VIII
THE COUNCIL CITY MINING DISTRICT—JOE RIPLEY AND OTHERS
ur quarters consisted of an excellent twenty-by-sixteen cabin, made of whip-sawed spruce timber, the round log side of course being outside. Half of it, partitioned off, was devoted to our office—a very complete one, I may say, for Alaska. The other half, its wainscoting adorned with pans, pots, saws, hammers, and the like, and its shelves and box-cupboards holding various cooking and eating paraphernalia, answered the purposes of kitchen and dining-room combined. A platform four feet wide, and stretching across in the middle from wall to wall, formed the base of an isosceles triangle with the peak of the roof, and thereby made a loft or cache, convenient for storing provisions, etc. But, for the life of me, I could discover no provisions for storing ourselves at night. Immediately in the rear of the cabin was a tent, but that was filled with miscellaneous stuff, and evidently was not intended for sleeping purposes. At last the mystery was solved in looking behind an apparently unnecessary hanging of drill tapestry which covered my side of the partition, and discovering, neatly folded and caught up against the concealed wall, an excellent home-made bed or bunk, whose only springs, however, were the hinges from which it swung. Three fine, friendly dogs, now enjoying their summer vacation, loafed about the back door, near a sled upon which rested three old gold-pans from which they fed. The cabin was but a little distance back of our old camping-place, the marks of which were still very evident, and it commanded a fine view of the tortuous river and the landscape beyond. The appearance of the camp had improved,—many new cabins and several more stores had sprung up,—but I could obtain no concrete explanation from my partner, its president or mayor, why, during my absence, the city's main thoroughfare had not been asphalted. My letters from the "outside" telling of the time of my departure, and those intrusted at Nome to pretended overland travelers, all came some time after my arrival, but I was, nevertheless, expected to appear upon the scene any day in early July.
In very short order I was again in the traces of Alaskan harness and developing with my partner a certain team-work in our household duties as well as in legal and mining matters. We were truly "hewers of wood and drawers of water," and we enjoyed excellent health, although we did our own cooking. Perhaps our best parlor trick was what we were pleased to term "the poetry of motion." This took place after the mahogany had been cleared for action, when one of us, presiding over a pan of hot water, fished out from under the soapy suds some utensil and passed it along to the other, who, accepting gracefully, gave it a polish in transit and flourished it onward to its allotted place. Toward the end of the season a neighborly little woman, the New England wife of a miner from Maine, brought us some pastry which delightfully suggested the land of the Puritans. She sympathetically remarked that she would have performed many similar acts had she known we were doing our own cooking. I must admit that we bought our bread. Before I left Council we were guests at a dinner-party given by this hospitable neighbor, and rarely have I enjoyed a meal more. The home was most comfortable and roomy, and we ate from pretty china which this little housewife had brought all the way from New England. This goes to show that people can now live comfortably and well in that remote country, if they only will.
The winter of course had been very long and tedious, and, in many ways, a most trying one; but it was surprising to learn how lightly clad one can safely and comfortably move about with the thermometer ranging from 30° to 60° below zero. This is due to the dryness of the cold. For instance, at 30° below, and with no outer garments other than flannel shirt and overalls, one would perspire freely in chopping wood. With hands and feet warmly protected, and winter underwear and wind-proof outer clothes (drill coat and ordinary overalls), and exercise, one can comfortably weather a degree of cold which, in lower latitudes, would immediately transform him to an icicle. The snow had averaged on the level places about five feet in depth, but was very deep where it had drifted and been banked by the wind, making it a common thing to have to dig one's self out, or for a party to lend assistance in bringing to the light, if any there was, snow-buried men and women. The shortest day had given three and a half hours of dusky light; the coldest had forced the thermometer down to 60° below zero, where kerosene had frozen. Horses had to be killed on account of the absence of fodder; and, after having been left out a short time to freeze, one would chop them up with an ax for dog-food, the chips flying as if they were timber. Frequent salutations on the trail were such as, "Say, old man, your nose is frozen," which might bring forth the rejoinder, "So is yours"; whereupon both would rub snow upon the senseless point, and proceed onward. It was the continual wind, sometimes impossible to withstand, which worked the greatest hardship and fiendishly got upon the nerves. Old Tom Welch, whom I well remembered, and his partner, while trying to prospect in the snow, had been frozen to death; and there had been some talk of lynching the individual who had undertaken to supply them with provisions, upon whose failure to do so the two unfortunates had essayed to return to Council in a storm which had cost them their lives. Some others had met a like unnecessary fate. The natives and oldest white inhabitants unanimously agreed that it had been the most severe winter known; and it was an attested fact that many creeks in that region remained throughout the following summer hopeless ice and presented to the expectant miner a frozen face.
The freighters came in at midnight the day of my arrival; and by the noon following my twenty-odd pieces of freight and baggage, intact, were properly stored and distributed in and about our abode—a very great satisfaction indeed. Those fellows earned their three cents a pound all right. A little later in the season two very small and very light-draft stern-wheelers, referred to as "coal-oil Johnnies," plied intermittently between White Mountain and Council, as the condition of the streams allowed; but the usual and best-adapted means of transportation were long, shallow scows which a horse pulled up-stream freighted, and rode down upon empty.
This section of the country was now the Council City Precinct and Recording District, a subdivision of the Second Judicial Division, as designated by the Alaskan code. A United States commissioner, with liberal jurisdiction and a marshal at his back, supplanted our military tribunal and the mining recorder of the last year. With the exceptions that his jurisdiction in civil matters is limited to a certain amount, that he can neither grant an injunction nor try title to real estate, his powers, judicial and otherwise, are plenary and varied. For instance, in addition to his civil and extensive criminal jurisdiction, the commissioner is ex officio probate judge, coroner, notary public, mining recorder, and tier of matrimonial knots. In the latter capacity he is not overburdened with work, and having once tied, he has no authority to unloose. There is a section of the criminal code which in mining matters worked very salutary results. Under it an action of "criminal trespass" can be brought in the commissioner's court, in which the court may consider the record title, and, in proper cases, oust irresponsible "jumpers" or legal blackmailers, who may then, if they wish, in a legal way, seek a remedy in the District Court at Nome. We proceeded on several occasions under this section. If the defendant was found guilty, he was ejected from the premises by the marshal, and either paid his fine and costs or languished awhile in an unupholstered "jug." Although, naturally enough, he was in the country to better himself from the ground, and not primarily from his fees, our genial commissioner presided over his court with dignity, fairness, and ability. I always made it a point to wear a necktie in appearing before his Honor. After a trial he might drop into our cabin; and, over a cigar and a little Scotch whisky, we would suggest wherein, in our opinion, he had erred in his rulings or decisions, to which presumptuous insinuations he would either good-naturedly assent or demur.
There was a lot doing. The District Court, though not appointing receivers, was grinding out injunctions, or temporary restraining orders, which, frequently conveyed by some legal luminary, came drifting over from Nome, and, in consequence, some poor devil or arrant rascal was thrown out of his job and summoned to appear at the metropolis. There was a pause, however, about the middle of August, when Judge Noyes pulled up stakes and sailed for the "outside" to prepare himself for his October ordeal before the Court of Appeals.