Read Ebook: The True Life Story of Swiftwater Bill Gates by Beebe Iola

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 531 lines and 29128 words, and 11 pages

One night an adventurous trader came down from the Upper Yukon in a small boat--there were no steamers then--and brought two crates of fresh eggs from Seattle.

Swiftwater heard of this, and he knew that there would be a tremendous demand for those eggs, as the miners usually made their breakfasts of the evaporated article; so, shrewdly, he went immediately to the restaurant which had purchased the crates and called for the proprietor.

Now, this worthy knew Swiftwater to be immensely wealthy and a very good customer, so when the Eldorado miner demanded the right to buy every egg in the house, which meant every egg in town, the restaurant man stroked his chin and said:

"Swiftwater, those eggs cost me a big lot of money, and there hain't no more. You can have the hull outfit for three dollars an egg, in dust."

There was just one whole crate left, and Swiftwater weighed out ,280 in gold dust.

"Those eggs are mine--keep them here and don't let anybody have any."

Now, Swiftwater and Gussie had been in the habit of breakfasting on fresh eggs some days before, when the first infrequent trader of the season had managed, after enduring several wrecks on the upper river, to reach Dawson. Fresh eggs were to Gussie what chocolates and bon bons are to the average girl in the States.

The next morning Swiftwater arrived at the restaurant for breakfast, a little earlier than usual, and in a few minutes the waiter placed before him a steaming hot platter containing an even dozen of the eggs, nicely poached and served on small strips of toast.

Just then Gussie came in for her breakfast and seated herself at the other end of the little dining room. It was long after the usual hour for breakfast, and they were the only two in the room. Without doing Swiftwater the honor of passing so much as a glance in his direction, Gussie said to the waiter:

"Bring me a full order of fried eggs."

"We ain't got no eggs, mum; they was all sold out last night," said the waiter.

Gussie's face flamed with anger, but only for an instant. Then she picked up her plate, her knife and fork and napkin and strode over to the table where Swiftwater sat.

"I guess I'll have some eggs, after all," said Gussie, without looking at Swiftwater, as she liberally helped herself from his platter.

Then both of them burst out laughing and peace reigned once more between them.

Of course, Swiftwater figured that he had won a substantial victory by reaching Gussie's heart through her stomach. But, as a matter of fact, we all figured that the laugh was on Swiftwater, and I think every woman who reads this story will agree with me.

SWIFTWATER has often told me that he never could quite understand why it was that the way to a woman's heart, even his own way--Swiftwater's--was so hard to travel and so devious and tortuous in its windings and interwindings.

"Why, Mrs. Beebe," Swiftwater used to say, "I should think a man could do anything with gold! And for my own part, I used to always figure that money would buy anything," said Swiftwater, "even the most beautiful woman in the world for your wife."

Swiftwater's mental processes were simple, as the foregoing will illustrate. It was hardly to be expected otherwise. Swiftwater decamped from the drudgery and slavish toil of a kitchen in the little road-house at Circle City to gain in less than three months more money than he had ever dreamed it possible for him to have.

Two hundred thousand dollars was the minimum of Swiftwater's first big clean-up. If Gussie Lamore had lovers, Swiftwater figured, his money would win her heart away from all the rest.

All this relates very intimately to the really interesting story of Swiftwater's courtship of Gussie Lamore. The girl kept him at arm's length, yet if ever Swiftwater became restive Gussie would cleverly draw the line taut and Swiftwater was at her feet.

"I am tired of this, Gussie," said Swiftwater one day, and finally the "Knight of the Golden Omelette," as he was often termed, was serious for once in his life.

"I am going back to Eldorado and I'll bring down here a bunch of gold. It will weigh as much as you do on the scales, pound for pound. Gussie, that gold will be yours if you give me your word you will marry me."

"All right, Bill, we'll see. Go get your gold and show me that you really have it."

Swiftwater, in the early morning, carried to Gussie's apartments two tin coffee cans filled with the yellow gold.

"Here's all you weigh, anyhow," said Swiftwater. "Now, take this gold to the Trading Company's office and bank it. Then I want you to buy a ticket to San Francisco and I will meet you there this summer and we will be married."

Thus ended the curious story of Swiftwater's wooing of Gussie Lamore. All the world knows how, when Gussie reached San Francisco, where her folks lived, she banked Swiftwater's gold and turned him down cold.

Swiftwater reached the Golden Gate a month after Gussie had arrived at her home. All his entreaties for her to carry out her bargain came to nothing.

Bitter as he was towards Gussie, Swiftwater still seemed to love the girl. His first creed, "I can buy any woman with gold," seemed to stick with him.

There was, for one thing, little Grace Lamore. It came to Swiftwater that he could marry Grace and punish Gussie for her inconstancy.

Now, this may seem to you, my reader, like an ill-founded story. Yet the truth is, Grace and Swiftwater were married within a month of his arrival in San Francisco, and the San Francisco papers were filled with the story of how Swiftwater bought his bride a ,000 home in Oakland and furnished it most beautifully with all that money could buy.

Swiftwater and Grace, after a two days' wedding trip down the San Joaquin Valley leased the bridal chamber of the Baldwin Hotel, while their new home in Oakland was being fitted up. Old-time Alaskans will smile when I recall the impression that Swiftwater made on San Franciscans.

It was his invariable custom to stand in front of the lobby of the Baldwin every evening, smoothly shaved, his moustaches nicely brushed and curled, and wearing his favorite black Prince Albert and silk hat.

Probably few in the throng that came and went through the lobby of the Baldwin--in those days one of the most popular hostelries in San Francisco--would have paid any attention to Swiftwater. But Bill knew a trick or two and his old-time friends have told me that Swiftwater made it an unfailing custom to tip the bell-boys a dollar each a day to point to the dapper little man and have them tell both guests of the Baldwin and strangers:

"There is Swiftwater Bill Gates, the King of the Klondike."

And Swiftwater would stand every evening, silk hat on his head, spick and span, and clean, and bow politely to everybody as they came in through the lobby to the dining hall.

Isn't it curious, that with all his money, and his confidence in the purchasing power of gold, Swiftwater's dream of love with Grace Lamore should have lasted scarcely more than a short three weeks? It was not that Swiftwater was parsimonious with is money--the very finest of silks and satins, millinery, diamonds at Shreve's, cut glass and silverware, were Grace's for the asking. They will tell you in San Francisco to this day that Swiftwater and his bride worked overtime in a carriage shopping in the most expensive houses in the city of the Golden Gate.

Then came the break with Grace. I do not know the cause, but the girl threw Swiftwater overboard and left the bridal chamber of the Baldwin to return to her family, even before they had occupied the palatial home in Oakland.

Swiftwater's rage knew no bounds. In his heart he cursed the whole Lamore family and quickly took means to vent his spite.

This is how it came about that scarcely a month after Swiftwater's wedding bells had rung, the "Knight of the Golden Omelette" was seen to enter his Oakland home one evening and emerge therefrom a half hour later bearing on his back a heavy bundle wrapped in a bed sheet.

The burden was all that Swiftwater's-strength could manage. Laboriously he toiled his way to the house of a friend in Oakland and wearily deposited his bundle on the front porch, where he sat and waited the coming of his friend.

When Swiftwater was finally admitted to the house, he untied the sheet and opened up the contents of the pack. There lay glittering on the floor ,000 worth of solid silver plate and cut glass.

IT HAS always seemed a standing wonder to me that when Swiftwater had separated himself from about 0,000 or more in gold dust with the Lamore sisters as the chief beneficiaries, and after he had been divorced from Grace, following her refusal to live with him in San Francisco, he did not finally come within a rifle shot of the realization of the real value of money. There is no doubt but that Swiftwater was bitterly resentful towards Gussie and Grace Lamore after they had both thrown him overboard, and you will no doubt agree with me that to an ordinary man such experiences as these would have had a sobering effect.

Instead, however, the miner plunged more recklessly than ever into all manner of money-making and money-spending, and the only reason that Swiftwater Bill Gates is not ranked today with Flood, Mackay and Fair as one of a group of the greatest and richest mining men the Pacific Coast has produced, is that he did not have the balance wheel of caution and discretion that is given to the ordinary artisan or day laborer.

Swiftwater left San Francisco soon after his rupture with Grace Lamore and went directly to Ottawa, Canada, where, marvelous as it may seem in the light of the ten years of mining history in the north, Swiftwater induced the Dominion government to grant him a concession on Quartz Creek, in the Klondike, worth today millions upon millions.

This concession covered an immense tract of ground at least three miles long and in some places two miles wide. Much of the ground was very rich, and today, ten years later, it is paying big dividends. Yet rich as it was and immensely valuable as was the enormous concession, Swiftwater induced the Dominion of Canada authorities to part with it for merely a nominal consideration. His success in this respect cannot be otherwise regarded than phenomenal. Although his money was nearly all gone, Swiftwater, taking a new grip on himself, and entirely disregardful of the fates which had been so lavish to him, went from Ottawa to London, England, where he obtained enough money to buy and ship to Dawson one of the largest and most expensive hydraulic plants in the country.

When this plant was shipped to Seattle in 1898, Swiftwater followed it to the city on Elliott Bay.

It was the day following Swiftwater Bill's arrival in Seattle from San Francisco in the spring of 1899 that Mr. Richardson, an old Seattle friend of mine, who knew Gates well, telephoned me that Swiftwater had an elegant suite of apartments at the Butler Hotel, and that he had asked him to arrange for an introduction. Mr. Richardson said over the telephone:

"You ought to know Swiftwater--he knows everybody in Dawson and the Klondike, and for a woman like you to go into that country with a big hotel outfit and no friends would be ridiculous."

When I think of what happened to me and my daughters, Blanche and Bera, in the next few days following this incident, and of the years of wretchedness and misery and laying waste of human lives and happiness that came after, I am tempted to wonder what curious form of an unseen fate shapes our destinies and turns and twists our fortunes in all manner of devious and uncertain ways.

My whole hotel outfit had gone up to St. Michael the fall previous and I with it--and at great cost of labor and trouble I had seen to it, at St. Michael, that the precious shipment--representing all I had in the world--was safely stored aboard a river steamer bound for Dawson.

Now, spring had come again, and with it the big rush to the gold fields of the Yukon was on, and Seattle was again filled with a seething, surging, struggling, discontented, optimistic, laughing crowd of gold hunters of every nationality and color.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet