Force of Blood by Joseph Heywood Page A

do to help you?”
    “I want to try to nail down whether this vaunted Iroquois-Ojibwa battle actually took place, and if so, roughly when. Father Lalemant in the
Jesuit Relations
puts a certain battle in the spring or early summer of 1662, which seems to relate to the general story, but anything you can do to clarify would help.”
    “And if the battle didn’t happen?”
    “Then it didn’t happen.”
Which would make Katsu’s whole effort null and void, clearing the way for Sedge to hammer him with charges if he kept interfering with archaeologists whose work was approved by the State
.
Approved by the State? Does this mean the state archaeologist alone, or are others involved?
    “The other day you said both the Iroquois and Ojibwa buried their dead?”
    “I did.”
    “If you found remains, how would you know which was which?”
    “The Ojibwa tended to dress up their dead and have viewings much as we have before burying them in their best clothes. The Iroquois wrapped their dead in birch bark because when the rotting process was done, they would dig up the bones, clean them, and rebury them with a big ceremony. You’d also know by any implements with the remains…. Well, not exactly
know,
but you’d have evidence for an intelligent guess.”
    “Thanks, Etta.”
    “You want to stop for pastry and coffee next week and I’ll share what I have?”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    “I’ll call or send an e-mail when I have something,” she said.
    “Have you ever worked with the state archaeologist in Lansing?”
    “No.”
    “Do you happen to know if the SAO is the sole government agency to grant approvals to excavate?”
    “I think DEQ gives the approval, based on the SAO’s recommendation. After all, someone is asking to alter the environment, aren’t they?”

12
Slippery Creek Camp
TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2007
    When Grady Service saw Limpy Allerdyce’s battered Ford pickup parked next to his cabin, he winced. Allerdyce was one of the U.P.’s most notorious poachers, a felon, the leader of a feral tribe with a remote camp in the swamps of extreme southwest Marquette County, his father’s alleged onetime snitch and now his informant as well. All of this was bad enough in its own right, but what hurt most was that Limpy had somehow eliminated the people who had killed Nantz and his son, Walter, which by unbending Yooper ethical standards now left him indebted to the creep.
    He found Allerdyce in a stare-down with Newf on the porch. “Yore dog t’ward me ain’t so frien’ly, sonny,” Limpy said.
    “Good for her,” Service said. “You want coffee or arsenic?”
    “I don’t like da flavors youse got in dere.” Which meant the old poacher had been inside his cabin. Keeping him out was like trying to cut off air.
    “Why’re you here, Limpy? I’m busy.”
    “Yeah, youse ain’t here much dese days. Youse still porkin’ dat cute little state trooper?”
    Service glared at Limpy, who greeted the glare with a bobblehead grin. The old man was here with a purpose. He never showed up without a reason. “Spit it out, Allerdyce.”
    “Word out youse’re lookin’ for errorheads.”
    “The ubiquitous ‘word,’ huh?”
    Allerdyce ignored Service’s sarcasm. “I had me dis call from pal over Raco, eh.”
    “That so?”
    “Said red niggers campin’ up Vermilion way got somepin’ in da ground dey don’t want white men ta have.”
    Jesus, the U.P. swamp drums are unbelievable
. “
What
sort of thing in the ground?”
    Allerdyce shrugged. “I ain’t no monocle like dat ole Nekkidbuttgeezer.”
    The poacher’s often sloppy language, twisted logic, and malapropisms made him seem a fool, but he wasn’t. What the man lacked in formal education, he overcame with prodigious natural smarts, raw intelligence, and highly refined woodcraft, the sort of combination that made him a formidable cedar swamp lawbreaker. “What
have
you heard?” Service asked.
    “Hectorio, El Spicko Grande, word is he put out word for