Mountains of the Misbegotten, page 16
Bapcat could sense a tightness in her. Nerves? Fear?
“This will happen quickly,” she explained, “and as soon as it is done, we’ll go back to the north and camp where we came across the back of that ridge a mile or so from here. There are springs and small creeks there for the stock, and good grass.”
“I might not do that,” Bapcat said.
“You’re not in charge,” she said wearily. “This is old ground.”
“I’m not trying to take over,” he said, “but the Russian and me seen we got us a shadow since we come between them two lakes back some.”
Jone Gleann glared at him. “But you never said anything.”
“And you never told any of us what you want us to do. We don’t read minds.”
“You’re experienced men on the trail. I wouldn’t think I’d have to tell you what to do.”
“You should rethink your thinking,” Zakov said softly, joining them. “One mounted man. He has a telescope. I saw a glint of the glass when the sun got lower in the west.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I guess me and the Russian know a thing or two about following and getting followed,” Bapcat said in his partner’s defense.
She tried to shrug it off. “There are strange people with crackbrains in the mountains, poor for social company, but often rife with curiosity.”
“Same day, every year,” Bapcat said. “The easiest person to surprise is the regular person, the one you can predict.”
“Explain,” she said.
“I’m guessing money is about to change hands.”
She nodded.
“I wouldn’t rule out trouble,” Bapcat said.
Jone Gleann looked behind her and asked sourly, “What do you think we should do?”
Bapcat said, “I would send Pinkhus Sergeyevich and let him confront this shadow-watcher of ours.”
Gleann dispatched the Russian with a flick of her hand.
“What exactly is going to happen here?” Bapcat asked.
“The special train will stop at our flag. We’ll hurry down and move the canvas sacks from the mules to the baggage car. The bags will be loaded into large glass jars, designed for this purpose. They will count the leeches, pay us in cash, and depart immediately.”
“Who is they?” Bapcat asked.
“Dr. Marcella Tourant of St. Louis Catholic Hospital and Sanatorium.”
“It’s always this same doctor you deal with?”
“Always.”
“How long has this gone on?”
“My sixth year. I discovered the leeches seven summers back, made contact with Dr. Tourant, and we established this arrangement.”
“The special train, cash for the leeches—this seems like a lot of money for the doctor to pay. There’re leeches everywhere in this country.”
“Not like these. This is a species much like those favored in Europe, and they are very, very rare, especially this far north. Dr. Tourant uses them in therapy and in her research. She is a woman of science.”
“Who in Lake Mine knows about this?”
When she failed to answer immediately, he quickly pressed. “Not everybody over that way is your supporter.”
“The children know,” she said, “and their parents, and those children who’ve made the trek know of the swamp and what we do there. Only Scale, Jimjim, and I meet the train, always the same day, but always at a different time and location. When I meet Dr. Tourant today, she and I will look at a railroad map and decide on next year’s location.”
“Scale and Jimjim?”
“Just she and I will know the specifics.”
“Where’s the money go?”
“The Ontonagon bank.”
Bapcat looked at her. “How long after you get it does the money get to the bank?”
“A week to ten days.”
“And then?”
“Scale, Jimjim, and I go back into the mountains until September.”
“For what?”
She shrugged. “Whatever moves us,” she said. “Gathering, hunting, looking around.”
“The bank’s people know you put a lot of cash into an account every year about the same time,” he pointed out.
“I don’t want to believe what you are intimating.”
“I ain’t saying nothing for sure. I’m only telling you that the way you done this has left a clear trail to follow, should one get such a notion. It don’t take much to backtrack,” he added.
“Nobody followed us,” she declared.
“This is true,” he said, “but you did not see our watcher today, and the children could have been followed.”
“They would follow children?”
“Possibly, or take one aside and threaten his family, or promise him rewards. Children are human.”
“Your mind is twisted, your view of the world dark.”
“I guess a bullet in the back helps shape a man’s thinking,” he told her.
“Life can be beautiful,” she told him, “if you allow it.”
“I am who I am,” he said.
“I can see that now, but nothing’s happened in all these years.”
“Nothing in the past don’t mean nothing in the future,” he said. “Point is to live so you don’t make nothing easy for nobody, never.”
“I will allow that I am a guarded person, but you are a fortress.”
Minutes later the train hove into sight and began slowing for the marker flat. The entire stop, transfer, count, and payoff lasted less than thirty minutes, and when the train pulled out, heading west, they had two saddlebags filled with cash, two thousand four hundred leeches bringing in three thousand crisp dollars. The group mounted and rode back up into the birches to await the Russian’s return, but he was already there, with a prisoner on a brown horse, trussed with rope and a black canvas bucket over his head.
“I believe this individual to be mentally deranged and incapable of basic human communication,” Zakov said, greeting them. “I gave deep consideration to putting a bullet in his brain, to save anguish and pain, the way I would dispatch an injured horse, but the man’s tears made it impossible, and now I present him to you.”
The Russian lifted the canvas bucket.
“Phin?” Bapcat said.
“General Wellington Trafalgar Smith-Jones Elphinstone, reporting as ordered, if in a somewhat irregular manner made necessary by circumstance. Your man is to be congratulated for his extreme stealth, but needs remediation in his emotional control. A few tears is all it took to get what I wanted, which was to be brought to you.”
“Dammit,” Lute Bapcat said to the man. “What the hell is going on?”
“Far-reaching question, that. The Germans are at war with the Russians and the French, and the Bosch have moved to occupy Belgium, which caused Great Britain to declare war on the Hun. You can safely wager that the Austro-Hungarian blokes will soon opt for war with Russia, and the Serbs will no doubt declare against Germany.”
Zakov asked, “The world is at war?”
Phin said, “All but America, it seems. Your eloquent and loquacious President Wilson has gone mum.”
“He can’t keep the country out forever,” Zakov said.
“I guess we’ll see,” the old Brit said. “Always wondered how long forever is.”
“Never mind all that malarkey!” Bapcat said. “What the hell is going on with you following us?”
“Easily explained, dear boy. Got your information, you see, followed the children, watched your camp, and came along looking for an appropriate time to announce myself. No magic here, my boy. I myself gave McIlrath that horse he so dearly loves, shod it myself with shoes specially made to leave distinctive prints. Like Hansel and Gretel, I imagine, wot.”
“You might’ve been shot!”
“C’est la guerre, dear fellow, luck of the draw and all that. Silver City, I say again: Silver City, October the first, Mr. Archibald, his ducks ’imself, to take personal possession of said delivery.”
“You are Nick Vedder’s clerk,” Jone Gleann said.
“Was, madam, was. Bit uncomfortable with this business. A respite from these bindings would be most welcome, wot.”
Bapcat nodded to Zakov, who cut loose the prisoner.
“Are you out of your mind?” Bapcat asked.
“One clearly hopes not,” the General said. “But how can any one of us pathetic and frail creatures ever know what’s real and what’s just our own notion of real? Mr. Nicholas Vedder is to order materiel for a camp to be established one mile west of White Pine, on the west bank of the Big Iron River. A Frenchy called Pierre Malyotte is to set up said camp and organize it for the arrival of the traps from Silver City to Nonesuch.
“Malyotte and sons run a hotel and general store in Nonesuch and guide hunters and anglers, mainly city sports wanting to buy themselves an adventure in the great North Woods. Malyotte is reputedly a good and honest man. It would behoove us to find a way to confer with him. I doubt he knows the details of what lies ahead with Mr. Archibald.”
“You’ve gone from not knowing much to knowing a heap, General.”
“As ordered, and as it happens, a pattern in my life, which is driven as much by pure serendipity as hard logic and intent. It turns out, you see, Monsieur Malyotte’s integrity in business aside, the old Frenchy dabs it up with a part-time blowen called Les Trois Tetons, for which she is quite deservedly if merely locally famous.”
“This . . . whatever she is, just happened to drop all this information in your lap.”
“For a fee, sir,” the General declared. “It may be a tawdry business, her line, but a business it surely is, one of the oldest in recorded history, wot, and there are protocols extant. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Bapcat looked at his partner, who said only, “He’s a raving lunatic.”
“He brought us information,” Bapcat said.
“No doubt worthless.”
Bapcat did not agree. “We’re going north to make camp, General.”
“Capital notion. I haven’t eaten anything but raw rat in two days, and it is quite salty, I must report.”
Zakov grunted loudly and Phin said, “English humor, old boy, humor. You Russkies are all too bleeding serious. Haven’t you read your Gogol?”
“He was Ukrainian, not Russian,” Zakov said gloomily.
CHAPTER 28
Ironwood, Gogebic County
Wednesday, August 12
They camped north of the rendezvous point for several days, and Bapcat—never happy to be idle when he could be moving and doing—was exceedingly antsy. Moreover, the pile of cash in Jone Gleann’s saddlebags added to his edginess. While the animals enjoyed the break and grazed, they all caught large, fat brook trout from Cherry Creek until they were tired of eating fish.
With the General now part of the sortie, and Rinka Isohultamaki possibly returning, the expedition needed more supplies. When Bapcat pressed Gleann, she told him, “We’ll go to Sullivan and Coumbe in Ironwood. They sell groceries and supplies to most of the area iron mines, and have the best prices around. Most businessmen are robbers and will charge you all they can get.”
Bapcat pulled her aside after her announcement and stumbled at making his point. “I don’t know for sure—probably the Ontonagon bank is fine. But if we’re going to be in Ironwood, why not put the cash in a bank there? You can always have it wired later, and Ironwood’s closer to your annual rendezvous place than Ontonagon. You might even meet the doctor in Ironwood. It’s a bigger town, and you’d both be invisible strangers there.”
“The woodsman is suddenly a finance expert?” she said.
“I just think you ought to get that cash into a safe place.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” she said, and walked away.
Though no decision on the money was forthcoming, their leader decided they would head to Ironwood for supplies.
Ironwood lay about twenty or so miles west, on the banks of the Montreal River, which was also the border with Wisconsin. Zakov and Jimjim immediately decided that the expedition should detour to Silver Street in Hurley, on the Wisconsin side, to visit the famous red-light district and partake of its various amusements and entertainments.
“Suppose you’ll be joining the men,” Jone Gleann said to Bapcat.
“No, I ain’t much for such sport.”
“I thought drinking and women were every man’s sport,” the teacher said.
“Could be, I guess. Just not mine.”
Bapcat had traversed the area years before and it had been an affront to his eyes then. Now it was far worse, mine location after location, starting south of Bessemer with Ramsay and on through Anvil, Yale, Puritan, Bonnie, Jessieville, Aurora, and Norrie, and eventually into Ironwood itself, fifteen thousand people strong, supported by two major mines inside the city limits, a trolley line to move people around, and a lot of languages, of which English was not even the most often heard. For some reason, iron mining seemed far dirtier and more destructive than other kinds, especially open pit sites where they gouged out the ground and no doubt would leave it that way when they had finished taking what they wanted.
It was, in fact, Bapcat thought, like moving through different countries, each one’s political borders marked by hundred-foot-high ridges of red iron ore, the air choked with swirling red dust and smoke, and sometimes around sundown, the low rays of the sun illuminated the air like the Devil’s forge in the fires of Hell itself. The clank and clunk of equipment was relentless at all times of day and night.
Last night they had camped south of Ramsay on the Black River, and this morning steadily made their way ten miles to Ironwood, where they found a traveler’s hotel called Delmer’s House, and a livery for their stock. The men repaired to a public bath run by Finns and Bapcat used the hotel telephone to call Roland Echo.
“We’re in Ironwood,” he told the assistant prosecutor in Houghton.
“Bit off your usual trapline.”
“We need the name of a trustworthy banker here,” the deputy game warden said.
Echo paused. “Now that’s a tall order anywhere,” the man said, “but I’d seek out Hugo Plinlimon of First National. He grew up here, went to school in Ann Arbor, and has a law degree, but married a lovely lady of means and took to banking when her father-in-law went to the Great Vault in the Sky. You can trust Hugo. Feel free to prominently use my name.”
Bapcat thanked his friend and he and Gleann went to the bank, a stately Jacobsville sandstone monolith on the town’s main drag, the bank’s red stone not suffering much from the red dust in the air. Bapcat wondered if that had been an accident or intentional.
“Appointment with Hugo?” a male greeter asked.
“No, sir, but Roland Echo of Houghton said we should see him.”
The man excused himself and went away. Bapcat decided this was the first banker he had ever met whose employees referred to him by his given name.
Ten minutes later they were seated in the banker’s office, which was more of a space carved out among other white-shirt employees. Bapcat expected a banker big shot to have his own big office, not a rabbit’s warren.
“How’s Roland? Still tilting at windmills?”
“He still comes to work early and stays late,” Bapcat answered. The allusion to windmills had no meaning to Bapcat whatsoever, and he ignored it.
“Needs a good woman in his life,” the banker said with a twinkle in his eye.
“Or a naughty one,” Jone Gleann said, and Plinlimon exploded with laughter.
“I take your point,” the banker said when the laughing fit subsided.
“She needs an account for savings,” Bapcat said, driving directly to their reason for being there.
“I’ll want to draw from it,” Gleann added.
“You’re local, ma’am?”
“Lake Mine near Mass and Greenland, or thereabouts,” she said.
“First National is pleased to accommodate you.”
Bapcat plopped the saddlebags on the banker’s desk and unbuckled the straps.
The banker stared. “That’s a lot of cash.”
“Three thousand,” Jone Gleann said. “Even.”
“You won’t be offended if we re-count it before deposit?” the banker asked.
“No, sir,” the teacher said. “I’d do the very same.”
Plinlimon took the bags into another room and came back with a clutch of papers. “We want to make business with us easy,” the man said, “but there are laws and procedures.” He laid the papers on his desk, handed the woman a pen.
Bapcat went outside to the street for a smoke and the banker joined him in his shirtsleeves, waving to passersby, calling many by their first names, and using several languages to exchange comments.
Lute Bapcat showed the man his badge.
“Your colleague Napoleol Gunt is a good customer,” the banker said. “You know him?”
“Not well. We met at training last year over in the Soo.”
“Long time in this community, carried over from the old patronage system, widely respected and narrowly feared by those who have ample reason for it.”
“You know where he lives?”
“As it happens, I do. He has a cabin four miles north of town where Spring Creek meets the Montreal.”
Bapcat thanked Plinlimon and they both went back inside, where Jone Gleann had finished filling out the paperwork. The banker looked over the papers, went into the other room, came back, and handed her a piece of paper and an envelope. “Your receipt for three thousand dollars and your new bankbook is in the envelope. Thank you for your business.”
Back in the street, Gleann told him, “I guess we ought to see to our supplies.”
