Hunter’s Dance (18 page)

“I'd as soon think this over out in the open.” McIntire stooped to exit the cave, blinked at the sunlight, and found himself staring into the twin barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun.

“Straighten up and get the hell out of there.” The voice was harsh and raspy. It bore nuances of French. McIntire straightened up and got the hell out of the mine, not exactly in that order.

The butt end of the gun was planted firmly into the shoulder of a small man with fidgety black eyes and sparse, tobacco-yellowed whiskers twitching at the corners of his mouth.

“Get your buddy out here.”

McIntire didn't turn. “You heard him, buddy. You better get out here!”

“What the hell!” Fratelli's response was muffled. McIntire felt himself bumped from behind and heard the detective's sharp intake of breath.

The grating voice rang out again. “What's your business here?”

“Who the hell do you—”

McIntire stepped back onto the imprudently mouthy detective's foot. “Good afternoon,” he said, in a voice that he hoped sounded composed. “I'm John McIntire. I believe you're Esko Thomson?” Then McIntire did what any good Catholic boy does when faced with imminent bodily harm. He invoked the saints. “I think you knew my father, Colin.”

A degree of the craftiness passed from the eyes. “You Col's boy? Well, I'll be!” The gun barrels sank below the level of McIntire's forehead, then rose again. “You don't look much like him.”

“No,” McIntire acknowledged, “I took after Ma. In looks.”

“What're you doing out here?”

“Scouting a place to put up a deer stand and got a little turned around, as they say. Keeping your bearings can be tricky around here.”

“Not if you got any sense a-tall, but I remember you ended up being a city boy.” He tucked the gun under his arm, and his voice dropped to a less strident pitch. “Thought you were a couple of them gol-damned uranium hunters. I've had to persuade a few of them to hunt elsewhere.” He arced a stream of tobacco into the bushes. “What about your buddy there?”

“Pa's cousin's son, Paddy McIntire, all the way from County Cork.”

Fratelli coughed and put out his hand. “Top o' the day t'ye.”

Thomson grasped the hand in his own grubby paw and gave a satisfied nod. “Now you
do
favor the McIntires.” He pulled a plug of tobacco from his shirt pocket, stripped back its brown wrapping, bit off a generous portion, and extended it to Fratelli. “Chaw?”

The P.I. showed his mettle. “It's after my own heart you are.” He took his medicine without so much as a tear. As a city boy, McIntire figured he was safe in declining.

“Come on down to my camp, and we'll have a little warmer-upper.” Thomson stowed his tobacco. “I couldn't let Col's boys run off without a bit of hospitality. And I know no real McIntire would turn
that
down.”

McIntire took one look at the persuader under Thomson's arm and, like a real McIntire, followed him through the trees.

Fratelli hissed through his chaw, “But what about my—”

“Forget the damn Geiger counter!”

XXVI

He would have liked to fill the castle with whirling wheels and working levers. He wished to be a great inventor and improve the world.

The trip to Esko Thomson's camp followed no direct path. After scrambling through the brush for forty-five minutes, they climbed a ridge, descended its other side, and emerged in a clearing occupied by a bizarre conglomeration of wood and metal. The industrial revolution run amok. Every square foot of space among the trees, as well as half of the trees themselves, contained some motley assemblage of timbers, angle iron, pulleys, and rope.

The purpose of some of the contraptions was evident. The hand pump enthroned on a platform six feet off the ground—a series of gears converting its operation to a crank at ground level—would send water down a twisting chute to the cabin. The iron wedge attached to a length of steel would drop like a guillotine from its tripod of upright logs to split even the most recalcitrant hunk of firewood. The use of other devices, like the one consisting of the top of an oil barrel and a rusty mallet, both tethered to a tree limb, was unfathomable.

In addition to the Rube Goldberg apparatuses, raw materials were stockpiled neatly under makeshift lean-tos. Car parts, wagon wheels, plumbing supplies, containers from lard cans to stock tanks. Each species of cast-off had its own spot. How in hell had the scrawny old coot gotten all this stuff back here?

In the center of this backwoods mad scientist laboratory, a corrugated metal roof rose up, distinguishing Esko Thomson's home from its junk-yard surroundings. The structure was about sixty feet long, the former center of a lumber camp. For a building of its age, and one which hadn't been constructed for the long haul, it stood reasonably straight and square for about a third of its length. From there on it ran downhill both figuratively and literally.

Its undulating roof descended at a steep pitch to meet a set of eaves-troughs with downspouts converging into a single dented conduit. This pipe angled down to spill into a galvanized washtub perched on a boxy cast iron stove. The stove sat on its own concrete pad next to a stack of firewood as high as the cabin. It made an innovative method for collecting and heating water, but the resourceful Esko hadn't stopped there. Copper tubing ran from the base of the vat and ended in a spigot bolted to the side of a chipped claw-footed bathtub. To complete the cycle, a rubber hose extended from the bathtub's drain down the gentle slope to a good sized garden plot. The entire complex was tucked into a spot sheltered by buildings, lean-tos, and stacks of enough firewood to last until well into the next century, protecting it from wind and possibly even the bulk of the snowfall. McIntire had to give Esko credit. Most people would have settled for a sauna. But from the appearance of the back of his neck, of which McIntire had an all too clear view, the old man didn't appear to give his bathing facilities much use. Well, it had been a dry autumn.

McIntire wondered if the stove and copper tubing were leftovers from Esko's infamous still. Maybe the bathtub had been used for gin. Esko had been Colin McIntire's main supplier during the long arid years of prohibition and had provided the occasional jug even before that. As far as McIntire knew he'd gotten out of the business. Not much market for home brew these days. He might still produce some for his own use, or, a chilling thought, for entertaining guests.

Behind the tub was a pile of what resembled gigantic galvanized bowls, nested one inside the other. McIntire had heard of these, a kind of basin used in the gold extracting process. After the mines had closed down, local people had salvaged them to use as chick brooders. Supposedly someone had found that gold deposits could be recovered from them, and chickens were being evicted by the hundreds. Esko Thomson didn't look as if he'd made a fortune in gold.

A clothesline strung between two birches held a pair of much mended wool trousers. Not remarkable in itself, but the piercingly acrid odor emanating from them set McIntire's eyes to watering. Fratelli's shoulders shook as he coughed into his handkerchief. Neither of them risked a glance in Thomson's direction or in each other's. So the great woodsman had run afoul of a skunk. It had happened to Kelpie once. The smell had lasted until she grew a new coat of hair. Esko might as well give the pants a proper cremation and have done with it.

As they approached the building, three identical cats, long legged and gray, leaped from their sunny spots on the woodpile and disappeared into the brush.

Esko stopped just outside his door, a heavy carved oak affair which, aside from its peeling paint, McIntire quite envied him.

“Hang on a sec, boys.” The little scavenger stooped to take an egg-sized stone from a yellow lard bucket and directed his attention across the clearing to his vegetable garden. A few rows of drying sweet corn still stood. One stalk swayed under the weight of a persistent crow struggling to strip a shriveled ear of its husk. Thomson drew back his arm and let fly. Crow and rock hit the ground together.

“That's one less.”

He led them into a room crammed with more of the same, a veritable shrine to Sir Isaac Newton. In addition to the elaborate array of gravity-assisted appliances, a good share of the space was taken up by a stove whose Paul Bunyan proportions attested to a previous incarnation in service to a crew of lumberjacks. The room must have comprised Esko's entire living space; there was no adjoining door to the rest of the building. He probably used that for storage. Maybe the stuff stacked outside was only the overflow. It also looked like a good spot for hanging out of season deer. McIntire wondered if he should have a look. He had a look at Esko and his firearm and decided to leave it for now.

Esko stood the shotgun in a corner, lit a lamp, and poked up the fire. “Just sit anywhere. Make yourselves homely.” His low chuckle didn't disguise the fact that it was more order than invitation. Fratelli dove for the pitted chrome kitchen stool, leaving McIntire to step over a galvanized metal chick feeder and hopscotch around several piles of magazines to a salvaged car seat. He sank into it, knees in the air.

Their host produced two crazed cups and a glass from a small cupboard, then dropped to his knees and crawled under the oil-cloth covered table. For a few minutes only his skinny twill-covered posterior was visible. Fratelli mouthed something that looked like, “We could take him now!” but McIntire shook his head. The skinny haunches went into motion. Esko backed out and stood erect with a grunt and a bottle. McIntire was relieved to see that, from surface appearances anyway, the warmer-upper was of the purchased variety.

McIntire's Son of Colin status paid off once again. Esko handed him the only glass, small but embellished in full color, the Road Runner trapped forever in his flight from that brush wolf.

The whisky wasn't only store bought, but was smooth, creamy, and definitely imparted a welcome warmth. McIntire accepted a second bump, leaned back against the seat, and listened abstractedly to Esko regaling cousin Paddy with tales of his illustrious American relative.

Esko's walls were decorated in keeping with the rest of his home. Objects both utilitarian and ornamental covered every inch. Traps for fur-bearing creatures in sizes ranging from weasel to wolf hung in a ragged row. Deer antlers held jackets, hats, and ropes. Pictures cut from magazines overlapped one another and provided a background for a collection of axes, fish nets, fish spears, fishing rods, fishing lures, and a peeling stuffed bass.

A framed photograph near the window showed the Esko Thomson that McIntire remembered, wiry, his face tanned dark but smooth and unmottled. He stood clutching a pick to his chest with both hands, surrounded by a cluster of fellow miners or prospectors. McIntire leaned closer. Of the seven men in the group, he recognized two besides Esko. On the far left, one of his father's regular customers, Jack Driscoll, was the only one to be smiling. Driscoll might have had more to smile about. He was reputed to have discovered some rich source of silver, but died before anyone could worm the secret of its whereabouts out of him. Next to him was Walleye Wall. Walleye had worked many years as a Huron Mountain guide and was probably with the group in that capacity rather than as a member of the prospecting crew.

There were a few other photographs, formally posed studio portraits, staid subjects in shades of brown. A wedding portrait, the bride's head level with her new husband's though he was sitting while she stood at his side, her hand on his shoulder. A small girl in buckled shoes and effusive curls swinging on a crescent moon.

The room was growing dim and comfortably warm. McIntire extended his legs, fitting them between a stack of encyclopedias and a glass churn. He had never thought of Esko as having a family. Well, everybody has to come from somewhere. McIntire felt his eyelids droop. Esko came from Canada. The old man's voice droned on, punctuated by an occasional
och
or
begorrah
from his rapt audience. The story had moved to a lurid recounting of rape and torture at the hands of orange men. Orange? Orangemen? Some Canadian political strife, McIntire imagined, no doubt considerably embellished by the intervening years. Did Esko still think of life north of the border? Not fondly, by the sound of things.

Estella
. The word swam up from the depths of his subconscious. A hazy recollection of a conversation between his parents, heard the way Johnny McIntire had gotten most of his information, through the open grate in his bedroom floor. Esko had a sister. She'd died sometime before he fled French Canada for Michigan. Estella. McIntire had been fascinated by the sound of the name.

A bloodcurdling yowl sliced through his drowsing. McIntire's eyes flew open, and his feet hit the floor. “What in—”

Esko Thomson rose from his spot on a narrow cot and gave a yank on a knotted rope looped through a hook on the wall. “Still a little skittish, eh?” A hatch in the bottom of the door slid up, allowing the three rangy felines to slip inside. They sidled up to the chick feeding pan and sat, dark shadows, six topaz eyes glowing.

Esko zig-zagged through the room, pulled aside the flour sack curtain from a fruit crate cabinet and lifted a can of Carnation milk. He drew a jackknife from his pocket and stabbed a pair of holes in the can.

“If I leave 'em out all night, owls'll get 'em.” He poured a thick yellow stream into a fruit jar and added an equal amount of scummy looking water from a vinegar jug. The cats waited without moving until he'd poured the concoction into the pan and stepped back. Then they fell upon it like hairy vultures.

McIntire wondered if he should try to put a few questions to Esko about who else he might have seen hanging around the old mine. Maybe Bambi and Ross had gotten involved with somebody Ross hadn't mentioned. Maybe they'd been involved with Esko himself, although if Esko had visited their hideout before today, McIntire was confident that the stove and supplies would have gone with him when he left. Unless, that is, the boys had cached a lot more gear, and Esko was there because he was making a second trip. Had he confronted Bambi and Ross? He didn't have much use for the uranium hunters. He'd never had much use for hunters of any sort poking around his place, but so far as McIntire had heard, he'd never gone so far as to eliminate any of them. And the mine was not all that near Esko's place.

Thomson pulled a white pouch of Peerless and a packet of cigarette papers from his pocket. Fratelli countered with an offer of his ready-made Chesterfields. Thomson drew a stick match across his thigh and lit up. He flicked the spent match toward the stove. It hit the lid but bounced off, narrowly missed a pile of newspapers, and smoldered out on the toe of a worn boot. How was it that the place hadn't gone up in smoke years ago?

The cats had licked the pan clean and were involved in the process of tidying themselves up. Then, one by one, they slunk off to a row of wooden boxes. McIntire's torpor abated a bit. He stared. Each of the boxes was rigged with rope that ran through a pulley on the beam overhead.

“What the devil is that?” The warmer-upper had rendered McIntire imprudently blunt as well as groggy, and he interrupted Thomson's tale of the elder McIntire's expert manhandling of three drunk, ax-wielding Swedes.

Thomson frowned, his eyes black marbles in the lamplight. McIntire waved apologetically toward the boxes. “Cat beds,” he stated and made to turn back to Cousin Paddy.

“But why the block and tackle?”

“Like I said, if I leave 'em out—great horned supper! Can't stand to have them running around the cabin at night, though. Crawling all over the bed, hair on everything.” He gave a fastidious shudder. “I tuck them in their beds and,” he mimed pulling on the ropes,” up to the ceiling, snug as bugs all night long.”

“Speaking of night,” McIntire said, “it's time we headed back while we can still see.”

“It's pretty gol-damn dark already. Maybe you boys better stay over.”

Was this another enforced invitation? Spend the night or face their host's wrath? Hadn't McIntire heard a story like this on
The Inner Sanctum
? He looked from Esko's shotgun in the corner to his stained and rumpled cot. He chose the lesser of two evils. “'Fraid we have to be going.”

“Well, suit yourselves. Keep your eyes peeled for wolves.” He smiled. The few teeth he had left were as yellow as the cats' eyes.

As they stepped out into the dusk, the creak of rope on pulley announced that the cats were on their way to being snug as bugs.

“How in hell are we gonna get out of here?” Fratelli demanded. “I didn't leave any trail of breadcrumbs along the way.”

“Relax, Sherlock,” McIntire told him. “I'm pretty sure I know where we are.”

“
Pretty
sure?”

“Real sure.” McIntire did know where they were. He'd visited Esko's camp with his father back when the little opportunist had first co-opted it, shortly after it had ceased functioning as a lumber camp. He knew where they were, but wasn't quite so sanguine about his ability to get them back to their cars at Carlson's cabin. He buttoned his coat up to the neck, led the way across the minefield that was Esko's homestead, and started down an overgrown track.