Red Jacket (33 page)

89

Laurium

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1913

Citizens Hardware was less than six blocks from Herman Gipp's house. Bapcat wondered how Uncle Herman would escape to the woods from a job so close to home.

“Like your new job?” Bapcat asked Herman.

“Pays da bills, I guess,” the man said.

“Where's Fig working these days?”

“Dunno. He sorta got mad at me and I ain't seen 'im for a while, ya know?”

“Nothing serious, I hope,” Bapcat said. He hated making small talk, but was slowly learning to accept it as part of the job.

“Nah, Fig can't stay mad long on account he can't remember nuttin' dat long.”

“Herman, you're a woodsman. You know what Canady yew is?”

“Yeah, sure, you betcha. My grandpa usta call it deer candy.”

“Much of it in these parts?”

“Some, if youse know where ta look. Why?”

“Mostly curious, I guess. I like to know what's around me in the woods, don't you?”

“Yeah, sure, I guess.”

“So?”

“You mean yew? Way up Lake Manganese ridges, ya know, 'round dere.”

“How about around here?”

“Upper Owl Creek usta be good; Cedar Creek Canyon down low, and youse know, Delaware mine down ta Eagle River, all t'rough dose ridges an' deep cuts.”

“Good deer hunting?”

“Can be, 'specially in winter when da deers yard up. Most head toward da bay, but lotsa dose big bucks, dey go west up into da yew canyons.”

When did it become legal to hunt deer in winter, in their yards?
“Don't hear much about that westerly movement.”

“Most pipple lazy, eh. Won't work hard, which makes huntin' good for dem dat will.”

“You ever hunt up there?”

“Not after all da wolfies come.”

“Are you talking about the ratting grounds?”

Herman Gipp nodded solemnly. “Not no more so much, you know.”

“But there are still some yews up that way?”

“Wun't s'prise me, but I ain't been up dere in years. Fig, he don't like it up dat place.”

“How come?”

“Ghosts and spooks and stuff,” Herman said nervously.

“Thanks, Herman.”

The elder Gipp smiled and said nothing.

“See you, Unc,” George told his uncle, and turned to Bapcat. “Get what you needed?”

“Could be.”
Yew kills rats, but not deer. How come Herman knows yew attracts deer and I don't?

“We done working?” George asked.

“Yes. How about you drop me up the hill and take the electric back?”

“Sure. You been to the ratting grounds?”

“Once, why?”

“Not a place people talk about. Spooks, ghosts, Indian
manitous—
all that crazy stuff.”

“You superstitious, George?”

“Only when it makes sense to be. You?”

“Nope.”

“Even when you were a kid?”

“Never.” Being an orphan was all the monster a kid needed. You always felt like the world was out to get you, which was a mistake. For the most part the world didn't care if you lived or died. Either way, life—and what you did with it—was your problem.

90

Allouez

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1913

Mid-afternoon an agitated Zakov came stumbling and blustering into the house on the hill. “Davidov's gone. Nobody knows where, or why. I called and talked to Harju about Champion. There's big trouble at the depot down the hill.”

Bapcat grabbed his rifle, Zakov got behind the wheel of the truck, Bapcat turned the crank, and they headed down the dirt road for town and the rail depot.

A few of the remaining National Guard soldiers were on the scene, but standing back from the action, which involved special mine guards and their sun-shaped badges and some of Cruse's full-time Houghton County deputies.

Bapcat had no idea what had precipitated the trouble, but all sides were brandishing weapons—rocks, bottles, and clubs—and lots of angry words were being shouted, including special deputies telling miners' wives they all belonged in whorehouses.

Both groups were rubbing and bumping, but there was no outright violence, save one example: Deputy Sheriff Raber was wading through the strikers with a sap, hammering anyone around him who was significantly smaller than him. Bapcat watched one small man lift his arm in defense against Raber, but it didn't offer any protection, as Raber came up with a sap in his other hand and drove it straight into the man's head, collapsing the victim. Bapcat thought he saw Fig Verbankick in the melee, but the scene was kaleidoscopic, shifting with wrestling and motion and an increased crescendo of noise, and he lost track of the odd little man.

“Where the hell is John Hepting?” Bapcat shouted over the din at Zakov. “This isn't Cruse's county.”
So this is what O'Brien was talking about yesterday
.

Zakov pointed, and Bapcat saw that the special mine deputies were pulling out their revolvers, this action immediately dampening the crowd's fire.

Minutes later an army sergeant carrying a Springfield approached them and Zakov showed their shared badge. The sergeant said, “The specials got a hundred and forty-one for the lockup out of this mess, and another sixty or so up to Mohawk.”

“To be taken to jail in Houghton?”

The sergeant looked surprised. “How'd you know that?”

“There's no space in the Keweenaw jail.”

“Replacement workers are coming north on trains from Hancock today. Cruse and the mines have guards all along the rail route for protection, with more armed guards on board.”

Feltrow, a clerk in Petermann's store in Allouez, came out on the porch. “Two weeks ago we had five hundred kids skip school and make a parade right here,” he said. “It's a darn disgrace! Ignored school and come here instead. Lucky nobody got hurt.

“Last Tuesday someone over to Red Jacket tried to set fire to a house that boards forty guards. Kids come out of the house, yelling
Fire!
to get help, and the darn strikers mobbed the house and the firefighters, trying to stop them from putting the fire out. What the hell's wrong with people who think this way? Let a family home burn with kids inside? Good Lord.

“First of the month more than a thousand strikers jumped men trying to get to work; cavalry boys had to ride their horses into the melee to break it up. I'm telling you, when this thing got going, most folks were siding with the strikers, but now it seems they'd rather fight than go back to work. I just don't understand it,” he lamented.

Zakov said, “Sometimes it takes violent acts to compel substantial change.”

“Maybe,” the clerk said, “but the jump between violent and tragic don't seem all that far, and that's what worries me. What if those strikers prevented that fire from being put out last week? There's some things that's just got to be off limits, even when you have a righteous cause.”

•••

Sheriff John Hepting stopped at the house on the hill late in the early evening.

“Looks like everything went swimmingly for you fellas down in Houghton,” he greeted them, walking in. “I could sure do with a drink.”

Bapcat told him about the deer meat and the heads, and Hepting took out a folded Houghton-Calumet Mining Journal from the day before and opened it. A banner headline read:
game wardens find illegal deer cache in houghton business; promise mass arrests ahead.

“Cruse's men made a lot of arrests at the Allouez depot this morning,” Bapcat said.

“Tell me something I don't know,” Hepting said. “Our glorious governor has ordered all national guardsmen withdrawn, and has told the companies to defend their own property because the State can't take sides in such a dispute.”

“What're sheriffs supposed to do?” Bapcat asked.

“Help the company side.”

“And you?”

“Like the damn gutless State, I ain't taking sides neither. I heard Allouez didn't go that badly; mostly a lot of shoving and nasty talk. Up in Mohawk they came in so fast the strikers couldn't react, and they got 'em all locked up in a shed until a train could be arranged. You hear from Marquette yet?”

Zakov said, “I talked to Harju. Will take up to four days to get a search warrant for Champion.”

Hepting grinned and tapped the newspaper. “Trust me; that story will move things along fast. That story will be all over the state. Government always reacts to newspaper reports. They got no choice. What's your next move?”

Bapcat said, “Let them all cook for a few days. We have the evidence secured, and Nesmith's business is closed for the time being.”

Hepting said, “That will get the attention of a lot of local businessmen. Most of that crowd don't even start to think about things until money and profits are threatened.”

“I'm going up to Copper Harbor for a day or two,” Bapcat said.

“If she has a friend, send her this way,” Zakov said.

91

Copper Harbor

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1913

The weather remained unseasonably mild. Jaquelle Frei's store was closed for most of Sunday, but she came downstairs to let Bapcat in, greeting him with an exuberant hug and kiss and leading him upstairs by the hand. Jordy Kluboshar was sitting by a window, reading.

“He likes school,” Frei said. “Teachers not so much, but school, books, learning—these things he likes.”

The boy looked up from his book. “I can read on my own. I don't need no teachers.”

“We
all
need teachers,” Bapcat told Jordy Kluboshar.

“Not you.”

Bapcat laughed. “
Especially
me. How's your hygiene?”

“With
her
in charge?” the boy retorted. “
Her
rules,
all
the time,” he said with a sigh.

“We haven't seen you in going on a month,” Frei said.

“Training in the Soo, work in Seney, business in Marquette.”

“We seen the paper,” Jordy said. “About you and Mr. Zakov, and them deer you took down to Houghton.”

“Did you see Moriarty?” Jaquelle Frei asked him.

“You didn't want me to.”

She smiled. “It's good that you listen to your lady.”

Bapcat smiled benevolently.
A lie, but not one he had a label for. Sometimes being uneducated could work in your favor.

“Are you staying tonight?” Frei asked, hope in her voice.

“Can't.”

Her disappointment was immediate.

“Thanksgiving,” he said. “Thought I'd come back then, spend four or five days. When is it this year?”

“November twenty-seventh,” the boy called out. “It was in the newspaper.”

“That's good; just not soon enough,” Jaquelle Frei said.

“Soon enough for what?” The boy asked.

“Read!” the adults said in unison.

“Sure about tonight?” she asked, rubbing against him.

“Duty calls.”

“Lunch before you leave?”

“That would be good.” It seemed forever since he'd had a good meal.

She pan-fried partridge breasts wrapped in bacon strips. “The boy shot them,” she announced. “He's a fine little hunter.”

“I ain't little,” Jordy Kluboshar said.

“Deputy out of Houghton, name of Raber?”

“What about him?” she asked.

“You claim to know everyone up here.”

“I do. Raber's been a roughneck all his life. Worked underground at the Quincy before Cruse hired him. His mother was widowed and she remarried well.”

“Like, to a czar or something like that?”

“You spend too much time with that damn Russian. No, she married Philamon Hedyn.”

“Kin to Madog?”

“The captain's baby brother, I believe.”

“Also a miner?”

“No, a Methodist minister in Central. Cornish Methodist Church, big congregation. Got the job when the former pastor came to be at odds with the congregation.”

A familiar ring to the story. “He ever work in the mines?”

“In Cornwall, maybe. I don't really know about here.”

“Is he like his older brother, the cap'n?”

“Meaning?”

“Cock of the walk?”

She smiled. “No, that's Madog's way. The word is that Philamon will do anything for his elder brother.”

“Anything takes in a lot,” he said.

She countered, “Especially when blood's involved.”

“Was Philamon a preacher in Cornwall?”

“I couldn't say.”

“How long's the younger Hedyn been here?”

“I don't know that either, and you have become exceptionally inquisitive over the past six months. Do I look like the oracle of Delphi?”

He shrugged. “Do you?”

“Do you even know what Delphi is?”

Damn—caught
. “Can't say I do.”

“Think of a Greek gypsy with a crystal ball and more reputation than substance. I have a couple of errands the boy can run,” she said. “Two hours?”

“No time.”

“No time, or is it no interest?”

“There's plenty of interest,” he said.

“Talk's cheap,” she countered.

“Is Deputy Raber close to his stepfather? Does the reverend hunt?”

She sighed, and held her hands up in frustration.

On his way out he noticed dead birds hanging from wires in front of the store windows. “What's that all about?” he asked, pointing.

“Jordy's idea. It's supposed to keep live birds from flying into our windows.”

“Does it work?”

“Seems to.”

Bapcat called the boy to the stairs. “You can't kill songbirds. I'm the game warden.”

“I didn't kill them,” the boy said in his own defense. “I found them out on the beach. Some of them fly across the big lake and get tired and die. You can always find them out on the flows.”

Exhausted from flying over Lake Superior?
“Where did you get the idea?” Bapcat asked.

“Read it somewhere.”

Bapcat smiled. “Keep reading, and let me know what you learn.”

“I'd rather go hunting.”

“Thanksgiving we'll go get a deer.”

The boy grinned and Frei kissed Bapcat good-bye.

He wondered how she'd feel about his notions toward his own schooling. Raber is Hedyn's nephew-in-law, if that's what it was properly called. Growing up without kin gave Bapcat little interest in such things. Central was a good location, Canady yew in the ridges to the north and west, big deer, all worth a look.

The newspaper article was much longer than he had expected. Was it too much? If not, he had a hunch that what lay ahead might come barreling right at him rather than him having to chase it down, and that maybe patience right now would pay off more than pursuit. Speed without direction didn't add up to much. He'd try to meet with Deputy Raber in a couple of days and see how he reacted. His appearance at the warehouse seemed to say a lot, especially when he saw what was happening and took off.