Jack Pine, page 18
Reuger set his beer on the table.
“Why protect the girl?”
“Because she’s the link between Jorde and the Indian!” Phsit pop! His eyes drilled the soft light. “She saw Jorde and the Indian in the woodshed the night before she was raped. Don’t you get it yet? This is all part of a conspiracy. Phsit…sorry about that.”
He leaned down and retrieved the seed from the floor.
“Are you saying Jorde killed Knudsen, Sheriff?”
“Why not?” The sheriff stood and walked to the mantle. “It’s Jorde’s goal to halt the logging and get everyone out of the Boundary Waters any way he can!”
He turned slowly against the flames.
“This is a war, Reuger. It may be undeclared, but this war over the land is being played out all over the country. You have these radicals who think they know what’s best for everyone else, but they don’t see what it does to people. They don’t see the jobs and communities they destroy so they can drive their SUVs and drink their fucking lattés in the woods.”
Riechardt shook his head. “We lose logging, and this town has had it! Johnson Timber employs this town, and I can’t let a bunch of radicals destroy our way of life.”
The sheriff hit the iron poker on the hearth and it fell and cracked a tile. He picked up the poker, blackening his hands.
“Anyway,” he gestured, wiping creosote off, carrying the wadded napkin, “Jorde knew a rape at Pine Lodge to the daughter of an attorney from Chicago would spell the end, and God, ya, it looks like they’re right. They’ve wanted Jim Carpenter out of there for a long time so they can burn that lodge to the ground.”
The sheriff looked at the can and shook the seeds. “Look here, Reuger. I’m fifty-five-years old. I can’t go looking for another job now.” He raised his head and nodded. “So, my job and your job, is to bring these radicals to justice and make sure the town’s interests are looked after.”
Reuger pursed his lips, staring at the man in the changing light.
“How much Ben give you for re-election, Sheriff?”
“Ya,” he nodded slowly, “fuck up one more time here, and you’ll be packing for the Twin Cities there.” He pointed down. “You get that old man or whatever you need here and go arrest that Indian. Then we’ll have Jorde there for the loggers, and the Indian for the girl, and people can forget all about this.”
Riechardt stood and walked to the door with the can extended.
“You better learn which side you’re on here, Reuger.”
36
REUGER SHUT HIS eyes and smelled the early dew. His neck hurt from hunching over the infrared scope in the seaplane for three hours. It had been a futile search for Tommy Tobin. He was almost asleep in the chair by the fireplace when the phone rang in the kitchen.
He stood up and walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
“Hello.”
The line clicked dead. Reuger hung up the phone and set the cup on the sill, steaming in the damp night stream. He leaned closer to the window and saw a flicker deep in the dim forest. An orange muzzle flash flared as glass rained the sink like fine crystal and he dove to the floor with glass tinkling from his head and shoulders. He pulled the Colt and crawled to his feet, then moved low out of the kitchen, knocking over magazines by the chair with brass cartridges rolling on the floor. He ran across the porch and into the trees.
Reuger was swallowed into a gloomy half-light and saw things between the trees that became men then turned back into trees. Silvery light touched the pistol in his hand as he hopped a fallen tree then smelled gunpowder, then saw smashed-down foliage and branches bent and snapped. He approached a cedar, placing his boots like a surgeon, then snapped the branches back.
He found twenty feet of mashed ivy and honeysuckle in a small clearing. Reuger breathed heavily and turned, staring at his shattered kitchen window. He lowered the pistol and knelt to the ground and touched a boot print, then picked up something greasy. He dropped the cigar and reached down again. The casing was a spent .44. The percussion cap gleamed like a dime.
37
ROSS HABER SAWED the tree with sawdust spewing his shoes and pants, and blue smoke funneling out the sides. His pickup was parked under some cedars with a green metal gas can and a pair of tan gloves on the hood. He pulled the saw away and took the cigarette from his mouth, then killed the motor and silence rushed in the same way.
“How she go, Ross?”
“Deputy,” he nodded.
Reuger glanced up to the tree.
“Must be about forty-five feet.”
“Fifty-five, Deputy.”
Reuger sat back on the motorcycle and rested his boot on the foot peg.
“So, you’ve heard about what’s been going on then?”
“Oh, ya.” He grinned, a cleft of chin hair moving up. “Them tree huggers come this way they’re goin’ to get the wrong end of some double-aught buck.” He shook his head. “My granddaughter come home the other day, you know what they teach her in school now, Deputy? Hug a tree!” He moved the tobacco wad. “Hug a tree. She asks me why I hurt the trees and tell me how you can explain to a little girl that this here is just agriculture when they get them that young?”
Ross held the thirty-pound saw and scratched a cheek as rough as sandpaper with oil-blackened fingers. Reuger swung off the motorcycle and looked at the trees again. A man could hide in the foliage easily.
“It’s a rough game now, Ross.”
“Ya.” Ross grinned and nodded. “So yer been rolling in the dust, Deputy?”
“Gets dusty on these old logging roads.” He brushed the sand off his jeans and boots and stood up. “You’ve been logging a long time, Ross, and you know more about what’s going on than most men.”
He smiled gently.
“Just mind my own, Deputy.”
“Let me give you my card, here.” He reached into his vest pocket then pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and found a card. “Anything you want to tell me we can keep it between us,” he said putting the tan card with the star into his hand.
“Sure, Deputy,” he nodded, pocketing the card. “Not much really to tell there. I just log out here and mind to my own business and expect others do same.”
Reuger rested his hand on the Colt.
“You think the environmentalists are killing loggers, Ross?”
He shrugged gruffly.
“Wouldn’t know, Deputy, but it wouldn’t seem to serve no purpose. Just make people hate them more and that just helps the loggers.”
“Anyone else you can think of who might gain from something like this?”
Ross smiled, the lines at the corner of his eyes running back to his temples.
“Couldn’t think of a one, Deputy…” Ross tilted his head back and gestured to a transistor radio on the hood of his truck. “Except that crazy John Mcfee. He’s the only one seeming to get any mileage out of this.”
“Keep my card, Ross.”
“Got it right here, Deputy,” he said, patting his blue jeans with brass rivets on the sew joints.
Reuger walked back to his motorcycle and flipped out the kick-starter. Ross pulled fast on the chain saw, then pulled three times and cursed. He put down the saw and walked toward the pickup with spidery glass on the windshield and pulled a plug wrench from a toolbox. Reuger leaned on the gas tank like the pommel of a saddle.
“Plugs fouled?”
“Oh, ya.”
38
THE OWNER OF Wild Outfitters fitted a polar fleece parka on a manikin next to snowshoes and a canoe leaning against the storefront window. Gary Chatoee wore calf-high mukluks tanned the color of a deer with stitches of colored beads on top. A silver and turquoise bolo snugged the collar of his shirt.
“So, Tommy Tobin’s gone then,” he said, pulling up the furry hood around the manikin’s eyes and mouth.
“Looks that way.” Reuger nodded, leaning against the wall with his boot on edge of the picture window. “I kept Irene up there for three hours.”
Gary picked up a mitten and frowned.
“Straighten out the thumb there.”
“Ya, I did, these fucking manikins fight back, you know.” He put his own hand in the mitten. “That’s infrared right? Ya, he’s too smart for that. He’ll stay with his canoe and travel the rocks or stay in the caves while you fly above like an eagle looking for a mole.”
“Nice analogy.”
“Ya.” He grinned big yellow teeth. “I can wax literary you know, been reading some Fitzgerald. Pretty good stuff, you ever read the Diamond as the Big as the Ritz?”
“Nope.”
“Good stuff,” he nodded.” You should try it.”
“Sounds a little heavy for me.”
Gary shrugged. “It’s not really. You know what Saul Bellow said about men who read boring books?”
“What’s that?”
Gary Chatoee picked up the other mitten and shook his head.
“Must be losing my fucking mind. Something about you don’t get to heaven or some shit like that.”
Reuger stared out the window and watched the tourists streaming past.
“I found several trails that ended at the water’s edge.” He turned in and looked at Gary. “If they were Tommy, he might be heading for his cabin.”
Gary fought with the manikin’s hand, pulling the mitten down with both hands.
“Maybe you should forget the mittens, Gary.”
“No!” He grimaced. “I can get these fucking things on—there!”
They stared at the misshapen hand with the thumb bulging the middle.
“Missed the thumb again.”
“Fuck it,” Gary muttered.
“So, Bruce Anderson told me you’re testifying against Jorde.”
“Ya,” he shrugged. “I started thinking about our conversation and all you know, and then I wondered if he tried the same thing with Foster. Guess Riechardt found a bunch of them wires and bulbs at Earth First.”
Reuger nodded and hooked a thumb on his gun belt.
“Seems odd that Jorde would keep things like that around.”
“Ya…but he must’ve thought no one would catch him, you know.” He moved around the manikin. “Anyway, only way to find Tommy Tobin is to track him, you know,” he continued, grabbing a pair of mukluks. “He’s a good Indian and can disappear if he wants to.”
He picked up the flesh-colored leg.
“That’s why I need your help, Gary.”
Gary put down the leg picking up the other mukluk that draped over his hand like a dead animal.
“Ya, looking for him in connection with them dead loggers?”
“Nope.” Reuger shook his head. “Rape of the sixteen-year-old girl at Pine Lodge.”
Gary stopped then moved slower.
“Oh, ya.” He slipped the mukluk on. “I read about that in the Ely Standard there. Shit, that’s fucked up.”
“When did you read about it?”
“Just today, you know,” he shrugged.
Gary stood back and raised the arm of the manikin. He squinted at the scene.
“Some little girl from the lower forty-eight decided that Tonto raped her, then?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Ya.” Gary turned the other manikin inward. “What do you think?”
Reuger stared out the window and saw a man in a new buckskin coat.
“I don’t know… I haven’t talked to her yet.”
“Her father rich then?”
“An attorney,” he said meeting his eyes.
Gary moved the manikin back.
“Ya…so they hang the Indian for it. You and I know that’s fucked up, Reuger. These people come up here and get in some shit, and then they leave us with the mess, you know.” He shook his head disgustedly. “Always the same. White people get into some shit and they hang it on the Indian.”
Reuger walked the old store planks, inventorying the wall of moccasins.
“I don’t know what kind of shit Tommy’s in.” He put the moccasins down. “But I have to find him either way.”
Gary moved the teepee back in the window and fluffed up the snow.
“So you want me to go help you clean up the mess.” Gary’s eyes flashed dark. “Help you catch the Indian who wronged the white woman again?”
“Raped the white girl.” Reuger hooked a heel back on the window ledge. “I better bring him in, or Jim Carpenter won’t have much of a lodge left when the girl’s father gets through with him.”
Gary raised his eyebrows.
“Those lawyers will take everything but your shirt, and then they’ll come back for that, you know.” He fluffed up the shredded paper some more. “You can’t change what will be with some people. Tommy Tobin has been headed for trouble since he was born, and he’ll die that way, you know.”
Reuger looked at the big man in the picture window and the snowy scene. He wondered then whether Gary would have stopped on the road that day or would he have driven by.
“Tommy reload his own?”
“Think he does.” He squinted. “He used to anyway, you know.”
Gary stepped back from the window and jumped into the store. He reached forward and moved the snow around again and pushed back the teepee.
“You know things are changing for us, Reuger. We’re winning in the courts now.” He nodded slowly with his arms crossed. “I think we might get Ben Johnson to pay reparations on land he logged out. It won’t be much because he’ll pay what prices were then, but at least we’re getting something here.”
Gary raised the other manikin’s arms until it was almost straight up. He pulled the green canoe closer and propped the snowshoes. Sun slanted across the two plastic Indians as he moved the aluminum foil fire closer to the teepee.
“People’s perceptions are changing too, you know, but all it takes is one bad Indian and people say ‘See, you see how they are.’” He gestured to the manikins. “You can’t trust an Indian.”
They both stared at the scene from long before.
“So then, when you thinking of going up there?”
“Tomorrow.”
Gary pointed to the Indians waving cheerily above the fire.
“You know, I would come in and buy something here if I saw these fucking people in the window.”
39
THE NEXT MORNING, they slid into the soft mud with the two canoes nudging the motorboat like fawns with their mother. The lodge boat was jammed with packs and extra gas tanks and firearms and ammo in sealed zip-locked bags. Gary Chatoee kneeled with the fringe of his buckskin coat touching earth then nodded to Reuger and started up the trail.
Reuger carried the shotgun, watching Gary’s coat blend with the forest as they climbed. Gus breathed heavily, his mustache fluttering with each exhale. Gary held up his arm with buckskin tassels falling in succession. His black eyes mirrored the trapper’s cabin as they watched two squirrels leap from the porch with weeds flying up like wind.
Reuger nodded to the cabin.
“What do you think, Gary?”
He shook his head.
“I’ll take a look, I don’t think anyone is in there, you know.”
“Better let me do it,” Reuger said, moving forward.
Gary stared at him.
“You come up there with that gun? I’ve known Tommy all my life, and I know he wouldn’t shoot me down, at least I hope he wouldn’t,” he muttered, standing slowly.
He crept forward and ducked under the hanging roof then pushed the door open. Reuger handed Gus the shotgun and levered a shell into the Winchester. Gary walked into the cabin then returned to the door and fell on a loose plank.
“Fuck!” he shouted. “Ya, what a shithole!”
Reuger and Gus walked slowly toward the porch.
“He’s not here,” Gary muttered, looking around.
Gus cocked his eyebrow.
“And how in the hell can yer tell that?”
“I’m a tracker,” he grunted, turning to the cabin and staring at the painted refrigerator and the table with the gallon of Jack Daniels. “So this is what the Ojibwa have come to.” He gestured to the cabin with both hands. “Hundreds of years come down to this shithole in the woods the government allows us to keep?”
Reuger walked the cabin with the dirt floor soft and dusty like flour. The same smell of old clothes and damp mud was there. He examined the hole in the door from the arrows and looked around the cabin. Gary was brushing his new coat, trying to get the mud off.
“Make anything out of any of this Gary? Do you think he’s been here?”
“How do I know?” Gary pointed down the trail. “But somebody went that way recently. Might be just ahead of us, you know.”
Gus scoffed and spat out the door.
“Don’t know how yer can tell that. Last time we was here, we thought this cabin was empty and had them arrows flying at us!”
Gary stared at him dully.
“You have to know what to look for.”
“Is that right?” Gus spat again. “What you looking for, a broken twig or somethin’ like that?”
“Nope.” Gary shook his head. “That’s the movies. You look to the ground to track, but you either feel it or you don’t. You either have that extra sense or you don’t. Most Indians have it.” He nodded toward Reuger. “He has it too, from what I’ve heard.”
“And how would yer know if yer had this sense?”
“You’d know,” Gary said solemnly. “I’ll show you,” he called, leading off on a trail away from the cabin.
“Do yer believe all that Indian hocus-pocus, Reuger?”
“I wouldn’t know, Gus,” he said starting down the trail.
They hiked for ten minutes until Gary kneeled and pointed to a yellow plywood teepee with a plastic tarp covering the top and leather crisscrossing the seams. The dark oval opening faced them with a zigzag of red paint. There was a clearing with a fire ring in front of the teepee.
“Must be his sister, Running Bear,” Gary whispered.
“Think I met her with a couple of arrows before.”
“Why protect the girl?”
“Because she’s the link between Jorde and the Indian!” Phsit pop! His eyes drilled the soft light. “She saw Jorde and the Indian in the woodshed the night before she was raped. Don’t you get it yet? This is all part of a conspiracy. Phsit…sorry about that.”
He leaned down and retrieved the seed from the floor.
“Are you saying Jorde killed Knudsen, Sheriff?”
“Why not?” The sheriff stood and walked to the mantle. “It’s Jorde’s goal to halt the logging and get everyone out of the Boundary Waters any way he can!”
He turned slowly against the flames.
“This is a war, Reuger. It may be undeclared, but this war over the land is being played out all over the country. You have these radicals who think they know what’s best for everyone else, but they don’t see what it does to people. They don’t see the jobs and communities they destroy so they can drive their SUVs and drink their fucking lattés in the woods.”
Riechardt shook his head. “We lose logging, and this town has had it! Johnson Timber employs this town, and I can’t let a bunch of radicals destroy our way of life.”
The sheriff hit the iron poker on the hearth and it fell and cracked a tile. He picked up the poker, blackening his hands.
“Anyway,” he gestured, wiping creosote off, carrying the wadded napkin, “Jorde knew a rape at Pine Lodge to the daughter of an attorney from Chicago would spell the end, and God, ya, it looks like they’re right. They’ve wanted Jim Carpenter out of there for a long time so they can burn that lodge to the ground.”
The sheriff looked at the can and shook the seeds. “Look here, Reuger. I’m fifty-five-years old. I can’t go looking for another job now.” He raised his head and nodded. “So, my job and your job, is to bring these radicals to justice and make sure the town’s interests are looked after.”
Reuger pursed his lips, staring at the man in the changing light.
“How much Ben give you for re-election, Sheriff?”
“Ya,” he nodded slowly, “fuck up one more time here, and you’ll be packing for the Twin Cities there.” He pointed down. “You get that old man or whatever you need here and go arrest that Indian. Then we’ll have Jorde there for the loggers, and the Indian for the girl, and people can forget all about this.”
Riechardt stood and walked to the door with the can extended.
“You better learn which side you’re on here, Reuger.”
36
REUGER SHUT HIS eyes and smelled the early dew. His neck hurt from hunching over the infrared scope in the seaplane for three hours. It had been a futile search for Tommy Tobin. He was almost asleep in the chair by the fireplace when the phone rang in the kitchen.
He stood up and walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
“Hello.”
The line clicked dead. Reuger hung up the phone and set the cup on the sill, steaming in the damp night stream. He leaned closer to the window and saw a flicker deep in the dim forest. An orange muzzle flash flared as glass rained the sink like fine crystal and he dove to the floor with glass tinkling from his head and shoulders. He pulled the Colt and crawled to his feet, then moved low out of the kitchen, knocking over magazines by the chair with brass cartridges rolling on the floor. He ran across the porch and into the trees.
Reuger was swallowed into a gloomy half-light and saw things between the trees that became men then turned back into trees. Silvery light touched the pistol in his hand as he hopped a fallen tree then smelled gunpowder, then saw smashed-down foliage and branches bent and snapped. He approached a cedar, placing his boots like a surgeon, then snapped the branches back.
He found twenty feet of mashed ivy and honeysuckle in a small clearing. Reuger breathed heavily and turned, staring at his shattered kitchen window. He lowered the pistol and knelt to the ground and touched a boot print, then picked up something greasy. He dropped the cigar and reached down again. The casing was a spent .44. The percussion cap gleamed like a dime.
37
ROSS HABER SAWED the tree with sawdust spewing his shoes and pants, and blue smoke funneling out the sides. His pickup was parked under some cedars with a green metal gas can and a pair of tan gloves on the hood. He pulled the saw away and took the cigarette from his mouth, then killed the motor and silence rushed in the same way.
“How she go, Ross?”
“Deputy,” he nodded.
Reuger glanced up to the tree.
“Must be about forty-five feet.”
“Fifty-five, Deputy.”
Reuger sat back on the motorcycle and rested his boot on the foot peg.
“So, you’ve heard about what’s been going on then?”
“Oh, ya.” He grinned, a cleft of chin hair moving up. “Them tree huggers come this way they’re goin’ to get the wrong end of some double-aught buck.” He shook his head. “My granddaughter come home the other day, you know what they teach her in school now, Deputy? Hug a tree!” He moved the tobacco wad. “Hug a tree. She asks me why I hurt the trees and tell me how you can explain to a little girl that this here is just agriculture when they get them that young?”
Ross held the thirty-pound saw and scratched a cheek as rough as sandpaper with oil-blackened fingers. Reuger swung off the motorcycle and looked at the trees again. A man could hide in the foliage easily.
“It’s a rough game now, Ross.”
“Ya.” Ross grinned and nodded. “So yer been rolling in the dust, Deputy?”
“Gets dusty on these old logging roads.” He brushed the sand off his jeans and boots and stood up. “You’ve been logging a long time, Ross, and you know more about what’s going on than most men.”
He smiled gently.
“Just mind my own, Deputy.”
“Let me give you my card, here.” He reached into his vest pocket then pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and found a card. “Anything you want to tell me we can keep it between us,” he said putting the tan card with the star into his hand.
“Sure, Deputy,” he nodded, pocketing the card. “Not much really to tell there. I just log out here and mind to my own business and expect others do same.”
Reuger rested his hand on the Colt.
“You think the environmentalists are killing loggers, Ross?”
He shrugged gruffly.
“Wouldn’t know, Deputy, but it wouldn’t seem to serve no purpose. Just make people hate them more and that just helps the loggers.”
“Anyone else you can think of who might gain from something like this?”
Ross smiled, the lines at the corner of his eyes running back to his temples.
“Couldn’t think of a one, Deputy…” Ross tilted his head back and gestured to a transistor radio on the hood of his truck. “Except that crazy John Mcfee. He’s the only one seeming to get any mileage out of this.”
“Keep my card, Ross.”
“Got it right here, Deputy,” he said, patting his blue jeans with brass rivets on the sew joints.
Reuger walked back to his motorcycle and flipped out the kick-starter. Ross pulled fast on the chain saw, then pulled three times and cursed. He put down the saw and walked toward the pickup with spidery glass on the windshield and pulled a plug wrench from a toolbox. Reuger leaned on the gas tank like the pommel of a saddle.
“Plugs fouled?”
“Oh, ya.”
38
THE OWNER OF Wild Outfitters fitted a polar fleece parka on a manikin next to snowshoes and a canoe leaning against the storefront window. Gary Chatoee wore calf-high mukluks tanned the color of a deer with stitches of colored beads on top. A silver and turquoise bolo snugged the collar of his shirt.
“So, Tommy Tobin’s gone then,” he said, pulling up the furry hood around the manikin’s eyes and mouth.
“Looks that way.” Reuger nodded, leaning against the wall with his boot on edge of the picture window. “I kept Irene up there for three hours.”
Gary picked up a mitten and frowned.
“Straighten out the thumb there.”
“Ya, I did, these fucking manikins fight back, you know.” He put his own hand in the mitten. “That’s infrared right? Ya, he’s too smart for that. He’ll stay with his canoe and travel the rocks or stay in the caves while you fly above like an eagle looking for a mole.”
“Nice analogy.”
“Ya.” He grinned big yellow teeth. “I can wax literary you know, been reading some Fitzgerald. Pretty good stuff, you ever read the Diamond as the Big as the Ritz?”
“Nope.”
“Good stuff,” he nodded.” You should try it.”
“Sounds a little heavy for me.”
Gary shrugged. “It’s not really. You know what Saul Bellow said about men who read boring books?”
“What’s that?”
Gary Chatoee picked up the other mitten and shook his head.
“Must be losing my fucking mind. Something about you don’t get to heaven or some shit like that.”
Reuger stared out the window and watched the tourists streaming past.
“I found several trails that ended at the water’s edge.” He turned in and looked at Gary. “If they were Tommy, he might be heading for his cabin.”
Gary fought with the manikin’s hand, pulling the mitten down with both hands.
“Maybe you should forget the mittens, Gary.”
“No!” He grimaced. “I can get these fucking things on—there!”
They stared at the misshapen hand with the thumb bulging the middle.
“Missed the thumb again.”
“Fuck it,” Gary muttered.
“So, Bruce Anderson told me you’re testifying against Jorde.”
“Ya,” he shrugged. “I started thinking about our conversation and all you know, and then I wondered if he tried the same thing with Foster. Guess Riechardt found a bunch of them wires and bulbs at Earth First.”
Reuger nodded and hooked a thumb on his gun belt.
“Seems odd that Jorde would keep things like that around.”
“Ya…but he must’ve thought no one would catch him, you know.” He moved around the manikin. “Anyway, only way to find Tommy Tobin is to track him, you know,” he continued, grabbing a pair of mukluks. “He’s a good Indian and can disappear if he wants to.”
He picked up the flesh-colored leg.
“That’s why I need your help, Gary.”
Gary put down the leg picking up the other mukluk that draped over his hand like a dead animal.
“Ya, looking for him in connection with them dead loggers?”
“Nope.” Reuger shook his head. “Rape of the sixteen-year-old girl at Pine Lodge.”
Gary stopped then moved slower.
“Oh, ya.” He slipped the mukluk on. “I read about that in the Ely Standard there. Shit, that’s fucked up.”
“When did you read about it?”
“Just today, you know,” he shrugged.
Gary stood back and raised the arm of the manikin. He squinted at the scene.
“Some little girl from the lower forty-eight decided that Tonto raped her, then?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Ya.” Gary turned the other manikin inward. “What do you think?”
Reuger stared out the window and saw a man in a new buckskin coat.
“I don’t know… I haven’t talked to her yet.”
“Her father rich then?”
“An attorney,” he said meeting his eyes.
Gary moved the manikin back.
“Ya…so they hang the Indian for it. You and I know that’s fucked up, Reuger. These people come up here and get in some shit, and then they leave us with the mess, you know.” He shook his head disgustedly. “Always the same. White people get into some shit and they hang it on the Indian.”
Reuger walked the old store planks, inventorying the wall of moccasins.
“I don’t know what kind of shit Tommy’s in.” He put the moccasins down. “But I have to find him either way.”
Gary moved the teepee back in the window and fluffed up the snow.
“So you want me to go help you clean up the mess.” Gary’s eyes flashed dark. “Help you catch the Indian who wronged the white woman again?”
“Raped the white girl.” Reuger hooked a heel back on the window ledge. “I better bring him in, or Jim Carpenter won’t have much of a lodge left when the girl’s father gets through with him.”
Gary raised his eyebrows.
“Those lawyers will take everything but your shirt, and then they’ll come back for that, you know.” He fluffed up the shredded paper some more. “You can’t change what will be with some people. Tommy Tobin has been headed for trouble since he was born, and he’ll die that way, you know.”
Reuger looked at the big man in the picture window and the snowy scene. He wondered then whether Gary would have stopped on the road that day or would he have driven by.
“Tommy reload his own?”
“Think he does.” He squinted. “He used to anyway, you know.”
Gary stepped back from the window and jumped into the store. He reached forward and moved the snow around again and pushed back the teepee.
“You know things are changing for us, Reuger. We’re winning in the courts now.” He nodded slowly with his arms crossed. “I think we might get Ben Johnson to pay reparations on land he logged out. It won’t be much because he’ll pay what prices were then, but at least we’re getting something here.”
Gary raised the other manikin’s arms until it was almost straight up. He pulled the green canoe closer and propped the snowshoes. Sun slanted across the two plastic Indians as he moved the aluminum foil fire closer to the teepee.
“People’s perceptions are changing too, you know, but all it takes is one bad Indian and people say ‘See, you see how they are.’” He gestured to the manikins. “You can’t trust an Indian.”
They both stared at the scene from long before.
“So then, when you thinking of going up there?”
“Tomorrow.”
Gary pointed to the Indians waving cheerily above the fire.
“You know, I would come in and buy something here if I saw these fucking people in the window.”
39
THE NEXT MORNING, they slid into the soft mud with the two canoes nudging the motorboat like fawns with their mother. The lodge boat was jammed with packs and extra gas tanks and firearms and ammo in sealed zip-locked bags. Gary Chatoee kneeled with the fringe of his buckskin coat touching earth then nodded to Reuger and started up the trail.
Reuger carried the shotgun, watching Gary’s coat blend with the forest as they climbed. Gus breathed heavily, his mustache fluttering with each exhale. Gary held up his arm with buckskin tassels falling in succession. His black eyes mirrored the trapper’s cabin as they watched two squirrels leap from the porch with weeds flying up like wind.
Reuger nodded to the cabin.
“What do you think, Gary?”
He shook his head.
“I’ll take a look, I don’t think anyone is in there, you know.”
“Better let me do it,” Reuger said, moving forward.
Gary stared at him.
“You come up there with that gun? I’ve known Tommy all my life, and I know he wouldn’t shoot me down, at least I hope he wouldn’t,” he muttered, standing slowly.
He crept forward and ducked under the hanging roof then pushed the door open. Reuger handed Gus the shotgun and levered a shell into the Winchester. Gary walked into the cabin then returned to the door and fell on a loose plank.
“Fuck!” he shouted. “Ya, what a shithole!”
Reuger and Gus walked slowly toward the porch.
“He’s not here,” Gary muttered, looking around.
Gus cocked his eyebrow.
“And how in the hell can yer tell that?”
“I’m a tracker,” he grunted, turning to the cabin and staring at the painted refrigerator and the table with the gallon of Jack Daniels. “So this is what the Ojibwa have come to.” He gestured to the cabin with both hands. “Hundreds of years come down to this shithole in the woods the government allows us to keep?”
Reuger walked the cabin with the dirt floor soft and dusty like flour. The same smell of old clothes and damp mud was there. He examined the hole in the door from the arrows and looked around the cabin. Gary was brushing his new coat, trying to get the mud off.
“Make anything out of any of this Gary? Do you think he’s been here?”
“How do I know?” Gary pointed down the trail. “But somebody went that way recently. Might be just ahead of us, you know.”
Gus scoffed and spat out the door.
“Don’t know how yer can tell that. Last time we was here, we thought this cabin was empty and had them arrows flying at us!”
Gary stared at him dully.
“You have to know what to look for.”
“Is that right?” Gus spat again. “What you looking for, a broken twig or somethin’ like that?”
“Nope.” Gary shook his head. “That’s the movies. You look to the ground to track, but you either feel it or you don’t. You either have that extra sense or you don’t. Most Indians have it.” He nodded toward Reuger. “He has it too, from what I’ve heard.”
“And how would yer know if yer had this sense?”
“You’d know,” Gary said solemnly. “I’ll show you,” he called, leading off on a trail away from the cabin.
“Do yer believe all that Indian hocus-pocus, Reuger?”
“I wouldn’t know, Gus,” he said starting down the trail.
They hiked for ten minutes until Gary kneeled and pointed to a yellow plywood teepee with a plastic tarp covering the top and leather crisscrossing the seams. The dark oval opening faced them with a zigzag of red paint. There was a clearing with a fire ring in front of the teepee.
“Must be his sister, Running Bear,” Gary whispered.
“Think I met her with a couple of arrows before.”
