The Bones of Paradise (27 page)

Over the next month, he followed the mounting alarm over the Ghost Dance on Pine Ridge. He read papers from Chadron, Gordon, and Omaha, and rode into town as often as he could get away. Elaine Goodale Eastman, an Indian agent, said the ghost shirts only became bulletproof after the army arrived, and that should be evidence this was a peaceful gathering. He couldn't rid his mind of the images: gaunt children in threadbare clothes playing happily while their families danced and prayed to change their futures. At night he held Hayward for longer than usual and let him sleep with him when bad dreams threatened.

Then the news turned desperate. A Sioux cowboy passing through from North Platte to Pine Ridge told them Sitting Bull was murdered on December 15, by agency police at Standing Rock Reservation. The army feared he was urging his followers to join the Ghost Dancers and create an uprising. Buffalo Bill had come to Sitting Bull, his old friend, and tried to trick him into surrendering, but the ruse failed and Bill departed. The Indian ate sparingly though he was clearly hungry, and J.B. and Vera both urged more food on him. When he pushed away from the table he thanked them and J.B. let him sleep on the sofa so he'd have at least one warm night. In the morning, Vera gave him all the leftover beef, a chicken, and twenty biscuits she woke early to bake. Later, when Buffalo Bill was granted the use of the braves who held out in the Stronghold after
Wounded Knee, J.B. wondered if the cowboy, Roy Dancing Spear, was among them. The men were allowed few choices: become part of Bill's show and travel to Europe, go to prison, or be relocated to Oklahoma, where the Lakota people were the most hated by all the other tribes.

I
n late December J.B. received a message from Father Hansen that urged him to return to Pine Ridge. J.B. was in a quandary. He didn't want to leave Hayward, and had no notion that he'd be of any help, yet the man asked and he still couldn't shake the images of those children. The priest said the military was poised to attack simply because it was winter, they were cold, and their patience had worn thin with a people who wouldn't stop dancing despite the lack of food and warmth. Families starved, and it made no difference. They danced with rags wrapped around their feet. Finally, a large contingent of Indians fled the encampment, but were followed by the army, found and taken to Wounded Knee Creek, and assured they'd be safe. One of their leaders, Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, was among them.

When he heard the news, J.B. decided to go, despite the frigid weather and the snow that would bury them any day now. He brought extra clothing, blankets, and food on a packhorse. Hayward was left in the care of Jorge and Willie Munday, since Vera and Higgs had taken the train to Denver. The hands wore grim expressions as he waved good-bye, and something in the pit of his stomach told him they were right. He had no business in the middle
of this. He secretly hoped to see his wife, but he couldn't tell them that either.

When J.B. arrived at Wounded Knee Creek and met Father Hansen on the evening of December 28, the soldiers were drunk on whiskey a freighter sold out of the back of his wagon. Hardly anyone slept that night with the drunken yelling, singing, and fighting, and on the morning of the twenty-ninth the camp's mood was tense, soldiers prepared to shoot at any provocation, Indians wary despite the children playing around tipis, and the dancers and drummers organized at first light. As Father Hansen and J.B. drank their coffee and ate hard biscuits, they remarked on the sense of dread and hostility among the surly troops. “The army wants to attack,” Father Hansen warned. “Their patience is gone. They'll attack. There's nothing else they can do.”

“Then why am I here?” he asked in a bitter voice. The man had no right to drag him into this mess.

Father Hansen stared at him, then shrugged. “I couldn't think of anyone else who cared enough.”

“To do what?” J.B. wanted to hit the priest.

“To bear witness. Someone has to know the true story. The army's already writing their version, the one that makes them heroes. I thought between us we could gather the facts. The truth.” He shook his head. “Something terrible is about to happen, and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it but stand and watch.” He clenched his fists and hit the ground, producing a crackling in his bones.

J.B. saw he was right, and wished he hadn't turned down the earlier offer of whiskey. As far as he could tell, there were no weapons in the camp except for the guards' Winchesters. He wondered where the young photographer was, where any photographer was when a fight could erupt at any moment. He saddled his horse as a precaution, pulled the rifle from the boot, confirmed it was loaded, and then checked the load in his revolver. He made sure he had extra ammunition in his saddlebags, took a handful of bullets and
slid them into his buffalo coat pocket. He didn't question his actions. He knew how quickly things could change. In the back of his mind he wondered exactly who he was going to shoot. Shortly after, as the bystanders watched from what seemed a safe distance, Colonel Forsyth and Major Whitside demanded the Indians hand over their weapons.

The soldiers held their breath while the Indian leaders met and finally brought a handful of old, broken rifles and muskets to Forsyth and Whitside, dropped them on the ground before the two men, and refused to meet their eyes. Father Hansen drew a sharp breath and J.B. grabbed his arm to stop him from rushing into the confrontation. The officers indicated that the guards must hand over their rifles, too, and allow them to search the camp. A long, heated argument followed while four big Hotchkiss cannons were wheeled into place on the hillsides around the camp. J.B. looked at the soldiers lying or kneeling on the ground, guns at the ready, fingers on triggers, except when they took time to puke or gulp water to nurse their hangovers.

When the dancing was set to begin, a man hit the group drum once, twice, and the men and women in their ghost shirts moved into a ragged circle, oblivious to the guns trained on them. Beside him, J.B. heard Father Hansen take a deep breath as he pointed at the Indian who chanted and raised his arms in the air. “Stosa Yanka, Sits Up Straight,” he said, “will signal the dance to begin.” The man bent, grabbed a handful of dirt, and threw it at the sky, offering the road for the return of the buffalo—

Later the officers would testify that they thought the thrown dirt a signal to attack, despite the women and children in full view. And when a rifle was fired into the air by one of the Indians, the red-eyed, confused soldiers took it as their cue to begin.

J.B. threw up his arms and started to yell stop but Father Hansen grabbed his arm and pulled him backward as returning bullets cut close in the din of gunfire, men shouting, and horses and women and children screaming. Several Indians ran to their tipis to retrieve
hidden weapons while camp animals and people scattered, running in all directions for cover. J.B. and the priest crawled to the end of the soldiers' line as the other white onlookers ran for their buggies and horses. J.B. did not draw a gun. He was afraid of what he might do, especially when he saw the men prepare to fire one of four big Hotchkiss guns on the rise nearby.

“There's no target,” he muttered, then shouted, “There's no target!” as the gun roared, splashing through two women running away. After that, J.B. witnessed the sickening horror of superior weapons against an unarmed people, and the exhaustion of patience. The soldiers' fear surfaced in a kind of violence he had only heard about from earlier days. Some of the Seventh Cavalry from Custer's old command was part of the deployment, so there was a special vengeance at work, too. J.B. felt paralyzed to do more than witness as the soldiers rose from their positions to chase down stragglers, finish off children and crippled old people. It happened so quickly. Later he would learn that Big Foot, sick with pneumonia, was one of the fallen.

A cry went up among the ranks that people were escaping at the ravine on the opposite side of the camp, and a group of soldiers took after them. At that point J.B. rose and followed. His head swam in the terrible sounds and sights of the massacre, hoping he could stop the horror, despite Father Hansen's shout at him to stay. By the time he came to the ravine, the soldiers were already shooting down the fleeing women, children, and old people. A woman and child were felled by the same bullet as it passed through her back and took the top of the baby's skull. The men cheered. Two young sisters holding hands with their younger brother between them met a shower of gunfire that produced red roses on their legs and arms, torsos and faces, and they fell still linked, as if made of pasteboard. The elderly were the easiest targets, and the soldiers were methodical in cutting them down. A hunched old woman, her gray braids long enough to sweep the ground, tried to hobble past by creeping along the edge of the ravine. A soldier kept his
rifle trained on the back of her neck, as if hunting a wounded deer. Finally, he squeezed the trigger and watched with satisfaction as she fell. Her head was severed from her shoulders and rolled a foot beyond the body as if it still inched toward escape. Often two or three soldiers fired on the same person and the body would fall, spurting blood from a dozen wounds.

The atmosphere was almost joyful, a kind of play at work as they took turns and pointed out the wounded who needed to be shot again until not even a foot twitched. J.B. looked at his hands and found he still held his pistol and rifle. He wanted to raise his weapons and kill every soldier in sight, but could not lift his arms, could only watch. As if in a dream, he saw two white men, not soldiers, chase a mother and young daughter. They passed out of sight where the ravine curved, narrowed and deepened. He hoped it was a trap for the white men, yet knew that it wasn't. He heard the men hooting as if chasing coyotes for the kill. It was too late to save them. He was too late.

When there were no more Indians to escape, the firing finally stopped, and there was only silence. The bodies in the ravine lay unmoving. The soldiers stepped back, and some collapsed and shook their heads as if to clear the terrible sight from their eyes. It was obvious now what they had done. They could embrace it, bury the corrosive memory to etch them like acid, killing them slowly, or they could shrink from it in horror and relive it for the rest of their lives as if the dead could rise like spirits looking for form.

The gorge rose in J.B.'s throat and he swallowed hard. He felt someone beside him, and heard Father Hansen praying in Latin, the monotone of the chant so discordant J.B. had to walk away. He should have used his guns against the soldiers. He couldn't use his guns against the soldiers. The snowy ground of the ravine was splotched pink and red and black with blood that looked like shadows of the fallen in the midwinter light of later photographs. Even as he made his way back to where his horses were tethered, the intermittent firing continued as soldiers chased people up to three
miles to kill them. Though he tried not to look, he could not help himself.

The relic hunters and soldiers searching for souvenirs were already stripping the bodies, holding up their trophies: moccasins, beaded belts, hair ornaments, necklaces, and ghost shirts, especially with bullet holes and blood, the irony doubling the value in their minds. A group of schoolboys, caught in the midst of a game, lay in a row like a sad picket fence. Bodies everywhere. Later the military would underestimate the number by at least a hundred, a mistake made in part because the Indians retrieved as many of their wounded and dead as they could after nightfall. J.B.'s journey across the camp was a tortured winding path around the grotesque bodies twisted and contorted in every manner of agony with gaping wounds and sometimes worse: the top of a skull taken, the brain matter spilling and freezing pink and gray on the ground, the expression on the face peaceful, a hand resting on the chest as if the man were asleep. A woman with a missing lower jaw and her throat ripped open, her arms extending from her sides, eyes staring up as if she had fallen from the sky. A family whose mangled bodies seemed to exchange shards of bone and blood, faces shocked and outraged.

J.B. thought he heard a small cry, and stopped and knelt beside a woman whose body rested higher than the others. He hesitated, then carefully rolled her off her back and found that the cradleboard strapped there held an infant. The child silently scrutinized his face as he cut the straps off the mother's shoulders and lifted the board, then removed the baby and cradled it in his arms. A shadow rose behind him as he stood.

“You want I should get rid of that?” A soldier held his rifle so the butt was raised and ready to club the babe. His cartridge belt was hung with booty. He grinned, and J.B. could smell the liquor sweating from his skin.

J.B. shook his head and brushed past the man, prepared to shoot him if needed. He pulled the deerskin wrap over the baby's head
and hurried on toward his horse without any idea what he was going to do. Several scavengers stopped work to stare after him, wondering what prize he'd managed to secure, wondering if it'd be worth it to follow him and take it.

He was untying his horses when Father Hansen found him. “You don't want that child,” the priest assured him. “I can take care of it. We have room. Don't worry.”

J.B. sighed, slid his rifle in the saddle boot, and drew his gun, pointed it at the priest, barely registering the other man's blood-streaked face and hands, the black robe bearing deeper black splashes. There was a bullet crease along his jaw and a knife wound on the back of his hand that the priest ignored as he held out his arms. “You need to leave. Go back to your ranch, your son. There's nothing here for you. I shouldn't have asked you to come.” The priest looked around. “Nothing for anyone now.”

Unable to mount his horse or move at all, J.B. stood and waited, heard the wind rustle the grass, the shouts of soldiers torn between their desire to kill the wounded enemy and their obligation to drag them back to the medics for care, and then the first wails of the survivors upon discovery of their dead. Finally his arms loosened, and Father Hansen took the baby, tucked it expertly on one shoulder as he gripped J.B.'s arm. “Go home. Forget this.”

J.B. stared at his retreating back until the priest disappeared into the crowd of gathering Indians searching for their kin.

He intended to ride straight through to the ranch, but snow and bitter cold forced him to stop in Rushville. He was able to find a bed in a large room crowded with twenty cots at the hotel despite the newspaper reporters and government officials and thrill seekers. When he went downstairs to the saloon crowded with soldiers and civilians, he stood at the end, head down over his whiskey glass, unable to avoid overhearing the noise of men celebrating their victory over a vanquished enemy.

He was on the verge of leaving when a man pushed his way into
the narrow space beside him and called for whiskey. Turning to J.B., he raised his brow and nodded toward his empty glass. J.B. shrugged. The barkeep poured their glasses full and both men drank them half down.

“Percival Chance,” the man said. He was tall, thin, and handsome in a varnished eastern kind of style, despite the rugged condition of his clothing. He had a thin nose and an angular face with elegant planes, a high forehead with longish blond hair. J.B. imagined he was the kind of man women appreciated. He still had decent teeth.

Chance raised his brow at him and J.B. remembered to introduce himself and thank him for the drink.

The high atmosphere of the saloon fit Chance. As he drank, the color mounted in his cheeks and his eyes seemed charged with electricity as if they held a secret. J.B. wondered if a touch would ignite his own clothing.