Red Jacket (22 page)

60

Baltic, Houghton County

TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1913

Bapcat and Zakov checked mine properties and creeks all the way south to just north of Hancock, and saw nothing resembling the disruptions in the northern reaches of the strike zone. They crossed the ship canal into Houghton and worked their way south through Atlantic Mine, South Range, and Trimountain, to the village of Painesdale, where they found numerous guards patrolling the streets. The weather was sweltering again. Last week thermometers had climbed above 100 degrees, and tonight felt like 90. Rather than take a room in a hotel or boardinghouse, the two men found a field near the Pilgrim River, parked, and put their bedrolls under the Ford.

Bapcat said, “When I was a boy at the orphanage, we sometimes went camping by the Pilgrim River. It was rich in brook trout. I remember a lot more trees then.”

“Mines require timber shoring,” Zakov reminded him.

“Shoring requires large timber, not the small trees that were here.”

“Time passes; trees grow, and some die. Like people,” the Russian said philosophically.

“They don't grow to the size mines need—not in that short a time. The big trees come from far up the Keweenaw.”

“Do you ever think about
food?
” the Russian asked.

“Not the way you do.”

“I am hardly a glutton.”

“We'll find food in the morning.”

Bapcat could smell death, and knew the Russian smelled it, too. At first light they saw the source, and both men lost their appetites. Dead fish were everywhere in the discolored water. Trees were gone, and up the road at the Baltic Pump House, hoses were stretched out into the surrounding area, flooding animal dens, turning the entire area into soft red muck.

“We see the octopus,” Zakov said. “In military terms, this is a siege we are looking at.”

“I don't follow.”

“Is there more violence and disorder at the extreme ends of the strike area because of sabotage, or more sabotage because strikers on the ends are more militant and violent? Is it better to weaken your enemy through starvation and thirst than through direct fighting? The question is not entirely rhetorical.”

“I don't know,” Bapcat said, having only a vague notion of what a rhetorical question might be, and reminding himself how badly he needed more education.
You can't talk to people if you don't understand them
. In some ways, his own native English sometimes seemed like a foreign language to him. Such deficiencies notwithstanding, he knew that even though his ability to think and figure things out was raw, it was solid. “Twenty-eight miles,” he said. “And not all Calumet and Hecla properties.”

Zakov nodded enthusiastically. “The word is
conspiracy,
” the Russian said, “and there is little doubt that everything that happens grows directly or indirectly from what MacNaughton thinks and wants.”

“Could be it's time we visited the man,” Bapcat said.

“A military man learns that a well-executed ambush leaves fewer casualties and doubtful outcomes than direct frontal assaults can ever deliver.”

“We should wait?”

“A mentor once advised me to never ask a question to which I did not already have the answer.”

•••

The Ford was parked near a branch of the Pilgrim that ran south from the west side of Baltic. Two deputies in dark coats on black horses approached, one of the horses nickering and snorting, and acting unruly. Both men carried long wooden clubs.

“You fellas got business here?” one of the men challenged. He had light hair and a bushy mustache.

“Our business is not your business,” Zakov told the man.

“Says who?” the man said with a chirp as he dismounted, only to find the barrel of Bapcat's .30-40 pressed under his chin.

“Mr. Krag says,” Bapcat growled to the man.

Zakov turned his lapel to reveal their badge.

“Sorry, boys; it would have helped if you'd shown a badge before,” one of the horsemen said.

“Help is not in our brief,” Zakov said.

“What the hell's that supposed to mean?” one of the company special deputies asked.

Bapcat wondered, too. “It means, keep out of our way and our business,” Zakov said. “Our badge comes from state authority, not some damn trumped-up company costume game.”

“Stay out of your damn way, or
what?
” one of the men challenged.

Bapcat poked the man's throat hard with the rifle. “Figure it out.”

The man stepped back. “You can't challenge a deputy sheriff,” the man said, glaring.

“Or what—you'll call the Waddies in to hold your hands?” Bapcat spit back. “You're not lawmen; you're night watchmen in costumes.”

“Maybe we'll see about that,” the man still on horseback said.

“Not here, and not now,” Bapcat said. “We hear that the style down this way is bushwhacking houses and unarmed citizens.”

The man glared, but remounted.

“Don't worry, Tom,” the other deputy said. “They'll get theirs.”

Zakov said, “Company deputies are a disgrace to all legitimate lawmen. You should be ashamed of this charade.”

“You can bet Sheriff Cruse will hear about you two,” the first special deputy said.

“Good,” Bapcat said. “Tell your mamas too.”

The men gone, the game wardens got into their truck. Zakov said, “Tell your mamas?”

Bapcat shrugged. “You're the clever one. It was all I could think of.”

Both men began laughing.

61

Mandan, Keweenaw County

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1913

Young Gipp arrived at 5 a.m., knocking urgently on the front door, and when Zakov answered, he pushed past him to find Bapcat. “Widow Frei wants to see you.”

“Now?” Bapcat asked.

“She called my boss and he sent me to fetch you.”

“Double if we hurry?”

“Yessir.

Bapcat took his rifle and a small bag with a shirt and put them in Gipp's cab.

“Where to?”

Gipp handed him a piece of paper with directions scratched in pencil. The destination showed only an “X,” but, knowing the area, he was pretty sure he could decipher the destination as the Mandan Nimrod Club.

“You know the place?” Gipp asked.

“It's close to all my old traplines,” Bapcat said, wondering what shape his old camp was in, and feeling a sudden and unexpected wave of sadness for having left the trapping life. “A man from Cleveland used to own the club,” he told Gipp. “With a full section of land.”

“You've been there?”

“Only seen the house from the woods.”

“A game warden trespassing?” Gipp asked teasingly.

“Wipe the smile off your face, George. That was
before
I took the oath.”

On a sharp curve between Allouez and Ahmeek, the Ford's windscreen shattered, raining glass on Bapcat, who heard a thump in the seat behind them. Gipp lowered his head, hunched his tall frame over as best he could, and sped up as Bapcat racked a round into the chamber of his rifle.

“Was that a shot?” Gipp yelled.

“Yes, George.”

“Holy moly! What do we do?”

“Keep driving. If they wanted to hit us, they would have.”

“I almost ran us off the road,” Gipp said.

Bapcat knew this wasn't true. Gipp had driven on as if nothing had happened, calm the whole time.
The boy has great inner strength
.

“I heard some shots south of Allouez, too,” Gipp said. “But nothing
that
close. Who's doin' the shooting?”

“Either side, both sides,” Bapcat said. “Outside agitators; it's impossible to know, and it doesn't matter who's shooting if you get hit.”

“The strike's getting
crazy
,” Gipp said.

Bapcat didn't have the heart to tell him the situation would undoubtedly get worse as winter settled in.

The road to the club stretched south from the Mineral Range Road to Copper Harbor, and veered west to a ridge near Clear Lake. The Montreal River lay a half-mile south of the club, over several steep, razorback ridges and a dark, almost-impenetrable cedar swamp.

Gipp pulled up to the sprawling log building. Widow Frei came out and handed him an envelope. “Tomorrow morning at eight, George,” she said. “You'll come and fetch me to Copper Harbor and then take the deputy wherever he needs to go. You have the key to my Copper Harbor store in the envelope. The upstairs apartment is yours. Help yourself to the food.”

Frei looped Bapcat's arm and watched Gipp drive away.

“What happened to the windshield?” she asked.

“Bullet,” he said. “You know the owner of this place?”

“Intimately,” she said, steering him inside. The interior was large, but not fancy, a well-equipped hunting club like those he'd once worked for in the Dakotas.

“Sit down, Lute,” the widow said, waiting for him to sit down on one of the chairs. Then, “Hannula's gone.”

“Gone,” he echoed.

“Dead, Lute.”

“You know this how?”

“Never mind that. I know he's dead, and that's what you needed to know.”

“You know more than you're saying.”

“A lot more, but I don't wish to follow Mr. Hannula, nor do I want you to emulate him.”

“I can protect you,” he said.

She laughed out loud, and caught herself. “I beg to differ. Your protection did Mr. Hannula no good that I can see, and the window in your Ford got shot out.”

“We did it the way Hannula wanted,” Bapcat said defensively.

“Good. Then you won't mind doing things my way as well, and if something goes wrong, it will be on my head, not yours.”

“You got me all the way out here to tell me Hannula's dead?”

“You asked me to find out, did you not?”

Why—and how—did she always find a way to twist him?

“I just meant that a message would have been enough.”

“But a note wouldn't take care of me, dearest. I need you here—in the flesh.”

“Working off the debt.”

“However you wish to characterize it.” Frei sucked in a deep breath. “Do you have any idea what you've latched on to?
Do
you?”

“We know,” he said.

“I seriously doubt you do, Lute. MacNaughton and his cronies, both in Boston and here, are serious men. Dangerous men.”

“We're also serious,” he countered.

“You're professionally serious,” she said. “They're kill-the-opposition-for-money serious, huge stakes, millions of dollars.
You
follow the rules, Lute, and serve the rules. They don't, because money can make its own laws and change them when and how money wants and directs. The only law they recognize is the law they pay for, and which directly benefits them and their investments. They own miners' houses, churches, schools, the library, the police, politicians, newspapers—all of it, and more. In their minds a simple game warden lacks gravitas,” she said. “They don't even recognize you as a serious foe.”

“They killed Hannula?”

She stiffened. “I did not say who killed him. I said only that the man is dead.”

“Two plus two,” Bapcat said.

“No, Lute. Don't be so damned literal. In their game they define the sum and others have no say. If they focus on you, they'll treat you as no more than a minor impediment, nothing more than a pesky fly to be swatted dead.”

“I took an oath,” he said.

“Quit the job and join me, dearest. Let me take care of you,” she countered, in a tone he had never heard before.

“I'm not the quitting kind,” Bapcat said.

“You have to trust me, Lute. You really do.”

“I do,” he said.

“This thing you're in, it can't end well. It just can't.”

He stood in front of her. “The mines are cutting down trees, pouring water into animals' dens, poisoning streams to kill fish, paying people to kill deer to deny meat to hungry miners,” he said. “The operators are trying to crush the strikers' resistance with starvation. If they go out, they can't use company stores, and they won't be able to live off the land because there won't be anything left to live off of.”

She looked at him and folded her hands in her lap. “You have evidence of all this—witnesses?”

“Hannula knew.”

“Hannula's gone,” she reminded him.

“It's happening at both ends of the district, where there are more foreigners and stronger support for the union. In the middle, miners seem more in tune with the owners.” Zakov had offered these observations, which Bapcat decided were accurate.

“That's opinion, not evidence,” she said.

“You're not a lawyer.”

“For God's sake, Lute, neither are you, and I suspect you can barely read.”

“I don't have to read like a lawyer or schoolteacher to know what I see, and to be able to tell right from wrong.”

“Sometimes insisting on right
is
wrong.”

“You sound like the Russian.”

“Good. Perhaps he and I can persuade you to employ some discretion and common sense.”

“And if I don't?”

Jaquelle Frei pursed her lips: “I prefer not to consider that path.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Come, there is a lovely back porch. I am cooking dinner for us tonight, and we'll talk more when we are more relaxed.”

“I damn well intend to see this thing through,” Bapcat declared. “Wherever it takes me.”

She sighed. “I pray it doesn't take you where Hannula went.”

“You know more than you're telling me.”

She smiled. “Alas, I suspect this will always be so.”

The night, he noted, seemed to pass with far less urgency than in the past, and he was not sure why. Over coffee the next morning, he gave her a hard look.

“You're close to the owner of this place? He just lets you borrow it?”

Frei tilted her head and smiled. “Are you
jealous
, dearest?”

“No, I'm just asking a simple question.”
Not entirely the truth, but it was all she needed to know.

“Then you shall have your answer. I am as close as one can get to the owner, and have been for a long, long time.”

Bapcat gulped and went silent.

George Gipp knocked on the door at precisely 8 a.m. All the way to Copper Harbor, Widow Frei was friendly but reserved, having put on her public face. At the store she gave Gipp another envelope and he returned her key. She whispered something to him and he said, “Yes, ma'am,” and drove away.

Bapcat didn't look back.

Around Phoenix, Gipp looked over at Bapcat. “She said to tell you she's the owner, and she said you'd understand.”

Bapcat shook his head and laughed, as much from relief as from the humor of it. He wanted to think about her, but his mind was locked on acid in Quince Creek. The boy Jordy Kluboshar had asked, “Are you fellas gonna do something to help hunters?”

“Where to?” Gipp asked.

“Back to the hill.”

Bapcat noticed a large number of blue-coated special deputies and National Guardsmen all together in Mohawk as they drove through, and wondered why.