”
He questioned her and she answered for a good long while. The longer she talked
the more she wondered whether she had let riches get in front of people when she listened
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to the rumors about Belinda and Norwood’s business dealings. At last, she looked
Ogilvie in the eye. “If you are a saint in Dawson, you would be made a devil before you
got through; if you carry a Bible in your arm you are a fraud. Common sense teaches that.
I have been in mining camps for thirty-five years, and if I had common sense, I would not
have bothered Miss Mulrooney. I think she was putting up a job on me.” Nellie pulled up
the dim memory of that long ago day on the coffin ship when she swore she would never
put money in front of people like the English did. Had she become an Englisher? Surely
it couldn’t be.
Norwood was acquitted in the miners’ claims, and Nellie lost part of Little
Skookum in the deal. Nevertheless, she and Belinda continued to support Father Judge’s
hospital together and work to make Dawson a better place for the miners. Nellie judged
with more care as she went to court about mining claims. It was hard to shake the
thought that money might have taken a higher place than people in her mind, though.