by V. L. Locey
Morgan wiped his thin lips with his napkin then flung it to the drive. I cocked an eyebrow but said nothing.
“Are you insinuating we took some fucking stupid bones?” Morgan snapped and took a step forward. Clayton’s big hand landed on his brother’s chest with a sound slap.
“Go back inside, Morgan. Take Shepherd with you.”
“But he said—”
Clayton glowered at his younger brother. Morgan bit back whatever he was going to say then stalked back into the house. Shep stayed for a moment longer, only leaving when Clayton waved him off like an unwanted dog. The youngest McCrary stalked off, the pumpkin door slamming in his wake.
“Morgan’s a bit of a hothead before he has a pot of coffee in him,” Clayton said, plastering on that artificial smile he wore.
Morgan was a hothead no matter how much coffee he had in him. The middle McCrary was a mean son-of-a-bitch and he didn’t care who or what felt his wrath. Dogs, horses, women, men, kids, cattle, ranch hands. He abused them all equally. And if those hands happened to be Native American, his cruelty was two-fold.
Morgan was the reason Kyle wasn’t permitted to step foot on the Hollow Wind land. Several years ago, Kyle had come upon a young Shoshone woman in tattered clothing wandering aimlessly on our land. She obviously had been assaulted, roughly so, and claimed it had been Morgan McCrary who had abused her. Kyle rode hell bent for leather to this very spot, drug Morgan out of the house, and beat on him unmercifully. We’d somehow managed to keep Clayton from pressing charges. The young woman, a maid for the McCrary’s, had been given a generous severance package after signing an NDA of some sort. The matter had faded away, but the cruelty of Morgan McCrary had continued on I was sure. Leopards didn’t change their spots.
“We all know his temper and hatred aren’t washed away with a cup of joe,” I replied, meeting his assessing glare with one of my own.
“Are you here to accuse me of sneaking onto your property and making off with a bunch of stupid bones?” He was a tall man, all of them were, and he liked to use that height to intimidate. Didn’t work on me though. I’d cut him down like firewood if he made a move, and he knew it. We’d been playing this game for years now. “I’m sure Mr. Reece and his wife would dislike any sort of erroneous accusations to be thrown around by one of his underlings.”
Smug bastard. He did like letting me know that I was only an employee. I let the slimy slam against Montrell go, but it took all I had not to throw a punch although I suspected Landon wouldn’t object to me decking his neighbor given the nasty comment.
“I’m sure he and his husband would. Which is why I’m not throwing anything around. I’m here as a courtesy to inform you that we had a robbery on our land last night. The sheriff has been called out and is investigating. If you happen to see any strangers lurking around or should hear or see anything that might lead us to apprehend these bone poachers, it would be a neighborly thing to call us or the sheriff.”
“We’re always willing to help local law enforcement. Is there anything else, Pearson?”
“No, sir, that was it.”
“Then I suggest you head back to your side of the river and allow me to finish my fucking eggs in peace.”
I tapped the brim of my Stetson and walked slowly back to my ride. Once I was seated in the old green Ford, I watched Clayton step over the napkin in the driveway and thunder into the house. The front door slammed shut. I started the truck then ran over the napkin on my way out.
***
After lunch and before a final check of the herd prior to moving them out tomorrow morning, I was out at the creek bed, about ten miles from the dig site. I’d stopped to help Perry and a few of the other hands pull my crinkled four-wheeler out of the creek. It took a chain and a heavy foot on a gas pedal, but the Polaris limped and leaked her way out of the bed. I pushed back my hat and made a circle around the poor old gal.
“Guess I know what I’ll be spending my Christmas bonus from last year on,” I muttered as the smell of antifreeze floated by on a warm wind. “Let’s get her into the back. Take her to the equipment barn. I’ll drain all the fluids that are left then start working on her in the evenings.”
“Will do, boss!” Perry shouted. With four men pushing and one steering, we slowly got the four-wheeler up the aluminum ramp and into the back of a ranch truck.
Once they were gone I climbed up onto the saddle, gave Tiberius a pat on the neck, and set off to meet up with Aaron and Kyle. I was sorely tempted to go downstream a bit to see Bishop but work first then pleasure. Maybe I could visit after chores. No, I had a four-wheeler to work on and paperwork to complete. This working for a living sucked.
Tiberius trotted along, his head high, his gait strong. He was no longer limping after a few days off, but I didn’t push him too hard. I had a few hours to kill and doing it atop a horse was one of the best ways to while away some time.
The pastureland was greening up rapidly. A warm wind danced and played, the cold bite of the Tetons disappearing more and more every day. Soon flowers would be knee high. Seeing something big and brown to my left, I pulled up on the reins. Tiberius didn’t act spooked as he would if it were a grizzly so I relaxed a bit, smiling when I made out the cow elk as she slowly got to her feet. She must have winded me. A spindly-legged calf also stood up then fell back down. He was still wet by the looks, so I rode on, leaving mama to tend to her newborn. Hopefully, she and the babe would be fine. We had our share of hungry predators out here, and a wobbly newborn elk calf would look damn good to a mountain lion, grizzly, or the wolf packs that called this area home.
I spied Aaron’s bright yellow truck a mile away. Giving my horse a little head, we closed the distance quickly. Kyle lifted a hand in greeting as he rested his ass on the tailgate of Aaron’s truck. I dropped the reins and Tiberius moseyed off to enjoy the fresh grass.
“Sorry I’m late,” I whispered as I hopped up to sit beside Kyle.
“No worries. He’s just started.” Kyle jerked his head at the silver-haired man holding two forked willow branches which had been blessed in a ceremony back on the Shoshone-Arapahoe reservation where he lived. Aaron was in his sixties, shorter than his grandson by several inches, weathered and wrinkled from a lifetime in the sun, and prone to telling the dirtiest jokes I’d ever heard. We’d had Aaron out several times during my time running the ranch. Today he was doing his thing while wearing worn jeans, bright green sneakers, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt.
Kyle was more of a scientific sort who relied on hydrologists, geological maps, and random drillings to locate new water sources. Which was fine and all, but Landon had expressed a desire to not have drilling companies on his land if he could avoid them, which was why we’d been out scraping around when Millicent had been found. Plus, Aaron knew his stuff.
“You okay? Word ran through the hands about the shit at the dino site.”
“I’m fine, we’re both okay. Just a few bumps and bruises. My four-wheeler is in bad shape though.”
“Sons-of-bitches. We should go talk to those asshole McCrary’s. This has their dirty fingerprints all over it,” Kyle snarled.
“I visited the neighbors this morning. They claim to have no knowledge of the robbery, not that they’d confess to it if they did, but they know that we know and are suspicious.”
“I hope you spit in Morgan’s eye.”
“I did not.” I chuckled. “I did speak to Landon today. He said Will can sign on, but he’s got to walk a damn straight line,” I stated and got a firm nod from Kyle.
“Thank you. I’ll keep his wild ass in check. Besides, what the hell can he possibly get into out here?”
That was a good point. So we sat back and watched Aaron dowse. It was an incredible process to observe. Aaron worked the area in a precise method laid out by a medicine wheel method he once explained to me. He always started walking north as the north wind was always the best place to start according to him. Then he would take a certain number of steps and if the
willow branches didn’t cross, he would walk west, then south, and then east until he came to a spot that made the branches speak to him or cross. It was really fascinating to watch him work.
According to Aaron, he could also dowse burial mounds, sacred rock sites, marker trees, and rock cairns. Amazingly, or perhaps not so amazingly, almost all the sacred sites that he dowsed had water running under them. He claims that the Native Americans know where the water runs in the earth and so that was why they would plant marker trees over that water source. Aaron has also dowsed for graves and burial sites. He professes to be able to tell the gender and tribal affiliation of the person in the grave. As precise as he is at finding us water, I have no reason to doubt his dowsing expertise or claims. We were as quiet as possible, which was how Aaron preferred it when he was working. Nothing but the winds, the mountains, and the song of the earth. Kyle stretched out, covered his face with his beat-up hat, and took a nap. With the sun beating down on me, a snooze did sound good, but I forced myself to remain upright.
Forty-five minutes into the process and about a solid mile from where we were parked, Aaron found a spot that made his rods extremely happy. Which he bellowed down to us, waking Kyle from a rather erotic dream if his mumblings of “more” and “suck it, baby” were any indication.
“Dammit,” he muttered as he sat up, his hat sliding down to his lap. “I was just about to come.”
“Who was it this time? Scarlett Johansson or Pedro Pascal?” I asked as I slid off the tailgate to the dusty ground.
“Both,” he replied with a wink.
“You two coming or what?” Aaron shouted.
“I was about to,” Kyle yelled back. Aaron hooted in glee. No sooner had we gotten to within spitting range when our dowser hit us with one of his ribald jokes while Kyle began entering coordinates into his phone.
“A man boards a plane with six kids,” Aaron opened with.
“Are we sure this is the final spot?” Kyle interrupted.
Aaron gave him a dark look. “Don’t you know it’s rude as fuck to interrupt a tribal elder?”
“Sorry,” Kyle muttered. “But are you sure this is the spot?”
“Look at my happy sticks.”
“Old man, stop trying to get me to look at your happy stick,” Kyle parried.
Aaron snorted. “Yes, I’m sure, now shut up and let me finish. Keeping this one inside me while I dowsed gave me flatulence.”
“Right, like you can blame that on a joke,” I tossed out. Both men chuckled.
“Are you two done? I’m not getting any younger. I might croak any second,” Aaron said. We both fell into silence. God knows we didn’t want to add to Aaron’s gas problems. “Good. Now, a man boards a plane with six kids. After they get in their seats a woman across the aisle leans over to him and asks, ‘Are all of those kids yours?’ He replies, ‘No, I work for a condom company. These are customer complaints.’”
Kyle and I laughed long and hard. Aaron beamed. After Kyle had his information registered, he left us to return to the ranch and make some calls. We’d need the excavator out again, and the watering tank and all that went with it would have to be moved down the creek bed. I hung back to have a cold beer with Aaron. He always brought a six-pack out with him on jobs. So we had a sit-down and an icy Budweiser from the cooler in the front seat.
“So, Perry tells me that you and the professor are getting all the butt sex going on.” I almost spewed my sip of beer all over myself. Aaron sniggered. “Guess I’ll take that as a yes.”
“No.” I coughed, waving my wet bottle around. “No, there is no butt sex.”
“Yet.”
I thought to argue then pressed my lips together. If I had a dime for every fantasy I’d had about Bishop, me, and his dick in my ass I’d be richer than Midas.
“Yet,” I replied then pulled my forearm over my chin. That tickled Aaron. “How the hell did Perry know that Bishop and I were—”
“Fucking?”
“We’re not fucking.”
“Yet.”
I huffed. “Yet.”
“He said he went to the stable early to check on that pinto mare of his that’s due to foal soon and saw you and the professor sucking on each other’s faces.” He gave me a lecherous eyebrow waggle then took a long pull from his beer. A dusty wind whipped around us, tossing his long white hair into his face.
“Does that bother you?” I asked as he thumbed some hair from his sweaty brow.
“What?”
“That I’m gay.” It was something that I’d not really broadcast around, not like Kyle who was pretty open about his bisexuality. Which was how I knew about his lust for Pedro. I never really talked about my sexual desires. For many reasons. Although I’d spent nearly twenty years working and living with members of several tribes, my being gay was never discussed with the hands or the owner. Now, though, it seemed my sexuality was the topic of hot gossip. “I’m not sure how Native American’s view LGBT people.”
“We view them as people, just like all other people. Sure, there’s some ribbing but in the Native culture no one is exempt from teasing. Most tribal nations view a gay man as being almost perfectly balanced with male/female energy. In a lot of tribal nations gay men have a special medicine and are tasked with telling a person, usually a child, their spirit name, the name they’re called on by the creator. The only two people in the tribe that know a person’s spirit name are the teller of the name and the person themselves. So, we’re a few steps ahead of the white world. Which, you know, ain’t nothing new.”
He gave me a jab in the ribs with his elbow. I nodded in agreement.
“I’ve not felt this pull toward a man in years. Since I first met Devon to be honest.” I stared down at the beer bottle in my hand. “He’s not at all like my ex. I mean, nothing even similar. Devon was uptight, anal to a degree...stop snickering. What are we, fourteen?” Aaron snorted but remained silent. “Bishop is...different. More laid back, more open, blonder, and tanner, and he has a bun. I’m not sure about the bun. And he’s much younger than I am.”
“Is he legal?”
“Of course! He’s twenty-eight.”
“Then pretend he’s butter and spread him on your bagel.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Yeah, it sounded better inside my head.” He tapped his temple with the rim of his beer bottle. “The point that I was going to make,” he paused to belch, “nothing burps like Bud! What I was going to say was that who cares if he’s younger than you by a few years.”
“A few decades,” I interjected.
Aaron rolled his eyes. “Even better. He’ll keep your dick hard for longer. If you like him and he likes you, and by what Perry said you two really liked each other in the stable, then get laid and enjoy the ride. Are you the cowboy or the horse?”
“I’m not answering that,” I said, finishing my beer while he tittered. I passed him the empty then slid to the ground. “Thanks for the talk. I appreciate your acceptance.”
He lifted his beer in reply. “It’s all good. Make sure my check is in the mail by Friday.”
“As always.” We shook, and I whistled for my horse. He didn’t come, the shithead. Aaron thought my stupid horse was hilarious. “Always works for Roy Rogers,” I muttered as I went to get Tiberius, who was merrily munching away a good half mile away.
Once I was in the saddle, I had a decision to make. I could ride back to the ranch. There was a load of work to be done, as always. Or I could visit the dinosaur site. Purely for business reasons. I did have to make sure the hands that were scheduled to guard the site were on duty. Also, I was curious to see how the frill they’d found was coming along. Was there a skull nearby, or even still attached to the frill? If so, an intact skull would be worth a ton of money according to Perry the gossipmonger. Not that the university would be selling Millicent’s skull of course.
Leading my horse in the direction of the dig, we trotted along the dry creek bed, my excitement rising when
I spied the snapping tarps over the dig. I rode right into the area without a soul stopping me. I was about to pitch a fit when I saw two of my hands helping to drape strips of what appeared to be dripping wet cloth over a large chunk of what looked to be rock. Everyone at the site was buzzing with excitement and covered with plaster.
“Nate!” Bishop shouted as he jogged up to me, his hands and arms coated with plaster cast. His nose was white, his glasses speckled, and his hair dotted. He glowed up at me. Tiberius tossed his head. Bishop took a few steps back. “Come see this! We found a humerus, a fibula, and phalanges!”
I smiled down at him, easing myself out of the saddle, keeping the reins in my hands. “That’s wonderful!”
“It is! And we might, and I don’t want to say it too loudly in case the flowers are bugged, we might have a skull that’s still attached to the frill! We have what we think is a horn point uncovered. Oh! And I’ve been informed that we’re no longer calling our find Millicent as that’s a feminine name, and since we don’t know how this dinosaur would identify, we voted on a non-binary name.”
“You’ve been busy. And what is the new name?”
“Finch.” His gaze darted to Tiberius nibbling at my shirt. “He looks hungry.”
“Thirsty probably.”
“We have some bottled water we can dump into a bucket for him.”
“That would be great.”
I tied T to the bumper of a ranch four-wheeler parked in the shade then rounded up a five gallon pail. Bishop helped fill the bucket, one bottle of semi-cold water at a time. As we dumped we kept darting glances at each other. I felt giddy. Me. An old man. Tiberius enjoyed his drink immensely, and Bishop worked up the courage to place his hand on T’s nose before the horse whipped his head around to try to bite a fly on his ass. That sent Bishop stumbling backward. I caught him before he went tumbling into the pit.
“Thanks,” he whispered as I gave his elbow a short squeeze. “Come see Finch’s horn tip!”
Two hours flew by. I’d moved from observing to helping or trying to help. Most of the time I felt like I was in the way, but Bishop and his team were incredibly kind. I got a crash course in making plaster molds for small fossils. The big stuff, Finch, for example, I left the experts to handle. I’d been tasked with making molds of tiny little shrimpy things as well as a beast that looked exactly like a horseshoe crab. Obviously, this area had once been a river bend which caught all manner of bones. A bone cache as it were. Anything that died upstream had been carried down here and the earth and time had worked to bury the remains. Kneeling in the dirt, sweat on my brow, and the sound of Bishop’s voice in my ear made for a pleasant afternoon.
