The Painting

By Dave Sullivan

Twenty-seven-year old Minneapolis divorce lawyer Molly Parker Graham has had a fascination with The Painting nearly all her life. She suddenly finds herself a Gold Star widow, her life turned upside down by Taliban machine gun fire that took her Army Ranger husband and a miscarriage that took their unborn son. Uncertain whether she can go on living or even wants to, she seeks respite and convalescence at her family’s one hundred-year-old lakeshore lodge in the north woods of northwestern Wisconsin. There she finds comfort and solace in The Painting, a pastoral wooded scene that has hung above the mantel in the Great Room of the lodge for nearly a hundred years.
While there, Molly learns that the lodge’s future is uncertain since the recent death of its owner, her great uncle, Elliot. Some family members want to take over the operation of the lodge. Others want to sell it. In her mental state Molly wants no part of the feud that is brewing. At a big family meeting with
Molly’s reluctance to get involved is overcome by the encouragement and cajoling of her eighty-three-year old great aunt Wilhelmina. Together, Molly and Aunt Will tackle issues surrounding their family, the lodge and Molly’s mental state
Molly and Aunt Will learn they share an affinity for seeing things that others do not, especially in The Painting. The artist, Wm Werner Wells is described as having been "a curmudgeon in the extreme, a naturalist, a botanist, an artist, a poet, a poacher and a thief!
Molly and Aunt Will struggle with issues related to their family lodge, the death of Molly’s great uncle and aunt will’s brother and more. Together they face these issues and more ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Sullivan
• Release date: Mar 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781005800710

Dave Sullivan

Dave Sullivan is a retired Minnesota State District Court Judge. After practicing law for thirty years in Duluth, Minnesota, he was appointed to the District Court Bench and was chambered in Duluth for ten years until his retirement in 2006. Dave and his wife, Kath, live in Madeira Beach, Florida and Bayfield County, Wisconsin.

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FOREWORD

This is a work of fiction. The story takes place in the Cable Lakes Area of northwestern Wisconsin and in Minnesota’s Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The characters are fictional save a few historical names from the history of the Tri-Lakes.

The Tri-Lakes, Hammill, Samoset and Wilipyro are real, but Standing Pines Lodge and the Morgan family are entirely fictional.

The Garmisch Resort on Lake Namakagon is real, is beautiful and the food is excellent.

Molly Parker Graham and her Aunt Will have their hands full trying to save the lodge, solve a murder and find lost buried treasure!

Dave Sullivan

March 2018

CHAPTER ONE

People in one time can communicate with inhabitants of the future. We know that. Letters, now probably e-mails or social media posts to the next generation seem easy enough. Time capsules have been used for many years as a means of communicating into the future. But can people in the present communicate back in time? Can people in the former time see or learn what is happening in the present?

Molly Parker Graham was about to find out. The subject was gold.

Gold. Nothing else quite captures man’s imagination or drives him crazier than sweet yellow gold.

Chemical symbol: Au

Atomic Number: 79

Color: Bright Yellow (gold)

Properties: Relatively inert, corrosion resistant metal

Perhaps more than any other substance found in nature, this simple, beautiful metal has obsessed mankind for thousands of years, triggering wars and conflicts, supporting economies and empires, and causing something called gold fever that so takes over a man's mind that he can think of nothing more and do nothing more than pursue the faint hope of finding color and the riches that gold promises.

Human fascination with gold goes back to before the beginning of recorded history. Ancient Egyptian pharaohs and priests prized the yellow metal for their temples and religious icons. Since recorded history began, gold has served man beyond mere symbols and decorations, but as a medium of exchange. Gold was minted into coins used as currency. Gold provided a standard by which currency has been measured. Its perceived value has been so stable and reliable, gold has often been used as a means of storing substantial wealth. Gold, by itself, offers no explanation for this obsession. Rather, the answer, however puzzling, lies in man’s perception and his fascination with this particular substance.

Gold is not necessary for human existence. It is not like water, food, clothing and shelter. Gold has no intrinsic value. Only man's obsession makes gold desirable and gives it artificial value. Gold doesn’t go away. Of the nearly 200,000 tons that have been found or mined from the earth, nearly all is still around, although most is kept under careful guard.

Men have labored long and hard to take gold from the land. Some men have preferred to take the gold from other men. Many have fought and died over gold.

When gold is around and possibly for the taking, whether from nature or someone else, otherwise sane and honest men go crazy, act in foolish, dangerous and often illegal ways. Honesty, integrity and honor disappear.

Lost or mislaid gold wakens the greed and avarice in many men. Throughout history, stories of sunken Spanish galleons and buried treasure abound. Men's desire, obsession and willingness to seek this yellow treasure at all costs drives them in one irreversible and self-destructive direction. As long as the gold continues to be missing and lost, the obsession continues. The search never ends.

In the summer of 1897 in the hills of western Wisconsin, the dog days of August were uncomfortably warm and dry. On a particularly hot and hazy day, GB&W Engine No. 7 rolled along the tracks pulling its tender, twenty-seven freight cars and a caboose bound for Winona on the Green Bay Route. Past the town of Arcadia, she generally followed the meandering Trempealeau River as it flowed south and west toward its confluence with the Mississippi. But No. 7 and its train would not follow the Trempealeau that far. She would cross the Trempealeau and then cross over the Mississippi at Winona on the river crossing bridge jointly owned by the Chicago, Burling & Quincy Railroad and No. 7's owner, the Green Bay & Western Railroad or commonly called GB&W. But, as it turned out, that wouldn't happen either.

The engineer peered through the haze, heat rising from the tracks ahead in waves that made the tracks appear to oscillate back and forth like waves of grain in a field. He figured the temperature would get well into the nineties by mid-afternoon. A hot day for working. As a kid, on a hot, lazy summer day like this one, he would find a way to spend the afternoon in and out of a stream or river like the nearby Trempealeau or the Mississippi. In his imagination he could feel the cool water. Oh, to be a kid again.

At first, he sensed the obstruction on the tracks more than he saw it. He applied the brakes hoping there was enough time and distance to stop the train. It slowed gradually and finally stopped just short of a pile of logs and lumber on the track.

Suddenly, several armed, masked men appeared on both sides of the track. Two remained by the locomotive with carbines trained on the engineer. Others moved back along the train.

Hands up! shouted one of the masked men. The engineer put up his hands where the riflemen could see them. He leaned back and waited. His fireman stood by, anxiously watching the robbers. Up the hillside away from the tracks and the river, the engineer saw four more men with rifles and a dozen or so horses being tended by another man, also masked.

The seventh car back behind the tender carried the gold he'd been told was on this run. He didn't know if the robbers knew which car or were even after the gold.

The gold shipment was $250,000 in gold and silver coinage being shipped from Chicago to Winona by Mississippi Valley Bank & Trust Company for distribution to its branches in Winona, Red Wing, Wabasha, Lake City, and La Crescent, all towns along the river. The coins were shipped in twenty-four Winchester strong boxes each carrying 500 - 600 coins worth over $10,000. Empty, the metal strong boxes weighed twenty-five pounds each. With the gold and silver, each box weighed from seventy-five to more than ninety pounds. The railroad used teams of men and heavy lifting equipment at the station to off load such heavy freight containers to other transportation vehicles. The engineer had seen only men and horses. If the gold shipment was their objective, he saw no transport method for getting the gold out of the area.

The shipment, he understood, came up from Chicago to New London where its boxcar was added to the train, continuing on toward Winona on the Green Bay Route. The National Express Company handled the shipping. An express agent and an additional armed guard inside the car guarded the gold. He'd heard other guards or detectives were aboard, but the engineer wasn't sure and hadn't seen any he recognized as such. Maybe some back in the caboose. He reached to his blouse pocket for his pipe.

Hold it, there! One of the men near the engine threatened with his carbine. The engineer held up his old briar pipe, his eyebrows raised, asking permission and, at the same time, showing the innocence in his move. By this time, the engineer had concluded he was in little or no danger provided he didn't do something foolish.

The man relaxed the rifle a little but shook his head in the negative. The engineer put his pipe back in his pocket.

From where he stood, the engineer could not see back along the train. The riflemen had directed him to keep eyes forward. With his peripheral vision, he could still see the men and horses up the hill. Several had mounted and were proceeding down the grassy slope toward the train farther back. Tiny dust clouds rose up from the dry ground and hung in the air behind the horses. Going to the caboose, he thought. Two more rode down to the engine where one of the engineer's guards held their mounts while they began moving the woodpile on the tracks that had stopped the train. One of the riflemen called his fireman down to help. Odd, thought the engineer. What did these guys care about what happened to them after they left?

Noises from commotion back along the train sounded like it could be in the vicinity of the seventh car back. Voices barking commands of some sort. After about fifteen minutes the shouts and noises stopped. A rider came forward, examined the progress of the obstruction removal and leaned down to speak to one of the riflemen. The man nodded and looked toward the engineer as the rider moved back along the train. He motioned with his rifle at the fireman who climbed back aboard. The pile of logs and lumber and other junk that had been on the tracks just ahead of Engine No. 7 was gone.

The rifleman waved in response from a shout from further back. He turned to the engineer. Okay. Now, get out of here!

The steam gauge showed they still had enough steam to get going. The big driving wheels spun a little with the throttle until they began to get traction and give power to Engine No. 7 to overcome the inertia of twenty-nine cars standing still and wanting to remain that way. Soon the train was on its way. In his mirror, the engineer could see men and horses and a stack of what he assumed were twenty-four Winchester strong boxes filled with $250,000 in gold and silver coins. Now what?

The engineer drove Engine No. 7 forward for what he judged to be about five miles. A curve in the track had quickly put the train robbers and their loot out of sight. At five miles away from the robbery site, the engineer figured it was safe to stop. Moving back along the train, the fireman and engineer found no sign of activity. The door to the seventh car back was locked with a heavy brass padlock. No key was anywhere in sight. The limited tools in the Engine cab would be of little use against that lock. They would get it eventually, but it would take time. The engineer pounded on the door and shouted. He heard movement and muffled voices.

The caboose, he told the fireman who began jogging back toward the rear. Maybe there was something there that would work against the heavy lock. There was nothing in the engine that would do the job.

Scanning as much of the line of cars as he could from where he stood, he saw nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary but no activity of any kind, either. The fireman returned shortly with bolt cutters the size of pruning shears for hedges. There was something that should work. Why they were in the caboose, he couldn’t imagine. With hardened muscles from years of shoveling coal into the firebox, the fireman made short work of the lock. The big door slid back revealing eight men, bound and gagged on the floor of the car. No one seemed to be hurt. The express agent, two men the engineer didn't know and the rest of the train crew. From the empty holsters and cartridge belts on the two he didn't know, he presumed they had been armed. Probably railroad detectives or private police. No weapons were in sight.

The men split up. Five returned to the caboose. Three joined the engineer and fireman in the engine. The engineer headed for the first stop where they could report the robbery.

Hours later, the authorities arrived at the site where the train had been stopped. The late afternoon sun, still high in a cloudless sky over the valley of the Trempealeau River, shone down on the men investigating. No shade to offer relief from the oppressive heat unless one wandered off to the trees along the river bottom. Some did. At nearly four in the afternoon, the air temperature had shone no sign of cooling. It had taken them that long to get there after receiving a telegraph report that the train had been robbed. Arriving on horseback and by buggy, they brought the engineer, fireman, express agent and one of the caboose crewmen with them as witnesses to explain what happened. The armed guard in the car carrying the gold was in on it, the express agent said.

At the scene, there was nothing.

You sure this is the place? asked a Buffalo County Sheriff's deputy, wiping his forehead with a red bandanna.

The engineer scanned the woods along the river for a pair of particularly tall pines that stood above the rest. He had noted them as landmarks while still under the watchful eye of the outlaws. He pulled his pipe and tobacco pouch. This is it, he answered.

Where did they offload the gold?

The engineer touched a match to the fresh fill, took a few deep drafts on the stem sending clouds of blue smoke into the air. Seven cars back. He nodded back along the track.

As the group walked back along the track, the engineer mentally paced off railway car lengths. He stopped. Just about here, he told the deputies. Sheriffs and deputies from Buffalo and Trempealeau counties were joined by railroad police and some Pinkertons the express company had sent. They all wandered around the scene, tramping this way and that, walking over each other's tracks, much to the amusement, in part, and dismay, in a larger part, of the engineer.

Over here, he said, finally. He pointed out an area near the track on the river side. The tall grass was bent down flat, like where a bear or deer had slept the night before. But where the engineer pointed, the flattened grass was not the shape of a nesting White-tail or Black Bear. The pressings in the grass were several and in rectangular shapes. The engineer recalled the view in the engine's mirror of boxes stacked, surrounded by men whose faces were masked by their bandanas pulled up nearly to their eyes.

A young Pinkerton man named Jensen asked him, You say you saw the strong boxes stacked here where these impressions are?

The engineer nodded. I thought so. I was looking in the rear view mirror from the engine eight cars ahead.

Jensen nodded, studied the impressions in the grass some more and stared off toward the river.

Beyond the impressions in the grass, the assembled peace officers found nothing. No tracks, of men, horses or wagons. The engineer had observed nothing but men and horses. No wagons, draft animals or equipment that could run or be pushed or pulled on the tracks. How did they remove the gold? Did they remove it from the strongboxes? If so, what did they do with twenty-four boxes that weighed twenty-five pounds each, empty? And where did they take the gold, if they actually took it somewhere?

Jensen, still standing next to the engineer, shook his head. Moving all that heavy gold and those strong boxes would have been difficult in any circumstance, but in this heat. You didn’t’ see any wagons or equipment?

Nope.

Expert trackers who later studied the scene, speculated that the thieves unloaded the strongboxes and hid or destroyed them, carrying the gold and silver some other way. Some thought the money was buried somewhere not far from the robbery site. Some thought they got the treasure to the banks of the Trempealeau River and floated it in small boats or canoes down to the Mississippi and getting away down the big river by boat or river barge. More Pinkerton detectives were brought in. Everyone searched. Nothing was found. No one was caught.

Nearly twenty-five years later, on a warm morning in June in the Minneapolis office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the wooden swivel chair creaked as Walter Jensen leaned back from his desk and the open file he was reviewing. Jensen was a veteran of the Agency, nearing retirement after nearly thirty years. The file was the case file on a train robbery that happened back in 1897 near Arcadia, Wisconsin. Jensen was little more than a rookie back then. Pinkertons had not been aboard when the train was stopped and robbed. They were called in immediately following the first report of the incident. Because he and a partner had been in Winona when the call came in by wire, they were able to arrive within hours along with local law enforcement. Jensen was fairly new then, still learning, but some experienced investigators and skilled trackers on the scene were mystified by the lack of physical evidence.

$250,000 in gold and silver coins isn't light. It isn't easy to move. How the hell did they do it? That question had bothered Detective Jensen for nearly his entire career. He had always held to the theory that the gold was put on boats in the nearby Trempealeau River and floated down to the Mississippi and from there in the boats or on a river barge out of the area and far away.

Train robberies had diminished in number since then as the country was becoming more civilized. Fast communications systems had improved. Remote places suitable to stop a train weren't as common as they used to be. Still, the Newton gang had taken three million off a train near Chicago just a couple of years ago. More importantly, though, thought Jensen, those cases were solved. The robbers were caught and killed or sent to prison. Not so with the case in the file on his desk.

Hugh Brandon came in. He looked at the file on Jensen's desk. Walt! You still lookin' at that old Mississippi Valley/National Express case?

Jensen nodded.

It's been twenty-five years, Walt. You ain't never gonna catch them now. We'll never know who they are, or were.

I don't give up that easily, Jensen responded. Remember the company slogan, 'We never sleep!' I've lost a few nights sleep over this one.

I know you have, Walt. No one could ever accuse you of giving up easily. Brandon leaned against the wall of Jensen's tiny office. You should give it up now, though. You're about to retire. I'm sure those guys retired years ago, if they're even still alive. He struck a match against a cast iron radiator and lit a factory-rolled cigarette. You know, Walt, the robbery victims don’t even care, anymore. The National Express Company no longer exists. It was absorbed by American Express several years ago. The Mississippi Valley Bank is still going strong, but the people who ran the bank when it was hurt by the train robbery are also dead and gone or retired. The current executives would probably love to get the money, if you found it, but they are comfortable running the bank successfully as it is.

Brandon tapped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. The fact is, Walt, enough time has passed that nobody today cares, except maybe you.

After Hugh Brandon left, Jensen reviewed the file one more time. Nothing stood out. It was the same as it had been for years. There had been specialists who could have pulled off the robbery. But the James gang was long gone by that time, its members either dead or in prison in Minnesota. It was pretty far east for the Wild Bunch. Besides, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed more than a decade ago in Bolivia. Solving the case now wouldn't affect them much. Jensen had gone through the Pinkerton Rogue's Gallery several times over looking for outlaws who might have pulled it off. Jensen assumed, therefore, that it was somebody new. Somebody without a reputation or a record. Somebody who stole once and then disappeared into anonymity.

Jensen thought about what Brandon said. Did a case die just because people lost interest? He hoped that wasn't true. But, Hugh Brandon was probably right. The robbers would never be identified. The gold would never be found. Because nobody cared anymore. Jensen closed the file for the last time.

With inflation at an annual average of 2.82 %, it would take about $560 to buy today what a twenty dollar gold coin could buy in 1897. The spending power of $250,000 in 1897 would be the equivalent of over $7 Million, today. In reverse, although $250,000 in 1897 dollars, if they were accepted at face value, could purchase $250,000 worth of goods and services today, those goods and services would have cost less than $9,000 in 1897. A good reason not to hide savings in a mattress. Or in leathern bags, like Silas Marner.

However, as gold hunters know, the value of gold has out performed even inflation. The melt value today of a twenty dollar gold double eagle is over $1200. For 12,500 coins, that is over $15 Million. But the 12,500 coins in good condition, and these were newly minted when stolen, could be sold as coins through the right coin dealer at auction for as much as $1,500 to $2,000 apiece, giving the stolen treasure a current value of Eighteen to Twenty-five Million Dollars.

Where could it be? As long as it is missing, people will keep looking.

CHAPTER TWO

More than a hundred years after the Arcadia train robbery, Molly Parker Graham sat in the Great Room of Standing Pines Lodge, wondering what more could happen to her; wondering whether she could even survive what had already happened. At age twenty-seven, she should have her life in front of her with all its wonderful opportunities. She did have all that until four months earlier when it was brutally taken away by Taliban machine gun fire. Molly and Brian Wozniak were married little over a year ago. Molly had kept her birth name as it was the name she used in starting her career as a family law attorney in downtown Minneapolis. Brian was Staff Sergeant Brian Wozniak of the United States Army Rangers. He was planning to leave the Army at the end of his current enlistment later this year. With a baby on the way, he had decided to become a civilian and join Molly in beginning their life in the Twin Cities.

While deployed in Afghanistan, his team came under heavy attack while on patrol in the mountainous Kunar Province in the northeastern part of the country. With what the Army later described as uncommon acts of heroism and valor, Sergeant Wozniak held off overpowering enemy forces until his team members could be rescued. He did so at the cost of his own life.

Sgt. Wozniak was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumously.

Molly was devastated. She miscarried their child, a boy whom she would have named Brian Wozniak, Jr. Friends and family tried to make her feel better. Their efforts were born of genuine compassion, but they failed miserably. Not their fault, Molly knew, but no help nonetheless. It was her fault. It was Molly who couldn't understand this enormous change in her life, or didn't want to. While only a few months ago she had had everything to look forward to, now she had only a memory of a child who never was, a hero who would not come back, a Congressional Medal of Honor and a tri-corner folded American flag.

After Brian's death, Molly had been offered all kinds of support from a variety of compassionate and willing sources. Several governmental agencies and a few private charitable organizations tried to help. The Veterans' Administration sent people to see her and offer her grief counseling and other assistance. Others also stood ready to help with counseling, networking with other survivors and various therapies designed to keep her mind off her troubles. The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, acronym T.A.P.S., offered 24/7 services. Other organized groups offered the opportunity to meet other women, or men, or children and parents who had lost someone on active military service. One group of military widows had been formed during World War II. Gold Star Wives of America was started in 1945. Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the Commander-in-Chief, joined and became one of its founding members. Its more than ten thousand members in twenty-six states are organized, have annual meetings, conventions and local and regional divisions.

But, these well-intended organizations were little help to Molly because she couldn't take the first step. She couldn't or didn't want to let herself meet with other survivors. They told her that was normal at first but would pass when she got involved. She didn't. Get involved, that is. It didn't. Pass, that is.

At first, the grief was overwhelming. The grief began to change to anger. Molly was mad. Mad at the Taliban. Mad at the U. S. Army. Mad the United States of America. Mad at whoever in government had us in Afghanistan in the first place and whoever in government that wasn't getting us out of there. Then, when she miscarried Brian, Jr., her anger turned to more grief and unbelievable guilt. Molly was not in any way responsible for Brian's loss in battle. She generally believed, but was not completely certain, and been told by all her health care specialists, that she was not to blame for the miscarriage, but the horrible feeling of guilt prevailed. Molly knew from her divorce work that children in