The Bones of Paradise

by Jonis Agee

  “You sure? Last opportunity. All this sand, usually find something. Can’t say there’s oil for sure, but what do you have to lose? Get money for exploration, much more if we find something.” He paused and watched a calf struggle against the branding iron, then it kicked a cowboy’s thigh so hard the man fell down. “Beats this.” He spread his hand to include the roiling cattle and distant hills.

  “My mother said no. As co-owner, I back her.” Hayward stood over him. “You’ve had your fill, now ride.” He stepped back. “Don’t let me catch you here again.” He hooked his thumbs on the twin holsters he still wore.

  The man shrugged. “Missing an opportunity. Were me, I’d much rather see derricks pumping black gold than cattle slopping up the place with green crap. You folks will die poor. What about your children? Don’t you owe them something?”

  Hayward shook his head. “Ride three hours north, you’ll get to a railroad.” He moved to Dulcinea’s side and put his arm around her. She nearly broke down with relief, but knew better and stood straight, biting her lip to keep the tears from springing to her eyes. It didn’t matter that he dropped his arm the moment the man was out of sight.

  “Have to keep them off the land. More coming and we can’t tolerate it. I’ll march them off at gunpoint if I have to.” He sounded so grown, she smiled.

  “That’s good, son,” she said and bent to stir the beans and beef again as the cowhands drifted in for their meal.

  Without Chance to advise her, Dulcinea realized she wasn’t sure of her legal rights to deny the exploration of her land. She hoped the other ranchers would lend their support. Tookie would. They had spoken briefly at Drum’s burial in the graveyard next to J.B. and Cullen. No one had much to say about the old man, and most were too embarrassed by the quickie wedding to stick around and talk to Dulcinea or Hayward. Tookie did mention the lawyer’s face was so battered by the runaway horses that he had to be identified by his clothes and the papers in his pocket.

  They were down to the last five calves and despite the odd haziness of the sky, Dulcinea thought the weather would hold long enough for her to ride to the line shack that had been Cullen’s while the others finished the work. The boundary between the two ranches was nearby, and she could follow the barbed wire fence to the cabin. Over the past few weeks she’d started to piece together the fragments of his life after he was taken by Drum. Everything she found made her feel closer to her son. When she reached the windmill, she stopped to allow the stallion a drink. Soon she would have her men tear down the fence dividing the land. A breeze from the north pushed the windmill blades around with an uneven squeal that ground in her ears like she was chewing sand. She and J.B. had always laughed about this one. The memory brought tears to her eyes, and she vowed never to replace it no matter how much it irritated.

  She thought back to the moment she finally understood what the ranch meant to J.B. and what it had cost them all.

  It was early spring after Drum took Cullen, and before she left. She couldn’t eat or sleep, paced days and nights, searching for the reason J.B. allowed this to happen, and why he wouldn’t do a thing to bring back her son. She took to getting up in the night once she heard his light snoring, and thought nothing could allow her to sleep as naturally as he did. One night she hoped a glass of brandy would help close her eyes, and went to his office. She never sat in his chair, it hadn’t seemed right, but she did that night. She sat too low to command the desk the way he did, and poured a glass of their wedding brandy. The thick, sweet bite threatened to turn her stomach. She clenched her teeth, drank until her throat grew numb, her head light, and her body unsteady. She decided that night that she would leave in two weeks as Drum had ordered.

  She had married Drum to secure the ranches for Hayward, but she also did it to save herself, to save something for herself—these hills, this dream, when for a short, lovely time she believed that her life, their life, meant this place and what they did here, what they learned by living and loving each other. It was because she still felt him here, J.B., he touched her, and nothing could change this place, this land, lest he and Cullen were left alone in their separate graves.

  It was how she understood the Indians like Rose and Some Horses who mourned the land, not as wealth but as the place where all was alive, all living, in one form or another. The whites took it but the dead still walked it, the spirits, whatever they were. Her faith had removed God, dispersed him like seed or gravel. It was not that God didn’t exist. It was that he wasn’t alone, but in pieces, parts, always whole, sufficient, always multiple. So like the ancient Greeks she trod lightly, carefully, tried to give no offense to the land, the sacred grass her feet crushed, the ants hurriedly preparing caverns for the winter, pushing tiny yellow boulders out of a hole the size of a bee’s leg. Oh the offense, to walk so clumsily through the world, to crush and bring havoc, that they couldn’t help. But to give no recognition to the cost of their being alive, to the price paid for their dreams by everything else? J.B., Cullen, now Drum.

  She turned the stallion back toward the dim path that led to the line shack and thought of Hayward. He was seeing Pearl Stryker now. She was too old and experienced for him. He was also seeing the new schoolteacher from Ohio. And a girl from Rosebud Reservation. And several others. In a dream J.B. told her he would love many women, unable to resist them, but he’d marry and live a long life, have a son and send him to military school in Missouri, position him to inherit the Bennett fortunes, and though she would not live to see it, a long line of children followed. There was a red smear on the white tile wall of the future. People couldn’t help the pain that rode them like overbroke ponies and tired them too soon for the length of a life.

  Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice the weather change until the cold breeze made her shiver and she realized the hazy sunlight had thinned and the air turned gray-blue. She put her heels to the stallion to hurry him. Overhead heavy gray-white clouds eased back and forth, casting dark shapes across the valley. To the north a wall of gray-white, a mile away and several miles wide, rolled toward them, sent by the sudden gusty wind that lifted the stallion’s mane and scattered it, breaking the sky to pieces. He stopped and danced sideways, swinging his haunches into the wind, and called long and loud into the empty hills, ears pricked, waiting for a reply that didn’t come. She looked at the empty horizon and saw she was the only vertical thing for miles. The wind, filled with bits of sand, stung the skin and threatened to fill their eyes. They’d never make it home; she’d have to try for the line shack though it meant riding straight into the storm. She turned the stallion and slapped him with the reins.

  The sun disappeared and the wind became a roaring whirlwind and she couldn’t tell direction anymore. After a while, she understood that it was snow and ice that pelted her bare skin, not sand. Her chest hurt as she held her breath against the cold that encased her in her soaked clothes, and trembling waves rose up her legs into her arms and teeth that she clenched to keep from chattering. Don’t stop, she urged the stallion, keep moving. They were in one of those early blizzards that came sweeping across the hills without notice, stranding cattle and killing people. She looked into the white walls of whirling snow and called for help, but the wind whipped her words away with a loud roar. Her eyes were heavy with ice, and she decided it was better to close them than have them freeze open. She pulled her hair from the bun and tried to wrap it around her neck, but the wind caught it, filled it with snow and ice and flung it back like a club beating against her shoulders and head. She buried her hands in the stallion’s snow-filled mane, fought to keep her fingers tight on the reins. She should knot them around her hands, she thought, she should knot the reins so they didn’t slide over his head, she should knot them, and put the end in her mouth, or under her thigh, she should stop, remove the saddle, wrap herself in the blanket and ride bareback so his body would keep her warm, but how to remount, he was too tall, so she lay on his neck for protection. The stallion lifted his head to push h
er back, and she was forced to open her eyes. When he whinnied, the sound started deep in his belly and shook his body, again no answer. Dulcinea became aware of parts she rarely thought about, the tops of her thighs that burned and then grew numb, her knees that felt as if she knelt on a frozen lake, her elbows so sharp with cold they rubbed raw where the frozen cloth of her shirt touched.

  In her delirium, she saw a picture of J.B. and herself and their old dog Jesse James, named after a distant relative in Missouri, caught in a blur of motion in front of their half-finished house. They were so young and handsome and the snow turned the world white around them. She saw J.B. reflected in the window of their completed house, fingerprints from his hand on the glass as he called to her. She startled awake. “I’m here! Help!” The wind snatched her words.

  She saw him gather his old buffalo hide coat, hat and scarf, and horsehide mittens lined in rabbit fur, and pull out the bag he kept at the ready for winter mishaps when stranded cattle and folks on the road needed rescuing. She was trapped between alternating wind shears and storms, and felt snow crisscrossing in front of her face. “Keep moving,” she heard J.B. say. “Don’t stop.”

  Then she was sure he was there beside her, reaching for the ice-encased rein, pulling the stumbling horse along, rubbing the horse’s shoulder and speaking low words of praise, telling the stallion he was brave and strong, calling him his night horse, blowing his own breath into his nostrils dripping with ice, stroking his nose and heating the ice until his face dripped and his large eyes gained brightness and he fought fiercely onward, lifting his legs high above the gathering drifts, marching to the music of his words. She felt him rest his hand on her small boot. The leather warmed and a sigh escaped her lips. He moved his hand up her ankle, calf, knee, and thigh, and his extraordinary heat relieved the numbness of her muscles, the bitter cold that had begun to settle in her bones. His heat pushed beneath her skin, deep into her flesh. She imagined he could feel her blood as he swam up onto the horse’s back, settled behind her, wrapped his coat and arms around her, and held her in the saddle. All he wanted was her forgiveness, she realized. The horse stumbled to a stop, nose pressed against the door of the old line shack. When the door unlatched, the animal stepped inside to the warmth of a small fire and a candle flickered in the sudden gust of blown snow.

  Dulcinea slid down, pushed the door closed, and stumbled to the fire to warm her hands as snow dropped off the horse and puddled on the hard-packed dirt floor. When she was warm, she stood, shook the last of the melting snow off her clothes, and glanced at the walls of the shack, surprisingly tight, the cracks filled with animal hair, grassy mud, and paper. A candle guttered on the table among several pieces of scattered paper and a dirty plate and cup, as if someone had just left the room. Who was living here? Her heart leapt. Cullen! She calmed herself. Of course not, but someone.

  Curious, she lifted a page from the table and saw it was a deed for Drum’s ranch, with a shaky signature at the bottom that bore little resemblance to his firm block letters. She quickly scanned the other pages, which included the deed to J.B.’s and what appeared to be someone practicing Hayward’s and her signatures. Even though they were poor efforts, their intent was clear. She sank into one of the two straight-backed chairs. Who could this be? Whoever it was, it meant she and her son would have to disappear. A deeper chill came over her, and she began to shiver uncontrollably.

  The stallion lifted his head and gave a deep guttural whinny as the door opened.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Graver fought against the image of Dulcinea frozen beneath a ten-foot snowdrift that wouldn’t melt for another two weeks when one of those warm trade winds rode through the hills, melted everything in a day, and delivered the dead as casually as flowers in spring: cattle caught in fence corners, crowding each other, trapped by their own panic and blindness in the storm, people caught unawares when the winds shifted and the sun fled behind a wall of snow and ice. Sometimes a horse and rider were found together like lovers, belly to belly in a last frantic arrival at the end. Once, a whole family in their buckboard on the way home when it struck, somehow too blind and exhausted to move once the horses mired in a six-foot drift, and the family froze to death where they sat, as polite and still as worshippers on the splintered boards, reins still gripped in the father’s hands, his mouth open as if calling his last benediction upon the sleeping heads of his little ones.

  At least he knew where she was headed, unless the stallion had lost its instinct for survival. He patted the chestnut, shouted encouragement, and kept his eye on the fence line as best he could in the whiteout. It couldn’t be much farther.

  The chestnut nearly rammed the wall of the lean-to behind the shack. Graver had to turn him aside as he dismounted, then feel his way into the dark shelter. He unsaddled the horse, tossed some hay off the mound in back, and hooked the wire gate. With the saddle in his arms, he pushed a shoulder against the shack door and shoved it open. At least it wasn’t latched. He was surprised when the stallion greeted him like an old friend. Dulcinea stared at him in disbelief.

  “It’s you?”

  Graver looked at her. “You expecting somebody else?” He dropped the saddle by the fire.

  She eyed him, loathing on her face. “I trusted you. My son trusted you.”

  Graver was confused. He’d followed her through a blizzard and this was how she greeted him? It didn’t make sense. “You want me to put your horse in the lean-to with mine?”

  She gazed at the cabin walls as if searching for something, and he had a bad feeling it was a weapon. What had he ever done to her?

  She picked up a paper from the table and waved it at him. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? How long have you been living here?”

  He shook his head and grabbed the stallion’s reins. “You know where I live. Think about it. How would I get back and forth without you noticing I was gone all the time? The men would say something. Your son would know. Rose and Jerome, too.” He lifted the reins and started to turn.

  “I don’t know what to think.” She set the paper on the table, gathered the others into a neat stack, squaring the sides, and placed the ink bottle and pen on top.

  “Try trusting me. I never did a damn thing but work to earn my keep. I’m beginning to think you want me gone.” As he unsaddled the stallion he felt the exhaustion he’d fought for months now. He was tired of this life he’d been leading since he came to Nebraska. It was no good, his trying with her. He should know better. “I’ll put him in the lean-to. Wait out the storm, be gone soon as it quits. I can stay out there with the horses if it suits you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

  Graver led the horse outside, gathered more hay, and warned him not to fight with the chestnut gelding or he’d be standing out in the storm. He was fastening the gate when a tall black horse appeared out of the snow with a rider slumped on its back. He reached for the reins, pulled them from the man’s hand, and led the animal into the shelter. The horse nuzzled the chestnut and ignored the stallion as it grabbed hungrily at the hay after Graver pulled the bridle over its head. He wondered if the rider was alive; he appeared frozen, bent over the saddle horn the way he was. He shook the man’s leg, pressed his chest against the horse’s side, and eased him down as best he could. Gradually, the man slid off and Graver released his boot from the stirrup. Once on the ground, the man leaned on the horse and took several deep breaths before pushing off and nodding. Graver rested him against the fence while he unsaddled the animal. Then he fought the storm and drifts to the shack door with the saddle in one hand and the man’s arm in the other. Inside, he sat him beside the fire to warm. When he turned, Dulcinea stood glaring at them both with a rusty muzzle loader in her arms.

  “Who is that?” she demanded. “Does he live here?”

  Her questions struck Graver as odd. He ignored her and found a pot, filled it with snow and began to heat it over the fire.

  The stranger sat with leg
s stretched out and shoulders slumped, hiding his face. He was dressed in a motley array of coats and pants, and his dirty blond hair hung in greasy strands. His new beard had grown in red and brown.

  As soon as the water steamed, Graver poured a cup and handed it to him. When the man looked up and smiled, Graver was shocked.

  “Chance. Thought you were dead.”

  “Almost. Went out hunting and got caught by the storm. Same as you folks, I’d say.” He lifted the cup, drained it, and held it out for more.

  Dulcinea edged forward, aiming the gun at the two men.

  “Doesn’t fire,” Chance said. “Already tried it.”

  Her eyes sharpened. “You live here?”

  He nodded. “Not a bad place for a retreat. Cullen was right.”

  She flinched at the mention of his name. Graver stepped toward her, and she swung the musket in his direction.

  Chance laughed. “She doesn’t trust you either.”

  Ignoring the drama, he unlaced his wet boots, slid them off, and a sweet stink oozed into the little room. “I’m afraid”—Chance looked apologetically at his feet—“they’re frostbit. Third time it’s happened. Slightest chill they split and bleed.” He shook his head.

  “Let me see.” Graver knelt on the hearth and eased off the white silk dress socks stuck to the toes with dried blood. Chance looked on the verge of fainting. Graver poured warm water in a pail and eased his foot into it. As the cracks opened and released the material, he whimpered. Graver searched the room for bandages and finally settled on a mouse-chewed shirt from a box of clothes on the shelf.

  As they thawed, the toes swelled and broke open, oozing yellow fluid Graver sponged away.

  “Whiskey in my saddlebag by the bed,” the lawyer whispered.

  Graver dragged the bag to the middle of the room. He put a hand inside and his fingers touched a smooth glass surface. He was about to remove it when he heard a whisper of cloth behind him, and Dulcinea cried out, “No!” as a blow to the back of his head drove him to the floor and another to the side dropped him into darkness.