Zakov stepped toward passing strikers. “How many of you speak English—one out of ten? Less?”
A man elbowed his way over to them. “Army’s got instructions to shoot; no orders needed. They all got told this on the way up here. We have to be careful. They want to kill all of us!”
Bapcat and Harju exchanged glances and Zakov said, “In the czar’s army, perhaps. Here, no. You Americans worship order from law, a thing that would be classified as fantasy everywhere else in the world. Draco the Greek would prosper in this country.”
The men went inside. “John Hepting been around?” Bapcat asked Vairo.
“I ain’t seen him for a long time. Too busy, I t’ink.”
“Cruse?”
“T’ings too hot here for fat man. He sticks to cover till it’s safe to be out,” Vairo said with undisguised disgust. “Strikers beat hell out of a lot of company deputies, I heard. We seen none of Cruse’s reg’lar deputies anywhere—so far.”
Bapcat stepped outside again. The strikers were parading in single file on both sides of the street. At the front and between them a band marched, followed by women in flowing white dresses, red Western Federation of Miners sashes draped diagonally over their bosoms.
“Hey, Big Annie!” Vairo shouted at a giant woman carrying an equally outsized American flag, whipping and snapping in the morning breeze.
“Big Annie?” Bapcat asked.
“Anna Clemenc, wife of miner we don’t see so much, on account he got no balls. Annike, she’s tough gal; crossing her is a big mistake.”
Bapcat watched the woman, over six feet tall, straight-backed, iron-jawed; other women clustered around her like peeplings, as did dozens of children, all the girls dressed in virginal white.
“This many women here yesterday?” Bapcat asked Vairo.
“I think not so many.”
“Dangerous if it turns ugly.”
“Dose girls hold dere own, you see,” Vairo said.
“Do Russian women march like this?” Bapcat asked Zakov.
“Our Russian flowers protest on their backs with their legs spread, protest by prostration, an old and revered civic skill, taught by Genghis Khan and Napoleon.”
The striking miners seemed wary of the soldiers’ combined power.
“What would your Colonel Roosevelt do here?” Harju asked.
Lute Bapcat didn’t know, and oddly enough found himself thinking of Jaquelle Frei, who had not yet returned from Chicago.
J. W. Nara came to the saloon and stopped as his brother marched on beside the demonstrators. Bapcat looked at the photographer, dressed in a black trilby, dark suit, string tie, and polished black shoes. He looks like an undertaker. The man’s shoes were beginning to turn red from the dust raised by the marchers.
“You know Caledonia Car Camp Fourteen, up Gardner’s Creek?” Nara asked Bapcat.
“I know it,” Zakov volunteered.
“Night before last a woman named Norma Polo heard a whole bunch of shooting. Yesterday morning she went down to the creek for a look and found twenty dead deer, maybe more.”
“Headless?” Bapcat asked.
“Some, I believe.”
Bapcat grimaced. “You talk to her?”
“Let’s just say that the information came to me. What I heard is, Norma saw a man named Arven Lammie with a shotgun.”
“Someone she knows?”
“I don’t know. Old Man Polo, Norma’s grandpap, owns the camp. This Lammie fella, he used to work at Caledonia Car Camp Fourteen. Now he’s a timberman at Ahmeek Seven.”
“She’s sure of the man’s identity?” Harju asked.
“Supposedly she told him, ‘Arven, why you out there shooting at night?’ and he told her to mind her own business or he’d teach her a lesson.”
“Ahmeek Seven.”
“Yeah, bad bunch in that outfit, a blackguard captain named Madog Hedyn.”
“Heard that name,” Bapcat said noncommittally.
“Makes being mean a hobby,” Nara said. “You might want to step easy around him.”
“We appreciate the information, Nara. Will Miss Polo talk to me?”
“Girlie lives out there among all them loggers. They eat, work, sleep, drink, fart—not much on talking. She’s happy to talk.”
“Use your name?”
“Suit yourself.”
“Hedyn,” Bapcat said, drawing in a deep breath. “Arven Lammie,” he said to Vairo. “Know him?”
“Russian-Finn,” the Italian said. “Mean son of a bitch.” Vairo slapped his hip. “Carry two guns, holster there, ’nother down his right boot. Kicked out of most saloons in Red Jacket. Don’t hear where the man drink no more.”
“Perhaps he’s on the wagon,” Harju offered.
“Snakes see, snakes bite; all snakes can do. God made them one way.”
Harju grinned as the four men trooped out to the Ford.
“Something funny?” Bapcat asked.
“Got people comin’ to you with information already. Knew you’d be good at this job.”
“We don’t have much to show for it.”
“Patience, Deputy. Patience is the cardinal virtue for all game wardens.”
“I thought it would be the ability to shoot fast and straight,” Zakov offered.
53
Caledonia Car Camp Number 14, Houghton County
FRIDAY, JULY 25, 1913
When J. W. Nara had talked about a car camp, Bapcat had had no idea what the man meant, but now as he looked at four railroad cars sitting on a hundred yards of track that connected to nothing, the meaning seemed clear. Ladder steps led to a short platform where a woman stood smoking a small black cigar. She wore a pressed gray apron over a black dress, black leather shoes with low heels, revealing her ankles and nothing more. Her hair was packed in a bun, her hands red and rough.
“We’re looking for Norma Polo,” Bapcat said.
“You ain’t alone,” the small woman said, deadpan, with a growly, gravel voice. “I heard there was a time she was the most looked-for woman in the county.” The woman smiled. “I’m her. Least, I usta be before my grandpa got me work up here in this bloody camp. Usta have beaus piled up in the parlor, could just take my pick, like a whole pack of yammering beagles. Now all I got is a buncha Bohunk Eye-tie jacks that’d rather make love to forty-rod than a woman with hot blood.”
Zakov nudged Bapcat, who started to introduce him, but was cut off. “Pinkhus Sergeyevich Zakov,” the Russian said, bowing gallantly. “We are most apologetic for interrupting your meditation.”
The woman eyed him. “You Polack, Bohunk, Croat—what?”
“Russian,” Zakov said. “Of esteemed ancestry.”
“You like one a them tin stars the mine bosses got running around?”
“Czars,” he corrected her gently. “I am a military man.”
“Like a general or a skunk-low private?”
“I was advancing inexorably upward before the war injured me,” he said, taking a step to show off his limp.
“J. W. Nara told us you found some deer,” Bapcat said, cutting off Zakov.
“He ain’t been around, J. W. hasn’t.”
“Maybe Arven Lammie said something to him,” Bapcat tried.
“Don’t make sense he would,” the woman said, “but Lammie ain’t got a whole lot of sense.”
“Did you or didn’t you find deer and see Lammie with a shotgun?”
The woman stared over Bapcat’s head. “I seen what I saw and heard what I heard,” she said. “You want to see them deer?”
“Your courage is duly noted,” Zakov told her.
“I had twenty by my count, but the wolves got at ’em pretty good last night.”
Fifteen minutes late
r they stood on the killing ground, and surveyed the carnage.
“You heard the shots?” Bapcat asked.
“I did, and I looked out at one point and saw lights, too, miners’ lights—on their hats.” She touched her forehead.
“Was Lammie wearing such a hat when you saw him?”
“Nope, but he had it in his hand, like he was trying to hide it. I reckon I seen enough of them in my life to know one when I see it.”
“You talked to Lammie?”
“Don’t nobody talks to that one, eh. Told me it was none of my business. I told him I work hard, and he and his buckos woke me from a fine dream, so I guess their shooting all night concerns me, all right.”
“Did he threaten you?”
She chuckled. “Said he’d strip me, use me, and throw me down a hole. I told him if he tried, I’d be the last woman he touched.” She held up a sawed-off shotgun, not more than a foot long. “This ain’t no damn ladylike thirty-two. This here’s for turnin’ people to mush. I said, ‘Arven, you no-good skunk, you got doubts what I’ll do, you might want to talk with Old Man Polo, but he’ll do the same thing I will, so I think you’re shit out of luck, chum.’ ”
“Well put,” Zakov said. “Eloquent, simple, and to the point—the zenith of pointed rhetoric.”
“What do I care what some uppity Russian thinks?” Norma Polo countered.
“You should report Lammie’s threat to the sheriff,” Harju told her.
“This here’s the woods,” she said. “We don’t need no lard-ass sheriff waddling around out here like an overstuffed tom turkey. We can take care of ourselves, thank you very much.”
“Lammie’s at Ahmeek Seven?” Bapcat asked.
“Timberman aboveground, topside, first cap’n’s favorite pet. Lammie got in good with the Cousin Jacks, but not enough to get underground where the good pay is. Others trap him down there, he won’t never come up again. Good Book says you reap what you sow, and I guess that’s true.”
“You know where he lives?” Harju asked.
“Across the street from Allouez Four, miners’ house, though he don’t qualify.”
“What does a captain’s favorite do?” Harju asked.
“Whatever the cap’n wants done, and don’t be using the name of a particular cap’n out loud. The Indians say everything got long ears in summertime. And memories, too. Mostly, a favorite kisses his cap’n’s arse.”
“You’ll let us know if you hear from him again,” Harju said.
“Next time he shows, I’ll blow his head off,” she said.
“What we meant is, if you hear any more shooting?” Bapcat corrected.
“Goes on all the time in the deer fields and along the creek.”
“All the time, and you never reported it?” Harju said.
She shrugged. “Like I said, we got our own law out here.”
“Meaning?” Harju pressed her.
“Could come a day when a blind eye might be a good thing for a lawman to have.”
“Silence as needed,” Bapcat said.
The woman pursed her lips and nodded resolutely, lines forming where her mouth was drawn.
“Might I have the honor of calling upon the lady sometime?” Zakov ventured.
The woman said, “I ain’t no lady, and you come sneaking ’round here, I’ll blow your head off, just like Lammie. I don’t like no Russians, silver-tongued dandies, or the like.”
54
Ahmeek Location
SUNDAY, JULY 27, 1913
It had been a long, peaceful night on the hill, the usual lights and fires from mining operations gone black, giant mine pumps and engines silenced—“A preview of the end of the world,” Zakov called it. After his rebuff by Norma Polo, the Russian had been quiet, and only seemed to revive early this morning when Bapcat began to replay events for Harju and Sandheim.
The facts were disjointed, only loosely connected by the seeming rash of dying deer.
Jerko Skander, poacher for pay, rat killer extraordinaire, claimed pay from mine operators for dead deer, perhaps more details to follow, but the man would go only so far in talking about his employers. Enock “Stumper” Hannula had admitted a similar arrangement, and Bapcat had arranged to have charges dropped so Hannula could be released to resume his work and act as an informant. But Hannula had disappeared, perhaps without a trace (or not). There was blood at his camp, but whose? Or had Hannula run away? No way to tell yet.
Fig Verbankick and Herman Gipp seemed incidental, though the Laurium Ice Company letting Herman go after Bapcat had talked to the owner-sales manager seemed more than a coincidence. The destruction and disappearance of what was said to be a perfectly functional ice wagon seemed suspicious and begged for follow-up.
Bruno Geronissi and his songbird killers appeared to have Sheriff Cruse’s protection, at least for the moment, the reason far from clear because the sheriff seemed no friend of foreigners. If Mano Nera had a role in all of this, that role was far from evident or clear, but Bapcat had it in the back of his mind that the Black Hand was in some way an instrument of the mine operators and political power brokers. Maybe.
Bapcat plodded methodically through what they knew, or thought they knew, and Harju, fighting sleep, occasionally asked for clarification of this point or that. Deputy Sandheim made no pretense of participation and only halfheartedly fought sleep.
Only Zakov seemed entirely alert.
After multiple cups of strong coffee and Bapcat’s voice straining to the brink of failure, Zakov fully came alive. “The month of April—this seems to be most relevant. This is when the deer-killing seems to have begun. There is evidence of long-standing conspiracy and preparation by mining capitalists. In Russia the czar’s control people were his secret police, who in turn paid or extorted other citizens to spy on their neighbors, colleagues, and relatives.”
“We ain’t Russians,” Harju said.
“Hear me out,” Zakov said. “Those who have power will do anything to keep it. You cannot retain power without information about your enemies and their intentions, and the most effective way to do this is to find enemies who will take pay and betray those they pretend loyalty for.”
“This is not Russia,” Harju repeated.
“The mine operators and owners are the equivalents of our aristocrats and nobility. They will use spies. They have no other option. This is true across the world, and the mine owners have the sort of money needed to do this. In Russia, of course, the regime can go further: read correspondence, arrest without cause, all of that and more. In this regard, America is not Russia, but we are not talking about your country and its values; we are talking about a class and its values, the most important of which is to keep getting rich on the heads of the poor, and the mine owners will do anything to continue this.”
“What are you driving at?” Bapcat asked. Hepting had already told him there were spies for the mine operators. “As I have said, the deer-killing appears to have begun in April. When did talk of a strike begin, and among whom? It seems foolish to strike now, looking into the mouth of the long winter. It would make more sense to strike in March or April and have summer and six snowless months ahead. Why now? And why not eat the deer they are killing? Who would want this?”
Bapcat was listening. The Russian’s logic and questions made some sense. “Assume you’re right,” he said. “What’s that to us?”
“The longer something exists in secret, the more vulnerable it is to discovery.”
“The deer-killing is no longer a secret,” Sandheim said, his only words in hours.
“We need evidence to connect the deer-killing directly to the companies,” Bapcat said. “If it’s true.”
“We can’t compete with money,” Harju pointed out.
“Pay is an ambiguous and expansive topic,” the Ru
ssian said. “The secret police began under Ivan the Terrible as the Oprichnina. They wore all black and carried the emblem of a dog’s severed head. This gave way eventually to the czar’s Third Department, a bland and ambiguous title, and this was in turn replaced by the Okhranka, the so-called Guard Department. All of these had the same charge: to become experts in what motivates men, be it money, power, women, other men, whatever.”
“Other men?” Sandheim asked, coughing.
“When the business is survival, you use what opportunity presents,” Zakov told them. “Staying alive isn’t for the squeamish.”
“Unless one is morally opposed to using poison to kill wolves,” Bapcat reminded the Russian.
“Point conceded,” Zakov said. “Nonetheless, mine holds.”
“Do these Russian guards get physical and use force?” Harju asked.
“Yes—torture, beatings, starvation, isolation—every form of intimidation is employed.”
“Not here,” Harju said. “We have limits.”
“Do the opponents know these limits?” Zakov asked.
“Their lawyers will,” Harju answered.
“I don’t have experience,” Bapcat said, “but even lawyers may not have a specific notion of our limits. In most ways, game wardens are a new thing, yes?”
Harju nodded. “Relatively new, yes.”
“We should find Mr. Arven Lammie,” Bapcat said quietly, “and help him to decide what’s best for his future: cooperation with us, or blind obedience to his mine bosses.”
Which was how the four came to visit the house of Arven Lammie and were waiting for him when he came stumbling home drunk in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Red Jacket Page 19