Tamarack River Ghost (13 page)

“Yup,” Josh said, extending his hand. “We met out at your place a little while back, when I interviewed you. Josh Wittmore.”

“That’s right—what you doin’ traipsing around with the game warden?”

“Still doing stories on the Tamarack River Valley. Need to have something about ice fishing. Seems pretty popular.”

While Burman and Josh chatted, Natalie counted fish. Burman’s son looked on.

“I count forty-five,” Natalie said. “What’s your count?” she asked, looking to the young man.

“I get forty-five too,” he said. Both the warden and the young man knew that twenty-five was the limit for each fisherman, and they were just five shy.

“Nice bunch of bluegills you got there,” Natalie said. “Just make sure that when you get to fifty you pull up your lines.” She didn’t mention that she’d caught them pushing fish back down the hole—she had no idea how many they’d already caught past fifty, but without evidence, she could issue no citations.

“You guys have a good day, now,” Natalie said as she and Josh walked on to the next shanty to repeat the routine.

On the way back to Willow River, Natalie and Josh chatted about the afternoon.

“I was a little surprised to see Dan Burman and his son out there,” Josh said.

“I wasn’t. Guy’s a good fisherman, good hunter, too. Too bad he’s always pushing the legal limits.”

“He’s got a big family to feed,” Josh said. “He’s barely making it.”

“Still got to obey the law,” Natalie said.

They drove on, neither saying anything for several miles. Josh, usually a good judge of character, simply was confused about the difference between Natalie Karlsen conservation warden and Natalie Karlsen dinner date. Today he had seen Natalie the conservation warden, and he had been impressed. She knew her job, and she knew it well. She was firm with people, yet pleasant. He still harbored the deeper question—what did she want from him?

Josh sat at his computer at
Farm Country News
, working on the second in a series of stories he’d planned about the Tamarack River Valley. His brief history of the valley had appeared in
Farm Country News
this week, with a couple of photos he had taken of the river and an overview shot of the valley itself.

The Tamarack River defines the western boundary of Ames County in central Wisconsin. The river and the valley surrounding it were formed by the glacier that ground its way through this part of what eventually became Wisconsin. The glacier began retreating about 10,000 years ago, followed by the return of plants and animals, and eventually Native Americans who lived on these lands for many years.

Although Wisconsin had become a state in 1848, this part of central Wisconsin remained Indian country until the U.S. government signed a treaty with the Menominee Indian Tribe that had lived on these lands for centuries. In 1851, government surveyors laid out the townships and created the section and quarter-section lines, before offering the land for sale. Since the area was settled, the Tamarack River Valley has seen many changes, although the river itself, flowing southeast toward Lake Winnebago, has remained a constant in the lives of the people who live and work in the valley. As one old timer said, “The Tamarack River is always the same but ever changing.”

During the logging era in northern Wisconsin, from the mid-1850s to the early 1900s, the Tamarack River served as a “logger’s highway.” Each
spring, when the ice went out, the logging crews that had piled huge logs on the river’s banks during the winter dumped them into the river for their trip south to the sawmills in Oshkosh and Fond du Lac. Log drivers, daredevil loggers who rode the river south with the logs, accompanied the logs, keeping them in the current and breaking up logjams when they occurred. Injuries and even deaths were not uncommon during the spring log drives.

In the spring of 1900, a logjam on the Tamarack took the life of Mortimer Dunn, a farmer in the valley during the summer months and a logger during the winter. A family gravesite contains a marker for Dunn, but his body was never found. Some local residents claim that Mortimer Dunn’s ghost still haunts the valley as it searches for his grave. Others say that the Tamarack River Ghost looks out for the valley and the mighty Tamarack River.

Farmers, many of them immigrants from northern Europe, but some from upstate New York, first settled the valley. From the 1850s until the 1880s, the majority of these farmers grew wheat. But then, over a period of a few years, wheat yields declined because of disease and an insect called the chinch bug, which sucked the juices from the wheat plant. Most valley farmers then took up dairy farming. Many also raised hogs, sometimes a few sheep, occasionally some beef cattle, and small flocks of chickens that provided eggs and meat for the table, and a little extra money for groceries. They became diversified farmers, not depending solely on one enterprise for their income.

The Depression years of the 1930s challenged the Tamarack Valley farmers. A few lost their farms because they couldn’t make mortgage payments. But most hunkered down and carried on. Cucumbers and green beans became popular cash crops for most of the valley farmers, especially those with large families. From planting to harvesting, both crops required considerable hand labor. From late July through August, valley farm kids could be seen in their cucumber and bean patches, earning enough money for school clothes and supplies, Christmas presents, and sometimes even enough for a new bike or a .22 rifle.

The valley land was not rich, especially not as fertile as farmland in the southern counties of Wisconsin. But for several generations the
Tamarack River Valley supported the family farmers who lived there, raised families, and sent them to school.

Electricity did not come to the Tamarack River Valley until after World War II. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, valley farmers also bought tractors and put their draft horses out to pasture, although they would not sell them. “Never can tell when a good team might come in handy” was a comment often made by farmers who had grown up driving horses and had come to love and respect them.

In the southern part of the Tamarack River Valley, several cranberry growers established cranberry marshes in the years following the Civil War. Most of these cranberry growers still operate, and in recent years they have done well with an expanded cranberry market in the United States and around the world.

Today, the Tamarack River Valley faces two major outside forces— developers who see the river property as prime land for golf courses and condo development, and industrial agriculture that sees relatively cheap land that can be used for large, confined animal operations. Future stories will discuss these new challenges for the people of the Tamarack River Valley.

Fred and Oscar enjoyed another day of ice fishing in their little shack on the backwater of the Tamarack River.

“Say Fred, you gettin’ any bites on that fancy new rod you got for Christmas?”

“Does it look I’m gettin’ any bites? You going blind as well as senile?” answered Oscar, who fished from a second hole within their little shack.

“Well don’t get huffy about it. Ain’t my fault your new rod don’t work.”

“New rod works just fine. It’s the fish that are the problem,” said Fred.

“Now it’s the fish you’re blaming.”

“Gotta blame something. Probably that lady game warden’s really the problem. She put a jinx on our fishing. That’s what happened. You get a lady game warden prancing around on the ice checking on fishing licenses, and you just don’t know what’s gonna happen,” said Fred.

“Kinda of a looker, she is,” said Oscar, smiling.

“‘Looker,’ what in hell do you know about who’s a looker and who’s not?”

“I may be old, but I ain’t blind. Underneath all that uniform and badge and stuff is a helluva good-lookin’ woman,” said Oscar.

“So now you’re like an X-ray machine, huh?” said Fred.

“Gotta use a little of your imagination, Fred.” Oscar touched his finger to the side of his head. “Keeps life interesting. Yup, it does. Keeps life interesting.”

“I don’t know about you, Oscar. You’re not only getting senile, you’re acting like you’re eighteen again.”

“Nothing wrong with thinkin’ that you’re eighteen. Helluva lot better than thinking that you’re eighty. Helluva lot better.”

The two old men sat quietly for a time. A stick of pine wood they had stuffed into their little box stove crackled and snapped. A stiff breeze from the northwest blew down the Tamarack River and whistled around the corner of their comfortable fishing shanty.

“What’d you think about the history piece in the
Farm Country
newspaper, Fred?”

“What history piece?”

“You read the paper, don’t you?”

“Every time it comes.”

“Well what’d you think?”

“About what?”

“The story about the history of the Tamarack River Valley,” said Oscar as he put down his fishing pole and reached for his thermos of coffee.

“Oh, that piece.”

“Well what’d you think?”

“It was okay,” said Fred. “You got any more coffee in that thermos?”

Oscar reached for Fred’s nearly empty coffee cup and refilled it.

“Just okay? I thought it was pretty damn good,” said Oscar.

“I wouldn’t go that far. That guy ridin’ around with the lady game warden is the one that wrote it. You knew that, didn’t you?” said Fred.

“Is that right? Nope, I didn’t put that together. Seemed like a decent sort. Name is Josh Wittmore, I recall. His old man is Jacob Wittmore— has a farm over by Link Lake.”

“Yeah, I remember Jacob.”

“Didn’t you read the fine print, Oscar? This guy Wittmore is writin’ a whole series on the Tamarack River Valley. Probably we’ll be in his next story, two sorry-assed ice fisherman that don’t catch nothin’.”

Both men laughed as they went back to fishing, intent on at least catching enough bluegills for an evening meal.

“Liked what Wittmore wrote about the Tamarack River Ghost,” said Oscar.

“Yup, he got that part right. Got that right for sure. That old ghost is still around and doin’ all kinds of mischief—mostly scaring the bejeebers out of folks who don’t know about him,” said Fred.

Fred stuffed a couple of sticks of oak wood into the little stove and glanced out the window of the ice fishing shanty. It had turned out to be a nice January day. A good day for ice fishing, even if the fish didn’t bite.

“Say, Fred. You thinkin’ on showing up at the big meeting over at the Tamarack Town Hall next week?” asked Oscar.

“What meeting is that?”

“Big meeting.”

“You said it was a big meeting before. Big meeting about what?”

“You didn’t hear about the meeting?”

“I may have; I hear about lots of meetings. Which one you talking about?”

“Geez , Fred. Some days you are dense as hell. Meeting about the big hog factory comin’ to the valley.”

“Oh, that meeting. Yeah, thought I might show up.”

“Thought I might come too,” said Oscar. “Before that I thought I might gather me up a few facts on how they grow hogs these days.”

This time Josh took the initiative. It was a bright, sunny Sunday in January, a fine day to be outside. He decided to call Natalie to see if she’d like to go cross-country skiing. It was a wild idea. He didn’t even know if she knew how to ski. And besides, this might be one of the weekends she worked.

She answered on the first ring. “Sure, I’d love to go,” she said when Josh posed the question. “I’ll rustle up my skis and be ready when you get here.”

Josh now remembered he didn’t even know where she lived. “Where is ‘here’?” he said.

“Oh, you don’t know where I live, do you?” She gave him the address, a cabin on Copperhead Lake, a couple of miles east of Willow River.

The temperature hung around twenty degrees, but without a wind and with bright sunshine it was about as nice a winter day as anyone could ever want. The snow piled along the road was still fresh and clean, since the latest snowfall had only been a couple of days earlier. Josh decided on the Tamarack River Park; it had new trails that spread out along the Tamarack River and snaked through the nearby pine woods and marshes.

They traveled along the snow-packed road for several miles in silence, enjoying the winter views. How different Ames County looked in winter: all of nature’s sharp edges were rounded. The vivid colors of summer were now blacks, grays, and whites, with an occasional pine tree providing a splash of green.

Their skis crunched over the cold snow. Otherwise the park was quiet, not a sound as they moved along the trail. Snow hung from the pine trees,
the white contrasting with the green. And a bright blue sky with a warm sun added the final note to perfect the scene.

When they stopped to rest, Josh dug his camera out of his pocket.

“Can I snap a picture?” he asked.

“Sure, snap away,” said Natalie, a big smile spreading across her face.

“Want to see it?” asked Josh. “It’s a good one.”

“Nah, let’s move on.”

They skied along quietly for nearly a half hour, one following the other, enjoying the winter day and each other’s company. Josh turned a corner in the woods and stopped abruptly. A person holding a gun stood next to the ski trail. He was smiling.

“Mr. Burman,” Josh blurted out. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” By this time, Natalie had caught up with Josh and turned the corner as well, and saw Burman with a gun.

“Mr. Burman,” she said. Burman was wearing snowshoes, the old-fashioned kind made of bent wood and leather.

“Madam game warden,” said Burman, bowing a bit. He held the gun in the crook of his hand, the barrel pointed downward.

“What . . . what are you doing out here?” asked Natalie. She wished she were wearing her sidearm and badge.

“Huntin’ rabbits,” said Burman. “Tryin’ to find me a few rabbits. Kids like fresh fried rabbit meat.”

“With a deer rifle. You’re hunting rabbits with a .30–30 Winchester?”

“Yup, I am.” Burman smiled, knowing that rabbit season was still open and that deer season had closed back in late November.