The Bones of Paradise (24 page)

At the sternness in her voice the men straightened their shoulders, lifted their chins, and resettled their hats.

Graver cupped her elbow as the men parted for her. “You and Rose did good, Mrs. J.B. Real good.”

She stopped next to the stallion, who dozed hipshot at the rail, and said over her shoulder, “And you make sure Haven Smith lets him see his leg if he asks.”

In the days to come, she was never told the town wags passed the withering, rotting leg between them like an artifact from a carnival freak show, leaving it on one man's doorstep in the middle of the night, dropping it on another's lunch table at the café, and strapping it to a saddle as if the rest of the body were invisible as the horse was led through town. Tom Farr never knew that his leg continued its journey into the larger world, made it all the way to Leadville and the Black Hills gold camp of Deadwood, then back again. Tom never asked for the limb, and it was finally lost on a deer hunting trip when the men got so drunk they thought it was driving away
the animals. They took it out to the Badlands and threw it as far as they could, watching the hard blackened flesh topple end over end as it descended into a mudflat that later would yield the skeletons of animals so ancient they no longer walked the earth. Eventually, it ended up on the shelf of an amateur Sand Hills archaeologist/rancher who spent the rest of his life searching for the animal large and odd enough to possess such a severed limb, despite being told by the experts at the Museum of Natural History in Lincoln that it was from the remains of a human, possibly killed by a wild animal or Indian raid judging by the violence done to it.

Rose, Dulcinea, and Graver made their way down the street, looking for the other men. The bonfires were dying with only a few torches set here and there in the dirt. It would take daylight to determine the rest of the storm damage. When they reached the ranch horses, they found Larabee, Irish Jim, Black Bill, Jorge, and Some Horses sober, tired, and eager to be shut of the place.

“Best Saturday night I ever had,” Larabee declared. He spread his hands wide to show he was untouched by fight or liquor or loose women.

“Now ya got no excuse for lying about the bed come Sunday morn,” Irish Jim said.

Dulcinea stood beside the stallion holding the high stirrup of the English saddle, and leaned her head against the leather flap.

Irish Jim started to step forward, but Graver shook his head, bent over, and placed the cup of his clasped hands at her knee. “I'll give you a leg up.”

She glanced at him, surprised and relieved, placed her foot in his hands, and allowed him to hoist her into the saddle as he used to do for the exercise riders at the Kentucky racehorse farm. She nodded her thanks, exhaustion so deeply etched on her face her eyes seemed sunken into darkness and her mouth was a thin line. He noticed when she was tired a frown deepened on her brow, making her look stern when she was merely in need of sleep. He felt a wild urge to climb up behind her on the horse and hold her in his arms so she
could lean back and rest after the night's ordeal. There was much more to this woman than he had imagined. She had real bottom and in no way deserved the poor treatment of Drum Bennett and her boys. He untied J.B.'s chestnut, grateful she had brought the best horse in the string for him, and led it out of the way of the others to mount. When he turned the horse back he realized Rose seemed to follow him. He was about to ask her why, then thought they'd had enough drama for one night. He couldn't forget what Some Horses had said. On the long ride home, he glanced at her when her attention was elsewhere, and saw that a deep sadness showed when she thought no one was looking, and he understood how the two women were so close, and he wondered what would happen if the Bennett boys were guilty.

R
ose woke at dawn, looked at Jerome and Lily asleep in the tipi, dressed, and walked outside, since it was the only time she would have all day to be alone. She passed the graveyard on the side of the hill, where the big spotted dog joined her, and kept walking. Across the new green pasture lay hundreds of webs that tented the Sand Hills grass with tiny silver beads, so many spiders, invisible, at work all night long to capture the equally tiny insects, a speck or two the meal until the hard hooves of cows and horses trampled the morning, breaking trails in long, dark lines. The dog padded through the grass, meandering as if a straight line could not be found in his mind. The webs so fragile they tore without a whisper, the slightest contact shredding the light.

“Iktomi,” she whispered to the spiderlike man, the trickster who might be watching. Perhaps this was his doing, this field of webs. Her mother appeared to her as Rose had last seen her ten years ago, a serious person who cared for her elders and raised two daughters despite a husband who was lost in the past among white people. Rose remembered her mother shading her eyes and watching as the priests took her children away the first time. She thought her mother would fight, slash the throats of the men and free them,
but she didn't. It was years before Rose understood. Years to forgive her, and just as she had, her mother was swept away forever. Star was the lucky one, she thought bitterly as she ran her hand across the webs until her palm was wet and sticky. No, Star wasn't lucky. That was a terrible thought. Star was brave, braver than her. She was going to find the man and punish him. Rose thought of her daughter, Lily, and hoped she was never given such a task. She would have to tell Some Horses that no matter what happened to her, he was to keep Lily from following her path. She wouldn't allow the daughters in her family to be sentenced to vengeance forever, barring their restless spirits from the red road. This crime must be settled in her lifetime.

She made a list of every man who might have killed her sister, and her mother. First, the man had to be part of the massacre at Wounded Knee. Then he had to recognize the locket on the chain Star had worn that Rose now kept in the hidden pocket of her skirt, where she could feel it burning even now. Sometimes at night she wondered it did not scald her husband when he lifted her skirt. Last, he had to meet Star at the windmill on Bennett land, which meant he had to know the place. She didn't include the fact that he had to be capable of killing. She assumed every person was, given the necessity. She watched as the sun dried the webs and they gradually disappeared as if they had never been. And he had to be clever, a trickster.

“Help me, Iktomi,” she prayed, even though it was dangerous to enlist his aid. He could easily help her enemy first.

D
ulcinea awoke early, too, restless after the excitement of the storm and its aftermath. She rose, grabbed the wedding ring quilt, and went to the balcony, where the telescope waited like a falcon under its hood. She wrapped the quilt around her shoulders, sat in the wooden chair, and thought of that morning years ago when she saw the figure ride up the long road to their ranch. It was a memory she replayed constantly, wondering what she could have done to make their lives turn out differently. Now that she was back at the ranch, the memory had become especially painful. At first the figure was merely a speck floating in a ball of dust, but as it grew near, the old man was revealed, sitting rock hard in the saddle, unbending with the horse's motion, as if the saddle and the man were welded in a permanent iron fixture. She saw that he led another horse, saddled.

“What is it?” she asked Drum from the porch rocker where she sat with her two boys, one in her lap, the other beside her. Drum, realizing J.B. had said nothing, began a stream of invective.

“J.B. is in the barn. I'll call him.”

As soon as she spoke, she saw in his eyes that he knew something
she didn't, and his narrow lips twitched below the carefully waxed mustache.

She was rarely alone with Drum and was foolish enough to assume he abided by the rules of civilized society, though why she imagined that she could not say. She was still a young woman then, with a child at her knee, another at her breast on the porch of her own home.

“I'm takin' that youngster,” he said and used his chin to indicate Cullen, who quickly hid his face in her skirt. She should have rushed inside for the rifle by the door, she should have called out. Instead, she tried to bargain, though her heartbeat was too slow and loud, as if it would strike the wall of her chest and burst.

“Taking him for a ride? He's too young to be on a horse by himself.”

The triumph in his eyes made her look down at Hayward and jiggle him in her arms, hoping his cry would give her an excuse to flee inside, though she doubted she could stand at that moment. Her legs were shaking and weak.

“No, ma'am. Taking him to live with me. Be raised the way a boy should be, grow up and run the ranches as they ought to be run.”

He gazed at the boy a moment, his lips pursed with thought. “You think a boy clinging to his mama's skirts grows up to be worth a damn? You think I was raised soft? Or J.B.? Well, never mind about him.” Drum looked at the house with its curtains at the windows and bushes and flowers and herringbone brick walk. “Made a mistake sending him to the wife's kin, shiftless as they come. Took me five years to put some sense in that boy once I got him back.”

Drum's expression, the frown and tight lips, said it was her ruining the hard work he'd put into raising his son. She didn't say a word. Truth be told, she couldn't. Her heart beat too fast now, drying her breath so she couldn't raise enough moisture to unlock her lips or her tongue that stuck to the roof of her mouth.

Cullen whimpered and clung harder, digging his tiny fingers
into her leg, leaving bruises that took weeks to disappear, though she never wanted to lose them and found comfort in pressing her nails into the purple marks he left. Hayward ignored her efforts to wake him, merely smiled in his sleep while his brother broke into hiccupping sobs and stamped his feet as if he knew the days that lay ahead would forbid his tears. Still she did nothing, didn't believe her ears, simply sat in the rocking chair J.B. had given her when she was pregnant with Cullen. She had rocked both her babies in that chair, and by the time his brother was born, Cullen had learned to stand on it and ride up and down, laughing, his head thrown back, eyes closed. Drum dismounted and walked toward the porch.

“I would have you leave now,” she said, finally standing and half turning, but he was too quick and snatched her son before she could stop him. The boy kicked and punched and scratched. Dulcinea grabbed the metal dipper on the water pail on the bench by the door and slashed it across Drum's face, smashing his lips against his teeth.

With the momentary distraction, Cullen escaped and ran not to his mother, but around her into the house, with her on his heels. She barred the door, placed the baby in his cradle, took down the rifle, checked the load, and aimed it at the window so Drum could see. Blood dripped down his chin onto his faded gray shirt and she felt a wave of satisfaction when he spoke because the split in his lip garbled his words.

“This ain't the end of it, missy. Not even halfway. I'll be back—tell J.B. to have the boy ready.”

He didn't bother touching his hat brim, a courtesy afforded even the most vile female in the hills. And he left the little paint gelding tied to the front fence. When J.B. came in for the noon meal, he took the paint to the corral, unsaddled and fed it. She stared out the kitchen window while it whinnied and paced to be taken home.

“What's this all about, J.B.?” She demanded an answer and was met with silence and a shrug. It took her a while to find the reason, and by then it was already too late.

“You're up early,” Vera said, her hands coated with flour from rolling and cutting biscuits as Dulcinea entered the kitchen. Rose glanced at her without smiling, like she had something on her mind. Rose usually said nothing while Vera and she talked, but Dulcinea heard her conversing with Lily whenever she thought they were alone. This morning, however, Rose spoke.

“You were up early, too,” Rose said. Vera's shoulders stiffened, and her hands paused as she lifted the flour-dusted glass to cut the next biscuit shape. Vera's mouth opened to respond, and then she stopped and merely shrugged.

“Nearly summer solstice,” Dulcinea said, “nobody can sleep.”

Vera glanced at her with her eyebrows raised. She finished cutting out the biscuits and placed the tin sheet in the oven while Rose sliced the bacon and Dulcinea greased the big pan and began to fry the meat.

“Here.” Rose handed her a bib apron and helped her with the tie so she wouldn't splatter her clothes with grease. Fifteen minutes later, she forked the strips onto the platter beside Vera's scrambled eggs and set it on the back of the stove to stay warm.

“We taking the horses out today?” Rose asked.

“We'll clean stalls first.”

“I can do that,” Rose said, “I'm fast.” She meant quicker. “I promised Jerome I'd help him with the young horses this afternoon. Maybe Lily can stay with you, Vera, if you aren't too busy.”

Something passed between the two women, but Dulcinea didn't know what it was.

When the coffee was boiled, Rose set the giant pot to the side while Vera removed the biscuits and rolled them onto a plate for the table. They'd learned to work as a well-oiled machine in the kitchen, made the meal chores quicker. Sometimes she marveled that Vera had done all this by herself for years. She should be sick of it by now, and Dulcinea was half-convinced her suspicions were
true as Vera watched the men file in for their meal. When Black Bill entered, she studiously averted her eyes and fiddled with food already cooked and washed dishes already clean. It was only after everyone was seated, women included, with heads down shoveling food and chewing as quickly as possible, that Vera fixed her attention on Black Bill. Her skin grew dewy and her eyes shone bright. There was a tremor in her fingers, and she merely picked at her food, spreading it around on her plate. Higgs didn't seem to notice. Dulcinea wanted to say something to her, but didn't dare.

“I won't say nothing,” Rose muttered when she and Vera were shoulder to shoulder at the wash sink. Vera ignored her. Nor would Vera permit Dulcinea to help with the cleanup, so she got ready to ride.

“Someone's here.” Rose glanced out the window and opened the door as the lawyer dismounted his horse.

“Now what's he doing here again?” Dulcinea murmured as the two women started down the walk to the gate.

“I thought we might go for a ride this fine morning.” He swept an arm toward the sun-dappled hills and smiled at Dulcinea.

“You come, too,” she said to Rose and they exchanged a knowing look.

Surprisingly, Rose looked at Chance and said, “Did you find that girl's home last night?” Her eyes glittered.

Chance shrugged. “Close enough,” he said and went inside as Rose and Dulcinea hurried to the barn to tack up their horses.

“He's carrying a pickax and shovel on his saddle again,” Rose said as she tightened the cinch on her horse.

Dulcinea frowned and slipped the bit in the stallion's mouth. “Seems a long way to come for a pleasure ride.”

They took the cow path to the southern pastures to run the horses, then paused to let them catch their breath at the top of a hill that offered a view of the vast hay marsh and grassland stretching into the distant horizon.

“You sit a horse well, Mrs. Bennett.” Percival Chance touched the brim of his hat as he pulled up alongside them. She ignored the comment.

“Our land stretches from the Dismal River almost to the Niobrara, Mr. Chance. What is it you're looking for?” She squeezed the reins to maintain the stud's attention. She realized with a growing unease that the lawyer's keen eye missed nothing as he searched the hills. Rose followed some distance behind.

The lawyer peered across the land. From his good but worn clothing, his air of educated romance, it was clear that this was a man seeking a way home, but first he must procure his fortune—an old story in the West. The roads to the Black Hills gold were strewn with skeletons of horses and mules and oxen driven to death in the mad hurry to reach men's destiny. Furniture discarded, empty barrels, crates of clothing and mementos, even toys left behind once the babe itself was gone. It was a hard land for those without patience. Time ruled this land, and in time everyone was wounded, and everything of value disappeared.

But in time, everything was born again, J.B. replied in her head, a man so in love with the Sand Hills and their vast silence that he allowed his father to take his oldest son to avoid an argument that would bring words into being that could not vanish, that hung in the air forever. In the hills grudges never died, they remained as they took place, as the words were uttered, since there was nowhere for them to go, nothing to break them apart, the soft edges of the hills offered nothing hard enough to smash the anger, nothing sharp enough to cut through the Gordian knot, so it lived fresh, undeniable as the first day. In the hills there were only first days, no history. Nothing was allowed to die. They marked time by the growing list of wrongs until its weight pulled them under and they vanished, smothered with the breath of sand in their mouths. “Don't leave me here,” she had told J.B. before the birth of Hayward. “If I die, don't put me in this ground. Build me a mausoleum, limestone or granite, something that will stand aboveground. Don't consign me, J.B., don't.”

He had smiled. “You don't understand this place, dear.”

The contractions began in earnest then and soon enough the baby was born, in its own bloody sac, relentless and loved and given utterly to the destroying world. How could she leave him? That day she saw that nothing she did could stave off the future, the grinding of time that would yield him up to a fate already determined and inexorable; although she kept both boys as close as possible, they were already not hers. Drum made sure of that.

“You're thoughtful today, Dulcinea,” Chance said, crowding her with his horse's body. The stallion lifted his back, arched his neck, and blew softly out his nostrils, his shoulders breaking into a sweat, foam on the bit flecking her dark brown riding skirt.

“I'm wondering when you're going to share the nature of your visit,” she said. “And if you don't move that mare, you're going to find yourself under my horse's hooves.” She glanced behind to catch sight of Rose, who kept her distance. She could feel there was something wrong about the lawyer, but couldn't quite put her finger on it yet. When she asked about his investigation into J.B.'s death, Chance made vague references to Indians who held a grudge against him and white people in general. When she asked, “Not my boys?” he smiled and shrugged, leaving her angry and uncomfortable.

They wove around patches of prickly pear cactus. She had it in mind to send the men out to dig it up and burn it, even though the fruit was palatable to man and beast alike. Eventually the grass would give way to the cactus.

“I hope my presence affords you some comfort, Mrs. Bennett. I know you to be a capable, intelligent woman, but out here—” He stretched his arm to include the undulating sea of green before them. The grass was alive with the buzzing and sawing of insects and birds, and the wind only a faint brush across the bridge of her nose, the lobes of her ears, not enough to even ruffle the horses' manes. Above them, the sky was a soft, pleasant blue, despite the line of thick, dark clouds to the west. They got their weather from Wyoming and their trouble from Omaha, hills people said.

“You are alone, and there are forces arrayed against you.” He clasped his hands around the saddle horn and let his horse drop her head to graze, a freedom Dulcinea never allowed the stallion. He chomped the bit impatiently and shifted his weight from foot to foot. Dulcinea squeezed her calves, picked up the reins, and resettled him.

“And isn't this a pleasant day,” she said with a toss of her head.

“If you will allow me to—”

“I wonder what Vera has planned for supper?” She turned and smiled brightly at him. He looked at his hands, sighed, and shook his head. Rose drew up a few yards behind them and watched.

“Okay.” He lifted his rein hand and dropped it back on the saddle horn with a dramatic sigh. “I've been retained to look at the oil and gas resources out here. On your land there's a possibility.” He gazed at her, his eyes reluctant.