Backfire

By Ron Boggs

CHICAGO-THE GEM OF THE PRAIRIE-EARLY AUTUMN, 1871 The city was alive. Raw materials and finished goods moved as fast as the new railroads and lake schooners could carry them. Wisconsin white pine lumber was big business in a city composed of thousands of wooden structures connected by wooden sidewalks and wooden-block streets.

Competition was fierce, ruthless, and deadly.

An Eau Claire lumberman is killed in his hotel room and a competitor, Arlyn Rygg, from Green Bay, must work with the police to find the real killer in order to exonerate himself. His inquiries draw him into a maelstrom of intrigue and deception. Ultimately he races through the Great Fire and learns more than he ever wanted to know.

Praise for Natural Drift, a contemporary Western action mystery pinning a Montana County Sheriff against a rogue U.S. Marshall.

I am writing to let you know how much I enjoyed your novel, Natural Drift. I found it to be a very good read with a realistic plot and well developed characters. I honestly could not put it down once I started it. Sheriff Thomas Rieger, Carbon County, Montana

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491729489

Ron Boggs

Ron Boggs is a Chicago native who has written extensively on a wide range of topics. His contemporary fiction includes Natural Drift, Adrians Bordereaux, and Natural Drift. Ron and his wife have a home in Big Sky, Montana.

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Copyright © 2014 Ron Boggs.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-2949-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2948-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905494

iUniverse rev. date: 03/19/2014

CONTENTS

ADIEU TO A SOLDIER

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

EPILOGUE

ADIEU TO A SOLDIER

Adieu O soldier,

You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,)

The rapid march, the life of camp,

The hot contention of opposing fronts, the long manoeuvre,

Red battles with their slaughter, the stimulus, the strong terrific game,

Spell of all the brave and manly hearts, the trains of time through you

And like of you all filled,

With war and war’s expression.

Adieu dear comrade,

Your mission is fulfilled—but I, more warlike,

Myself and this contentious soul of mine,

Still on our campaigning bound,

Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined,

Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled

Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out—aye here,

To fiercer, weightier battles give expression.

By Walt Whitman

PROLOGUE

It is about time that I do this. It is a story that needs to be told. I’ve been thinking about it for over forty years, since the fires.

Churned it over every day. Not all day every day, mind you, but every day—some little scrap. A long time. Time enough to lose a critical piece here or there, and then, after watching a hawk circle the mill pond, recapture the runaway speck and remember it as vividly as I would remember having been swept into a whirlpool an hour ago. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think that it’s a made-up tale. It sounds so contrived, so extreme that it couldn’t be real. Many unusual things happened in that long, hot summer of 1871.

Over the years I’ve shaped my thinking, like a potter adding bits of clay to a half-finished jug. I’ve gathered what I could from others, but this is my perspective—unabridged, and self-supporting as it is—with a good chance that I’ve stretched a point or two or assumed someone knew something before he or she actually did. I certainly wasn’t party to every conversation or privy to anyone’s thoughts but my own.

I have mellowed considerably since the ’70’s. I remember myself in those early days: full of energy and focused on making my mark on the world. In my defense, I had been to the war and saw how quickly lives could end. I had a consuming passion for life and wanted to do something—to make something happen and to have meaning. I didn’t want to sit out the parade or lag behind. On the carousel of life, I wanted to grab the brass ring before I fell off the horse. In the long run, I was a proud young man—worked hard, prospered and suffered for it.

Now is certainly not too soon to tell the tale. Can’t see that I’m going to get any healthier. Heart muscle doesn’t heal. I know pumps, and the one in my chest is not working right: the lower chamber just can’t hold the pressure. Backwash. At the pulp mill a pump as bad as my heart would be replaced before the next shift was over.

It’s not that I’m going to die tomorrow, but nobody would be surprised if I did.

Anyway, I’m really the only one who knows most of the story. All the major characters are gone. Pa died at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in ’93. Uncle Oskar, he died before the new century arrived. Of course, Milo’s long gone. My Miriam’s gone. I think that we’d have been a lot happier if I’d told her the whole story. I suppose I took a measure of happiness away from her as well by being the man I was—a man with a secret he thought about every day. Milo’s son Frederick may read this story and be incensed. Perhaps he’s my prime audience. I’m afraid he’s so much the American Colossus that he’ll only worry the story might hurt Rygg Brothers’ sales, lower the price of our shares or increase the interest rate on a new bond issue. I would counsel him to stand down, relax—an old family story about a bunch of dead people is not going to make a ripple. Anyway, Frederick’s got to suspect something. I certainly tried to consider his loss, but I’m afraid all I succeeded in doing was pushing his nose into the grindstone to the point that it was bloody.

Hell, it was an accident I haven’t told anyone about. It’s a story I should have laid out when it happened and taken the consequences. But, for want of courage, I didn’t, and now I can’t imagine what would have happened if I’d taken that route.

This story is not the sort of thing you read in the paper, a police file, or a government report. I’ll let Frederick and the rest of the family decide what to do with it.

With the story written from my perspective and with me, the last man standing, soon to be irrevocably dead, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to conjecture what actually happened—the irrefutable truth, if such a thing exists when humans are involved. But mind, I’ve got most of it right.

Regardless, I’m doing this for myself so I can gain a measure of peace. I imagine a lot of folks will find a modicum of spiteful consistency in that: Arlyn taking care of himself. They say that behind every fortune there’s a crime. If that’s the case, then I’m the criminal behind the Rygg Brothers’ fortune.

Enough said. Here it is: Arlyn Rygg, October 17, 1918.

CHAPTER 1

Saturday, September 23, 1871

I spotted a tall, well-dressed man with a bushy mustache coming through the archway into the main dining room. He walked across the room, leaning forward with his large head and narrow shoulders, as though he were about to fall forward. Thin and flatfooted, like Lincoln. Yes, it is Henry Hancock. My jaw tightened, and I slowly rose straight up from my chair, as though I was levitating. I’d hoped this moment would arrive—sometime, somewhere. With a stone-faced nod to the petite young lady I was with, I excused myself from the table and slowly crossed the floor, passing several other diners without noticing them, and approached Hancock, whom the maître d’ had seated at a small table near the window. Hancock began to read the menu card.

My shoulders drew square and my chest inflated as I inhaled. I strode up to Hancock’s table, looked down at him, and said, "Henry Hancock, I’ve been looking for you. Seems you owe us something on the Peer Olaf deal."

Hancock looked up, slowly shaking his large head as if trying to clear his mind, and then brought his hand up to his moustache and gave a brief smile on recognizing me, a fellow veteran of Sherman’s army and now a competitor in the white pine lumber business. He turned his head away and looked down at the silver tableware on the white tablecloth. He lifted his chin and gazed at the white gardenia in the crystal vase. Finally he looked up.

Sergeant Rygg, good to see you again. One would think Chicago was hosting a lumbermen’s convention. I can’t say I know what you’re talking about, though. We bought some of your lumber? Why would we do that? But my brother George did mention your name. He says you got us kicked out of Bergmann’s lumberyard? Is that true?

I shot back, "You know what I’m talking about. Our lumber on the Peer Olaf was unfairly downgraded and you bought it all at half price. You can’t deny it!"

In the first instance, I’m not buying and selling pine. George is the one to talk to about that. Not me. And, by your leave sir, I’d ask you to allow me a peaceful dinner.

As if to punctuate his statement, Henry Hancock quickly turned in his chair and stood. The near corner of the chair struck me in the knee and threw me backwards, off balance. I reached out towards Hancock, just as he drove a fist into my exposed gut. He was not a strong man, but he outweighed me by fifty pounds and stood over six feet to my five and a half. The blow almost lifted me off the ground.

A primal grunt reverberated from the bottom of my lungs to the walls of the small restaurant. As I collapsed, my flailing hands clawed the front of Hancock’s dinner jacket and latched onto the lapels. I landed on my back on the table. The table tipped and started to slide out from under me. The crash of the silverware brought the other diners to their feet.

For a long moment I was hanging in mid-air, scrambling to gain my footing. Once a foot found the floor, I released Hancock’s jacket and shot my fist up towards his head. The blow glanced off his chin and landed on the side of his prominent nose. I felt and heard the collapse of the cartilage, which released a deluge of blood. The torrent poured over both of us.

Hancock, momentarily stunned, stood upright, and watched the blood as it cascaded from his nose. He snatched his napkin off the floor, cupped his hands over his face, turned, and ran out of Schneider’s Restaurant.

I stood silently next to the overturned table. With a sense of a small victory, I stood tall and drilled Hancock’s retreating back with a piercing glare. Only after Hancock was out of sight did I notice the table and the blood covering the front of my own shirt. I dismissed it as an inconvenience, and with one hand snatched the small table off the floor and set it upright. Then, stepping over the broken glass and scattered tableware, I walked back across the room to Miss Miriam Albright. She was standing next to our table with a quizzical look on her small oval face. The sight of her standing there captured the moment for me. I could not help but notice her natural beauty framed in cascading auburn hair. I smiled. She shook her head in small, quick jerks, grasped my arms in her small, doll-like hands, and looked up to me. Avoiding my bloody shirt, she pulled me down and whispered in my ear.

CHAPTER 2

Saturday, September 23

Arl, are you all right? Miriam said. I sensed that we were on display in a theatrical stage production. All eyes were on us, but this was not the time for an explanation of the last scene. I could tell that Miriam wanted to leave the restaurant as quickly as we could and I silently agreed with her. She said in a whisper, We’ve got to get out of here. I successfully fought the urge to scan the room and say something, but the audience would be disappointed, the play was over. I pulled some silver dollars out of my pocket and slapped them on our table. Miriam ushered me out the front door and we scurried east on Randolph Street, her arm around my back.

I kept my head down and followed her lead. I was satisfied with the outcome of the exchange with Hancock, even though there was no admission of guilt. I’m fine. It’s his blood. It just poured out all over. I only hit him once. God, I wish I would’ve hit him again. I took a deep breath and looked up for the first time.

Well, you made your point, whatever it was. Who was that fellow? How could you do that at Schneider’s? My father will just rage. My God, look at you. You look like you got the worst of a knife fight.

Henry Hancock, a lumber guy from Wisconsin. Hammered us over a boatload of pine. He deserved worse.

"That was Henry Hancock?"

"Ja, the one and only. You know him?"

She didn’t answer but tugged at my gingham shirt, trying to hide the blood. People are staring.

Indeed, as we approached Dearborn Street a group of young boys walking towards us saw the blood on my shirt and started jostling each other and jeering,

Is he dead yet?

Should have seen the other guy!

Don’t bleed on me!

A newsboy waved a paper and trumpeted, Man stabbed on Randolph Street. Read all about it! The boys succeeded in getting the full attention of the early Saturday evening crowd at the busy intersection.

I smirked at the boys’ remarks, then looked down at Miriam and smiled. Who cares? Let’s get me a clean shirt. I’ve got some back at my room. We can still make the show.

Miriam shook her head. Let’s forget the show. She went to the curb and flagged down a one-horse cab. Let’s go to my house. Everyone’s in Lake Forest for the dedication of some new building at the university. My parents won’t be back until tomorrow night. We can get you one of Austin’s shirts and throw this bloody rag away. She turned away quickly to grasp the handrail of the cab before it stopped.

My mother had sewn the shirt just before she died and throwing it away was the last thing on my mind. Dearest, I want the shirt. What are we doing?

As we crawled into the back of the open-air carriage the driver turned to view his new passengers. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he saw the blood. Miriam gave him a cold stare and then shot a menacing scowl at the assembled onlookers. North Pine. Corner of Pine and Oak. Get us out of here, now!

The driver turned away, slapped the reins and the carriage jolted forward, throwing Miriam and me into the back of the upholstered seat.

I whispered, Miriam, I really don’t want to go to your house. I don’t want to borrow anything from Austin. Your house is like a hotel with rich people coming and going all the time. Certainly Austin, his wife and kids didn’t go to the dedication with your parents. And Esther, the house-detective, will be ruling the roost.

I turned and watched the traffic as we approached the turnstile bridge over the Chicago River. Let’s go up to Frank’s. We’re close. He’ll have a shirt I can borrow. Anyway, I need to check on a new shipment of photography stuff. Then we can go to Lincoln Park for a walk or an ice cream. I don’t want to ruin the whole evening.

Well, you need a new shirt, that’s for sure. But why do we need to do this errand now? Frank’s probably not even home. I must see him twice a week out and about, lugging his equipment. Austin has a shirt that will fit you. He won’t miss it. They all have two sleeves.

I shifted to face Miriam and said, I don’t want to be borrowing clothes from Austin. Austin and I have an understanding—we leave each other alone. We’re in different worlds. I don’t mess with him and he doesn’t mess with me. Used to call me ‘the pine man’, like I was a circus sideshow freak. This bloody shirt would be talked about for years. Certainly Esther would be telling your parents about it the minute they walked in the door. Let’s get me cleaned up at Frank’s and go from there, OK?

"All right, but tomorrow’s Sunday and I’m working at the orphanage. Then all week you’re going to be in meetings or down at the yards and then you’re going back to Green Bay—so tonight or tomorrow night, one way or another we really need to talk. We’ve got to figure out where we’re going from here. Arl, the way it is now, you spend more time coming and going on the schooners than anywhere else. You’re just too busy."

She put her delicate hands in her lap and toyed with a ring on her right hand. It was gold with three small inlaid rubies. It was a Christmas gift from me that held a secret marital pledge: a promise of a promise. She didn’t wear it all the time, as though she were saving it for special occasions. But I couldn’t help seeing it as a barometer measuring the periodic changes in our relationship. When she did not wear the ring, I was on the alert.

I opened my mouth ready to respond. Then I changed my mind and turned my head to view the passing traffic on the bridge.

I leaned forward and said to the driver, Let’s go over to Kinzie Street, just west of Clark. Can you wait? I won’t be long.

Miriam turned away from me and looked out at the river and the active boat traffic.

The horse clomped forward on the wooden boards of the bridge as the driver swung his head back over his shoulder and said, Well, I don’t do tours. Prancing all over town. And I can’t get through on Kinzie from Pine so we’ll have to go all the way up and backtrack down on Clark. I’ll have to charge you extra.

Miriam looked at me, silently asking if I would change my mind. I shook my head ‘no’. Then Miriam said to the driver, We’ll pay the fare. We need to wait while he changes his shirt. She looked at my trousers and saw that some of the blood from my shirt was spreading. Boy, you’re a mess.

Well, thank you very much. I always try to look my best for you!

We laughed and the driver laughed with us.

CHAPTER 3

Saturday, September 23

Francis Xavier Gilmartin ran a photography studio above a butcher shop, in a new frame three-story building, only two blocks off the increasingly fashionable North State Street. He was Frank to his friends and a small group of photography hobbyists for whom he bought equipment and chemicals, but he was Francis to his retail customers: wealthy families and successful businessmen who could afford to preserve their history with formal photographs.

It had always been obvious to me that the only reason Frank was in business was to finance his real passion: photographing the everyday life of everyday people, just as he had done during the war. During the war he was a field-operator in the U.S. Telegram Service and, unofficially, the regiment’s photographer. He was a new kind of artist whose medium was the photograph. I marveled at Frank’s artistic perspective and the emotional impact of his work. Frank stayed up with the latest technology to achieve the finest results.

Frank and I were the same age and about the same height and weight. He had dark red hair and mine was light brown then. In the headquarters company they said that hair color was the only thing that set us apart. Our small stature, the war and mutual interests had contributed to a bond that grew throughout the war and had lasted in spite of the years since then. But, we were different. He had a city boy’s savvy and looked for self-serving motives in everyone’s behavior, while I’d worked in the forest and mill focusing on the job-at-hand, and saw the world as a series of problems that needed solutions.

Aside from Miriam, photography was my only diversion from the lumber business. I had taken a lot of photos of our work crews, horses, equipment and buildings, but had yet to take formal portraits, Frank’s specialty. Frank was my mentor and friend. Picking up supplies from Frank was a regular feature of my trips to Chicago. My latest order was ready, and I was looking forward to the new Maddox dry-plate process and the long-range lens from Germany.

The carriage ground to a stop and I leaped out. I left Miriam without a goodbye and vaulted up the exterior staircase to Frank’s studio. I was pleased that a quick twist of the knob opened the door.

Frank! Frank! Come out, come out, wherever you are! I yelled into the empty space.

The muffled answer came after a long silence. I’m in the darkroom. Three minutes more.

It’s me, Arlyn, came for my stuff.

Be right out.

I looked around the large, high-ceilinged room. In one corner was a white, pleated curtain hanging from floor to ceiling and a long bench, long enough for four adults to sit together for a group portrait. The rest of the room was a jumble of boxy cameras, tripods, large framed photographs of army units, and a table stacked with loose pictures of factory workers and street vendors. On a second table were thick glass bottles of all sizes and colors, and in another corner a triangular jumble of heavy black canvas that I knew to be a developing tent for wet-plate slides. I found my box of supplies on the floor by the door to the darkroom. It was a complete dry-plate set-up, two lenses, a dozen five-by-eight inch glass plates, thick glass bottles of alcohol and ether, and heavy paper bags labeled pyroxyline, bromide of cadmium and iodide of ammonium. A sheaf of papers was tucked into the side of the box. The handwriting was distinctively precise as though printed by a machine. Frank had written out the process of coating the plates with the light-sensitive chemicals.

I hefted the box. It was solid oak with wrought iron edges and corner supports. It would take an effort to get it down the steep stairs and into the cab. I considered leaving the box for another day but decided that since I was here I would take it.

I was reading Frank’s write-up, swinging my head side-to-side trying to understand it, when Frank came out of the darkroom. Whoa, Arl, are you bleeding? You all right?

"Ja, sure. I’m fine. You won’t believe it. I looked down at the dried blood on my shirt. This is actually Henry Hancock’s blood. You remember him? Long story. He sucker-punched me and I hit him once in the nose and he bled all over me. You’d think I sliced his throat. You got a shirt I can borrow? Miriam’s downstairs in a carriage waiting and, well, it’s a long story."

Hancock, that dandy’s still on your tail? You two always seemed to have some rift going—one thing or another. Sure, I got a shirt for you. I got a bunch of nice ones for the society set. They expect a photographer to look like a preacher on Sunday morning. Where were you that you ran into Hancock? Before I could answer, Frank turned away to the back of the shop and quickly came back with a folded white dress shirt. Here, this ought to fit, he said, casually throwing it to me from ten feet away. I took off my bloody shirt. Hey, are you here the rest of the week?

I responded while wiggling into the heavily starched shirt. Mostly. Sailing north on Friday with Milo and a load of machinery.

"I want to show you how to work with