by C. E. Nelson
Outside Dave heard a truck pull up and a door slam. Don walked into the kitchen a moment later.
“Making enough for me?” he asked as he sat next to Linda at the bar. He filled Dave in on what little additional information he had, letting him know that the techs should be calling soon about the blood sample.
“Hey!” he said looking at his watch and then from Dave to Linda and back. “You two left to have dinner almost two hours ago.”
“Your brother gave me a wonderful tour of his house and I’m afraid we just lost track of time,” Linda easily replied.
Don looked at her with a smirk on his face as he spotted the wine glasses on the deck railing, the deck door still open. “Must have been quite a tour if you left your wine glasses on the deck,” he said to his brother who had turned his back and whose face was now turning red.
“Dave is quite the tour guide,” Linda replied unfazed by Don’s intended jab. “He suggested we leave the wine glasses outside so the wine wouldn’t spill when we were moving around.”
“Right,” said Don with a smile. “Definitely don’t want to spill anything in Dave’s house.” Linda was glowing and his brother looked like, well, like he had just had sex. Well, it was about time. “You know, on second thought, I’m beat. I think I’ll just grab a sandwich and crash,” he said as he got up from the stool. His phone buzzed as he reached the refrigerator. Don listened for a moment and then turned back to his twin. “OK, thanks.” Don pocketed his phone. “We got a match. And the Canada witness said he wasn’t sure it was Bigeagle, but it could have been. We better be after this dude first thing.”
Chapter Thirty-five
He had waited on shore at the head of the river until dark. He had planned to do this anyway, but the boat that ran back and forth in front of the entrance to the river would have made it impossible to leave without being seen before then. Police. He took the time to rest and clean his wound again.
The Sentry traveled across the lake without any lights because he had none on the boat, which he felt was fine, because he did not want to be detected. Besides, if anything, lights on a boat only made it harder to see where you were going at night. He was familiar with the way to Ghost Bay, the off-and-on moonlight of the partly cloudy night providing the needed light to keep him on course. Still, without GPS, it was easy to become disoriented and lost on the big Canadian shield lake during the day, and even more so at night. Twice he cut the motor as he waited for the moon to reappear so he could get his bearings, but he made it to the opening to Ghost Bay without incident.
Making it into the bay was not so easy. The entrance to the bay is a narrow shallow channel between vertical granite walls allowing no light. He bumped rocks several times as he crawled through, gritting his teeth each time, hoping the prop would not be damaged. The stars and moon finally provided some light as he entered the bay and pushed his way to the opposite shore, concealing his boat there before struggling up the ridge to his campsite.
He sits on a log watching his campfire. The embers in the fire seem almost alive, pulsing as they glow in the night, reacting to the slight breeze. It is a warm evening for a fire. The smoke bends toward him. It is too dark for the smoke to be seen and the long branches of the pine surrounding him make it impossible for anyone to detect a glow from the fire. The smoke seems to keep most of the mosquitoes at bay but one lands on the shoulder of the Sentry as he stirs the coals. He does not seem to notice. He waits for the beans in the can on the grate above the fire to warm as he pokes at the coals with a stick.
The beans are from shore lunch supplies that he received as a guide. As was the case with most of his fellow guides, he reported the beans used, but kept them for his own use. The camp owners let it go for the most part. The owners knew the guides couldn’t make it on tips and wage alone, and allowing them ‘extra supplies’ kept them loyal to their camp. Bobby Bigeagle’s long knife cuts a slice from an apple a guest had left in the cooler.
At seventeen Bigeagle fled the reservation to find a life in the city. He was an average student but saw little use for what he was being taught. His mother had begged him to at least finish high school before he left but he told her the teachers were idiots who were trying to shove the ways of the white man, their culture and systems, down his throat. He saw his family and relatives content to live in a system dictated to them. He felt trapped.
But the city proved to be no escape. He managed to hitchhike his way to Duluth and then to Minneapolis but with no degree, he found it nearly impossible to find a job. Business owners were much more willing to give jobs to unskilled Mong or Somali rather than a Native American. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that the old prejudices against his race still existed.
As Bigeagle prepared to spend his second night in a park, two men approached him, one pulling a gun and demanding Bobby’s money. Bigeagle stared at the men in disgust. The thin black man on his left in a dirty blue windbreaker stood barely five and a half feet tall, his bloodshot eyes slits on a cadaver-like face. The white man on his right that held the gun was broad-chested under a stained red t-shirt, but no taller than the other man. His long greasy black hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, a tattoo of a dagger on the right side of his neck. They again demanded his money but Bigeagle only laughed. The men looked at each other and then the man with the gun took a step closer to Bobby. Bobby was too quick. With one motion he drew his own knife and slapped away the man’s arm holding the revolver, knocking the gun to the ground. He quickly reversed course with his blade, slicing the man across the chest. The man screamed, his other hand going to his chest, blood now staining his shirt. He pulled his hand away to see it covered with blood. Both men ran. Bigeagle put the gun in his backpack.
As Bigeagle walked down Hennepin Avenue the next day he ran into a man three years his senior from his reservation, Jerry Treat. Treat bought Bigeagle lunch at McDonald’s and then fanned the fire of Bobby’s hatred of white men who had taken their lands and way of life before offering him a job as a deliveryman and a place to stay.
It didn’t take Bobby long to understand he would be delivering meth or heroin. At first he didn’t mind. The money was good and he took pleasure in seeing the way it destroyed the white men using the drugs. For once, he felt superior to them. Then, more and more, he found his deliveries going to other Native Americans, dirty and trembling, living only for the next high. Bobby hated the white man more for trapping his people in a life they could never escape, but he also hated the fact that he was feeding their hopelessness.
After one delivery to a man he knew from his reservation, but was too far gone to recognize Bobby, he returned to Treat’s apartment and told him he would no longer make deliveries to Native Americans.
“Don’t be so uptight man,” joked Treat. “They’re just customers.” Treat wiped his runny nose on the back of his hand, his eyes were dilated.
“They’re not just customers! They are our brothers!” Bigeagle shouted.
“Our brothers? Get off the reservation kid. As long as they pay their fucking bills I don’t care who they are or where they fucking come from – and you won’t either or I’ll kick your ass back on the street where I found you! Now shut the fuck up!”
Bobby pulled the revolver from his back and pointed it at Treat. “No more deliveries to brothers.”
Treat laughed again and then got mad. “You stupid shit! Don’t you know that if we don’t deliver someone else will? Now get over it!”
Bigeagle stared at Treat. “No.”
“No what?” Treat questioned in a taunting voice. “No what you stupid indian?”
“No this,” replied Bigeagle firing one shot into Treat’s chest. Treat’s eyes grew wide; he looked at Bobby, and then collapsed.
Bigeagle looked down at the body, his gun still held in front of him, and watched the blood spread on the wooden floor. He had killed many deer and other animals growing up. He justified those kills as having a purpose, to feed him and his family. Now
he had killed a man. This kill had a purpose too. He felt no remorse.
Bigeagle tucked the gun back behind him and went to his room, quickly stuffing his few personal belongings in his backpack. He crossed the room where Treat lay, glancing at the body as he past it, and went to the closet in Treat’s room. The prior week Treat had left his door open enough that Bigeagle had watched Treat hide the money Bobby handed over after his deliveries. It didn’t take Bobby long to find the loose board in the closet floor, remove the cash, and leave the building.
He spent the night in the bus station, took an early morning bus to Bemidji, and then another to Baudette on the Canadian border. He purchased supplies there and that night stole a boat and crossed the Rainy River into Canada. Over the next two years he found fishing and hunting guiding jobs in Canada and Minnesota, but the work was sparse and, after killing and robbing a client in Ontario that had called him a bush nigger, he fled across the border again, returning to his parents’ home.
Bobby’s mother was excited to see him home but his father sensed his son had crossed some kind of line. Bobby avoided them, giving them little but one-word answers to their questions about what he had been doing since he left. Still, his father spoke to relatives and was able to find his son guiding work, allowing Bobby to move out and stay at the camp where he was guiding. It was the last time they would see him.
Bigeagle finished his dinner, wincing at the pain in his shoulder as he reached to push the empty can in the fire. The bullet had only grazed his arm. He had re-wrapped it and the bleeding had stopped, but it still stung. He thought about the men who had shot him. He had no doubt they would come after him now, more men, possibly in planes, some with dogs. He thought he should run, maybe go back to Canada, but he was not sure. He looked up to the stars and listened, but the voices were quiet. He would rest here tonight and wait for them to speak.
Chapter Thirty-six
The morning was busy for the brothers. Don spent an hour on the phone with his boss in St. Paul, the superintendant of the BCA, and then another on the phone with the BCA supervisor of the office in Duluth. One of the guests at Allens Lodge at the time of Strom’s death worked in the Attorney General’s office in Minneapolis and had complained to his boss about how he had lost fishing time because the police up there couldn’t catch a killer. The Attorney General had called the governor about it who had in turn called Don’s boss. The superintendant, whose idea of being outdoors was a walk around one of the city lakes at lunch, could not understand why Don would need to commandeer more BCA personnel to try to catch someone running around in the woods. Still, he had heard about Rosemary Thiel’s complaint of the inability of the county sheriff, and so had given Don the authority to use personnel from Duluth. The men from the Duluth office were now set to arrive in the early afternoon at Station 30 where efforts would be coordinated with the county police.
For his part Dave requested the Meline and Clark contact as many camps and individuals in the area as possible to warn them of Bigeagle and ask that they contact the sheriff’s office if they spot anything of interest or, by some chance, see Bigeagle. He wanted to know about any boats that had gone missing. He also requested they contact the clinics in the area to see if anyone had been treated for a gunshot wound. The men were to be at Station 30 at noon to coordinate a search. Dave also commandeered two deputies from the Two Harbors’ office, Mike Carlson and Doug Linners, to Station 30 to assist in the manhunt.
With a couple of hours before they needed to be at Station 30, the brothers decided to see if they could spot any sign of Bigeagle on Timber Island, the first location John Bigeagle had mentioned.
Timber Island had been so named because it had held one of the densest stands of giant Norway pine in the area, trees that were cut years ago and sent on their way to mills on the south end of the lake. The brothers slowly circled the island looking for any sign of a boat or camp, finally passing a sheer cliff on the southeast corner of the island to reveal one of the lakes most impressive sights. Ahead lay a horseshoe-shaped fine sand beach that spanned nearly a mile. Visitors to the area were always amazed that an area with so many shorelines of boulders and jagged rock could have a sandy beach that would rival any in a state of over twelve thousand lakes.
Dave watched his depthfinder as they skirted as close to shore as possible while Don took up sentry in the bow looking for boat-eating rocks lurking beneath the surface. The beach on Timber was well known, attested to by numerous valleys in the sand on the shoreline where boats had been beached. Several circles of charred rock that held the remains of campfires past were also apparent, most still holding charred cans or bottles.
“I can’t understand why Bigeagle would choose Timber for a camp,” commented Don who had jumped on shore and was pulling the boat farther on the beach. “Too many people and too many people of the kind he wouldn’t like. I can’t imagine he would react too favorably to seeing a beach trashed like this. And why would he leave his boat beached here when others would likely show up?”
“Maybe it’s the weather. You get a strong wind out of any direction and this bay is going to be calm.”
“The same could be said for a bunch of other south-facing bays. I think his cousin is playing us.”
“We may as well look as long as we are here.”
The Trasks split up, heading in opposite directions down the beach. They inspected areas showing any signs of recent boat landings or tracks going into the interior of the island as they walked, none of which yielded any results. Within an hour they were back at the boat sipping on bottles of water.
“I think we need to go back and lean on John Bigeagle again Dave. He’s screwing with us while his cousin takes off.”
Dave looked at his brother and then, over Don’s left shoulder, noticed a deer peeking out between two pines leaning over the shore, roughly twenty yards from where the beach ended. “Look at that,” said Dave, pointing.
Don turned. “It’s a deer,” replied his brother sarcastically. “They have those up here.”
“But where did he come from? The cliffs are right behind him and I would have spooked him when I was down there looking if he came from the beach. Let’s have a look.” Dave closed his water bottle and set it in the boat and then started walking towards the deer. Don shook his head and took one more sip before putting his bottle down and following.
The beach ended at a rocky wall that went up fifteen feet before sloping off. Jack pines and poplar grew from tiny cracks in the rock seeming to defy gravity and the winds that should easily knock them from their perch. Dave removed his socks and shoes, carrying them in his hand, and began wading toward where he had seen the deer.
“What the hell are you doing?” yelled his brother.
“Come on. The bottom is sandy and the water feels good. If nothing else you can cool off,” replied Dave as he looked ahead in the water watching for rocks.
By the time Don was in the water grumbling about what an idiot his brother was Dave had reached the spot where the deer had appeared. “Look at this!” he shouted back before he magically seemed to disappear into the trees before Don’s eyes.
Completely invisible from boat or the shore, the trees covered an opening to a sandy creek bed that ran to the interior of the island. Six inches of water stood where it met the lake; it was dry ten yards inland. Once inside the trees, the men could easily stand side-by-side.
“A boat has been here recently,” said Dave as he looked down. Among the many deer tracks that led up the creek, a groove with human footprints to one side was easily visible. Dave looked inland at the cut between walls of granite. “I bet this thing is roaring with water in the spring.”
The walls began to close in on the men as they moved up the creek until they could only walk single-file and the ground turned rocky. They replaced their shoes and continued only a short distance further where the creek seemed to end and left them staring at a large crack in a cliff. Without speaking the men turned and began slowly walk
ing out before Don lifted the branch of a pine on the right.
“Here!” he said; holding the branch up until Dave arrived. “Up we go.”
The climb out of the creek bed was a steep natural granite stairway. The steps being uneven in height and depth forced the men to go slow, holding the walls or grasping small pines along the sides as they went. Both men bent with hands on their thighs after reaching the top, breathing deeply after the climb. An obvious trail ran across the moss and pine needle covered ground from where they had stopped, seeming to end at a steep embankment roughly seventy-five yards inland. The trail became increasingly harder to follow as they climbed, angry jack pine and the sharp, pointed dead branches of spruce and popular tried to hold them back, Don finally suggesting they go back after they lost the trail for the third time. Their shirts were stained, their short hair spiked with sweat, their arms scratched raw.
Dave looked up the sharp rise ahead and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “We’ve come this far, we might as well go see what’s on top,” he said as he tried to figure out which way would result in the fewest scratches.
“Great,” replied Don shaking his head. “I’m sure I’ve already got poison ivy anyway. Lead on Daniel Boone.”
Another hundred yards and the trail broke into a clearing of scattered chunks of granite covered with moss and scraggly berry bushes. The terrain continued to slope upward for another twenty yards where it leveled off. An obvious campsite was ahead.
“If this is Bigeagle’s campsite he could see boats coming from nearly every direction,” commented Dave as he looked out over the lake. “And I’m sure it would have been an easy job to spy on the people on the beach if he wanted. He would have been long gone before we ever got here.”
