Authors: Joseph Heywood
112
Central Location
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1913
Zakov parked the Ford between a boulder and a poor-rock cascade, backing it into place, and Bapcat helped him cut several cedar boughs to cover the vehicle's front.
They each carried a pack and a rifle, .45s in closed holsters. Snowshoes were lashed to their pack frames. Each took a white sheet and covered his regular clothes, the packs and rifle, so that they wouldn't stand out at any distance.
The two men moved quickly down to the river. The temperature back in town was hovering near zero, snow steadily piling up. The temperature was lower here in the middle of the peninsula's spine. The drive up had been hard, but by pushing and taking chances, they had gotten through.
Word had come this morning from Capicelli to meet him as quickly as they could get here. Jaquelle and Jordy were back at the hill, waiting.
The game wardens got close to the river and Capicelli stepped out of the tree line. “You fellas look like coupla damn ghosts.”
“What's going on?” Bapcat asked, getting right to business.
“Cap'n Hedyn come to his brother's house with that peculiar little fella and a big man carrying the same weapon you got. Four of 'em took off with packs and rifles to the north. Paulie's bird-dogging them. I take you to find them, then you two are on your own. Me and Paulie, we're done with this, okay?”
Bapcat slid off his pack, his mackinaw and wool sweater, rolled both, and wrapped them with twine, lashing them to the top of the pack frame. Zakov did the same without being told. In winter, sweat was your enemy. If you had to move fast and far, you stripped and added layers only when you stopped for any time.
“Prob'ly won't need
les raquettes
,” Capicelli said.
“Better to have and not need then to need and not have,” Bapcat said tersely. He had lived in the bush for years, knew what he was doing. Winter here could kill fast.
“Suit yourselves,” the man said, taking off in front of them.
Capicelli took them up into steep, rocky country west of the village, aiming on a diagonal for the top of the spine. They took a knee at the top to wait for the man to range and find sign, which he did in less than five minutes, coming back so they could see him, waving for them to follow to the northeast.
The ground up here was surprisingly flat, but mostly devoid of trees.
Been logged
, Bapcat told himself, which meant there was probably a mine shaft nearby. Central's miners had worked the Northwest Mine, south of town. What was up this way?
Their guide veered into a narrow defile between two hard rock spines that stuck up like black incisors. The sign led them eventually to a flat area, where the hard climb finally ended. Capicelli immediately knelt and used his hand to tell them to do the same. He immediately moved right, working his way through the edge of the trees, with a relatively open field to his left and in front of Bapcat and Zakov. The sign showed the trail going into the field straight ahead.
“We're close,” Bapcat said. “Let's add layers, drop packs here.”
Off in the distance Bapcat thought he saw another man moving toward Capicelli and held his breath until the two turned and started back.
“Paul,” the brother said. “Four men, three hundred yards ahead. They found a deer in a snow cone and killed it. They're butchering it now, got a fire going, and they're passing around a bottle.”
Zakov's eyes widened.
“Hedyn brothers?” Bapcat asked.
“And two more,” their scout reported.
“One with a Krag?” he tapped his own rifle to show the man.
“Same.”
“Why are they stopped up here?”
The man grimaced. “Don't know; just are. Don't think they were looking for deer, but they saw breath coming up from snow piled against small white pine and shot into it. Deer got in there to keep warm.”
“What's up here?” Zakov asked.
Capicelli said, “This whole mountain under us is a beehive of levels, stopes, tunnels, adits. This was the old Copper Falls mine from the way back. We're leaving,” Capicelli added. “Don't know what this is about, and don't want to.”
“Thanks,” Bapcat said, and watched the men slide back the way they had come.
Bapcat whispered, “Wish we knew what brought them up here.”
Zakov replied, “Von Clausewitz reminds us that our intellect always hopes for clarity and certainty, but our natures often find uncertainty fascinating.”
“Van who?”
“
Von
Clausewitz, the great Prussian general and military strategist.”
“Prussian, like a Polish-Russian?”
“Prussians are Germans.”
“Why don't they call themselves Germans, then?”
“Too complicated to explain,” Zakov said, showing his frustration.
He knows how little I know. Why is he with me?
“Let's move forward,” Bapcat said.
They rearranged some of their clothing so that they were almost entirely white, and went right through the woods where the Capicelli brothers had been. The wind was blowing steadily but lightly, the gusts done for now, steadying to a biting wind from the north-northeast.
We're in for it,
Bapcat told himself. He didn't understand why, but up here you could go from a clear day to a complete and total whiteout in minutes, and the whiteout could last for days once it descended.
Even with the wind, he could smell smoke, could tell it was a small fire, an experienced woodsman's fire.
The field to their left was on a slight rise, and as they worked back to the north they saw the men, not thirty yards away, tucked inside a tree line. Just as the brothers had reported, he saw the Hedyns, Sergeant Frankus Fish, and, as he had suspected, Fig Verbankick. He now understood why the word innocent kept tugging at his mind.
“Did you know?” Zakov asked.
“Suspected, I think, but didn't know for sure until now.”
A small deer carcass hung from a tree branch by its hind legs, the cape hanging down the front legs, dragging on the ground, bones showing where they had carved meat off the skeleton. It was last spring's fawn and would taste good; thus, the smell of meat cooking in a pan on the open fire.
Why are they here?
Bapcat wondered.
Frankus Fish stayed apart from the others, on guard, his rifle in one hand, his eyes roving continuously.
“Who is he?” Zakov asked.
“Rough Rider.”
“With you?”
“We were never chums.”
“Why is he here?”
“Ascher Agency.”
“How can you know this?”
“Remember our stop in Seney?”
Zakov nodded.
“Rudyard Riordan told me about him, and later I saw Fish in Helltown. I don't know what his game is. He might be hunting me.”
“You have bad blood?”
“I crossed him once, made him lose face.”
“In Cuba?”
“Yes, before we went up the hill.”
“A long memory is a curse,” the Russian said.
Fish motioned north and said something to the Hedyns that Bapcat couldn't make out. The brothers looked up, nodded, and prodded Verbankick. The three of them left camp.
“Stay with Fish,” Bapcat said, “no matter where he goes,” and crawled to his right as quickly as he could slide along, looking for cover to carry him in the direction of the three men.
He saw that they stopped no more than fifty feet from the camp. Fig Verbankick was carrying a rifle.
Strange.
Bapcat crept along wooded cover to a place in some rocks beyond where the three men stood, and there he saw what they were looking at: a hole, perhaps twenty feet across, gaping and black. Bapcat crawled closer so that he could hear.
“DARK!” Fig said loudly and shakily as Philamon Hedyn attached a rope to Verbankick's miner's harness, the sort they used to make vertical ascents and descents along steeply angled stopes in deep mines.
“The bats shine in the dark,” Hedyn said.
“BATS SLEEP ALL WINTER,” Fig shouted. “DARK!”
“You'll be able to see just fine when your eyes get accustomed to the dark. Fire your rifle now and let's make sure it hasn't frozen.
“BEER!” Fig screamed, and the shout and the unexpected rifle report made Bapcat flinch.
“Not long, okay?” Fig said, whimpering like a child.
“Just shoot a few; it's your reward. You like to shoot, right?”
“
LIKE
SHOOT! Herman's okay?”
“Herman's fine,” Hedyn said. “Get down on your belly and we'll let you down.”
Verbankick pivoted and tried to run, but Cap'n Hedyn swatted him in the head and drove a fist into this belly, and the little man went facedown in the snow, moaning, “I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE!”
“Herman will think you're a baby,” the captain said.
Fig glowered, pushed backward on his belly, holding onto the rope, which the two men gripped, slowly lowering the man into the hole.
“DARK, DARK, DARK!” Verbankick squealed.
The brothers grunted under the effort.
“BEER!” Fig screamed from inside the hole. “DARK!”
“He's sure got the lungs,” Philamon told his brother, and the two of them started laughing.
“DON'T SEE NO BATS!” came a shout from the hole.
Philamon eased toward the lip. “Feel around with your feet.”
“OKAY!”
“See the bats yet?”
“NO!”
“You feel ground yet with your feet?”
“YEAH, DARKâGET ME OUT, DON'T LIKE THIS!”
“Good Lord, son. It's dark out here, too. Remember, this is your reward, and wait until Herman hears. Relax, all right?”
“DON'T WANT TO RELAX!”
The captain said, “Let's go, Phil, this storm's stiffening.”
Hedyn let go of the rope and it snaked across the white snow and dropped into the darkness.
“UH . . . OH!” came a shout from the hole.
The Hedyns walked side by side toward the fire, and Bapcat got to his feet and into step behind them in the darkness. They needed to get Fig out, but couldn't do that until the Hedyns and Fish were accounted for. He hoped Zakov was close by.
The meat on the fire was pungent, and as Bapcat sniffed there was a shot near the fire and Philamon Hedyn collapsed to the ground.
“My brother,” Madog Hedyn said unemotionally.
“No witnesses,” Fish said. “Those are our orders.”
“
I
give the orders,” Madog Hedyn retorted with a snarl.
A shot cut him down beside his brother, and Fish said, “No witnesses, little man.”
It was all silent, but as his heart slowed, Bapcat heard the wind through the trees, some limbs beginning to bend and chatter and crack in the wind, the meat popping and the small cooking fire hissing. When another shot rang out, he instinctively ducked behind a tree and fought to catch his breath, his heart pounding, breathing too fast.
He eased forward, and reached over to check Philamon for a pulse. Finding none, he crawled over to Madog, who had a small pistol in his hand, and no pulse.
Zakov said, “I'll check the other one, then . . . Nothing. He's gone. Where is number four?”
“Underground,” Bapcat said.
“Fish is hit in the head. In this dark, pure luck for the shooter.”
Bapcat's hands shook as he tried to roll cigarettes. “What just happened?”
A distant voice echoed behind them. Bapcat said, “Fig!”
They went to the hole. “FIG!”
“GET ME OUT!”
“We're going to get you out.”
“DARK! I . . . DON'T . . . WANT . . . TO . . . BE . . . HERE . . .”
“Fig, it's Bapcat and Zakov, the game wardens. Remember us?”
“HELP!”
“Get a rope,” Bapcat said, and Zakov took off to fetch their packs while Bapcat tried to keep the man below as calm as he could.
Zakov came back, panting. “Snow's getting heavier.”
They each carried hundred-foot-long loops of half-inch hemp in their packs. Bapcat sat down and quickly spliced them together.
“No lights,” Zakov said. “How will he feel the rope?”
Bapcat thought for a moment, grabbed a snowshoe, and tied the end of the rope to the toe brace.
“This is crazy,” Zakov said. “Is the wood strong enough?”
“It's ash, cut in August, which is as strong as it gets. I want him to sit on the shoe and hang on. As we pull him up, the shoe will act like a small platform. It's narrow enough that he may be able to hook his feet underneath.”
“You've done this before?”
“It seems to work in my mind.”
“I find no reassurance in hypotheticals.”
“Fig, stand where you are! We're lowering a snowshoe on a rope. When you get hold of it, put it on the ground. Put the toe forward, the skinny part, and get a good hold on the rope. It'll be like riding a broom horse, You ever do that, Fig, ride a broom horse?”
“YEAH!”
“When we begin to pull you up, wrap your legs around the snowshoe and cross your ankles. You've got to hang on tight. Are you hearing me? Don't let go of the rope, no matter what.”
“DARK!”
“Fig!”
“OKAY!”
“You understand what we're going to do? You have to help us to help you.”
“OKAY!”
The game wardens launched the shoe over the lip into the black void.
“How the hell will he see it?” Zakov asked.
“Fig, are your hands out?”
“OKAY!”
They played the rope out slowly and deliberately until it began to oscillate.
“Fig, tell us if you can hear anything.”
“HEAR YOUSE!”
“Fig!”
“OKAY!”
“About halfway,” Zakov reported. “A hundred feet, give or take. We've got to be close.”
“I HEAR!” Verbankick screamed. “I HEAR!”
“Is it close, Fig?”