"Three men hung over there, an hour ago. They're goin' to bury 'em now," and the speaker twitched his thumbs first toward the Barracks, then farther east, where a rough stretch of ground lay unused. Here could be seen policemen and soldiers, evidently in the midst of some performance not on their daily routine.
A number of prisoners wearing the regulation garb of convicts,—pantaloons of heavy mackinaw, one leg of yellow and the other of black,—were carrying long, rough boxes, while others were digging shallow graves.
Upon inquiry I found that what the miner had said was true. Three prisoners, two of them Indian murderers, with another man notoriously bad, had indeed been hung about eight o'clock that morning in the barracks courtyard. In less than two hours afterward they were interred, and in as many days they were forgotten.
By the middle of July, 1899, the steamers leaving Dawson on their way down the Yukon to St. Michael and the new gold fields at Nome, were well filled with those who were anxious to try their luck in Uncle Sam's territory where they can breathe, dig, fish, hunt, or die without buying a license.
By August the steamers coming from St. Michael brought such glowing accounts of the Nome gold fields, that while few people came in, they carried as many out as they could accommodate.
By September the rush down the Yukon was tremendous, and of the twelve thousand people in Dawson many hundreds left for Nome.
When, after six weeks spent in curiously studying conditions and things,—not to say people,—in the great mining camp, it was decided that I should accompany my brother down the Yukon to Cape Nome, and so "out" home to San Francisco, I felt a very distinct sense of disappointment. The novelty of everything, the excitement which came each day in some form or other, was as agreeable as the beautiful summer weather with the long, quiet evenings only settling into darkness at midnight.
In September came the frosts. Men living in tents moved their little Yukon stoves inside, and brought fresh sawdust and shavings from the mills for their beds. Others packed their few possessions into small boats, hauled down their tents, whistled to their dogs, and rolling up their sleeves, pulled laboriously up the swift little Klondyke to their winter "lays" in the mines.
Hundreds were also leaving for the outside. Steamers, both large and small, going to White Horse and Bennett, carried those who had joyfully packed their bags and smilingly said good-bye; for they were going home to the "States." How we strained our eyes from our cabin window or from the higher bank above, to see the people on the decks of the out-going boats. How the name of each tug and even freight-carrier became a familiar household word, and how many were the conjectures as to whether "she" would get through to White Horse Rapids in the low water before a freeze-up!