The Run to Gitche Gumee

by Robert F. Jones

  “We’re gonna get wet,” Harry called back to me. “Maybe parboiled too, j-just for good measure.”

  “There’s time yet before it gets to us,” I said. “Let’s keep paddling as long and hard as we can, then pull over to whichever bank looks most protected. All we can do is pray until it blows through.”

  “Check.” But he sounded dubious.

  The air had gotten humid now, and the sun felt heavy on our heads and shoulders. Not a breath of breeze. Deer flies appeared from nowhere to halo our heads, swarming out from the shore, biting fast and hard, taking big chunks out of us, but we didn’t dare break the rhythm of our paddling to swat at them. Much good it would have done anyway. Gayelord snapped at the flies, bit at his back and tail, but finally gave up the unequal struggle and nosed his way under the tarpaulin that covered our gear amidships. His growls under there were soon drowned out by the approaching storm.

  A few minutes later I looked to the left and saw the cutting edge of the wind moving toward us. Closing fast. The spiky tops of the jackpines and spruce bent to its sudden lash. Ahead, not a furlong upriver, a tree toppled into the stream, and a flash of blinding white lightning whipped out of clear air to blast a nearby spruce into a column of steam, splinters, and sizzling needles. Thunder cracked loud and close and Gayelord whined as if doom were upon him. We were rounding a sharp bend. I saw white-water ahead—Heartbreak Rapids already? Harry looked back at me. I pointed my paddle to the left bank and we dug for it.

  Ahead the river opened out to a new view, and I thought I saw something flash red and black, metallic, against the far bank. Then—pop, pop, pop—what sounded like distant gunfire but could have been breaking branches. Right then I couldn’t concern myself with that, and the sound was drowned out anyway by the shriek of wind, followed by a blinding sheet of rain and hail the size of hen’s eggs that laced us hard as we swept in under the overhanging branches of the shoreline.

  We were out of the wind and most of the hail, in the lee of a man-high riverbank. Now all we had to worry about were-toppling trees and lightning.

  The storm blew through fast. The hail died away, moving ahead with the storm front, and the rain steadied down to a rapid thrum that lashed the river into froth. Already the water was discolored, stained with tendrils of graybrown clay sluiced from the banks. Branches, leaf litter, rafts of pine cones and needles bobbed past us, with now and then a whole tree thrown in for good measure, trailing its rootball behind it like a sea anchor. We were drenched to the skin, of course, and I could feel knots coming up on my head where the ice balls had bounced off of it. The air turned chilly. No. Downright cold.

  As the line squall boomed away toward the east and the rain eased off to a drizzle, all we could hear was the patter of icy water from the trees overhead and the rush of the river. Then that popping came again. Gayelord, who’d emerged from under the tarp, turned to look downriver, his ears peaked again.

  “You hear that?”

  “G-gunfire you think? Maybe duck hunters?”

  “Doesn’t sound like a shotgun. Too sharp. That’s a rifle. Maybe two different ones.” I remembered that red and black flash I’d seen along the bank ahead of us—like lightning reflected off painted metal. My God, could it be Stoat’s Beaver? We’d last seen it heading north. Maybe it had crash landed and Dobbs or Sailor was firing shots to attract attention.

  I told Harry about it.

  “Christ!” he said. “The girls! Th-they were all supposed to be heading back yesterday.”

  More shots in the distance. Four quick, throaty blasts that sounded like they came from a source close by, about where I’d seen what might be the Beaver, then two sharper cracks from a greater distance.

  “L-let’s get on down there,” Harry said, picking up his paddle.

  “Wait a minute. Someone signaling for help would fire three measured shots, then pause, then fire three more. That’s definitely two different rifles. One’s only about two hundred yards away and the other’s farther out, maybe twice as far.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “We spent a lot of time on the rifle range at Parris Island.”

  “So—what do we do?”

  “Let’s slip down there and have a look. Not in the canoe. Through the woods. And let’s bring the Thompson and the BAR, just in case.”

  “In case what?”

  “One of those rifles sounds like a Springfield. Curly’s weapon of choice.”

  We tied the bow line to a spruce root and worked our way downstream through the dripping woods, keeping well in from the bank for cover. It was thick in there. Gayelord came with us. I thought of leaving him tied to a thwart in the canoe, but he might bark when we left him and give us away. He knew something serious was up, probably from the tones of our voices, and stayed close behind me. We heard more firing, not fast this time, but single, sporadic shots, as of snipers firing at movement. When we were about opposite the nearer rifle, we got down on our hands and knees and crawled toward the river.

  It was the Beaver all right, moored in a shallow cove on the far bank. No sign of any people, but they’d all be under cover. Downstream about a quarter of a mile I saw what was left of the town of Chemango—a few blackened brick chimneys poking up from the second growth, and the abandoned general store cum gas station, hard by the riverbank. There were holes in the roof and the pumps were those old Mobilgas bubbledomes, faded red. A sign dangled cockeyed from a chain overhead: “The Sign of the Flying Red Horse.”

  “Keep your eyes skinned for a muzzle flash over there by the plane,” I told Harry.

  It wasn’t long in coming. We both saw the lance of flame spurt from behind a big, downed pine on the south side of the cove. The other rifle fired at the muzzle flash and bark flew from the pine trunk.

  “C-could you see where that second shot came from?”

  “No, but by the sound of it he’s maybe in the store, or behind one of those chimneys. Downstream from our gang, at any rate.”

  “Our gang? S-Stoat wants our scalps, remember?”

  “Curly and Doc want ’em worse,” I said. “Our balls as well. And the girls are over there near the plane, by the way. If Curly hasn’t shot them yet.”

  “We’ve got to get over and help them. They need our firepower.” Harry meant business now. No stutter this time. “We’d be in Curly’s sights if we tried to cross right here. Easy meat. But maybe we can haul the canoe upstream, above that last bend, then cross over and reach them through the woods.”

  “Good idea.”

  Wading chest-deep up the shoreline, we towed the canoe upstream under the cover of overhanging branches. It was hard going, slippery rocks underfoot and the current working against us, but when we were masked from Curly’s view by the river-bend, we piled in and were quickly across. We pulled the canoe up on the bank and stopped to consider our next move.

  “Sounds like our guys only have one rifle,” I said. “The one Sailor was carrying the other day when we saw them fly over. But they probably have those shotguns, too. Saving their fire for close shots. I hope the hell they don’t cut loose when we come up behind them.”

  “We’ll work in close, keep under cover, then yell to them.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Harry fed more .45 slugs into the Tommy gun’s drum and stuck the rest of the box in his shirt pocket. I draped the bandoleer of BAR magazines over my shoulder. Then we moved out, into battle.

  When we were within a hundred yards of the pine log, Harry yelled, “Mr. Stoat, hey you guys, it’s Harry and Ben. We’ve come to help you.”

  Silence. Then Stoat yelled back, “Do you still have that submachine gun you fired at me?”

  “Yeah,” I shouted. “And a BAR, too. With plenty of ammo for both weapons.”

  Another long pause. What was this? An audition? A job interview at Stoat’s goddamned bank? Then we heard the women’s voices arguing with him. I could make out Cora and Wanda, but Mrs. Stoat was the loudest, and she was chewing her husband out in no u
ncertain terms. He grumped back at them, something we couldn’t make out, but it sounded from his tone of voice like he’d caved in.

  “Come on in, boys,” Mrs. Stoat yelled to us.

  “And keep your heads down.” That was Flo talking. It was good to hear her voice. “Curly can pick a gnat’s nose at three hundred yards.”

  “Yes, please do be careful!” Wanda and Cora chiming in. Even better.

  12

  THE SIGN OF THE FLYING RED HORSE

  They were all huddled in the protective lee of the pine log, the girls and Mrs. Stoat grinning at us as we bellied in. Stoat glowered and looked away. He chewed savagely at another of his fragrant Upmann’s. Flo had their rifle—a Model 99 Savage, the lever action with the five-shot rotary magazine. A lot of empty brass lay scattered around her. Sailor was down flat on his back with a bloody bandage wrapped turban style around his head. His eyes were glazed with shock, but he smiled up at us and raised a thumb. “Cavalry to the rescue,” he said. Dobbs was at the far end of the log with one of the Brownings. Stoat had the other next to him. Neither of them looked at us.

  What had happened, as we pieced it together, was about what I’d figured. Dobbs refused to use the tainted avgas at the lodge and was heading for Superior to tank up. That electronic repair we’d seen him making the other night was on the Beaver’s fuel gauges but his fix hadn’t worked and they didn’t realize they had too little gas for the flight. They’d put down on the river with the engine sputtering. “Then these outlaws attacked us,” Mrs. Stoat said. She shuddered. “That Dr. Haugenbusch is a discredit to his profession. I shall certainly report him to the American Medical Association.”

  “Mother,” Cora broke in. “He’s not a real doctor. That’s only his nickname, as Florinda told us. He’s a bank robber.”

  “How are you doing for ammo?” I asked Flo.

  “Half a box left,” she said.

  “What caliber is the Savage?”

  “Aught six.”

  I handed her one of the magazines from the bandoleer. “Here’s twenty more.” I’d have given her the BAR but it had iron sights. She’d be more accurate using the four-power scope on the rifle.

  “Where are Doc and Curly holed up exactly?” Harry asked.

  “In that building there by the river,” Flo told him. “The old store with the gas pumps in front. Anyway Curly’s in there. Doc isn’t shooting, being blind like he is, but he’s probably right in there with him. He’s carrying that pump gun of yours.”

  I popped my head over the log for a quick look. Curly fired just as I dropped it again. The bullet smacked the bark and whined away into the woods.

  “There’s that old dirt road right ahead of him,” I said. “He can’t come across it without exposing himself. What do they have for a boat?”

  “That canoe you shot up,” Flo said. “Curly patched it like I knew he would. They were paddling upstream toward us just before the storm hit. Mr. Stoat spotted them first and said, ‘Good, help’s on the way.’ When I looked over and recognized them, I told Sailor to right away cut loose at them. Thank God he did. Otherwise they’d have come right in here and slaughtered us.” She shook her head. “Curly nailed poor Sailor as it was, a snap shot from two hundred yards away in a moving canoe.”

  “Did Sailor hit them, put a few holes in the canoe anyway?”

  “I don’t think so. Before I could pick up the rifle they’d ducked in behind the riverbank, by that dock there just next to to the store. Since then it’s just been a sniper’s fight.”

  I was trying to anticipate Curly’s next moves. “He’ll probably wait until dark, then move out of the store. Maybe circle back through the woods and try to outflank us.” There went our afternoon of steelhead fishing. And probably our ride back to Heldendorf as well.

  “Have you radioed for help?” Harry asked.

  “Dobbs tried to climb back in the cockpit but Curly made it too hot for him,” Flo said. “He couldn’t even wade out to the float before bullets were splashing all around him. Anyway, with the storm screwing up the atmospherics, he probably couldn’t have raised anyone anyway.”

  “Wonder why he hasn’t shot up the plane?” I said. “He’s mean enough to do it for sheer spite.”

  “Maybe they want the Beaver,” Flo said. “They’ll have to clear out of this country now, figuring you fellows blew the whistle on them. The cops could show up any minute. And Doc knows how to fly—he was in France with the Lafayette Escadrille during the First World War. He liked to talk about the time he used a Flying Jenny in a bank robbery out in Kansas. That was back in the twenties. Could be he figures on handling the controls while Curly acts as his eyes in the co-pilot’s seat.”

  “Pretty risky,” I said.

  “They’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Well,” Harry said, “they can’t fly it now without some gas.”

  Flo thought about that for a moment. Her eye was glued to the scope through all this, and now she squeezed off another shot. Then cursed. “Stick your head up again, you bastard,” she said. She resumed our conversation. “No, unless there’s some fuel left in the storage tanks at the gas station. Float planes used to land here back in the forties, guys flying in to fish the lakes in the Chequamagon country.”

  So we had the plane, they had the avgas. The trick would be to sneak in there and filch some of it. But how?

  Now Stoat piped up. “When are you fellows going to begin shooting? You have those machine guns, why don’t you use them?”

  “They’re our element of surprise,” I told him. “Doc and Curly don’t know we’re here yet, and that we have automatic weapons. Flo thinks they also may be sitting on a supply of avgas, in one of those pumps at the store.”

  “Well, we must get some of it then. Time’s a-wasting. I have to be back at the bank by nine a.m. tomorrow. You’re a bold young Marine. Charge them singlehanded, or take Mr. Taggart with you. Root them out of there. Surprise them with firepower. With those guns it should be easy as pie.” Dobbs looked over at me and smirked. His look seemed to say, Now you know what I have to put up with.

  But maybe it would work. I could leave Flo back here with the BAR to provide heavy covering fire while Harry, Dobbs, and I worked our way up along the riverbank, under cover. Then one of us could shoot up the store with the Tommy gun while the other two dashed for the gas pumps and filled a couple of cans with high-octane avgas.

  “Do you have any gas containers on the plane?” I asked Dobbs.

  “Two ten-gallon jerricans. Empty. And they’re in the back of the cabin. We’d never be able to fetch them, not the way that guy shoots.”

  “I think I can do it,” I said.

  The Beaver was moored by a single line to a tree on the bank, floating about twenty feet out from the shore. I told Flo what I wanted her to do, then stripped to my racing trunks and crawled down to the river. It was an easy underwater swim to the far float, the one on the upriver side from Curly’s vantage point. I looked back to Flo and gave her a thumbs-up. Wanda crouched beside her, eyes big with worry. Flo racked the lever of the Savage and started pouring shots into the storefront. I pulled myself up on the float, then scrambled into the portside hatch. As Dobbs said, the empty gas cans were stowed in the rear, under a couple of tarps. I grabbed them and crawled back. In the water, I unscrewed the caps and let them fill halfway. That way they could travel with me to the shore, underwater. Curly wouldn’t see them and would have no idea what we were planning. Anyway, I hoped he wouldn’t.

  Back behind the log I emptied the jerricans. Now came the hard part. I explained my plan to the rest of them. “Is twenty gallons of fuel enough to get you out of here?” I asked Dobbs.

  “Yeah, as far as Ashland anyway. Maybe even Duluth.”

  “Well, let’s go get it.”

  The pilot looked at me and frowned. “It’s not in my MOS, but what the hell.” He smiled. “The Japs couldn’t kill me. I don’t see why a renegade Marine like this guy Curly should be able to.” Sp
oken like a true movie flyboy. John Wayne, maybe, in Flying Tigers.

  Harry and I flipped a coin to see who would carry the gas cans. I won, for a change. He’d hang back at the riverbank and provide covering fire, alongside Dobbs with the Savage. Flo’s BAR would give us a crossfire. I’d rush the pumps with the jerricans. They were the old-fashioned kind of pumps with a manual crank and didn’t require electricity. I’d just have to pray that our guesswork about Doc’s intentions were correct, and that there was indeed still some avgas left in the tank.

  “Give us ten minutes to get in position,” I told Flo. “Then open up with all you’ve got.”

  “Shouldn’t you synchronize your watches?” Wanda asked. “They always do it in the movies.” Cora nodded her solemn corroboration.

  I didn’t have a watch, but Dobbs did. Waterproof, too. Stoat unstrapped his Patek Philippe and handed it to Flo—“Be careful, that timepiece cost $5,000!”—and we synchronized them to Wanda’s satisfaction. Then we slipped once again into the Firesteel’s icy water.

  As we worked our way down the bank, we could hear Flo popping a few desultory rounds at the store. She had the BAR on single fire. She’d flip the selector to full automatic when the time came. There was no difference Curly could detect in the sound of her fire. Both weapons shot the same round.

  When we reached the dock, Harry went up the bank first with the Tommy gun. He looked over the top, then signaled us up. We had four minutes left on Dobbs’s watch before H-hour.

  “I think I can sneak around behind the store,” Harry said. “There’s a big pile of snags back there for cover. Captain Dobbs can shoot from here, and with Flo firing from the front they might panic. They ought to. Hell, they’re surrounded.”

  “That drum on the Thompson’s supposed to hold a hundred rounds,” I told him. “It’s probably less. Try to keep your bursts short and sweet, conserve ammo, light finger on the trigger. The cyclic rate of fire on that bastard is about six hundred rounds a minute, so you could empty the drum in a hurry if you don’t watch out. Just . . .”