Red Jacket (28 page)

76

Ratting Grounds, Keweenaw County

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1913

They slept all night on the ground behind Stugo's. Harju said in the morning, “Sandheim and I have to get back to our counties. This thing feels like it's slowing. I can jump back over here if you need me.”

“Leave the truck back at the hill,” Bapcat said.

“What about you two?”

“Hepting's not that far away. Take the boy with you.”

“Where?”

“To his home.”

The boy sulked. “You have my bullets.”

“
And
your rifle. You'll get everything back if you behave, and before you start whining, I know—it's not fair.”

Zakov and Bapcat watched as Harju and Sandheim drove away in the truck, Jordy Kluboshar their unwilling passenger. They bought food and tobacco plugs in the store and hiked north up the cutover trail.

“You didn't notice the boy wasn't with Harju?” Bapcat said sharply to the Russian.

“I saw the little sneak in the forest and knew he was shadowing you. That boy is trouble, I think.”

Bapcat had similar concerns. “He has backbone.”

“As do all vertebrates.”

“Philosophy again?”

“Where are we going?”

“I found six or seven spots on the traprock formations—old blood.”

“I don't understand why one would haul trophies across such a difficult path.”

“Impossible to know. I want to get up to the top of the crossover and cut northeast.”

“Small lakes and high swamps.”

“I know. And the ratting grounds.”

“That has nothing to do with what we are doing.”

Technically, his partner was correct. “Still, I want to see.”

“The wolves will be gone by now,” Zakov said. “Wrong time of year.”

“How long to get there?”

“Three hard uphill miles, then northeast to just this side of Madison Gap. Two hours, perhaps three. Are we working off the previous trail?”

“I'll take us to the last blood spot and we'll work from there, see how far we can follow it. Like you, I keep thinking if you need to get things up here somewhere, why not up the main road to the cutoff?”

“Secrecy,” Zakov ventured.

•••

They paused later at Indian Dog Cut, where legend had it a dog had once led some stranded redmen down to safety from a killer blizzard. Bapcat had found two more blood spatters, tiny specks on the traprock, but the formation had suddenly dipped underground and disappeared. Bapcat walked along, looking upward at rocky promontories and overhangs.

“The blood is on the ground,” Zakov said.

Late in the afternoon they climbed up to a stone-and-grass benchland. On top they found scrub oaks and dozens of holes in a layer of blue-gray sand, the ground littered with countless piles of wolf scat and bear feces, dotted with fur and bone remnants.

“Here?” Bapcat asked.

The Russian nodded. “The rats come out to hunt at night. Our brothers in darkness.”

They sat on a pile of rocks by some pin oaks to wait. A bear came out within twenty minutes and likewise took a seat to wait, ignoring them, its focus exclusively on the area with the holes. After dark they heard rats squealing in terror and running and the sound of the grunting bear cavorting in front of them, but only the one bear came, and after a few moments of noise, the night settled back to silence.

Zakov made a fire at first light and heated a can of beans for them to share. After eating and extinguishing the tiny fire, they continued hiking northeast.

Bapcat felt all day they were being watched, but the watcher was skilled, and careful, left little sign, allowed no glimpses.

As they circled around the area in expanding clockwise laps they came to an unexpected stand of giant white oaks. On the southern perimeter a hundred or more dyed squirrel tails had been affixed to the branches of a mature ironwood tree, hanging in languor until zephyrs from Lake Superior a few short miles away swirled up the bluff and animated the colorful tails like battle pennants.

The Russian looked around with only his eyes. “We are under surveillance.”

“For some time,” Bapcat said.

“I suspected as much,” Zakov said. “Would you like to flush him out?”

“No,” Bapcat said. “It's time we went back. The squirrel tails—you've seen these before?”

“Never, and I have no idea what they signify.”

“That makes two of us,” Bapcat said, turning back to the southwest.

77

Bumbletown Hill

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1913

Bapcat and Zakov threw their gear in a corner and collapsed onto the floor, both sighing deeply. “We'll worry about grub later,” Bapcat said.

“
Da
, stop talking.”

Bapcat's mind refused to shut off. Colored squirrel tails fluttered from tree branches near the ratting grounds.
Who else is carrying a .30-40 Krag? Where's the disposal site?

Unable to sleep, Bapcat sat up and rolled a cigarette. The Russian was snoring a low buzz.
Why no word from Jaquelle about Helltown? Summer gone, no wood yet made for winter. We will need to see to that for a few days. Will be welcome, mindless work. So many questions, no answers.

Suddenly and silently, Zakov got to his feet, shuffled over to the trapdoor, leaned over to listen, yanked it open, and reached down to haul up Jordy Kluboshar by the scruff of his neck.

“Boy!” Zakov said with a snarl, shaking him.

“Leggo!” the boy shouted.

Bapcat saw that the boy's face was red and swollen, with puffing around his eyes and a cut near one ear. “Pinkhus Sergeyevich,” Bapcat said softly. “Release our guest.”

The frightened boy tried to compose himself.

Zakov examined his face. “You've taken up pugilism since we last saw you?” the Russian asked.

“I'm Catholic, not whatever you said,” Kluboshar said defensively.

“You're supposed to be home,” Bapcat said.

“Them wardens took me there, but my old man didn't like it.”

Bapcat went closer to the boy, looked at his face. “Your father did this?”

“If I wasn't so quick, it would be a lot worse,” the boy said.

“Where do you live, boy?” Zakov asked.

“I ain't going back,” the child said defiantly. “I want my rifle.”

“Show us your house,” Bapcat said.

The boy crossed his arms and set his jaw. “To hell with you.”

“Stay with him,” Bapcat told the Russian.

•••

They had found the boy in the Centennial Mine area, two and a half miles south of the hill. Assuming the boy lived nearby, it could be Kearsarge, Wolverine, Centennial, Centennial Heights, or any of several other small mining villages. They had first seen him near the Centennial mine pump house, and this would be Bapcat's starting point again.

Few people seemed to be out and around, including strikers, though they seemed most active at shift-change times. Saturdays were workdays for miners. Smoke spewed from stacks, pumps ran noisily, chains and cables in lift houses clanked and squealed. Hoses still stretched from the pump house to animal dens, and the nearest creek oozed a malodorous yellow-white fluid.

The few people he found were in no mood to talk to him and brushed right by, even when he tried to show his badge.

He was close to giving up when he stopped on the edge of Kearsarge at a blacksmith shop run by a tall man with eyebrows so bushy they looked like woolly bears. “What you want?” the man asked.

“A boy,” Bapcat said. “Information, on Jordy Kluboshar.”

“Croatian, very spunky boy; we call him Little Nomad. He in trouble again?”

“I want to talk to his father.”

“Then you be the one got trouble,” the man said gravely.

“The boy trouble?”

“No, he's just a scalawag.”

“They live near here?”

“Up toward Phillipsville, east side of main road, set back some. Old barn, log house. You sure you want to see this person?”

Bapcat showed his badge.

The man laughed. “Hope they give you gun, too. You mix much with Croatians?”

“No.”

“Foul mouths, yes. If Andro Kluboshar say his cunt hurts, he mean he don't care what you are talking.”

Andro
. “Good to know,” Bapcat said, thinking,
What the hell is going on here
?

Bapcat found the property, the dilapidated barn and cabin, dregs of a potato field, several chained hounds baying wildly. A man came out on the cabin porch with a two-bang shotgun, squinted at him, said nothing to the dogs dancing choke dances at the end of taut chains.

“You aren't inviting to here,” the man roared, and leveled the shotgun at him. “
Jebe se!
”

“I want to talk to you about your son.”

The man spit. “He is all shit, that one.”

The man seemed unsteady on his feet, but the gun didn't waver, and Bapcat warned himself to move slowly and deliberately for the moment. “Put down rifle,” the man ordered.

Bapcat said, “Game warden.”

The man sneered. “I piss on you, Game Warden.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Fuck you, Game Warden.”

Think
.
Get him in close. Make him come to you
.

“Look, your boy dropped some money and I found it. I just wanted to bring it back.”

“Give to me the money,” the man said, staring, taking a step down. “How much is there you got?”

“Hundred dollars.”

Kluboshar's eyes widened and he stepped closer, the shotgun now in one hand. “Show me,” he ordered.

Bapcat put his hand in his jacket, made a fist, and caused the pocket to bulge. “Got a lot here, afraid I'll drop some. Spread your hands?”

The man clamped his weapon under his arm, the barrels facing to the rear, and greedily stepped forward with his hands spread open and waiting. Bapcat could smell the alcohol wafting off of him. Before the man could react, Bapcat took his rifle and ripped the barrel across the inside of the man's knee. The man fell into a heap. Bapcat grabbed Kluboshar's shotgun and windmilled it into the weeds as the man recovered and bounced up, swinging wildly.

Bapcat hit him in the cheek with his rifle butt and the man keeled over and was still. The game warden put his knee behind the man's neck, pulled his hands behind him, and handcuffed his wrists.

When the man began to recover he mumbled through a bloody mouth, “My boy's money, my money. Mine!”

“There isn't any money,” Bapcat said. “You ever beat your son again, I'll be back, and it won't go this easily.”

“My cunt hurts,” the man said spitefully with a growling sound.

Bapcat stood, rolled the man onto his side, and drove his boot toe between the man's legs, causing an explosive loss of breath followed by violent gagging and moaning. “Touch that boy again, I'll use a knife next time.”

“I calling sheriff,” the man managed.

“My cunt hurts,” Bapcat said, and walked away, careful not to turn his back.

Back at the hill Bapcat got the boy's rifle and ammunition and gave them to him.

“This is your home now, boy. Understand?”

“You can't keep me here.”

Zakov said, “This is legal?”

Bapcat's intense glare silenced the Russian and the boy.

78

Eagle River

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1913

The sheriff met Bapcat outside the county's white building on the hill. “Most of the National Guard's been withdrawn,” Hepting reported. “I can't prove it, but most workers are back in the mines, all but Finns, Hungarians, and Croatians. The strike parades are shrinking, and with the army gone, the operators are about fed up.” The sheriff handed him a white button with red lettering:
alliance
. “Won't nobody say so, but this is MacNaughton's work. Bet on that.”

Finns, Hungarians, Croatians—no doubt all unskilled workers, trammers, beasts of burden, the bottom of every mine's pecking order. He didn't want to think too deeply about the strike. He had enough problems to contend with.

“You might want to have a talk with your lady friend,” Hepting said out of the blue. “About scabs.”

Bapcat wrinkled his brow and Hepting said, “Talk to her.”

What the hell?
“John, have you ever heard about squirrel tails up by Madison Gap?”

“Jesus, is he back?”

“He,
who
?”

“Captain Erastus Renard Webster, formerly of the Sixteenth Michigan Infantry, First Independent Sharpshooter Company.”

“War between the States?”

“Four years, fought pretty much the whole shebang.”

“He the one with the squirrel tails?”

“Got something to do with Genghis Khan and nomads, though I don't know zackly what, and don't much care. The man's not right in the head. Webster moves around a lot, and he's usually out in Arizona by the time the snow flies here. Far as I know, this is his first time up by Madison Gap. Most summers he's south along the Gratiot River. Got him a woman, too; she's always well-armed.”

“What's he do?”

Hepting pursed his mouth. “Don't really know. He avoids towns and stays in the woods and that's fine by me.”

“Dangerous?”

“Never broke laws here I know of, so I don't really know, but he's always struck me as desperate, and desperate usually means dangerous. Why?”

“Saw the tails in the tree, wondered.”

“What were
you
doing way up there?”

“Looking around. Zakov showed me the ratting grounds.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Long story. You ever cross paths with a man by the name of Kluboshar?”

“Good God,” Hepting said. “You bump heads with that sonuvabitch?”

“He's got a son.”

“You mean had one. His boy ran off years ago.”

“His name is Jordy, and he's still here.”

“The way that man beats on him, and he's still around?”

“He was, but now he's with Zakov and me.”

“Kluboshar beat his wife to death, though we couldn't get enough evidence to prove the case. This was five years back. Whaddya mean, the boy's
with
you two?”

“His father beat on him so I went to see the old man.”

“He come out fighting?”

“With a shotgun.”
Hepting snorted contemptuously. “Threaten to call the sheriff?”

“Something along those lines.”

“Won't happen. He knows I want him for his wife's death, and he won't go to Cruse because Cruse hates the man. He's a lush and a WFM man, one of those natural loudmouths that weaker men are drawn to because they talk big.”

“Strike
leader?
”

“Hell no, just a drunken agitator. If Cruse goes after him, it will only be under the banner of crushing the strike; otherwise the Fat Man don't like to personally get into potentially lethal confrontations. What other good news have you got?”

“We want the boy to stay with us—at least until we can find kin.”

“None here; they're all back in Croatia.”

“He can't live with his father.”

“Then you fellas hang on to him. I'll tell the JP and the judge.”

“I thrashed his father pretty good.”

“Pardon me if I shed no tears.”

“What about Jaquelle?” Bapcat asked.

“None of my business, but word's going 'round that she's sponsoring scabs.”

“What the hell does ‘sponsoring' mean?”

“I don't know the details. Ask her.”

“Then you don't actually
know
anything.”

“No need for that tone, Lute.”

“John, you're pro-union.”

“Officially, I'm neutral, but I'm also an honorary member of the WFM.”

“It can't be that all operators are bad.”

“Never said they were, but some want only money, and they don't much give a damn where it comes from, how they get it, or the costs others have to pay for their wealth.”

“Meaning Jaquelle Frei?”

“Dammit, it's just something I heard, Lute. Don't take it so damn personal.”

Switch directions
. “What about Ulrick Moriarty?”

Hepting loosed a nervous laugh. “Shit, Lute. Kluboshar, Webster, and Moriarty; now
there's
a threesome.”

“Star House,” Bapcat said.

“Your proverbial den of iniquity: gambling, draggletails, the usual low-life menu.”

“Some say he's hiding Pinnochi.”

“
That
Mick protecting a Dago?” Hepting said with a snarl. “Not very likely.”

“Tell me about Moriarty.”

“Well, as I hear it, he's threatening to kill the next lawman who steps over his threshold.”

“And he's still free?”

“All talk so far, and last I checked, the Constitution protects talk. You going up to Helltown?”

“Haven't decided yet.”

“You decide to go, take an army.”

“Including you?”

“Well, if you're that set on it—otherwise, I opt to leave that SOB right where he is.”