by Peter Bowen
The dude lifted up the case, and the skeleton stood on the wood slab, wired here and there to hold it up. The dude took out some snips and he cut the wires and one by one he put the bones in a silk bag he took from a pocket of his fancy coat. His silk vest was all roses and violets.
“I do not,” says the dude, “require the case.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. I was overdressed for the place, having on my beaded and quilled buckskin coat and big fancy new hat and a silk kerchief. My custom boots was new and barely muddy.
“Are you Yellowstone Kelly, by any chance,” says the dude.
“Bad luck, but I am,” I replies. I smelled trouble, and I hoped there wouldn’t be any.
“I am putting together an expedition,” says the dude, “and I will pay you well to be the scout.”
“Where and how long?” I says.
“Wyoming,” says the dude. “In two weeks.”
“In the winter?” I says. “Not a good time.”
“Haste is essential,” says the dude.
“Haste is expensive,” I says.
“Five hundred a month in gold,” says the dude. “First two months in advance.”
“Always was a hasty man,” I says. I could buy a tent, flunks, and a couple whores to keep me warm for that money and have enough left over for serious debauchery when I went East. I go there for the ice cream.
He languidly held out a paw, and I took it. His grip was hard and so were his eyes.
“You don’t mind,” I says, “what the hell was that thing you just bought?”
“It’s a horse,” says the dude.
Pignuts started to gasp and wheeze with laughter. The dude ignored him.
Least I could do was be polite to the feller. It did cross my mind that I maybe ought to take the gold and run.
Pignuts was slobbering onto his folded arms, head down.
“You familiar with Darwin?” says Cope.
I nodded. A British feller pissed all over the Bible, some said, though I wasn’t sure exactly what it was the man said.
Conversation come to a halt just then because the buffalo robe was thrown up so hard it got caught on a nail in the wall. A cold wind blew in, and a beautiful woman stomped across the rough plank floor, spurs jingling.
Pignuts looked up, puzzled.
Tall she was, with a pile of blond hair in a silk scarf and a pair of blazing blue eyes.
“Um,” said the dude, just before the woman slashed Pignuts across the face with a riding crop. Pignuts yelped and cowered. The woman had a dainty silver-chased pistol in her other hand, and it was quite accurately pointed at Pignuts’ forehead.
“You smelly bastard,” says the woman. “The bones in that coffin are not those of my brother. Who was six-foot-four, not five-feet-two. Now you get a shovel, you son of a bitch, and we are going to go and get what’s left of my brother.”
“He’s all rotten!” Pignuts screamed.
“You have a serviceable kettle out back,” says the woman. “I saw it.”
Pignuts started to work his mouth, and the woman fired one shot that put a neat hole through Pignuts’ left ear. The hole welled blood and Pignuts screamed.
“Move,” says the blond woman.
Pignuts was blubbering and scared enough to do as he was told. He got a slicker and some gloves. The woman never took that pistol’s eye off Pignuts’ forehead.
“Good afternoon, Alys,” says the dude.
“Delighted,” says Alys. “Always good to see you, Jonathan.”
Just for a moment her blue eyes met my black ones, and I had a jolt run through me. It was like you saw yourself when you were not expecting to.
“Mr. Kelly has agreed to accompany us,” says Jonathan.
“How nice,” says Alys.
Pignuts was shuffling toward the front door. Alys wasn’t far behind.
“Sad about your brother,” says Jonathan.
“Hell it was,” says Alys. “That poor sick bastard was so unhappy he’s better off dead.”
Alys and the gibbering Pignuts went on out. I heard a team lean into traces, then a wagon rolled. The wind was picking up and smelled of snow.
“Professor Jonathan Cope,” says the dude, “and we have much to do. I have business in Salt Lake. I propose you ride there with me at my expense. It will take only three days.”
I heard another shot. Maybe Alys had found the right grave, I thought, and didn’t need Pignuts anymore.
*See Kelly Blue
3
COPE HAD A BLOODED horse tied to the rail next to my big bay, with one of them funny pancake saddles on him, and we swung up and headed toward Laramie. I looked off toward Pignuts’ boneyard and saw dirt just-aflyin’. Alys had done convinced him she’d kill him ’less he did something mighty pleasing. A couple men was building a fire under the big kettle she’d spoke of—it was used to boil clothes, to get rid of the lice. That worked well enough, but I learned long ago it’s better to find a good anthill and kick it open and lay your clothes on it and let the angry ants hunt down the lice. They get the egg cases, too.
Cope set off, and I followed. Silly his saddle might look, but the man was a horseman, setting easy as he was on his porch in a rocking chair. The wind began to howl overhead, a banshee scream. Wyoming wind is a thing, like the mountains. Some folks went mad and put rifle or shotgun barrels in their mouths and pulled the trigger. If you had an uneasy soul, the wind could draw madness out of you and show you its face.
Laramie wasn’t far, and turned out Cope had a couple private cars—nobs traveled in ’em, homes on wheels, right down to paintings on the walls and four-poster beds.
A manservant met us at the door, and Cope bade him show me my rooms. They was in the other car, and an Irish girl was carrying kettles of hot water to a bathtub. I hadn’t had a bath in a while, and I took the hint. I stripped down and put on a silk bathrobe was on my bed and I went behind the screen and sank into hot water plain stinking of lilacs. I thought this better wear off before I come back to Laramie or the saloons would be a bad place to go, what with the sort of friends I got.
Whooooooeeeeee, they’d holler, smell that fine feller. And they wouldn’t rest till I had been cut down to size.
But the bath felt wonderful and I soaked a long time and I scrubbed and there was even a little brush for my teeth which did as good a job as a willow twig and salt did.
Time I got back to the room, there was my clothes that warn’t leather all white and even pressed. They smelled of bluing.
I got dressed and buttoned my shirt and left my heavy beaded coat on a rack and I sauntered back toward the main car. Cope was in what was the parlor, sipping brandy from a snifter and smoking a long cheroot. He nodded toward another snifter and another cigar and I nodded and he clipped the end and held out a match for me. He had them good manners you get only in the blood. He waited till I had a few puffs and a few sips and then he nodded and bent forward.
“When we return,” says Cope, “I wish to have you engage the services of some hardy men who know Wyoming. They must have excellent eyesight and be fighters. Offer them whatever the going rate is, plus forty dollars a month.”
Going rate was about twenty, so I doubted I’d have trouble recruiting.
“I am a paleontologist,” says Cope, “and there are reports of rich fossil beds in Wyoming.”
I nodded. He was talking about what the Sioux called Thunder Horses, giant bones weathering out of the earth belonging to the mounts of the Thunder People. I didn’t know how the Sioux would take having them mined out. Probably about like they took the gold miners. Which meant we’d better be well armed and have some trade goods and whiskey.
Red Cloud hand’t had a drink since ’47, when he killed his best friend while they was guzzling white man’s whiskey. He didn’t recall having done it but he was so ashamed he never touched it again. Red Cloud was one of them Indians you see you realize you are in the presence of a great man, like Washakie. They was bigger and wiser tha
n the rest of us.
A little yardpuller engine coupled up to our cars and moved us off the siding and gently pushed us into a passenger train’s caboose until the couplings locked. There was a hiss as the steam brakes was connected.
Salt Lake City. I had had a bad time with the damned Mormons, especially that madman Brigham Young. He was crazy like a goddamned fox and utterly ruthless. Didn’t believe a word of their dumb book, he told me, but it was a good way to make a million dollars. He talked of a million dollars like preachers talk of heaven, only with Brigham the million was a sure thing.
Brigham was a scoundrel, sure enough, but I had to give the man some credit. He’d led his people to the arse end of nowhere and built an empire. He had to know that while the railroad would end the Mormon hold on the Great Basin, it would also assure him of his million dollars.
Cope then plied me with pleasant but sharp questions about where I come from—upstate New York, and how I come to be in the West—I deserted the Union Army, but after Appomattox, so no one much cared—and how I got on with the Indians.
“Well,” I says, “that depends. Sometimes we find ourselves tryin’ to kill each other, and sometimes we have an amiable meal together. They’s good people really.”
Cope nodded.
“They’re in the way,” he says. “America is knitting itself together, we have millions of immigrants coming to our shores, and the Indians are doomed.”
True enough. Both Red Cloud and Washakie saw that, but the Sioux was more numerous and fierce than the Shoshones, and I knew it broke Red Cloud’s heart knowing how many of his brave warriors was going to die.
“I cannot tell them the truth,” Red Cloud said to me once. “They have only their love and bravery to offer the People.” Indians is supposed to be so stoic, but when he said that and looked at me there was tears and he let them well and fall, running down his lined cheeks. His eyes were so sad I began to cry, too.
But fate’s fate, and them as can’t see it is the happier for it. There’s only death at the end for all of us, anyway, but some of us try to do our best. Not that we ever know what that is.
“I understand that you know Red Cloud and Gall and Spotted Tail and Sitting Bull and the others,” says Cope.
I nodded.
“What will be their reaction?” he says.
“Them I can talk to,” I says, “though I may have some odd orders for the fellers I hire. It’s them damn Cheyennes worry me.”
Cope nodded and sipped brandy.
“Go on,” he says.
“They ain’t as big a tribe as the Sioux,” I says, “but they are one hell of a lot meaner. Red Cloud told me till about 1800 they was farmers, and then some prophet told ’em they had to move out on the Plains and learn to live by the horse and the buffalo, or they’d lose the tribe.”
“Lose the tribe?” says Cope.
“Have their ways changed by missionaries and such. You know how tedious those bastards are.”
Cope laughed.
“Most important thing to them is they keep their ways,” I says. “They are real religious and strong on family.”
“Do you know any Cheyennes?” says Cope.
I nodded. That cutthroat Blue Fox I knew real good, and a few others. Bravery is a common thing, actually, more common than cowardice is, but them Cheyennes was pure crazy when they were fighting. I seen one charge a company of cavalry once and run the lieutenant through with his lance and then the Cheyenne fell and there was twenty-three bullet holes in him, about half of which should have killed him outright.
“Will you talk to them?” says Cope.
I nodded. Blue Fox wouldn’t kill me, there being honor among scoundrels, and I wouldn’t probably have to look for him more than a mile ride away from camp toward dusk. Cheyennes can flat disappear on a blackrock plain with no more cover than pebbles. I half expect, when I am in their country, to step on one when I get up to piss in the night.
The train give a lurch and began to build up speed. The cars clanked, and soon the wheels was clacking over the joints in the rails and we was headed to Salt Lake City.
Cope went on asking his penetrating questions about the country we was headed to and the Indians we would have to contend with and the people I proposed to hire on.
The engineer blew a long lonesome blast on his whistle, and we headed down the sagebrush, with the black mountains up ahead.
I was getting peckish, and no sooner had I recalled my hunger than a maid come in with a big tray with pickled buffalo tongue and cheeses and bread cut in little squares and pickles and a tureen of turtle soup. I fell to, ravenous as a lame wolf on a dead carcass.
“Oh, Kelly,” says Cope, standing up and swaying with the car. “The lovely Miss Alys de Bonneterre will go with us. She’s one of my assistants. Studied art at the Sorbonne. She’ll be sketching geological features and specimens.”
I nodded.
She would while the light held, I expected, and I also expected that the dark would be a different matter indeed.
Oh, yes.
I made a note to get some best buffalo robes and more soap than I am wont to carry.
4
I HAVE SEEN SOME ridiculous sights in my time, but perhaps the best was what awaited us in Salt Lake City.
Cope’s cars was pulled right up to the main dock, and it was all covered with prominent Mormons, a brass band, bunting, and a long red carpet.
Standing at the end of the carpet was Brigham Young his own self, beaming.
“It seems that Young is terribly grateful to me,” says Cope, “since in the Book of Mormon horses are often mentioned, and of course modern horses did not arrive until the Spaniards brought them.”
“That skeleton is about the size of a small dog,” I says.
“All Brigham cares about is that it is a horse,” says Cope, “I have to admire a man who makes do with what’s available.”
“All the same to you,” I says, “I believe I’ll just rest up here. Me and Brigham don’t get along so good.”
“Au contraire,” says Cope. “He asked after you and specifically recommended you to me. He had most admiring words for your abilities and honor.”
“That crooked son of a bitch likely just wants to hang me,” I says, “and he’s got good reason.”
“Kelly,” says Cope, “Brigham is a statesman. He said all is forgiven and demanded I bring you along.”
So I drug back to my rooms and got my coat and hat and me and Cope got off the train. The other passengers was having to hike back to the station.
When the door to the parlor car opened the brass band struck up a tune and all of the Mormons cheered except Brigham, who chose to look all prophetic. I followed at a little distance from Cope, warily looking for signs of law.
“Professor Cope!” boomed Brigham. “Salt Lake City welcomes you, a distinguished scholar!”
Huzzahs.
A seagull overhead took a shit, and it hit the brim of Brigham’s hat, spattering white blots on the black silk.
Suddenly there were a hell of a lot more of them, and all the bastards had the runs. A sleet of bird shit fell and the band and worthies fled for the safety of the station. We mobbed through the doors, a lot of men mopping at their coats, and even Cope had a turd on one shoulder.
Brigham was right next to me.
“It’s a sign from God,” I says. “As a fully equipped prophet, would you mind explainin’ it to me.”
Brigham smiled at me like a weasel does at a chicken.
“I notice,” he says, “that you ain’t got any on you.”
“That must mean something,” I says.
“It means I am going to talk to Professor Cope without your damned Gentile insolence,” says Brigham. “There’s two dozen Sons of Dan here, awaiting the least excuse.”
The Sons of Dan was killers Brigham was known to send after apostates and anyone else he disliked. They always cut the throats of their quarry, something to do with Blood Atonement. But th
ey was just killers, that’s all.
A statesman. Well, I had killed John Wilkes Booth for one of ’em.*
“He’s under my protection,” says Cope.
“Better yet, he’s under mine,” says Brigham. “But since you are payin’ this scamp, tell him to hold his tongue. I don’t want my faithful disturbed.”
Cope nodded. I was going to quit anyway. It was only so much fun to needle Brigham because he didn’t believe the hogwash he preached anyway. What he believed in was Brigham Young.
The somewhat smeared faithful was getting restive, and so we trooped out to a long line of carriages and I got in with Cope and Young and a monstrous young Mormon thug who looked at me like he was sizing me up for chops.
“Levi,” says Brigham, “don’t stare at Mister Kelly. It ain’t polite.”
A shock run though me of a sudden. I suspected he was one of the sons of that polygamist I’d shot with the buffalo rifle. No wonder he hated me. Him and his probably two hundred brothers. Bein’ a Mormon could be a good life and I probably would have joined up but I can’t stand sermons.
We trooped off to the biggest hotel, and there was a reception laid on, tables piled with food. One dish caught my eye. It was green and had little orange shreds of carrots in it. Calves’-foot jelly. It sorta looked like moose puke, but the Mormons tucked into it like it was manna.
Brigham rapped on a lectern for order, and the faithful, reeking slightly of incontinent seagulls, formed up and looked all interested and Brigham gave a flowery speech praising this Gentile genius for having found incontrovertible proof of the Word of the Book of Mormon. There had been horses in America.
No doubt Brigham would have a revelation in the matter of who ate ’em all, but not today.
“Professor Cope!” boomed Brigham.
“Hear hear,” says the faithful. Flies had appeared and was very interested in everybody but me.
Cope made his elegant way to the lectern and he got there and he cleared his throat and a flunk brought him a glass of water. He waited a moment for the rustling to die down, and then he talked.
The world, he said, was uncountable millions of years old, and creatures which were the ancestors of every living thing on earth today had lived back then, and evolved. Professor Darwin and a feller named Wallace had thought really hard and divined that over enough time a lizard could have feathers and fly. There had been huge beasts, dinosaurs, terrible lizards, stalking round a few million years ago.
