Jonis Agee - The Bones of Paradise

She looked at him carefully. “You can’t read?” She turned and moved to the other end of the bar to serve a couple of cowboys so drunk they held on to the edge of the rail to stay standing.

Annoyance rolled over him and he was opening his mouth to respond when Larabee elbowed him in the side and tilted his head toward the door that had just closed behind Black Bill, Jorge, and Some Horses.

“Ah shite,” Irish Jim swore.

Larabee beckoned the three men over and shoved the pitcher of beer toward them. Without glasses, they had to pass the pitcher from man to man for a quick gulp while Lucille wasn’t looking. Some nights she was inclined to let the nonwhite cowboys drink if they didn’t ask for much.

Over the back door hung an enormous buffalo head, moth eaten, battered, shaggy to the point that it must have been going through summer molt when it was killed. One ear was twisted nearly off and dangled from the side of the head. The black marble eyes gazed almost drunkenly at the drinkers, and some wag had stuck a hand-rolled cigarette in its mouth.

Larabee leaned across Some Horses and said, “One of them English lords came out here and shot him a while back. Not much sport. He was the last old bull, not bothering nobody. Pretty tame. But he shot him, had him stuffed and crated to ship home. Then a funny thing happened.” Larabee’s eyes lit up as the whiskey and beer were set in front of him. He lifted the shot glass, toasted Graver and Some Horses, and drank it down in one swallow.

“So this lord decides to go on one final hunt. And having shot the hell out of every living thing in twenty miles, he heads on up to Pine Ridge Reservation. Right after the Wounded Knee massacre, it was. Heard there’s a big den of mountain lions up there and he wants one. Now nobody bothers telling him that these are cougars, and they don’t live in big family houses, they’re more loners. We figure to take his money and follow him around scraping up the bodies. Easier than cow work.”

Larabee took a longer draught of the beer. Beyond him the men began to talk loudly and laugh for the first time since supper. Irish Jim and Jorge wore evil smiles as they played stick pig with a knife and their hands on the bar.

“So first thing happens, this lord runs into a man claims to be chief who says he needs payment for permission to hunt on Indian land. Dumb cocksucker pays. Not even an argument. Well, you can see how that was gonna play out. We ride a little further. Another chief. More money. By about the fifth time we’re stopped, the lord asked the chief how many there were, figuring he should be about done paying. Indian smiles and says, ‘Why, we’re all chiefs in this tribe, sir.’”

Larabee laughed and slid a glass of whiskey to Some Horses, who smiled and shook his head, his eyes on the steady lift of his hand with the drink.

“But that’s not all. The lord got so mad, he started shooting dogs. And you and I know, one thing you don’t do is shoot reservation dogs. Hell, you don’t shoot any man’s dogs.” Larabee shook his head. “And this after them troops shot hell out the women and young’uns.

“So we hightailed out of there, figuring things were gonna go Wild West show soon as those chiefs mounted up. The Englishman saw our dust and followed suit. He wasn’t feeling too comfortable pulling this bull crap by himself, I guess. That lawyer fella, Percival Chance, was with him, tried to follow. Turns out, it was too late.”

Some Horses nodded, eyes half-closed, and held the glass under his nose as if the bouquet were Cognac instead of the cheapest watered whiskey. Larabee drained his beer and nodded at the bartender for another round. Graver finished his and shrugged.

“So you’re wondering what happened.” Larabee glanced at Graver while he took a drink from his fresh glass. “See, here’s the strange part.” He drank again, swished it in his mouth as if rinsing his teeth before swallowing. “We don’t know.” He grinned. “Never saw the man again.” He drank. “We rode out of there like Old Nick was on our tails, and didn’t stop till the Nebraska border. Ruint three good horses that day. When we looked back, there was nothing. No dust, not a thing.” He drained the beer and nodded at the bartender.

“So we rode on into town, had a good night of drinking, in the morning saddled up figuring to go find the dumb bastard. We guessed that lord’d learnt his lesson by then, so back we go. We’re still carrying rifles, you understand, and we’ve got pistols strapped on, just in case. And it’s a miserable morning, rainy and cold as hell. It’s fall and you can feel an early snowstorm tapping its boots over Wyoming way waiting for a good push from the wind to set loose over our heads. But we’d talked a little and worked ourselves up to going back to that last village for him. We knew nobody’d dare harm a hair on his head.”

Larabee drank a shot and ordered another without touching the beer. His face grew thoughtful.

“It was miserable, getting colder by the minute, wind picking up. I remember turning to my brother, Grayton, and saying, ‘We’re in it now,’ and his face had already started to freeze. Last I saw of him. Early blizzard took us down so fast we might have been twigs in the wind. Three days I hunkered in the little cave I dug with my bare hands in a ravine where some puny wild plums hung. Made my horse lie down to block the wind, and prayed. Ate snow, couldn’t get no fire, and only had dried biscuits and a bottle I finished the first night.”

Larabee drained his whiskey and raised two fingers again.

“I don’t know how I lost Grayton, he just up and disappeared. Never saw that English lord again neither.” He stepped back from the bar, pulled up his pants, and took a deep breath he let out slowly before he stepped up again.

“Reddy got the buffalo for next to nothing. Nobody felt good about it. The Englishman’s family sent a message that if we found a body, stick it in the ground. Guess they didn’t care too much for him neither.”

Larabee raised his whiskey in silent toast to the cracked mirror on the wall facing the drinkers. “Couple months later Lawyer Chance showed up, fit as a fiddle. Spent the winter in the Chadron hotel, living off what he packed out—hides, antlers, handmade Indian junk.”

Some Horses gazed at the mirror behind the bar and met Graver’s eyes, worry riding hard between them. It was the kind of night frayed the nerves of animals and men alike.

“Raise a glass to J.B., best boss we ever had!” Irish Jim shouted into the silence the men had fallen into. They automatically saluted the dead man and drained their glasses. Irish Jim glanced anxiously at Graver and ordered another round.

“You ever run into my brother up there on the reservation, Chief?” Larabee’s face had suddenly gained that unfocused, doughy quality of the nearly drunk: his mouth fighting to hold itself while the skin around it loosened and collapsed. “I mean, after that ruckus at Wounded Knee, guess a man can’t expect much from you people.” Some Horses’s face grew still as he stared into his drink. “Still, if you heard of a white man—”

Jorge leaned out from the bar and Graver caught his gaze. Black Bill was minding his own business at the end by the door, hat perched back on his head, latigo leather skin taut around the cheekbones and eyes, which he kept on the plank that served as a bar, and where his stack of coins stood in sober attention.

“Easy to get lost up there,” Some Horses murmured.

“How come we never found no body?” Larabee slurred his words slightly. “A bad thing never dies, Chief.”

Graver caught the bartender’s eye and held his hand over the glasses to cut off the liquor. She shrugged and moved down to the other men. Four cowhands playing cards at a round table along the back wall looked up, uneasy.