Red Jacket (2 page)

2

Chicago

FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 1903

Lute Bapcat realized too late that coming to Chicago had been a mistake, but his trip was nearly finished and he decided to see it through. Three years underground in the copper mines had given him a stake for a new life, and he had come to Chicago to buy equipment from Kisor's Silver City Fur Supply House. Kisor had salesmen traveling through trapping country, and one of them had told Bapcat he could get items a lot cheaper by going directly to the main depot at the home office.

The salesman, a Spanish-American War veteran who claimed to have seen action in the Philippines, gave Bapcat a ticket for the comedy
Mr. Bluebeard,
the seat for a matinee performance, which suited him. He found all the lights and activity at night in the cluttered, stinking city both disturbing and disorienting. Living alone in the North Woods seemed natural; alone in Chicago, he felt out of place, even unsafe. Tomorrow he would catch a train back to Copper Country, haul his supplies to the extreme tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, and begin his new life as an independent and unbeholden trapper.

Not wanting to be pressed in by other theatergoers, Bapcat found a tavern called Muley's on West Randolph Street, across from the Iroquois Theater, and toyed with a tepid beer, wondering if he should even bother to attend the play. Bluebeard, he thought he'd heard somewhere, had been a murderer.
How the hell do you make a musical show about a killer? Chicago is a damn strange place
. The ways of the city confounded him. One beer led to two, and a decision to forgo the show. Besides, it was well past the performance's starting time.
No point going over there
. He ordered another glass of beer, which was the only truly good thing to come from the day.

“What's going on over by the theater?” Someone at the bar asked. Bapcat looked out across the street, saw firefighters milling around the front of the building. Then he thought he saw smoke, and without thinking it through, pulled on his bearskin coat and fur cap and burst outside into a howling, icy wind. The firefighters were all screaming instructions at each other, several of them trying to pull open doors, which seemed blocked.

An alarm bell sounded in the distance, and police and more firemen began to converge on West Randolph Street. Bapcat grabbed a large cop by the arm. “You need help? I helped fight some fires out west,” Bapcat said, adding, “Soldier.”

“Stick with me, bub,” the cop said. “Name's O'Doyle.”

“Lute.”

Three hours later Bapcat had helped carry out dozens of bodies, mostly women and children. One woman had a perfect boot print on her crushed forehead, her nose, lips, and teeth smashed. There had been mass panic inside and hundreds were dead. He'd never imagined such carnage out of nothing. The smell of charred human flesh and shit was so overpowering that cops and firemen gagged repeatedly as they carried out the dead. Bapcat reacted the same way. It was one thing to kill a man from afar, another to pick up the parts of a burned corpse, whose flesh sloughed at the slightest touch.

Finally he and O'Doyle took a break for a cigarette. He'd not seen the cop lose his stomach. Instead, the man had resolutely continued to retrieve bodies, Bapcat staying with him the whole time. “The actor, that Foy fella,” the cop said as they carried out yet another body.

Bapcat had never heard the name before.

“Seems he tried to maintain order. Told people from the stage to sit where they were, ya know, not to panic—how everything would be all right. Then some jamoke opened the big doors behind the stage and that let the wind in from outside and made the bloody fire flare. It swept over them poor dumb bastards and suffocated and cooked 'em right there where they sat. Some's callin' da man a hero, but I dunno. Your number comes up, seems nuttin' you can do, God bein' an almighty prick about such things, don'chu know.”

Bapcat had seen the blackened, still-smoking corpses in the seats, wondered what had happened. He had killed Spaniards, had been given medals, called a hero. Now some actor who had tried to save lives had failed because of another man's mistake.
Is it the outcome that makes for a hero, or the attempt?
He had no idea.
Too damn deep for the likes of me
.

His only certainty: Those responsible for this fire needed to be punished. Kill kids, you deserved not just jail, but death.

“Will somebody be held accountable?” Bapcat asked the cop.

O'Doyle laughed sardonically. “In this town?”

3

Montreal River, Keweenaw County

THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1913

It had been a flinty, moody, relentless sort of winter, with storm after storm keeping fur-bearers hunkered down for long periods, the fluxing conditions forcing the trapper to run his line only when weather conditions permitted, not when he wanted to. Bapcat had been cold so often for such extended periods that back in his hillside dugout, he could barely tolerate even marginal heat from his small wood-burning stove.

In March, just before a raging weeklong blizzard, he had seen a man's tracks and intuited that the snooper was Zakov, the Russian wolfer some other backcountry Keweenawians called Borzoi, the Wolf Hound.

Timber wolves dined mainly on venison, but the whitetail herd this far north up the seventy-mile-long peninsula was infinitesimal compared to larger Houghton County herds to the south, where there were some farms raising potatoes, rutabagas, and beets. If wolves were moving north it would be for beaver, which meant they would be his competitors, but only if they stayed into autumn. The presence of the wolves did not concern him; Zakov did.

The wolfer's tracks were brushed with great skill, but Bapcat had still seen them and read the sign. The Russian seemed to be probing and measuring Bapcat's skills, and Bapcat himself. Why? Eventually there would be a confrontation of some sort. The direction and tenor would rest on the Russian's attitude, and explanations.

Three inches of snow had fallen on nearly barren ground on May 1 and was mostly gone now, but Bapcat had kept several sets out near blue ice structures in cedar swamps along the smaller creeks and ponds, and soon would have to go fetch the traps to boil, clean, and store them away for summer. Once summer arrived in earnest, he would prospect for silver and float-copper chunks, and start making next winter's wood.
Life here may not be that varied, but it's busy and steady, and there's little place here for an idle, lazy man.

He was not far from his dugout and looking at a fiddle fern trying to unfold when a brutish shadow stretched over his light path and startled him. He flinched, swallowed hard, and looked up to see the hulking, entirely naked form of Big Louie Moilanen, the town of Hancock's justice of the peace.

“Mr. Justice,” Bapcat greeted the man.

“Holy wah, dere, Lute. You know I ain't one a dem formal fellas. Youse t'ink mebbe youse seen my duds around?”

“Can't say I have. What makes you think they're around here?”

The eight-foot-one justice of the peace, reputedly the tallest man in the world, nervously rubbed the corner of his mouth. “I don't know, Lute. Widow Frei asked me come fetch you.”

Jaquelle Frei was thirty, beautiful, sensuous, sneaky, money-minded, and assertive. She owned and ran Frei Dry Goods and Outfitters in Copper Harbor.

“The widow mention why?”

Big Louie looked skyward, scratched at stubble on his chin, frowned, and answered, “I don't t'ink she did, Lute.”

Because of his size, many people thought the giant stupid, or mentally slow, but he was just an ordinary man, a careful thinker who liked to mull things over before he talked. However, today's odd behavior was not at all characteristic of the man who had spent three seasons as a sideshow attraction with Ringling Brothers, and used his lucre to buy a Hancock tavern. Two years back he'd been elected justice of the peace, and had since done a fine job in that role. No, this was not the normal Big Louie Moilanen, and it concerned Bapcat, who liked the big man a lot.

“Did you have your clothes on when you left the widow's place?” He'd not be surprised if she'd seduced the man and had her way with him.

More lip tugging. “Pretty sure I had 'em, Lute. Not certain, though.”

“Did you have your Bible?”

“Always carry da Blessed Word,” Moilanen said.

No Bible in sight now.
“How about you go take a seat in my shack and I'll backtrack you?”

“You can follow me?”

“It's like tracking a deer.”
One the size of a Belgian draft horse
. “Your feet all right?”

The big man looked down, wiggled his toes. “Seem ta be.”

“I'll be back, Louie. Help yourself to anything you need.”

“Lute, you t'ink dere might be somet'ing wrong wit' me?” Moilanen asked.

Bapcat heard concern in the man's voice. “I'm not a doctor, Louie, and truth be known, I ain't even much of a trapper, but if it worries you, let's see if you can talk to a doctor down there to Hancock. What brought you here—besides the widow?”

“I don't quite remember,” the man said. “Can you follow da tracks of t'oughts, too?”

“That's way outside my ken, Mr. Justice. You sit tight. I'll be back soon as I can.”

“Good t'ing she ain't so cold out, eh,” Big Louie said.

“Yessir,” Bapcat said with a chuckle. “Lucky for all of us.”

He found the man's neatly folded clothes along with his Bible near one of the abandoned copper mines dating from the Civil War era, fetched them back to the dugout, and handed them to the giant. Moilanen teared up when Bapcat gave him his Bible.

“Shall we head for town, find out what the Widow Frei wants?”

“Wants you ta come ta her store,” the justice of the peace said as he dressed.

“You take the train up from Hancock?”

“I t'ink so,” Moilanen said. “But I couldn't say for certain.”

Bapcat wondered if he should go with the man to make sure he got to a doctor. This behavior was not at all like the Louis Moilanen he'd known since his time in the mines a decade ago.

4

Copper Harbor, Keweenaw County

THURSDAY, MAY 15, 1913

Bapcat didn't allow time for the widow to get her dander up, which was pretty much her normal demeanor. She seemed eternally addled or perturbed, if not by anything specific, then by the vagaries and inexactitudes of life itself, which she considered unpredictable, annoying, and largely unfair.

“Why'd you send Big Louie to find me?” he asked. “He's waiting outside.”

“
Somebody
had to go, and you know perfectly well I have a thriving commercial enterprise to manage. You think I can just pick up and leave the likes of
him
in charge here and come traipsing after
you?
”

“Louie seems to run his saloon just fine down in Hancock.”

“We are in the respectable dry goods business, and do
not
cater to the swilling public,” she countered sharply. “Word's going 'round that Theodore Roosevelt himself is coming to Marquette for a libel trial. Seems some fool newspaperman over that way opined in print that the former president's a lush; the president, bless his plucky, righteous heart, has taken exception and filed suit. As well he should; a respectable person cannot let scoundrels have their way with their reputations. That particular allegation ring true to you? His drinking, I mean.”

Bapcat shrugged. He was not precisely sure what the word
allegation
meant, but it was the widow's way to sling about expensive words most real people had no sense of. Fact was, he'd seen Roosevelt take a glass of wine on rare occasions, but never anything stronger, and always just one small glass with some of his suppers. “I wouldn't know,” he told the volatile proprietor of Frei Dry Goods and Outfitters.

Widow Frei had the slithery moves of a Manx cat. Her response to him was to touch an eyebrow with her pinkie, as if she were tidying up. “Why then do you suppose you have gotten a summons to appear in Marquette for the trial?” She held out an envelope.

The trapper squinted at her. “That don't add up.”

“Deputy Sheriff Valo come up from Eagle River and asked me to send a messenger, but Big Louie volunteered, and I never turn down a man willing to do honest work or to act like a
real
man. Lord knows the world has few enough of them, and some places have an even larger void. Valo insists you were a Rough Rider with Roosevelt down there in Cuba. Is it true you've seen the elephant, Lute?”

Valo is dumber than an ice wagon!
Bapcat had tried to keep his past to himself, but some people, including Valo's boss, knew the facts. Bapcat tended to be a private man, happiest and most secure in his own counsel and company. He gave the widow a noncommittal shrug.

“
Good God
,
Lute!
Don't you dare dissemble! I cannot tolerate the lack of verisimilitude in a man. If you were an honest-to-God Rough Rider, I'll venture that makes you about the most special man in these parts.” She leaned over the glass counter and whispered lasciviously, “On occasion, as I recall fondly, in certain of
my
parts, too.”

He took the envelope, extracted the typewritten letter, and read it.
Office of W. S. Hill, Esq., Attorney at Law, Washington Street, Marquette.
He was ordered to present himself on the morning of Friday, May 23. “Not enough time to get myself all the way over there.”

Jaquelle Frei expelled a noisy breath. “Good God and foo, Mr. Bapcat, these here times are the epitome of the
modern
era we are privileged to inhabit: electric lights, telephones, motorcars . . . Ye God, Lute, you can take the train and electric trolley down to Houghton, and a train from there to Marquette. How difficult can
that
be? I daresay you could be there as early as tomorrow if you so choose.”

“Valo still around?”

“I'm not my brother's keeper, and in any event, he isn't my brother, is he? I don't know where the fool is. My guess, look in a doggery. All you men seem to have a weakness for forty rod, perhaps including the former president.”

“Oh, I doubt
that,
” Bapcat mumbled, letting it out and regretting he had. “I need someone to escort Big Louie back south.”

Frei grabbed his arm and turned him. “See, I
knew
you knew Roosevelt! Why would the giant Moilanen need help?” She glanced at the justice of the peace standing serenely outside on the porch of her store.

“I don't think he's feeling quite himself.”

“He looks normal to me.”

“He showed up at my place naked,” Bapcat said.

The widow's eyes glazed over and she absentmindedly nibbled her lower lip and grasped Bapcat's wrist. “Ye God!
Totally
disrobed, Mr. Bapcat, all secrets revealed and there for the whole world to gaze upon?” Her face was strained. “Ye God. Is he . . . you know, almighty? That is,
all
of him?”

Bapcat pushed her hand away. “I'm going to go find Valo,” he said, turning to leave, but she caught his arm again with a viselike grip.

“Been hesitant to raise the issue, dear friend. You've got quite a tab with this establishment, and I know you won't be selling your furs 'til July, but this lady has got bills year-round, and if all my customers paid as erratically as you, I'd have to close, and where would that leave the community? I'll have you know this enterprise is at the center of village life, and that makes me the linchpin of the entrepreneurial community. But,” she added in a low and conspiratorial whisper, “if you were to stay the night, we might could arrange to reduce some of your considerable and long-standing deficit.”

“I don't have money for a room, Jaquelle.”

She brayed. “
Ye God!
Why
these games, sir.
Why
? You
know
very well the very room I allude to is directly
upstairs
, Trapper Bapcat!”

Once, in a moment of weakness, he'd made the mistake of bedding her, and now she expected and demanded intimacy every time he came to town, which was as often as two or even three times a year. She was insatiable in such matters, and the reality was that she wore him out in all ways,
especially
with her palaver, which just about never stopped, and at times even got considerably pronounced once her clothes were shed and vigorous coupling commenced (fornicating with Jaquelle Frei being an always vigorous and physical undertaking).

“You render a woman both wanton and carnal,” she said. “I'll testify that the late Mr. Frei surely fell far short in these categories, though he was a fine provider and a polite and proper gentleman, as we all surely expect from pure German-born stock. I shall not speak unkindly of him, but tell me the truth straight-out, Lute: Were you one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders? I mean, were you in that mean bloody scrap down there with him and all those fine boys?”

Bapcat nodded, and Widow Frei picked up a piece of paper and began frantically fanning herself and exhaling loudly. “Sakes alive, my flesh is on fire, Mr. Bapcat, and I do believe you should commence to dowsing said flames before I swoon like a randy doe in a clutch of horned bucks. I say, I swear you'll turn me into a devotee of
cinq à sept,
Mr. Bapcat, have me shedding my gear and panting before high tea.”

Sankaset? What the blazes is she on about?
She made more turns than a snowshoe hare, and there was no sense fighting or trying to resist her. Once she got a notion into her mind, it would not be dislodged by logic or emotional appeal. She knew what she wanted, and what you wanted was a distant second, if it was a factor at all.

“All right, but I have to see to Big Louie first,” he said.

“That's the difference betwixt us,” she said. “When the wantons overcome yours truly, when that lovely twitching commences in her netherings, such urgencies override all else—but I suppose a soldier must learn to contain his emotions and not give in to bestial impetuosity.” She did not sound at all happy about the syllogistic conclusion she had constructed.

•••

As predicted, he found the rotund deputy Valo at Sigmund's Tavern. “Almo, when are you going back to Eagle River?”

“I guess mebbe I ain't yet decided,” the surly deputy crowed defiantly.

“Could you escort Justice of the Peace Moilanen down that way, and make sure he gets on south on the electric toward Hancock?”

“Tallest man in the damn world ought to be able to look after himself,” the deputy said with a snarl.

Sheriff John Hepting of Keweenaw County was one of the finest individuals Bapcat knew, but many of his deputies, especially this one, were lacking in many ways. “Justice Moilanen's feeling a little poorly.”

“Well, boo-hoo for the damn giant.
How
poorly?”

“You recently get you a doctor's license, did you?” Bapcat asked sharply, leaning into the man.

Valo, a devout coward, caved under the sharp question. “No cause to pull your tongue-gun.”

“Shorty like you got something against a man bein' tall?”

“ 'Course not, and I ain't short. I'm average.”

“Then act like an average lawman and see that he gets down the line. In fact, finish your beer and get over to the train station now. I'll send him over.”

Valo looked pained, but obeyed, belching once he'd swallowed his remaining beer in two gulps.

When Bapcat got back to the widow's place, he asked her, “Has Zakov been around?”

“The Borzoi?” She shook her head. “I daresay that one's even less social than you. And why are you changing the subject? I got intimate notions fluxerpating my mind, and other anatomical reaches that shan't be mentioned by a proper lady in public.”

“Just wondering.”

“I suppose he might have been around, which is to say most emphatically,
not
with me—here, I'd say late February, early March, and he wouldn't say why, only grinned like a simpleton when people spoke to him. Ask me, Russians are odd as two-tine forks on their best days.”

“He have pelts?”

“None I seen, but wouldn't wolves be took down to the sheriff in Eagle River? I thought that's where bounties get settled, or am I misinformed?” She made a sour face and cringed dramatically. “Who'd
want
a nasty old wolf pelt?”

“Fur's real warm,” Bapcat said.

“Don't tell me
you
trap them?”

“I do not, madam, and I don't agree with the bounty neither. Wolves ain't no threat to people, Jaquelle.”

The widow smiled. “I reckon our famous and legendary Little Miss Red Riding Hood might assert a diametrically opposed viewpoint.” Jaquelle Frei suddenly loosed an amazingly accurate imitation of a howling wolf, smacked his behind, took his belt and pulled him up the stairs to her living quarters as she ascended backwards, tugging relentlessly at his trousers.

“Guess I'm gonna find out why you fellas were called Rough Riders,” she said, a leer in her husky voice. “Treat me like I'm the enemy, Lute. Give me the real what-for, and don't you spare me any rough stuff. I can take it just fine. God's honest fact is, he seems to have made me especially
for
rough stuff, though I can't imagine why.”