“I will give you $2,000 or more, if necessary, to take six weeks off and go with me up to Quartz Creek where my child will be born. Just name your figure if that is not enough.”
Bera was seventeen years old, immature and delicate, yet brave and strong, and willing to imperil her own life to gratify Swiftwater’s whim. So it finally came about that I was delegated to do the final shopping in advance of our journey.
I went to Gandolfo’s and bought with my own money a case of oranges and a crate of apples. Each orange cost $3 in dust and the apples about the same. Next I ordered a barrel of bottled beer, for Swiftwater wanted to treat his men with a feast when the baby was born and the bottled beer was what he thought to be the proper thing. The barrel of beer cost me close to $500 in gold.
BERA BEEBE GATES
From a photograph taken at Washington, D. C., where she was deserted by Swiftwater Bill.
All this stuff was loaded on the sled. They started over the twenty-eight miles of crooked, winding, marshy trail to Quartz Creek. The journey was something terrible. The days were short and the wind from the hills and gulches was wet with the thawing of the snow and so cold that it seemed to make icicles of the drippings from the trees. Bera, wrapped a foot thick in furs, seemed to stand the trip all right, and in due time the baby was born and christened.
There was great rejoicing in the camp and Swiftwater weighed out $3,000 in dust to Dr. Marshall and sent him back to Dawson. A month afterwards one of our men brought from Dawson the word that the mail had arrived over the ice, but Swiftwater looked in vain for a letter from Joe Boyle. He had confidently expected a draft for $50,000.
For two days Swiftwater scarcely spoke. The cabin in which we lived was only a quarter of a mile from the nearest dump where the men were working. I used to go out every once in a while and take up a few shovels full of gravel which would wash out between $5 and $10 and if I had had the good common sense which comes only after years of hard knocks in this troublesome world, I could then and there have protected myself against the bitter misfortunes which came to me in a few months afterwards.