Red Jacket (5 page)

10

Marquette, Marquette County

FRIDAY, MAY 23, 1913

The man who opened the door was stoop-shouldered, with a drooping blond mustache, head shaved smooth as a Lake Superior rock, and huge wing-like ears. “Bapcat?” the man greeted him.

The trapper nodded.

“Horri Harju. Any trouble finding the place?”

Bapcat shook his head. “Only green house on the street.”

“So it is, so it is. Come in, come in.”

The house looked from without like a residence, but the interior was more like a military warehouse with crates of ammunition, stacks of rifles and boxes of pistols, snowshoes, skis and bindings, iron skillets, rucksacks—all sorts of things.

“Coffee?” Harju asked. “I assume you accepted the job, or you wouldn't be here, would you?”

“No coffee,” Bapcat said.

“I think half my blood's coffee,” Harju said, and before the statement fully registered with Bapcat, it was punctuated with a looping roundhouse sucker punch that Bapcat barely deflected with his left forearm, while grabbing Harju by the shirt, pulling him over and forward, and driving his knee into the man's crotch. Harju staggered backward, laughing and rubbing his crotch, while Bapcat began massaging his knee, which hurt like the dickens.

Pain in the knee momentarily ignored, Bapcat stepped toward the man, who put up his hands and said, “I surrender. Ya, you'll do Bapcat. In this job you gotta be ready at all times. The beaver ban help make up your mind?”

Who is this lunatic?
“What beaver ban?”

Harju groped in his trousers and pulled out a tin pot, which was dented, and tossed it to Bapcat. “Good idea to assume the worst going into any scrap. That pot's lined with heavy felt—my late wife's idea. She wanted me to invent armor to repel bullets, too, but I ain't had that sort of time. Truth is, I may need to redesign the pot. I felt your knee, and that's pretty rare. You're the first one to ever shed that first punch.”

“You
wanted
me to fight?”

“Well, sure—we needed to know something more about you.”

“Talk isn't good enough?”

“Sometimes action is far more compelling. Before we finish here, I'll show you how to put an opponent to sleep by pinching his neck.” Harju motioned at his own neck. “The beaver ban will be announced in July. There will be no beaver trapping through 1920. Populations have crashed downstate, and they're in damn poor condition most places up here as well. You agree?”

“I don't know about down below, but there are a lot fewer over my way.”

“Excellent distinction. A game warden needs to stick with what he knows and what he's seen. Avoid generalization when you can.”

He'd noticed, but never thought about connecting his personal experience to a larger picture. “I've seen.”

“So, if the ban wasn't the decider for you, what was?”

“Colonel Roosevelt.”

“You hold the man in high regard?”

“The highest.”

“He as brave as some make out, or just some reckless rich boy?”

“Bit of both,” Bapcat said. “Not sure how to sort out which is which.”

Harju smiled. “Yep, I think you'll do.”

“What's
your
job here?”

“Deputy warden—like you, but for Marquette County. The chief likes for me to orient new Upper Peninsula deputies.”

“Long at the job?”

“Ten years. Sometimes it feels longer, but with this civil service change, we're going to be hiring more qualified men, not a bunch of cowards, hacks, and sycophants. You hearing anything about a strike looming over your way?”

“There's been talk.”

“It could get ugly fast,” Harju said.

“For the miners.”

“For everyone except us. For us it could be a windfall. See, in this job you need to keep your eyes and ears open all the time, pay attention to everything that happens around you. Comes a strike, businesses get in trouble, can't make payrolls, can't pay their employees—who can't eat—and that's when we can expect violations to happen. Whole world is cause and effect once you adjust to thinking that way.”

“Am I to be the first warden over my way?”

“No. The first was a disaster named Case Bestemand. When they sent him to me, I wired the chief in Lansing and told him I had lots of doubts. Bestemand was once a deputy for Sheriff Cruse, who continued to use him as his personal dog. Bestemand didn't last a month. He went down to the Chassell area to look into rumors of wild fowl market-hunting in the marshes of the Sturgeon River. Trapper found him stumbling around the woods down by Pelkie a week later. He'd been severely beaten, his skull fractured. Hospital in Marquette sent him to the state mental hospital in Newberry, but he walked away from there and hasn't been seen since. That was two years ago.”

Harju took a breath and looked into Bapcat's eyes. “This job we do is dangerous. People up here grudgingly accept law in towns, but they don't accept law in the woods, and I doubt they will in the time we're on this Earth.”

“Are there a lot of laws?”

“Not yet,” Harju said. “But there will be, by and by. Deer and small-game licenses start this year, no shooting waterfowl in spring, new deer-season dates, and down the road, maybe as early as next year, there will be shooting only deer with horns, no more does and fawns. The limit on possessed fish is reduced, and people from outside the state now need to buy a fishing license, just like we do. You and me will talk a lot about all this in more detail, but that's a pretty fair look at what we're in.”

Bapcat was trying to process all the information.

Harju said, “Let's start with this principle: If a violator demands a jury trial, you'll probably lose. Few jurors will find a neighbor guilty of the same things they do themselves. This means your job is to be clever and get a confession from the man and then quickly get him to the justice of the peace for sentencing. If you can't get a confession, thrash the hell out of the man so that even if the case gets to the jury and he wins, he will already have lost because he'll remember what you did to him, which of course you will promise to mete out to him every single time you find him even stretching a law.”

Bapcat was speechless.

“You didn't hear that as an official order from the department,” Harju said. “I'm just telling you a way to handle some of our business. How'd you like being a miner?” Harju asked, changing subjects.

“Wasn't fond of being underground in the dark in closed spaces.”

“Three years at the Mohawk Number One, I hear.”

Do they know everything about me?
“Yes, three.”

Harju grinned. “Now that we're all civil servants, we're authorized to investigate personal backgrounds. Don't be alarmed. Were me in that mine job, I wouldn'ta lasted a month. You were a trammer, right?”

Bapcat nodded. “Yes, trammer.”

“Hard work?”

“Hard and scary, everything done by hand. Most mine owners wouldn't invest in motorized equipment.” Bapcat recalled the thirteen men he saw die in two years.

“The darkness drive you out?”

“A doctor told me he'd insist they fire me rather than let me go back underground again, so I took my leave. By then I had a stake saved.”

“Why'd you take the job in the first place?”

“Money. I could live cheap and build my stake.”

“Trap any while you were a miner?”

“No time. Mining takes all the tar out of you.”

Harju nodded. “This job will do the same.”

“This job's aboveground,” Bapcat said.

“And it's outside,” Harju added with a sly grin.

“How long will I be here?”

“Three, four days. That a problem?”

“No, sir, I'll wire people and let them know.”

“Rule One,” Harju said, holding up a forefinger. “Don't never let people know where you are going, or when, and don't never take the same route to or fro. The best game wardens are shadows of shadows. You bring enough duds with you?”

“Some.”

“Don't worry; we'll get you fixed up. Just listen when I instruct, and for Pete's sake, ask questions. Ready?”

Bapcat held out his hands. “It's your show.”

Harju grinned and shook his head. “
Our
show, Deputy. From this moment on, you and me, we're brothers, Bapcat.”

11

Marquette, Marquette County

MONDAY, MAY 26, 1913

Horri Harju was a fair man, a demanding teacher, passionate about work, making a salient point each time he could find an opening about how Bapcat needed to achieve a big success early on to validate the change to civil service status for game wardens.

One morning Harju announced, “That house in Ahmeek won't be available. There's been a fire. You'll need to find another abode.” Harju gave him a purchasing price range and told him, “Make it damn clear you're representing the state government.”

“Won't that make them want to charge more?”

“It will, which is why you should be resolute on price haggling, and not settle for a cent more than what you think you would pay if it was your own money.”

“I've never bought a house before,” Bapcat confessed.

“There's a first time for everything,” Harju pronounced. “Make them draw up a contract and send it to Chief Oates for his review and approval.”

Bapcat immediately began to wonder if the house fire was somehow related to how unpopular game wardens were, and when he shared his concerns, Harju laughed and nodded. “Good, good. That's the right attitude for deputies. Accept no coincidence on its face value.”

•••

Bapcat settled into his role as student. The litany of duties wardens faced was awesome, far more extensive than Bapcat had ever thought, and it left him wondering if this job was the right thing for him. He didn't mind working hard, but he liked having time to think. How could he find time to supervise and train township fire wardens, enforce commercial fishing regulations, help plant fish sperm and fingerlings, patrol lands, lakes, ponds, and streams, all while looking for fish and game violations, apprehending and prosecuting violators, securing private land for use as state game refuges, lecturing the public on conservation and fire prevention, removing obnoxious fish from designated state waters,
and
keeping streams and rivers free of beaver obstacles?

Midday a white-haired man with a red face showed up at the green house and Harju said, “Omer Clarke, meet Lute Bapcat. Lute meet Omer, the department's school coordinator.”

“Big title,” Clarke said. “But I'm a deputy, paid the same as you and Horri. I was a schoolteacher down to Lansing, but Davey Jones came up with the idea of recruiting kids to do fire prevention and conservation. He offered me the job and I took it. Statewide we've now got more than five thousand boys in the Michigan Forest Scouts. The last warden over your way did nothing with this program, but we have a chapter in Red Jacket. Your contact there is a teacher at Laurium High School named Cornelius Nayback. Bestemand gave Nayback a hundred dollars for MFS uniforms and sundries, and we ain't heard from Nayback since.”

“Has this program helped reduce fires in the state?” Bapcat asked.

“Has indeed, but more importantly, these scouting groups have allowed deputy wardens to move more freely in their communities and towns and to be accepted. Used to be it was damn near a local crime or cardinal sin to help the game warden. Now it's getting less so. More and more people are coming over to our way of thinking, which is why dealing with the public in a controlled and professional way is so important for our future
and
for our safety. Me, I work around Lansing, but you fellas are alone out in the deep bowels of Hell, and if you make enemies, your situation makes it real easy to get rid of you.”

“Like the last warden?”

“Possibly,” Harju said.

“We
know
Bestemand gave Nayback the money?” Bapcat asked.

Clarke said, “Draft drawn on Miners Bank in Laurium. We have the record.”

“Has the man checked with anyone since Bestemand disappeared?”

“No,” Harju said, “and we sent two letters asking that the money be returned to the State. No response either time.”

“Who chose Nayback?”

“Cruse—same man who chose Bestemand,” Clarke said. “Never mind Nayback for now. The big thing is to treat people fairly, don't let your temper loose unless it's warranted, and make sure you always pay attention to young people. They're the secret to our long-term success. If they grow up doing the right thing, it will make our job a lot easier someday.”

That afternoon on the shooting field south of the federal prison, Bapcat had fired the .30-40 Krag-Jørgensen, 12-gauge shotgun, and .44 revolver. At the end of the shooting Harju looked impressed.

“Some might shoot better with a shotgun or pistol, but your rifle score is the best we've ever had, and your combined results are also the best,” Harju said. “Word is that you used that rifle to lethal advantage during the Spanish War. Let's hope you never have to point a weapon at anyone in your career as a deputy.”

Bapcat nodded. He'd killed enough in Cuba.

Harju asked, “Any thoughts on a warden's biggest advantage?”

“Surprise,” Bapcat said.

Harju nodded. “Appear when and where they least expect it. Make folks think you are multiple people, and that you can work days on end without sleep and be everywhere and check on everyone.” Harju leaned over. “You only have to do this a couple of times. Violators talk to each other. Word will get around, and you'll have them all looking over their shoulders all the time. You'll see. It's good that you can handle a firearm, but your main weapon will be your brain. Without that, you're sunk.”

“Is this the end of things here?” Bapcat asked.

“Pretty much. Tonight we'll get you set up with report forms and law manuals, and you can head for home and get started finding a place to live.”

“If Ahmeek's out, what about staying at my own place?”

“A trapper's shack way the hell back in the woods? That won't do, Lute. Take a deep breath here and now. Find a bloody place close to town right from the start. Get a hotel room first, and work from there. I'll be over in a couple of weeks to look in on you.” Harju gave him a big grin and squeezed his shoulder. “All state wardens meet two or three times a year for training from the state biologist and senior deputies. It's always interesting. Your first group session will be later this year in Sault Ste. Marie. Now, don't you go running off like that last fella.”

Lute Bapcat looked the man in the eye. “I don't run. Ever.”