Mountains of the Misbegotten, page 25
“But why? If you must sleep, get off and sleep.”
She was difficult to talk to.
“Will you kill Nixon?” she asked, “if he is the guilty one?”
“No. I’ll try my best to arrest him.”
“But you may have to shoot him.”
“That’s possible, but I will do my best to avoid it.”
CHAPTER 46
Norwich
Sunday, September 6
Nixon never showed any indication of knowing he was being followed, and the dog, if it knew, showed no sign of tipping off its master. Bapcat used his spyglass for a closer look at their quarry. The man showed no concern, and kept his head and horse pointed straight east, either lost in thought and oblivious, or the sort of person who could focus on only one thing at a time. The stock of a long gun protruded from a saddle scabbard, but there was no way to tell if it was a scattergun or a rifle.
Isohultamaki rode close behind him, and when Nixon stopped and dismounted, the followers stopped. They were somewhere north of Matchwood.
Nixon left his horse and scuttled down a narrow defile with a slow-running stream at the bottom. Bapcat followed the man and watched him check a trap that was set alongside an impressive beaver dam.
“He’s trapping all right,” he told his companion as their slow-follow ground forward again.
“Can you tell what he’s after?” she asked.
“Standard number thirty-four Hawley and Norton, set for beaves,” he said. “Used them myself.”
“Beaver trapping is allowed? I thought it was closed,” she said.
Impressed she knows such a thing. “You’re right. There’s a three-year ban to allow the population to recover,” he explained.
“State law?”
“State regulation,” he said, which triggered some thoughts.
Oates had questioned him about beaver populations at the meeting where he had been hired. The boss had made the point then, that if there weren’t enough animals, you stopped the activity and let them come back. Would Lansing do the same if hunted animals were in question, and how would you know such control was needed? Only then did he again remember the animal and fish survey Lansing had wanted game wardens to conduct. It would provide a sort of rough count. Either Oates or others at the top seemed to have a strong interest in using their intelligence to manage game population. The answer from Oates about bears seemed to fit this overall concern, which told him that some men down there had a pretty good big picture of what ought to be going on.
“Winchester,” Isohultamaki said, interrupting his thoughts. “Forty eighty-two caliber.”
“What is?”
“Nixon’s rifle.”
“How do you know that?”
“While you followed him, I went to his horse and looked,” she said proudly.
“The horse could have spooked, or the dog could have barked,” he told her.
“But they didn’t. What’s wrong?”
“You shouldn’t have,” he said.
“He could have seen you when you followed him. Do you want a partner with initiative, or not?”
“Yes,” he conceded. “Initiative is good.”
“All right, then,” Isohultamaki said. “The rifle has a twenty-six-inch, octagonal barrel—a fine weapon. What caliber struck you?”
“Something between forty seventy-two and forty eighty-two,” he told her.
“Ah,” she said.
“There are Winchesters everywhere,” he reminded her.
“Will we talk to Mr. Nixon? We have reason because of the beaver trapping, right?”
“Yes, we have cause, but I’m not sure yet.”
“When will you reach certainty?”
“When I do.”
“Do you want a partner who wants to learn?”
“Learning’s fine,” he said.
CHAPTER 47
Norwich
Monday, September 7
They hovered around the man’s cabin all night. No light showed from inside, no smoke rose from the chimney, but it was humid, and there was no reason for a fire. They needed to be invisible, and they had provisions that didn’t need cooking. Hot food made the mind stronger, but security came before comfort. Even so, Bapcat became suspicious, and had to force himself to sit tight until the first hints of dawn, when they crept closer to the man’s cabin. The camp was situated a half-mile west of the mine, on the south side of a hill overlooking a valley, the West Branch of the Ontonagon River a few hundred yards south of them.
No dog, no man, no sound, no light inside, no smoke, no nothing. Bapcat considered knocking on the door and confronting the man about the beaver trapping. Taking beaves was illegal now, and what sort of trapper took beavers in summer when their pelts were sparse and ratty? As for the rifle and his being shot, suspicion alone wouldn’t get a warrant, and in any event, they were too far from anywhere or anyone to seek any sort of timely legal counsel.
Isohultamaki went behind the cabin and came back thirty minutes later. “He has a rabbit hole, a tunnel south. He left it uncovered, otherwise I wouldn’t have found it.”
Typical trapper behavior, to have alternate ways in and out. But trapping beaver in August and forgetting to cover his escape hole was unlike any trapper behavior Bapcat had ever witnessed.
“I guess he left in a hurry” was the best he could manage.
“Why?”
He had no answer for a while, but as they sat, he sniffed at her.
“Why are you doing that?” she demanded.
“Your scent,” he said.
“I smell clean,” she said. “I bathe regularly.”
“Exactly. I caught a whiff of you when you were coming back to join me from behind the cabin. You smelled clean.”
“He smelled me because I’m clean?”
“People who live alone in the woods develop abilities to hear and smell better than town people. They have to if they want to survive.”
“I live alone,” she said defensively.
“You are a woman, and you bathe.”
“Are you telling me this to eliminate me from wearing a badge?” she asked.
“No,” he said, trying to soothe her and not sure why. “Maybe you can specialize in clean criminals.”
“There are such creatures?”
“There’s always hope,” he said.
“And prayer,” she added. They laughed. Nervously.
The man’s horse was pastured west of the cabin.
“He’s on foot,” Bapcat said, looking at Nixon’s boot tracks, which pointed due south at the river. As he expected, the trail led not just to the river, but to an area of almost solid rock and stone.
“We can find where he gets off the rocks on the other side,” Isohultamaki offered.
“I doubt it,” Bapcat said. “The way he came right to this rocky section tells me he’s spooked bad and wants to disappear. We can check the edges here, but I’m assuming he crossed the river, and if you look over there, the rocks go on forever. He can probably travel miles without leaving sign.”
“So we just let him go?”
“He’s already gone, and all we have is a possible misdemeanor on beaver trapping,” he said.
“And now?” Isohultamaki asked.
“We’ll find the others and join up.”
“We haven’t seen the three-legged dog,” she said.
“It’s probably with Nixon,” he said, although he could not understand why any living creature would attach itself to another who seemed not to care if it lived or died.
“I like that,” Isohultamaki said.
“Like what?”
“You have used the word ‘we’ twice to refer to us. I like that very much.”
“Think about important things,” he said.
“I always do,” the girl said.
CHAPTER 48
Little Trap Falls, Ontonagon County
Tuesday, September 8
The trails west were up and down and twisted around, through narrow gaps and over sharp rocky ridges, through littered forests and what seemed like an endless series of marshes, swamps, and pestilential streams. But Bapcat kept them moving steadily, the way he had learned from his Northern Cheyenne friend. The great advantage of a horse was the expanded range it provided over a man on foot, and the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanche had perfected this tactical advantage over enemies who wanted to fight on foot rather than on mounts. It had taken a long time for the US Army to adopt Indian tactics, and when they did, the cavalry’s firepower had finally put an end to the so-called Indian troubles on the Plains and in the Southwest.
“Do you never feel hunger?” Isohultamaki asked early that morning.
“I feel it.”
“It is a comfort to know you have human needs.”
“I keep pemmican in the saddlebags.”
“As do I, but if you can go without, so can I.”
He looked at her. “This is not a contest.”
She shrugged. “To you, perhaps.”
“We’re sort of a split force right now,” he told her, but she just shook her head.
They paused on an old game trail on the side of a steep and irregular hill, and Bapcat arched up in his saddle. “I hear waterfalls,” he said, turning up a creek bed and eventually coming to the cataract. Here they paused to allow the animals to drink. The creek was skinny but clear, and quite cold. Joe lapped water greedily. Later they could stop to let the animals graze. “I don’t believe my scent caused Nixon to run,” Isohultamaki said.
“That’s not important now,” he told her.
“Then why did you say that?”
“Why can’t you let it go?” he said, and tuned her out. The temperature was dropping and fog was forming in the trees, a turn of events that concerned him more than her protestations. Heavy fog could be dangerous for the animals, and with scattered iron deposits causing his compass to find false readings, navigation would soon become a serious challenge.
CHAPTER 49
South of White Pine
Wednesday, September 9
The fog that finally settled in was a milky froth, causing Joe to advance more cautiously than usual. Rinka Isohultamaki rode close behind him.
“You are lost,” she said.
“And you aren’t?” he said.
She had actually laughed out loud, and he was glad that the heavy air kept her banshee-like voice from carrying too far. He was trying to head due west, but sensed they had drifted somewhat north toward White Pine. He cursed their lack of a good map. Someday, perhaps, game wardens would have detailed maps to help them do their jobs, rather than leaving their travel to luck and skill with a compass.
As usual, it was one creek crossing after another, either muck bottoms or sharp rock cobble and shards, and almost all of them with tag alders forming thick walls along the banksides. Rotting slash flopped helter-skelter across the streambeds, forcing them too often to have to try several approaches in order to find their way across. Despite the suddenly cool temperature, it was sweaty, nerve-racking work. Bapcat had calculated a destination six or seven miles west of the Nonesuch Mine, which he had seen on Jone Gleann’s map, but her map was crude and showed none of the streams they had crossed, leaving him with a lot of guesswork.
After struggling west he decided they would be better off ascending to a high point, sitting until the fog burned off, and finding a vista to help them figure out where they were. It was not that he was totally disoriented; he was pretty sure that if they struck due south they would eventually strike east-west railroad tracks, and if they went far enough north, they would undoubtedly hit the shoreline of Lake Superior. Knowing they were somewhere between the two extremes meant they weren’t technically lost, but he would be hard-pressed to say exactly where they were.
Reading the terrain angle, he turned Joe back to the southeast and found another game trail which led them steeply upward. Once it was clear they were going high, he resolved to get to the top and sit there until morning came and the fog lifted.
By the time he decided to call a halt, he guessed they had climbed up four or five hundred feet, but there was no way to know this for sure. They had stayed in trees the whole way, and once he had dismounted and moved to his left, outside the trees, he saw they were paralleling a cliff.
Eventually he stopped, patted Joe’s neck, and dismounted.
“What?” his companion asked.
“We’ll stay here until we have light. No fire,” he added.
“Are you afraid of something?”
“I’m always afraid when I don’t know exactly where I am, can’t see, and don’t know who or what else is close by.”
“Game wardens harbor fear?”
“It helps to keep us alive,” he said. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“No, but I am not the one leading us,” she said.
“Even followers have to pitch in with what they know,” he told her.
“I have no idea where we are,” she admitted.
They found a small clearing and hobbled their mounts. Bapcat cut balsam boughs, lay them on the ground, and placed canvas on top. They then sat on the boughs with their backs to the trees. “Sleep,” he said. “I’ll take first watch.”
Sitting like this was always a challenge. How to stay alert and awake, the two states not being exactly the same thing. When on guard, his practice was to close his eyes and push all of his energy into his ears and nose.
It was a short time later when he thought he felt a thump. Felt more than heard. Then another, a thump for sure, both of them south of their position and lower, though it was hard sometimes in the woods to know for sure. He lightly touched Isohultamaki’s hand.
“I heard,” she whispered. “What is it?”
“Not sure yet.”
More thumps ensued, then intermittent series of distant, shrill screeches, howls, yelps and squeals, squeaks and squawks, such as he had never before heard in one place at one time. He found it disorienting. Then a loud, deep thump resonated again and was repeated solidly for several minutes. He leaned over to Isohultamaki and whispered, “Drum,” and added, “Indians, maybe.”
“Indians have huge drums?”
“Yes. Several braves sit around one, thumping it.”
“But this one sounds like it is moving,” she pointed out.
“Yes, it’s moving.”
“Do we go look?” she asked.
“The sound is coming toward us,” he told her.
“Should we move out of the way?”
“In this fog?”
“I don’t like just waiting,” she told him.
“It’s a choice,” he said. “If you want to go, go.”
“No, I am with you. We are we, and we will go or stay together.”
The sounds were closer now, but low and seeming not to come up any higher.
“I think the fog is lifting,” Isohultamaki said.
“They’re not coming up,” Bapcat said. “They’re below us, and moving south.”
“Who are they?”
“I have no idea,” he told her.
“We’ll follow them, then?”
“No. We’ll look down from afar, get our bearings, and make for our group.”
The cacophony erupted again in the distance and kept receding. The fog was indeed lifting a little, and Bapcat got up and went to the precipice on the southeast face. A sheer drop of two hundred feet fell to a cloudy mattress of fog. Sheer drop, probably deeper than the distance to the clouds below. He felt Isohultamaki beside him. She seemed tentative along the edge. In the gloaming, he was compelled to look at his compass. “I want to backtrack down, toward the falls where we watered the horses, and strike due west from there.”
“But what about all that we’ve heard?”
“Some mysteries must remain so,” Bapcat said.
The howling began anew in the distance, rising and falling, sharp and ragged, barks and snarls, a virtual menagerie of lifelike sounds, and Isohultamaki, standing beside him, said, “Ah—wolves.”
Not wolves, Bapcat realized. It was men, trying to sound like wolves.
“Let’s go,” he said. “When we get lower and farther west, we’ll find a place for the animals to feed.”
CHAPTER 50
Sleepy Pond, Ontonagon County
Thursday, September 10
They descended the hill slowly, almost as the fog lifted in front of them. It seemed to Bapcat as if they were pushing away the shroud to welcome the sun, which soon began to show. When they reached the bottom of their descent, Bapcat turned Joe eastward.
“We are now walking into the rising sun,” Isohultamaki pointed out.
“Your sense of direction survived the night,” Bapcat said sharply.
“You said we were going to make our way west,” she reminded him.
“Your memory is as solid as your sense of direction,” he said.
“You make jokes at my expense?” she asked, not hiding her irritation.
“Be quiet,” he said. “The wolves are no doubt sleeping now.”
“Wolves?”
“You yourself identified them not long ago.”
“Am I to understand we are attempting to find sleeping wolves?”
“Possibly.”
“Won’t waking them make them angry?”
“Wolves are light sleepers,” he said. “Their biggest threat is from others of their kind, especially their own kin.”
“This makes no sense to me,” Isohultamaki said. “You don’t fear sleeping wolves?”
“I respect all wolves, awake or asleep.”
“You respect them, yet you want to awaken them?”
“You need to listen better, Rinka. I said possibly we would find sleeping wolves, and you assumed we would wake them.”
