Jonis Agee - The Bones of Paradise

“Kid? You there? Hey, kid?”

Graver waited a long time; he might even have passed out again, he wasn’t sure, he couldn’t remember what he was doing there, what time he’d started out that morning. He knew his wife would be worried if he was late for supper. And he was so thirsty, that surprised him, how his tongue felt swollen twice the size so he couldn’t quite close his mouth, but breathing that way made his throat all the drier. He thought about calling the kid to bring him some water, but decided against it when he remembered that the kid might be sneaking up on him. He heard a clink of metal nearby and turned so quickly his shoulder gave a vicious stab of pain, almost knocking him flat. He peered over the crest of the hill and saw a turkey vulture tear at the dead horse’s face, pulling the eyeball from the socket so viciously the head lifted an inch and resettled. Graver looked at the sky to figure the time. It seemed so long ago, all the earlier events. He braced the rifle on the ground and staggered to his feet.

Although it had pulled off its bridle, the red horse hadn’t gone far. Graver reached for the headstall, forgetting about his wound, and the pain took him to his knees.

He shook his head, it felt bloated and heavy, sloshing like a gourd of water, and the weight pulled him backward, his face to the unrelenting heat of the sky. The last thing he remembered was trying to straighten his legs because he didn’t want them to have to break his knees when they put him in the box.

J.B. was found after midnight by the foreman Frank Higgs, Larabee, Irish Jim, and Willie Munday. After a hasty supper, Higgs had divided the men and searched to the east and south of the ranch for their boss, who had failed to return as he always did at the end of the day. The other men went north and west, and wouldn’t return until early the next day. It was twilight as the men approached the windmill and water tank off the path to Drum Bennett’s ranch and noticed the small herd of cows pawing and milling, refusing to approach the water. Then they saw the dead horse and the dark, irregular shadow of bodies.

Higgs quickly dismounted. “Willie, you and Jim go and pull some of those bulrushes from the edge of the hay meadow, make a torch, search these hills around us.” He turned to Larabee, who dismounted, and paced the ground around the bodies, peering closely at the churned sand and grass glowing white in the dim light of the sliver of moon that inched past the shoulders of the hills.

J.B. was lying on his side, eyes fixed on a half-buried Indian girl who somehow looked like a fresher kill than the man. “What the hell, J.B.,” Higgs swore as he knelt, touched the edge of the wound that had torn a large hole from chest to back. On the face of his employer and friend he saw both shock and sadness.

“Oh damn it,” Higgs whispered and reached to rest his fingers on the cold forehead of the man he’d grown to love as a son over the years. This would kill Vera, who’d almost adopted the father and his young son as soon as she started working here. She bossed J.B. and the boy as if they were her own.

“Frank.” Larabee held out an empty brass shell casing that glinted dully in the moonlight.

Irish Jim, bearing a torch of creosote-soaked cattails, moved his horse closer and peered down. “We all carry that one.”

“Got another one over here,” Willie Munday said from the outer edge of darkness. “J.B.’s horse just wandered in, too. Must’ve heard us.”

Higgs brushed his fingers over Bennett’s eyes to close the lids, but it’d been too long. They were stiff, unmoving. He looked at the men gathered around the small circle of light at the center of which lay a man. They’d all seen death aplenty, a couple of the old-timers had fought in the War Between the States, and Larabee back from that war with Spain, but this was different. Bennett was boss. Well-liked. The kind of man to ride the river with. His sons, Cullen and Hayward, now that was another matter. Higgs looked at the men, and then nodded toward the body. “Willie, get down and help Jim pick him up, lay him over my saddle.”

It was difficult to lift a body the size of J.B. onto a horse. Higgs and Larabee stepped forward to help, but even with four men it was a struggle. They tied him to the saddle, and the horse danced and chomped nervously. It seemed for a moment that Bennett himself refused to leave the land. Higgs peered into the blackness beyond the wavering pool of light from the torch Willie had jammed into the ground. He sorted the sounds of curious, thirsty cattle gathered to watch the men—stamping hooves, grunting as one body pushed against another—and heard no telltale clink of metal spurs or jingle of bit, no flash of moonlight on rifle action or pistol barrel. Whoever did this was long gone.

“What about the girl?” Larabee asked.

“Hell.” Higgs swung back to the grave. “Cover that up.”

Larabee looked at the foreman, startled, then tipped his head and started kicking sand over the girl’s body. Irish Jim took a folding shovel from his saddle and set to work, too, but the sand wouldn’t stick. They no sooner had the body almost covered than it seemed to shift and slide off. Before long the two men stepped back, clearly spooked, their eyes on Higgs, who lifted his hat, ran his hand through his hair, and resettled the hat, tugging it more firmly in place.

“Maybe we should fetch her back to the ranch,” Irish Jim said.

Higgs shook his head. There’d been trouble again with the Sioux lately. It was only ten years since Wounded Knee, and the Indians were still pissed about that mess. No good would come from having a dead Indian girl on Bennett land. Damn it, if J.B. were alive, he’d know what to do. But he wasn’t, and Higgs could only face one thing at a time.

“Leave her,” he said, ignoring the quick exchange of looks between Larabee and Irish Jim.

“Better come see this, boss,” Willie Munday called from the darkness. They followed his voice to the small pool of light from another hastily constructed torch.

As he sank knee-deep in the sand, Higgs cursed.

Willie Munday knelt beside a body dressed in rags, peering into the face. “I know him. Name’s Graver, Ryland Graver. Farmer with a bunch of kids and a missus. J.B. sent me over there with a beef last fall. Heard they busted out.” Willie raised his head and looked at Higgs. “Think he did this?”

Higgs noted the dead horse beside Graver and shrugged.

“He has J.B.’s rifle,” Larabee offered. “And that’s Red’s bridle tied to his nag’s. I think he got caught trying to steal Red and J.B. and him fought and—”

Higgs held up his hand as the man on the ground groaned, his eyes fluttering open. His lips moved and Willie leaned down to hear, and then sat back on his heels.

“He wants some water.”

The men watched Higgs deliberate and then slowly nod. If he was the killer, they’d want to hang him back at the ranch, where they could use the cottonwood trees J.B.’s wife favored when they’d built the house.

Once the man drank enough, he tried to sit, but Irish Jim held him down and bound his wounded shoulder. Graver passed out again and the men lifted and shoved him onto the horse before Irish Jim got up behind to hold him. There was something unnatural about leaving the Indian girl unburied behind them, and the four men stole glances over their shoulders as the procession moved into the darkness toward the ranch.

“Frank?” Willie Munday, their newest cowboy, rode up beside Higgs and leaned over in a whisper. “Looked around, noticed another set of tracks out there. Small-footed horse and a man in moccasins.”

Higgs searched the man’s face. “Keep this quiet. Soon as we take care of J.B. and this Graver fella, you, me, and Larabee’ll come out here and God willing find something.” Although he didn’t know much about Munday, Higgs thought he could trust him. Man did his work. Wasn’t hard on the horses. Good tracker. Kept his mouth shut, not like Irish Jim or a couple of others who wore a man down with their constant yapping.