The Romance of Certain Old Bones

by Holly Messinger

  Typical, Jacob thought. Petty vengeance of a petty tyrant. Leading by threats instead of example. There was considerable grumbling and dark looks as the Yalies finished their breakfasts, but no outright mutiny.

  “Mr. Tracy,” Hope called. “A word with you, please.”

  Little bastard couldn’t even bother to come over and say his piece. Had to summon people away from their grub like an emperor. Taking a firm rein on his temper, Jacob knocked back the last of his coffee, set his plate on the rock where he’d been sitting, and marched over to where the professor and Ryan had withdrawn themselves, well away from the others.

  “Professor?” he said, as neutrally as he could manage.

  “How well do you know your man Bosley?” Hope asked.

  Jacob blinked. There was a grim, accusatory set to their faces. “Well enough, I’d say.”

  “I had the impression you had not been long acquainted,” Hope said. “In fact, Mr. Ryan has heard from Bosley’s own lips that he only met you in March, when you hired him for the drive to Yankton.”

  “That’s right,” Jacob said, looking from Hope to Ryan. The professor was upright and intent on his purpose, but Ryan stood with arms folded and that mean little smile on his lips, as if anticipating a sadistic treat.

  “You will acknowledge that Bosley was on watch two nights ago, when Carruthers was killed?”

  “Yeah, he took the early watch,” Jacob said. “He woke me just before it happened.” Though it must’ve been happening, right around the time he’d been dreaming of danger. “We heard someone messin around by the wall, but by the time we got there, Carruthers was dead and his friend run off.”

  “It wasn’t a friend,” Ryan said. “It was me. I heard something, too, and when I left my tent I heard Bosley arguing with Carruthers, there by the wall. I heard Bosley say he wanted more, and when Carruthers said no, Bosley struck him down.” Ryan’s lips parted in an unnerving grin. “Bosley went away, and I went over to Carruthers to see if he was hurt, but it was too late. And then Bosley was coming back with you, so I took fright and ran.”

  By Ryan’s expression, he was about as far from fright as a pig in slop. His eyes were glassy with glee. Jacob looked at Hope in bewilderment, wondering how he could not see the strangeness in his protégé’s behavior.

  “I should think, Mr. Tracy,” Hope said, “you would be eager to distance yourself from that Negro as much as possible. It seems he is not the worthy man you vouched for.”

  “I ain’t backed that horse yet,” Jacob said. “You happen to ask Bosley for his side of things?”

  “Of course not,” Hope said.

  “Could be Mr. Ryan mistook what he saw and heard. It was pretty dark that night.”

  “That’s how I knew it was Bosley,” Ryan said. “I could see Carruther’s hands and face in the moonlight. His assailant was too dark to make out the features.”

  “Bullshit,” Jacob said.

  Hope’s nostrils flared. “Mr. Tracy, I will admit that Bosley is an unusually clever and assiduous example of his race, but that is precisely why one might suspect him in an incident like this. He plainly desires advancement beyond what his nature predisposes him for, and when those ambitions are thwarted, he reverts to his bestial origins—”

  “Holy Christ,” Jacob exploded. “Is that what passes for science back east?”

  Hope’s chin thrust forward. “I had hoped you would be brought to see reason.”

  “What I see is somebody tryin to get away with murder by pinnin it on the easiest target,” Jacob said, and caught his breath, thinking: Stanley should’ve been the easiest target. The men generally liked Bosley; they treated the Indian boy like a pest, when they noticed him at all. Jacob looked into Ryan’s mad watchful eyes and knew in a flash, this wasn’t just about passing the blame, and it had little to do with Bosley per se. This was about taking Jacob’s right-hand man away and leaving him vulnerable.

  It’s mine, Ryan had said in the dream. But as Jacob stared at him, the predatory expression drained out of Ryan’s face, to be replaced by uneasy puzzlement, as if he had awoken to find himself in the middle of a tense confrontation.

  And at the same time, something rough and clammy scraped against Jacob’s soul and whispered, Unless you want to take it from him, maxpé-man…

  Jacob shoved away the presence, the way he had pushed away from the water in his dream. A second later that secretive grin was back on Ryan’s face, sly and taunting. Jacob averted his gaze; he felt he couldn’t look that thing in the eye long and remain sane.

  “Unless you got some kinda proof, I don’t wanna hear anymore about this,” he said, and his voice was only a little shaky. “Boz works for me and you hired the both of us, three hundred dollars apiece for the season.” Hope opened his mouth to argue and Jacob cut him off. “We’re not walkin off this dig and you ain’t usin this bosh as an excuse to break our contract.”

  Hope’s chin went up. “You will not accuse me of being a cheat, sir.”

  “Then don’t give me a reason,” Jacob said, and removed himself from the conversation. He walked back to where he’d left his plate and cup, aware of curious eyes on him, all the Yalies and Bosley, too, the frown on his partner’s face—God, how could this be happening again? did he deserve nothing good and loyal in his life?—and sidestepped the latter as he got near to the chuckwagon.

  “Not now,” he growled to Bosley’s unspoken question. He dumped his dishes and stalked off toward their tent.

  When he got there, he stood in its peak for a moment, looking at his own things on the left, Boz’s on the right. There wasn’t much: each of them carried as much as could fit in a bedroll and a couple of saddle-packs. The cots and tent were new, bought on Hope’s dime, but the rest of it Jacob reckoned he knew inside and out; he’d been looking at all Bosley’s things spread out for four months now. Bosley was tidy—everything was folded or hung or stowed, just so. Not much place to hide things. And what would he have to hide, anyway?

  It went completely against Jacob’s nature to rifle through someone else’s things. Five years in seminary, one in the army, two more in hospital, and a half-dozen seasons on ranches or riding the trail—God, had he been homeless and rootless so much of his life?—but in all the places he’d lived and worked during his adult life, the little privacy a man had, his bunk and bags, was sacrosanct.

  Nevertheless, Jacob felt an almost tangible tug toward Bosley’s cot, toward the folded-up Mexican blanket he used for a pillow. He plunged his hand inside, his heart in his throat with fear as well as guilt, and his fingers closed around something small—stiff and fuzzy at the same time, like a bony little creature that tried to squirm away from his grasp.

  He caught it and pulled it out. It was a weird little mannikin, no bigger than his thumb, with arms and legs made of twisted grass and a bit of something sharp, like a fragment of bone, stabbed through its chest. Its head was a blob of sealing-wax, with a bit of curly black wool for hair.

  Bosley. This was Bosley, with a splinter through his heart.

  Footsteps swished through the grass outside the tent flap and Jacob panicked, plunged his hand into the blanket and yanked it out again just as Bosley ducked through the doorway.

  They stared at each other for a beat or two.

  Bosley said quietly, “What are you doin?”

  Searching for proof that you killed a man? Finding a hex somebody put on you? Looking for signs that Ryan is possessed by some ancient demon rock-monster and is trying to drive a wedge between us?

  “You wasn’t goin through my kit?” Bosley’s tone was uncertain, almost hurt.

  Jacob sat down, took his hat off, raked a hand through his hair. “Ryan told the professor he saw you kill Carruthers.”

  Bosley stared at him for another minute. “But you don’t believe that.”

  “Of course not!”

  “So what was you lookin for?” Bosley picked up the blanket and shook it out. The little poppet fell to the cot and he swiped it
up.

  “I wasn’t lookin for anything, Boz, I know you didn’t do it. But Matheson said things have been goin missing—”

  “And you figured I was the only nigger in this woodpile, is that it?” Bosley’s tone was sharp, his body tightening into angry lines before he flinched in pain. “Goddamn it! What is this thing?” He opened his fist, dropped the little crushed effigy and used the tips of two fingers to prize the splinter of bone from his palm.

  “I was afraid somebody had stashed the plunder in here,” Jacob said, as reasonably as he could. “I was tryin to get a look before somebody got it in their heads to start searchin tents.”

  “So you couldn’t just tell me that?” Bosley snarled, still scratching at the wounded palm, like a wolf with its foot in a trap and determined to face off all comers. “You had to race in here and protect me, like some pickaninny can’t account for himself?”

  Jacob’s mouth fell open. “When have I ever—”

  “You know what, you can go to hell,” Bosley said, and took himself out of the tent before Jacob could say another word.

  12

  They finally removed the mosasaur from the wall that afternoon. Ryan supervised, barking orders at his classmates as they lowered the biggest chunks into a travois of canvas and birch-poles, to be carried down the butte to the wagons. They had already taken several such loads down the trail, and Jacob had kept a careful eye on the aggregate, knowing he’d soon have to call a halt when they reached the limit of what the wagons could safely haul, and what they could get upriver to Fort Buford in time to catch a steamboat east.

  As if he sensed his hours were numbered, Hope drove them all like rented mules that day. He barked at the boys when they paused to smoke or even to drink water. He snapped at the cook when supper was late, and then demanded to know why Stanley wasn’t back with the water by suppertime. Jacob had begun to worry over that fact, himself, and said he might go look for the boy, but Hope said they should all go scouting the canyons and cliffs near their camp—ostensibly to look for other deposits of fossils, but with the implication they would flush Stanley out of whatever grotto he had chosen to loaf in.

  Jacob chose not to argue. He figured he could find Hope some new pile of bones and slip away while the professor’s attention was engaged. Likely specimens were not hard to find; bones lay scattered along the wash-outs like the abandoned leavings of some giant’s meal, and protruded from the sandy spires in plain sight. Ebury found a massive skull, as long as his torso, with a strange protuberance on the nose that sparked a lively debate about whether the creature had had a trunk like an elephant.

  With his hands tracing along the canyon walls, Jacob could have told them where monsters were hidden. Water-beasts like the mosasaur, winged dragons, and one massive two-legged terror with teeth as long as his hand. Things out of nightmares whispered to him, Let us out and we’ll give you power. He ignored the voices and pointed out the more benign specimens to the others: a giant turtle here, a birdlike creature there. Hope was enthralled by the flying ones, so Jacob found him a cache of lightweight bones, as fine as reeds but stretching out longer than a man’s arm-span, that vibrated with a lingering memory of sky and fish.

  “Some type of pterodactyl,” Hope said, after inspecting the ridge of bone that protruded from the wall. “P. longispinis, by the length of the jaw here. Mark this space, Mr. Ryan.” Ryan moved forward with a wooden stake, the end of which had been colored with red chalk, and drove it into the crumbling wall below the specimen. “That’s three this afternoon, Mr. Tracy. I must say, a man of your education and background should be working in the natural sciences. You are wasted as a trail guide.”

  Jacob grunted in reply. Hope had been trying to butter him up all afternoon, which had Jacob wondering if Hope was possessed, until he realized that the professor couldn’t stand to have anyone dismiss his authority. His ego was bent upon being the dunghill rooster—the cleverest, the boldest, the strongest-willed when it came to managing men—and Jacob had smacked his nose with that accusation of trying to cheat them out of pay. And perhaps Hope had realized Jacob could leave, in which case the professor would be left out in this barren slice of prairie surrounded by hostiles of every stripe. So, having failed to bring Jacob to heel with bullying, Hope was trying flattery instead.

  Ryan had apparently picked up on Hope’s game, too, and resented it. He dogged close on the professor’s heels, shooting low-lidded malice at Jacob whenever he thought the latter wasn’t looking. The mad, eye-rolling grin of the morning was gone; the obsequious young proselyte was back, and Ryan was seething at Jacob’s having found more fossils than he had.

  Jacob pretended to ignore him, though he kept him in the corner of one eye, while the rest of his attention was tuned toward the voices of the others as they called and laughed to each other, out of sight along the passages of rock. Bosley had attached himself to Matheson and Ebury, and the others had likewise set off in parties of two or three. Jacob had wanted to caution them all not to venture too far; it was not long til nightfall and the maze of canyons was tricky in the dark. It would be easy to get lost, or put a foot down wrong and break an ankle. There might be hostile Indians hiding out there among the chimneys. There were certainly hostile paleontologists.

  Jacob was just debating whether to approach Boz and propose they go looking for Stanley, when his partner’s voice drifted up from somewhere down the ravine. “Hey Boss! Boss Tracy! Come have a look at this!”

  He sounded excited. Jacob didn’t even mind being called Boss so long as Bosley was speaking to him again. He turned toward the slope and started down. The old water-channel was fairly smooth and slick with grit under the leather soles of his boots. The tops of the rocks were warm from the day’s heat but each time Jacob passed through a shadow he could feel the oncoming cool. He came to a fork in the passage. The left side was wide open; the right bent in a tight hairpin. “Where you at?”

  “Down here,” came the voice, from the right. “Squeeze through. Watch your step.”

  Jacob squeezed through, hugging the sun-warmed rock. But it did him no good to watch his step. He couldn’t see the ground ahead of the tight turn, and once he popped through there was no ground for his foot to land on.

  It wasn’t far to fall—only three feet or so. He managed to bring both feet together and twist as he fell, so he sort of hopped once and landed on a shoulder instead of breaking an ankle or wrist.

  It hurt, though. He banged a knee and bruised that shoulder and hip pretty good. The floor of the wash-out was rough with rocks and hot with trapped sunlight. And as he pushed up on his elbows, even before he heard the tell-tale buzz of warning, all his senses went bright and taut with danger.

  There must’ve been thirty rattlesnakes down in that caldron—and those were just the ones he could see. Curled up on ledges, entwined in shady spots like lovers. And the biggest of them right near his feet, against the base of the ledge he had fallen from, coiled in a tight spring and buzzing with threat.

  Jacob made himself go very still. Smoothly and not-too-fast, he drew his knees up to his chest, put his feet down, and stood.

  He expected the rattler to turn tail. For the most part they would rather flee than fight. But this one sat up taller, still focused on him. And as he backed away, hand going to the Colt on his hip, the rattler’s nearest neighbors turned their heads, little black tongues flicking the air, bodies coiling and tails rising to spread the alarm. One by one, like a herd of cattle who had caught a panic, the message spread from one snake to the next, until their drone filled the wash-out like a swarm of bees.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jacob muttered, and then crossed himself to make it a prayer instead of blasphemy. There were a least a dozen snakes between him and the exit, and even if he had enough bullets to clear the way—he drew the Colt and took aim at the big rattler, cold sweat prickling his hairline as he heard the rasping of serpentine bodies over the rock, to either side and behind him.

  A shadow moved in
the passage above, became a small, lean body dressed in leggings and breechclout that wedged himself around the rock.

  “Go back, Stanley!” Jacob said. “Don’t come any closer!”

  “Be quiet, Mr. Tracy,” Stanley ordered. He stepped off the edge of the drop and landed two feet in front of the big rattler, who struck at him, but the boy made a deflecting gesture and the snake fell short of his target, turned across itself and retreated—sheepishly, Jacob thought, for a snake.

  “Go on now, go on,” Stanley scolded to the rest of the snakes, shooing them away as if they were chickens. “Why you listen to that liar, huh? Nobody wants to harm your babies.”

  He wasn’t speaking English. He was speaking in a combination of Crow and raspy sibilants and hand-sign. Jacob didn’t know which was more surprising, that the snakes understood, or that he did.

  He holstered the Colt as Stanley finished his snake-wrangling and turned toward him, a self-satisfied smile on his face. The boy had his hair braided for the first time since Jacob had met him, with the front combed up in a stiff pompadour. He was bare-chested except for the medicine bag hanging against his breast.

  “So I guess you didn’t come out here for no lousy forty-dollar scouting job,” Jacob said, and Stanley grinned.

  13

  “I told you my grandfather was Looks Ahead,” Stanley said, as they climbed through the canyons to where he’d left the water mules. The boy had a blood-soaked bandana wrapped around the last two fingers on his left hand, and he was careful about how he used that hand to steady himself against the rock walls. “He knew when I was five I would be a medicine man. That was when the snakes first came to me.” He chuckled. “My mother didn’t like that—finding snakes in our tent every morning.”

  “Is that how it works?” Jacob asked, curious. He’d met plenty of people who claimed to talk to spirits, but Stanley was the first whom he believed, and was so matter-of-fact about it. “Does your—I guess your patron spirit?—do they come to you?”