The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  “Doing good with that chestnut.” The boy’s face reddened and he straightened his back without looking at Graver. “We’ll have to use these two every day.”

  Hayward brushed a big green horsefly off the chestnut’s neck, swatted it when it tried to circle back. “Cullen wanted to ride him.” He nodded at the stallion. “Planned to sneak him out and run away.” He shook his head, his mouth jittery again. “It was too late, though, we weren’t kids anymore.” He pulled down his hat and touched the horse with his spurs. When he leapt ahead, the stud fought to follow until Graver let him loose. The stallion was too big and out of shape to put in much of a run. He’d never catch the lighter cow ponies or the leaner horses like the lawyer rode or the chestnut that was at least a quarter mile ahead, but the sheer power of his mass thrilled nonetheless.

  When they came through the valley and stopped at the windmill and tank, the horses’ sides heaved. “Best water the stud down slow,” Graver said as he dismounted. “Cow horse like the chestnut has the smarts to take care of itself, but this horse probably had someone watching out for it every day of its life.”

  Graver could feel Hayward study him, imitating his movements, so he put extra deliberation into each gesture. While the horses watered, he gazed around. This was where he’d been shot four months ago after he’d found the girl and J. B. Bennett murdered. He was surprised Hayward didn’t remark on it.

  “Come on over here.” Graver led the stud away from the tank toward the ground that still bore the rumpled disturbance of a grave reopened. The pale sand gave underfoot as they trod its edges and sat on the firmer grass.

  When the shadow of a huge bird coasted overhead, cutting across the sun-bleached valley, then swam back again, giving a high-pitched scream, Graver and Hayward shaded their eyes and looked up.

  “Golden eagle,” Hayward whispered, and the bird screamed again, a commanding, almost angry cry that should have alerted any prey, but didn’t. Then another joined, and another, and they swung in huge spiraling circles above the men, riding the drafts of air rising out of the valley before they rose higher and higher, almost into the sun itself, and disappeared.

  “Never seen that before,” Graver said.

  Hayward turned shy, pulled a piece of grass and followed an ant with the end until it climbed on, then he flung it away and lay on his back. “Saw one up on the reservation a while ago when Cullen and me were there.” Graver strained to hear him, the boy spoke so softly. “That’s where the trouble all started.”

  Graver felt a chill. “That so?”

  Hayward shifted to his side, then pulled his gun belt around so he wasn’t lying on the pistol, his mouth working against itself the whole time. “Cullen and me met with these Indian kids at the rodeo in Babylon. Cousins. Two boys wanted to get drunk. Girl didn’t. Cullen had some whiskey. Didn’t take much. They weren’t used to it. Me neither. Cullen was.”

  Hayward scrubbed his face with his hands, knocked his hat into the grass. Squeezing his eyes shut, he continued, “We hung out after they closed the rodeo for the night. Then we snuck into the stock pens. Cullen and the Indians, Raymond and Little Knife, wanted to ride the bulls. I wasn’t so drunk. Star, that was her name, tried to talk them out of it. They treated us like babies and it riled me up, but she asked me not to do it, so I didn’t. We went off under the bleachers with the last of the bottle.

  “Turns out the rodeo people had guards and they caught them soon as they opened the gate. Star and me ended up talking and holding hands. Her parents were dead, and I told her about my mother leaving and my father and brother. We weren’t paying attention to time, except to notice the moon making its way across the sky. Around dawn Cullen and the other two found us and there were some ugly words. They’d got the crap kicked out of them by the guards and were plenty sore we hadn’t stuck around to help. Raymond kept looking at Star like he wanted to accuse her of something and Little Knife was plain loaded for bear. Cullen stared at her and me like he knew a secret, with that grin on his face. Finally I said nothing happened and he looked happy. Her cousins didn’t believe me. Little Knife walked up and whispered that he’d cut out my liver and eat it I ever come near Star again. Raymond pulled him off and they left.”

  Hayward sat up and picked his hat off the ground. Smoothing his hair back, he put it on and tugged it down so it shaded his face, which glistened with tears he didn’t bother wiping away.

  Graver had a feeling he knew what came next.

  “I figured I’d never see her again, her being on the reservation and all, and J.B. and Drum telling us boys to stay away from there.” He took a deep breath then let it out in a long sigh. “But Cullen said we had to go up and find her and kick the crap out of her cousins if we got the chance. I never knew which he wanted more. I don’t think he ever, I mean, I don’t think he was ever with a girl. They were afraid of him. They didn’t understand.

  “So one day we sneak up there and there’s some kind of deal going on, Sun Dance, on the Buffalo Grounds, and we’re the only white people and everyone’s staring at us and nobody will talk to us. There’s all this drumming, men sitting around a big drum the size of a cow tank, dancers in the middle of this ring surrounded by posts covered with cedar boughs, families sitting in the shade around the circle. A cry goes up, drumming gets louder and louder and everyone’s watching this thing going on by this tall lodge pole in the middle of the circle with ropes and colored strips of cloth tied to it. The dancers are only wearing breechcloths and some of them are bleeding from cuts on their backs and chests. I grab Cullen’s arm and tell him we better go, but he gets that weird light in his eyes and points at this cluster of men at the center pole. It was the cousins, Raymond and Little Knife. Little Knife was already attached to the pole by strips of deerskin pulled through cuts on his chest. He’d back up until the rope stretched tight, pulling the skin to the point of breaking, all the while chanting and dancing with the drums, then he’d move toward the pole again. I guess he was praying. Two old men worked on Raymond, getting him ready. One with a knife slashed twin lines in his chest and pushed a deerskin strip through, then knotted it to the rope while the other man held him still, chanting to him. There wasn’t much blood, and I couldn’t stop watching. Next thing I knew, Cullen was gone.”

  Hayward stood, then squatted. “Think we should get back?”

  “Finish your story, son.” Graver flicked the rein end at the stallion when it grazed too close. This might be his only chance to find out what happened the day that brought him to the Bennetts.

  “He found Star with her family watching her cousins, so he stood beside her and grinned at the two boys. It was enough.”

  The silence filled with the sound of horses pulling grass and chewing.

  “They claimed we ruined the Sun Dance and the coming year for their tribe. I guess they think one of us ruined Star, too. We met up a few times after that, and I wanted to give her something, but J.B. never thought I needed money. And I never had before. Cullen told me to do it, to run off with her, marry her. We’d catch sight of the cousins once in a while, but always managed to duck them in town. They had to be gone by dark so it wasn’t hard. Town doesn’t like Indians after dark. Saves wear and tear on the white folks, I guess. We didn’t think they were serious. Star and I just wanted to get to know each other.”

  Something in his voice made him seem a boy again, and Graver reckoned that when a boy’s mother leaves it takes him the rest of his life to fill the hole—if he ever could. He had a sudden vision of Hayward as the sort of man who would pursue women as other men followed dreams of gold or land. A cowbird landed on the edge of the churned sand by the tank and began pecking seeds out of a splash of cow manure, its silver beak stabbing quickly between moments when the brown head swiveled to keep an eye on the men and the horses. Finally the motion of the horses’ tails flicking flies sent it soaring away, the dark body a glistening smear crossing out of sight.

  “I didn’t know half of what Cullen was doing, ta
unting the cousins, getting in fights with them, making them madder and madder, until something had to give. Little Knife wanted to marry Star, but she wouldn’t. We came out here once and she liked it, said her ancestors used to camp here. Then she told me she had to meet somebody here, something about her mother. I told her I’d come and protect her, hide so he wouldn’t see me. She wouldn’t tell me who it was—” He choked and coughed and took a deep breath. “I was late.” He paused again and wiped his face with his hand. “Maybe Little Knife followed her. I don’t know what J.B. was doing here. Saw two bodies but didn’t realize it was my father until Frank told me the next morning. I was so upset I didn’t notice it was J.B.’s horse either. Thought it was whoever Star went to meet. I asked you if he was dead . . . It’s all my fault—I was too late—” He sobbed and his shoulders shook as he buried his face in his hands.

  The boy dropped his hands. “Little Knife must have killed her. Then shot Pa, and—”

  “Cullen was never here?”

  The boy shook his head. “I thought you’d done it. Then I didn’t know what to think until Cullen told me.”

  “What?”

  “Raymond said Little Knife was gone to Canada or Montana or someplace, but he’d be back to finish the Bennett boys. That’s when we started buying guns and practicing.”

  Graver sat up. “Is that who shot at me that day we went hunting?”

  “Little Knife is still gone, far as I know. Guess it couldn’t be him. It sure wasn’t Cullen. Nobody understood my brother, Mr. Graver. He wasn’t like the way he appeared. He never killed anything he could help it.”

  “It was you shot me here, then.”

  The boy nodded. “I’m sorry for it now.”

  They rode back in silence while Graver ruminated. It wasn’t the boys. J.B. probably came upon the girl same as he did. It all came back to the girl.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Percival Chance neatly folded the Omaha Herald, laid it beside his breakfast plate, and picked up the china coffee cup. This was a splurge he couldn’t afford, so he stretched out his morning by ignoring the waiter’s increasing impatience, expressed through too much attention to his water glass. He glanced at his pocket watch, a heavy solid gold piece the young earl had carried. It was ten thirty and he’d met Harney Rivers at eight to plan their next step with the permits over breakfast, for which the older man paid. The trouble was Dulcinea hadn’t been available for a month. The old man either. Chance tried to understand their grief, but the boy wasn’t much of a go-getter. He could understand if Cullen were Frick or Carnegie, two men he read about in the paper, or J. J. Hill, now there was a man with destiny earned by his own two hands. It cheered him to read the life stories of captains of industry who began as he had, grabbed opportunity and shook it until it rained cash. He was mixing his metaphors, the voice of his old teacher at boarding school warned him. So be it. He smiled.

  Chance was sent away to school at five when his father, a merchant ship captain, took his mother and sailed to the Orient. His father had already made a small fortune in ivory and spices, and embarked on a longer journey to secure jewels, gold, and wild animals for the rising market in exotic species. They left funds for their son’s schooling but failed to appear when the money ran out at age fourteen. Since leaving school, Chance lived by his wits, using his social polish and education wherever and whenever useful. For a time in his late teens, he clerked with a lawyer in New York City, until the man found him in bed with his wife. From there, he made his way into a circle of bankers always in need of a smart young man fast on his feet. He was twenty-two when he borrowed enough money from the bank to seek his fortune out West, without going through the formalities of signing papers. He was tired of the East anyway. The great fortunes to be made there were already taken and deposited in other people’s accounts.

  He met the young earl at twenty-five in Chicago and truth be told, he was in despair for his poor luck. He had tried commodities trading, but it was a closed world and he was an Easterner. He was actually considering work on a steamboat on the Great Lakes when he met the earl one night in a Gold Coast saloon. With his outlandish clothes and English accent, the earl was about to be spirited away and mugged when Chance greeted him with a hug like an old friend, and whispered the danger in his ear. He threw his arm over the young earl’s shoulder and led him out the door into a horse cab.

  It took three times around the lakeshore and park for the earl to spill his story and Chance to convince him that he needed a guide, a person who would protect and lead him through the wonders of the American West—Chance had never been farther west than Chicago, but he’d read a great deal. With the earl, Chance’s life began an important new chapter that should have continued back to England, where he would remain a lifelong friend supported in the manner his parents had dreamed about.

  Chance opened the paper, refolded it, and used the edge of his palm to sharpen its creases. He sipped the cold coffee, raised his finger, and pointed at the cup when the waiter arrived. The hopeful expression on his face slid away as he left for the silver pot.

  What he had not foreseen, and what still troubled him, were the vagaries of the earl’s taste—there was no other way to put it. His capacity for sexual adventure, nay, sexual experience, grew into a monstrous appetite for the strange, forbidden, and violent until it culminated ten years ago at the massacre known as Wounded Knee. It was as if all his vices were ingredients in a stew so vile the memory still turned Chance’s stomach. Yes, they drank to the point of delirium in those days, a fever in the brain that burned away the edge of morality. Nothing was too outlandish. Chance lost himself, lost sight of who he was, what he wanted. The vanity of the old world became an acid on his soul.

  “We can do whatever we want,” the young earl said with a flourish of his hand—and he did. When Chance remembered the acts he participated in or simply watched, he felt beyond shame, he felt damned.

  He felt frustrated, too, because he only wanted to make his way in the world, as the promoters advised: GO WEST! He imagined himself with a fortune in gold or land. He imagined his parents miraculously returned, praising him for becoming so prosperous. That’s all he wanted in life. Was it too much? He was willing to work. He’d proven that, damn it.

  When the waiter returned, he gestured toward the empty cream pitcher. The man brought a fresh one and set it down heavily so it slopped over and he had to wipe it with his fresh white apron.

  Chance finally took mercy on him and said, “A few more minutes.”

  He would finish this damn business and be gone from this place. It was that girl, Star, who caused all the trouble. He was relieved the earl didn’t discover her the night they killed her mother, Lord, that would have been a grisly scene—still, he tried to talk to her, to buy back the necklace, the last token of his mother and father, tried to use reason and deny his participation, but she would have none of it. He could not stop her. Maybe he should have told her how he took revenge on the earl, killed him and left his body to be eaten by wild animals, the bones scattered across the reservation the last time they went up there. But she saw the pouch and knew what it was. He saved it as a reminder of how vile he could be. He would never cross that line again, ever. She wouldn’t listen to reason, though. He was only a relic hunter, a tradesman, the way her people were, he said. The whole world was a marketplace, and they were doing what people for thousands of years had done, trading goods. But she looked at him and drew her skinning blade. He had to stop her.

  It was no use. He tried to be a good man. He was usually a nice man, polite and good-natured. But maybe he wasn’t a good man after all. Maybe a person had to do good after he made his fortune, as Carnegie urged. He didn’t know whether Star had told her sister about him, or if Rose found the necklace and knew it would lead to the killer. Honestly, he was tired of killing. The earl shot every living creature he came across. On days when big game was scarce he shot prairie dogs, rabbits, birds, cattle, and wild horses. For a while
he employed a photographer to accompany them and capture the triumphant earl with his kill: rows and rows of snow geese left to rot after the picture was taken, five antelope also left because their horns were too small, and a dozen wild burros and horses trapped in a box canyon and slaughtered for joy. The man deserved to die. Chance did the world a service that day. He nodded to himself.

  If he could explain that to Rose, maybe she would understand. He knew it was wishful on his part. He had a fortune to be made here, and he could not allow a youthful misdeed to stand in the way. He was sorry. He was very sorry. Civilized people understood how it was in battle. The soldiers were awarded medals for the massacre. Why was he any different? The tension in his neck and shoulders relaxed. This was how he could explain himself. He was helping the army that day. And later, he was a relic and antiquities dealer—nothing illegal. He was a fair and just man. He was even a moral man in some circumstances. He definitely wasn’t any worse than most.

  That being said, he drank the last of his coffee, stood, put on his hat, brushed the crumbs from the front of his waistcoat, and left the hotel dining room. With a new energy in his step, he tipped his hat at the couple outside the hotel and went directly to his law office to draw up new papers for Mrs. Bennett to sign. And by Jesus, she would sign this time. Fortune smiles on those who force her hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The cowboys argued beneath her bedroom window and the day was gray. Clouds massed on the horizon and pushed toward the ranch like an invading Old Testament army bringing submission and doom while the hands argued like sparrows, back and forth, building the nest of disagreement into which they would eventually settle.

  Dulcinea went downstairs and pushed open the door, startling the men, who jumped to their feet. She clutched the shawl she carried as a chill worked its way down from her scalp and drenched her in cold as if she were caught in the rain.