Tamarack River Ghost (4 page)

“Are you through talking about sounds?” said Fred.

“I could say more. Tell you about the sounds of summer, sounds of spring. I could tell you about them sounds, Fred,” Oscar said, a big smile spreading across his wrinkled face.

“Hell, I ain’t talkin’ about the sounds of the seasons. I’m talking about the gossip goin’ around the Tamarack River Valley,” said Fred.

“What gossip is that? Old Shotgun Slogum shootin’ off his mouth about something? The cranberry growers in trouble? Some new rumor about the fancy golf course? Somebody see the Tamarack River Ghost again?”

“Nah, ain’t none of that,” said Fred. He reeled in his line and tossed it out again. The big red-and-white plastic bobber bumped up and down as the wind played across the millpond’s surface.

“Well, what the hell is it? You gonna tell me or not?” asked Oscar, looking his friend in the eye.

“Well, I am gonna tell you. I was just wonderin’ if you’ve heard it yourself,” said Fred.

“How in hell am I supposed to know what you heard if you don’t tell me what it is?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Then you don’t have to get all huffy on me.”

“I ain’t gettin’ huffy, just curious, that’s all.”

“Well, here’s what I heard,” Fred began.

“I’m all ears.”

“You know about our conservation warden, Natalie Karlsen?”

“Yeah, I know about her. Never met her. Don’t wanna meet her either. Heard she’s a tough cookie. Arrest her grandmother if she had one too many bluegills in her bucket.”

“Yup, that’s Natalie Karlsen.”

“Well, what about her?”

“Heard she’s payin’ particular attention to the Tamarack River Valley this fall,” said Fred.

“What’s that mean—payin’ particular attention?”

“Means she’s spending lots of time in our neighborhood.”

“So?”

“Oscar, do I gotta spell it out for you?”

“Guess you do, ’cause I ain’t heard nothin’ about what Warden Karlsen is doin’ in our neighborhood.”

“She’s lookin’ for poachers,” said Fred.

“Lookin’ for what?”

“Poachers,” said Fred, raising his voice a bit.

“Thought that’s what you said. Why’s she lookin’ for poachers?”

“’Cause poaching is against the law.”

“I know that. Also know that now and again some of our neighbors take a deer or two out of season to feed their families. I wouldn’t call that poaching,” said Oscar. He reeled in his line and tossed it out again.

“Still against the law,” said Fred.

“Shouldn’t be; folks have to live. Have to feed their kids. Like as not, the deer they take are ones they’ve fed all summer on their own land. Deer that ate their corn and alfalfa.”

“Doesn’t matter to the warden. If she catches somebody, she’s gonna fine ’em, take their guns away. Raise hell with ’em.”

“Ain’t that lady warden got something better to do than arrest these poor folks trying to make a livin’ off the land?”

“Yup, agree with you there, Oscar, you’d think she’d be doing something better with her time. Maybe she should go lookin’ for that old Tamarack River Ghost,” said Fred.

Both men laughed.

Two rifle shots echoed through the Tamarack River Valley and rolled into the low hills surrounding the slow-moving river. The spotlight coming from an old Chevy pickup parked on a field road caught in its sharp beam a six-point buck and doe fattened on Ames County corn and soybeans. With two rapid shots, the deer dropped dead. A .30–30 soft-point bullet struck each in the neck and severed its spinal cord.

“We got ourselves some good ones, Pa,” the sixteen-year-old boy holding the light said. “Got ourselves a nice buck and a fat doe.”

“Looks that way, Joey. We better get them gutted out quick and into the pickup ’fore somebody comes snoopin’ by. Heard that nosey lady warden has been on the prowl in the valley. Don’t know why the hell the DNR and their wardens spend so much time trying to pinch us poor folks. Don’t understand it a bit.”

With the freshly killed deer in the back of their old pickup, they slowly drove home, with their lights out, but a half mile from the field where they shot the deer.

Natalie Karlsen, Ames County conservation warden, sat in her four-wheel-drive, Ford F-150 extended-cab pickup with the windows down, listening. Twenty-eight years old and single, she had served a couple of years in the U.S. Army Military Police before becoming a warden. She was not a big woman, only five feet six, but she kept in excellent condition. The one thing people noticed immediately when they talked with her were her big, expressive brown eyes. She kept her long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. After only two years on the job, she had gained a reputation
for being tough. She had earned considerable respect, especially from other law-enforcement officers in the county, including the county sheriff. Of course, she also had her share of enemies—it goes with being in law enforcement.

Natalie carried a .40 caliber Glock on her duty belt. In her truck she also had a .308 Remington rifle and a Remington 12-gauge shotgun—all standard firearms for a Wisconsin warden. A laptop computer in the pickup allowed her ready access to both the Internet and the mobile data computer radio system so she could do an immediate check on license-plate numbers and other necessary information and keep in close contact with the sheriff and local police networks. The computer screen glowed in the darkness.

Earlier in the week, Natalie had gotten a tip that game poachers were at work in this part of Ames County, where the deer population was heaviest. A woman had called the ranger station in Willow River and left a curt message.

“I heard rifle shots last night. Somebody is shooting my deer. I think Dan Burman is one of them. Look into it.” She didn’t leave her name, only said that she lived in the Tamarack River Valley and that the warden should do her job. “Our taxes pay the warden’s salary. Why isn’t she doing something about this?”

Lately, game poachers had become Natalie’s biggest headache. She’d parked her pickup on a little hill overlooking the Tamarack River Valley where she had a view of the valley in two directions. Though small in stature, she had a way about her that few people challenged—maybe it was the badge, perhaps the gun at her belt, or, more likely, her way of staring down a game violator without so much as a blink. As a result, she’d had few problems apprehending everyday violators—fishermen with more than their limit, boaters without life jackets, those sorts of folks. Poachers were different, a tougher bunch, more difficult to catch in the act, and more dangerous, too. Some would just as soon shoot a conservation warden as an illegal deer.

Natalie remembered the story her father told about a conservation warden in Adams County back in the 1930s. The warden heard about game
poachers and had apparently run into an outfit that was shooting deer and selling the meat in Chicago. The poachers jumped the warden, stripped off all his clothes, tied him to a tree deep in the woods, and left him. This happened on a Saturday. Some kids walking to school Monday morning heard the warden’s yells. He had nearly died of exposure and was covered with ant bites, as an anthill was near the tree where he had been tied.

The moon was just coming up, and Natalie could see steam rising from the river in the distance, little horsetail clouds that formed when the cool early fall air collided with the warmer water. It was a typical evening in late September. The temperature had climbed into the high fifties during the day but had dropped rapidly with the sunset, as had the wind. The only sound Natalie heard was an owl’s call, eerie yet pleasing, far off in the hills. Otherwise it was dead still. The smells of fall were all around, dead leaves that had fallen from the aspen and birch trees and dead grass alongside the country road where she parked.

Natalie heard many stories about the Tamarack River Valley and wondered how many were true. She’d heard that a ghost and his dog roamed through this valley, especially on cool, quiet nights like this one. People claim to have heard the tinkle of the dog’s little bell on still nights when the moon was down and the wind was up. Some even said they heard the log driver’s song, “Ho Ho, Ho Hay, keep the logs a-going.” Natalie didn’t believe in ghosts, yet she still listened for these sounds. She’d heard the Tamarack River Ghost story several times; she’d like to run into him and his dog.

Natalie thought about all she had learned about the people living here in the valley in the two years that she’d been conservation warden. She’d learned that some of the farmers, now third and fourth generation, lived on the same property as their pioneer ancestors. Many were dirt poor, yet they stayed on because something more than money kept them on the land.

She thought about the dozen or so younger farmers, members of the Ames County Fruit and Vegetable Growers Cooperative, who were doing reasonably well on their farms, growing vegetables for the Willow River Farmers Market, and selling their produce directly to restaurants and grocery stores. She knew many of them and considered them some of her
strongest allies in the county, because they were, as she was, committed to taking care of the environment.

The cranberry growers in the southern part of the valley also came to mind as she sat waiting. Here was another group of families who had lived on the same land since the 1870s, but, different from some of their hard-scrabble neighbors, these farmers were making money as the cranberry market was growing and expanding, even internationally.

Natalie wondered how such different people managed to get along with each other; yet they did, living side by side year after year. Sure, some had left, moved off to the cities to find work, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when agriculture changed dramatically here in the valley and across the United States. Some of the valley farmers sold their farms to city folk in Madison and Milwaukee who wanted second homes in the country or land for hunting. So the part-time city person became a part of the mix of people in the valley. Additionally, several people who had grown up in the valley returned there to retire.

Natalie had backed her vehicle into a driveway to a cornfield that had yet to be harvested. If she heard or saw anything, she could fire up her pickup and be on her way in a matter of seconds. She poured a cup of coffee from the thermos she’d filled when she left her cabin just after dark. These deer poaching cases took time and lots of lost sleep. Last year, she had spent fifteen September and October evenings looking for poachers. All she found was a young couple looking to get better acquainted. She had scared the wits out of them when she shined her flashlight into the window of their car and discovered both of them stark naked.

“Better get your clothes on and get out of here,” she told them.

“You’re not gonna tell anybody, are you?” the embarrassed young woman pleaded. She was holding up a blanket to cover herself.

“Just get yourself decent and be on your way,” Natalie said, more sternly than she had intended.

Natalie sipped her steaming coffee, taking a moment to inhale the smell of the brew. She liked coffee. It had become her partner on many a long, lonely night on guard duty in the army and now as a warden.

Some parts of waiting out poachers she enjoyed, when the quiet of the night surrounded her and the never-ending phone calls, reports to complete, and meetings to attend were for another day. On these quiet nights, she had time to think, to organize her ideas, and even scribble down a few notes in a brown, leather-covered journal she always had with her in the truck.

KA-BOOM,” and a few seconds later, another “KA-BOOM.” Natalie nearly spilled her coffee when she heard the rifle shots. Quickly, she threw the rest of the coffee out the open window, started up her pickup, and headed down the country road in the direction she thought the sound had come from. It was difficult to locate the source of sounds as they echoed through the valley. Perhaps this night she might be lucky and find the poacher in the act, field-dressing the deer or dragging it to his vehicle.

Father and son turned their pickup into their driveway and parked behind the barn, out of sight from the road. They each grabbed one of the buck’s legs and hauled the animal into the barn, where they tied a rope around its neck, tossed the rope over a small beam, and hauled the deer up so its back feet were just off the barn floor. They did the same with the doe. The father held a small flashlight in his mouth so he could see what he was doing yet not cast enough light to raise suspicion from anyone driving along the road this time of night.

“Nice pair of deer,” said the son.

“Yup, nice deer. I’d say the buck would be about 180 pounds, the doe around 150.” The two deer hung side by side.

“Looks like this oughta do it for a while,” the father said. “All we gotta do now is skin ’em and cut up and freeze the meat. Yup, we’re not gonna go hungry this winter.”

Warden Karlsen drove slowly along the road, watching and listening, looking for a light, listening for another shot. But the countryside was once again quiet, eerily so.

She drove by a rather run-down-looking farm and didn’t see the sliver of light coming from the old, unpainted gray barn, so she kept driving.

Josh parked his Ford Ranger in the Ames County Courthouse parking lot. He had an appointment with the county agricultural agent, Ben Wesley, whom he hadn’t seen since he graduated from college. Now that
Farm Country News
had given him a promotion and transferred him from the Illinois bureau to the home office in Willow River, he was reacquainting himself with his home county. Josh grew up on a small farm west of Link Lake, twelve miles from Willow River; his folks, now retired, still lived on the home farm. He would now have an opportunity to occasionally visit them. As a 4-H member, Josh had gotten to know the agricultural agent well. He had fond memories of showing cattle at the Ames County Fair and attending the end-of-the-year 4-H achievement program, always held in the courtroom.

When Josh arrived in Willow River a week earlier, he drove down Main Street and noted the changes that had taken place since he’d left the county. He saw that the population had increased a little, to 3,010, but it was still a small place when compared to cities like Green Bay, Oshkosh, Madison, and Milwaukee. The first thing he spotted was the new Willow River High School, on the west end of town. He noticed a second stoplight as well. For years, Willow River had the only stoplight in all of Ames County. Driving slowly down Main Street, he saw what had been a clothing store and now housed All Such and More, a place that sold used stuff, everything from clothes to books, flower vases to dishes. He stopped there and bought an almost-new leather jacket for five dollars—he’d seen one like it in a Madison store for two hundred dollars.