Red Jacket by Joseph Heywood Read Free Book Online Page A

all towns. Still, one can’t turn down the former president when he asks you to serve.
    The former Rough Rider corporal nodded, and Teddy Roosevelt slapped his knee in delight. “Knew it!”
    The colonel reached down to the floor and picked up a .30-40 Krag-Jørgensen carbine, which he held out to Bapcat. “Had this sent to me when you mustered out in New Jersey,” Roosevelt said. “I want you to have it. Let it remind you of what the calm in a storm can accomplish.”
    Bapcat was speechless, and after collecting his wits, went to his pack and pulled a bayonet from its scabbard and popped the steel onto the Krag’s barrel. The carbines wouldn’t hold bayonets very effectively, but it looked lethal, and he had kept it since Cuba.
    Roosevelt was smiling. “You saved that all this time?”
    â€œYessir.”
    Roosevelt smiled. “At the critical moment, show your enemy your steel, Corporal.” Roosevelt was fond of bayonets—saw them as manly, lethal, and decisive in close fights.
    Chief Deputy Jones said, “There’s a green house up the hill on Rock Street. Ask for Deputy Warden Horri Harju. Good man. He’ll see to getting you set up and properly and officially instructed.”
    Oates stood. “Raise your right hand and repeat after me.”
    Lute Bapcat was sworn in as the Michigan deputy warden for Houghton and Keweenaw counties.
    Roosevelt grunted a happy, “Bully!”
    The two state men departed, leaving the old Rough Riders alone. Roosevelt said, “Your state’s new governor, Woody Ferris, is not the sort to meddle in local affairs. He’s a genteel type, thinks of himself as a higher-education man, a man of cerebral and calm pursuits. Likes to remain far above the fray. I suspect you’ll have free reign in your neck of the woods, Corporal, but choose your targets well. The Spaniards were pretty respectable as foes go, but these market hunters and the like are mankind’s sorriest excuses for people. Watch your back at all times and cut them no slack.
    â€œAnd remember this, Corporal: When times are hard—and they always get hard—just bear in mind there are other men (and even women) here and in other states doing the same thing you are doing, and through our mutual values and our collective efforts, we hope to protect and preserve the natural world we live in. I’ve been pushing for Rough Riders to be hired as forest rangers all around the country, in our parks and preserves. If we lose nature and the wilderness, we lose life itself. What you’re about to undertake is more than a mere job. We need tough, no-nonsense men on our front lines, men like you. Always remember that, son.”
    â€œYes, sir,” Bapcat said, shaking hands with his former commanding officer.

10
    Marquette, Marquette County
    FRIDAY, MAY 23, 1913
    The man who opened the door was stoop-shouldered, with a drooping blond mustache, head shaved smooth as a Lake Superior rock, and huge wing-like ears. “Bapcat?” the man greeted him.
    The trapper nodded.
    â€œHorri Harju. Any trouble finding the place?”
    Bapcat shook his head. “Only green house on the street.”
    â€œSo it is, so it is. Come in, come in.”
    The house looked from without like a residence, but the interior was more like a military warehouse with crates of ammunition, stacks of rifles and boxes of pistols, snowshoes, skis and bindings, iron skillets, rucksacks—all sorts of things.
    â€œCoffee?” Harju asked. “I assume you accepted the job, or you wouldn’t be here, would you?”
    â€œNo coffee,” Bapcat said.
    â€œI think half my blood’s coffee,” Harju said, and before the statement fully registered with Bapcat, it was punctuated with a looping roundhouse sucker punch that Bapcat barely deflected with his left forearm, while grabbing Harju by the shirt, pulling him over and forward, and driving his knee