The Bones of Paradise (36 page)

She gathered herself, tried to force down the tide of anger and fear before it sheeted her eyes red and black. “You are never to mention my son Cullen again. In fact, you are not to interfere in my dealings with my other son either. Is that clear?”

He nodded and set his mouth in a tight line.

“But, since I am apparently without a foreman, I would appreciate it if you would stay and manage the men until I find a replacement. You may move your things into the foreman's house.”

He nodded and a smile played at his lips until she held up her hand. “One more thing. You are to teach my son how to ride and care for my horses.” He shrugged and nodded, not meeting her eyes.

“Finally, I want you to go out there, put Drum Bennett on his horse, and take him home. I'll expect you back in the morning. We'll discuss the cattle then.”

He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and shook his head.

She hadn't told the truth about why she had left her husband and children. She'd never told anyone, it was part of their bargain, for
what good it did. She collapsed in the chair and gestured for him to sit. “I need you to understand something about Drum and me.

“It was the first break in the weather in mid-March when I tried again to take back Cullen. J.B. had left early to meet with the bank and cattle buyer in town and the hired girl had taken Hayward out to see the new calves in the barn. She'd moved in after Drum stole my boy and I went crazy. I had one of the men hook my half-blind mare to the runabout. I was determined not to fail this time.

“I found the old man at the smithy forge, naked to the waist, holding a red-hot horseshoe in pincers over the coals as he pumped the bellows. The gray horse being shod was tied to one side. My boy nowhere to be seen. I remember that Drum's skin was only a little loose for a man his age, and his muscles still looked hard as he pounded the shoe into shape, then plunged it into a waiting bucket of water and heated it again.

“‘What can I do you for?' he asked between ringing blows.

“‘I want my son.'

“Without pausing, he shook his head. ‘You don't get it, do you?' He held up the shoe to check its shape, turned, raised the horse's front hoof, and set the shoe against it, releasing acrid smoke.

“I repeated my request and he began to nail the shoe on. When he was done, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of grimy folded paper. ‘Read this. Tell me what it says.'

“I hesitated, and he waved it at me. I took it although I was filled with dread. I knew it was bad.

“The paper was a signed contract giving Cullen to be raised by his grandfather until he was eighteen in exchange for twenty thousand acres. At the bottom of the page, J.B.'s signature, the same he had signed his letters to me with, flowing and upright so there was no mistaking it. I crumpled the contract and threw it into the forge fire. Drum shook his head and uttered a small curse.

“‘He has a copy, too.'

“I was torn between betrayal and grief, unable to quite grasp
how a man could do this. But Drum wasn't finished with me. He patted the horse, took another shoe from the bin, and began heating it.

“‘Now you and me are going to come to an agreement, missy.' He pounded the hot shoe into shape.

“‘These hills are a dangerous place, you know, all kinds of accidents happen to a person out here. Hunters shoot a man thinking he's a deer. Boy gets bit by poisonous snake and nobody there to suck it out. Person falls off and gets dragged by a horse or lost in a blizzard. I tell you, there's endless danger out here.' He stopped and held up the shoe, squinting at its form.

“‘Here's what I'm offering: You leave here and stay away, not a word to my son about it, and I'll keep your menfolk safe. Boys can grow up and J.B. won't have any accidents. Long as you skedaddle and keep your word.'

“He thrust the shoe back into the coals, heated it again, lifted it out, and put it on the horse's back hoof. For the rest of my life I will remember this scene every time I smell that unholy acrid smoke like the depths of hell.

“I couldn't find words to answer him. The proposal was so outrageous that I didn't doubt him. As I stumbled across the barnyard and climbed into my runabout, he called after me: ‘Best be gone come May. Dangerous time, branding season.'”

She hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her body as if she felt the cold March wind again. “So you understand, I can't have that old man here. He was supposed to keep them safe.” Her head jerked up and she felt her eyes blaze with a kind of madness that both frightened and made her glad. “He killed J.B.! I know he did! He wants the ranch—you've heard him—”

Graver waited a moment, then settled his hat on the table and sighed. “That's a hard tale, ma'am. It makes me sorry to hear it. You been through it all right. But—”

They heard Rose and Some Horses arguing as they stepped
onto the porch and pulled open the door. Graver closed his mouth, stood, glanced at Dulcinea as if he wanted to say more, and then put on his hat, touched the brim, and slid out the door.

Jerome left almost immediately and Rose sat at the table with her head down like she'd lost the ability to speak. That happened to everyone around her now. Only Graver—Did the men have noon dinner? Dulcinea had lost track of time. Was it morning or afternoon? She looked anxiously to the sky as clouds slid across the sun. A cool wind gusted and gathered and gusted again, driving the squawking chickens into the henhouse and scattering the horses in the corral. The trotting horse weathervane on the barn spun wildly one direction and then another. Dust and sand rose and swirled around and burst against the house as if flung by a giant fist.

“My sister says we're close to him now. He's going to reveal himself soon.” Rose tapped her fingers on the table, pushed back the chair impatiently, and went to the parlor, where she picked up the hide scraper.

“Where did this come from?” she asked, turning.

Dulcinea shrugged. “Hayward collects Indian things.”

Rose set down the scraper and picked up the red stone pipe. “Same?”

Dulcinea stared at her. “What're you saying?”

Rose put it down, made sure it was away from the shelf edge. “They belonged to our family.” She stood at the end of the table staring at Dulcinea.

“I'll ask him, I will. But he didn't have anything to do with it, I swear.”

Rose wouldn't look her in the eye. “Find out tonight.”

Dulcinea shivered. This wasn't her friend Rose—she sounded so cold. “You think Hayward killed your sister?” She was breathless even saying the words.

Rose stared at her. “Ask him where those things came from. Tonight.”

After supper, which the two women cooked in silence, Dulcinea asked Graver and Hayward to stay. The boy was restless and wouldn't meet her eyes. Graver sat quietly meditating on his coffee while she went to the parlor and retrieved the items.

“Son, where did you get these?”

Hayward seemed rattled, folded his arms and stared at the table.

Graver cleared his throat. “Higgs brought them in.” He paused. “From the windmill where—you know. J.B. was holding the scraper and the pipe was with the girl.”

Hayward looked like he'd been slapped, his face red.

Dulcinea felt light-headed. Was he guilty?

Graver looked at the two of them and grimaced. “Boy, you need to tell your mother everything.” He laid his hands flat on the table and made to stand, thought better of it, and leaned back in the chair.

When the tale was done, Hayward was sobbing in his mother's arms. Dulcinea thought it lucky he didn't see the relief on her face at learning her sons weren't murderers. She knew J.B. wasn't either, and the two Indian boys weren't even around these days. Had to be an outsider. She never seriously considered Drum, despite what she said. He wouldn't kill his own son. Look how he was taking Cullen's—She couldn't think the word and willed herself back to the list of suspects. It had to be an outsider, then. Maybe someone who knew J.B. well enough to get close. That meant she and Hayward weren't safe. Drum was an old bastard on his own far as she was concerned, but she'd be damned if anyone was going to hurt this family again. She had to look harder, think about who stood to gain the most from their deaths. She needed to talk to Rose tonight.

S
ince it was the middle of September and the men hadn't been paid in two months, Dulcinea forced herself into town to meet Chance and the banker. If she sold the ranch, she'd have the money to protect her remaining son. In her mind, she pushed aside the disappointment she was sure would show on Graver's face when he found out. Damn it, she did care what he thought of her and maybe he was right. To be honest, she couldn't imagine Hayward leaving these hills. She couldn't imagine herself leaving either.

Chance seated her at a scarred round oak table in the tiny office that used to hold his desk. The room was stripped bare as if he was moving, and when she raised her eyebrows he smiled and shrugged. He cleared his throat, but she ignored that, too, opened her purse and pulled out the papers he had sent.

The sweet scent of his Bay Rum cologne hung in the air, crowding the small space. Sooty lines framed the white spaces where his diplomas and pictures had hung. Was he leaving now, before the will was probated?

He sat across from her, elaborately crossing his legs to the side, his striped trousers pulled up to reveal the unpolished shaft of a black boot.

“Why have you sent me this contract, Mr. Chance? I told you I wanted nothing to do with those people.”

“You must be feeling better, Dulcinea, you're looking lovely today.” He leaned back with a smile and combed his hair from his temple with a forefinger.

“Your one job was to clear probate on the will. Do I need to find another attorney?”

He smiled. “If you will be patient for a few minutes—”

“I've been patient all summer and look at the results.”

He took out a gold pocket watch embellished with an elaborate family crest, consulted it, and tucked it back in his waistcoat as if his time were more important than hers.

“That's it. Consider yourself fired.” She stood, picked up her purse, and turned toward the door, which opened precipitously, forcing her to step back into the tiny space.

“Sorry, sorry we're late.” The judge, Harney Rivers, a stranger, Stillhart the banker, and finally Drum Bennett came through the door, causing all to stand elbow to chin. “Town's filling up with rodeo crowd and it's hell getting anywhere. I don't know how they do it in those Eastern cities.” The judge tipped his hat. “Mrs. Bennett, Dulcinea.”

“What are you doing here?” Dulcinea asked Drum, who lingered behind the taller men.

The men removed their hats, put them back on, and then took them off again.

“Come in here, you can sit and I'll stand,” Chance offered. “Dulcinea, you sit right there where you were before.”

She almost protested, and then was overcome with curiosity. In her new state of mind, it was all she could do not to laugh them right out of their boots, as if they were caught in a ridiculous folly that any minute was going to split apart to show the awful, soul-grabbing horror beneath. She sat with a grimace. Across from her Drum kept his eyes on the flat-brimmed tan cowboy hat in his hands that he kept turning, stopping to brush off a fleck of lint every once in a
while. His face, covered in greasy sweat, had aged twenty years, ravaged with wrinkles and hollows and sagging skin as if he were dying of a cancer or lung ailment. There was a slight tremor in his fingers. She looked away, unable to stop the stirrings of sympathy.

The stranger, an out-of-town lawyer who introduced himself as Joshua Kidd, possessed dark eyes that peered through dime-sized glasses perched on his nose. His jaw worked as if he chewed something not quite pleasant, something he could neither spit out nor swallow. Next to Chance's clothes, the man's appeared fresh, shelf-creased. He was too current, probably sold a bill of goods by some smart young clerk in Omaha whose job it was to get rid of fashions no one was buying. In contrast, the judge must have inherited his clothing from an older, deceased relative. The black wool coat was too thick, the cream linen shirt too heavy, and the silk cravat too boldly colored in yellow and blue swirls. Stillhart, the banker, wore a dove-gray Western suit with overstitching and a black leather string tie with a rough turquoise nugget the size of her fist holding it snug at his throat, like something straight out of a Denver catalogue. Harney Rivers wore his usual plain wool suit and black vest with a gold watch chain stretched across the front. Only his gold-and-green silk tie made him fit company for the others. She felt set upon by mannequins out of the Emporium window across the street.

“Dulcinea—May I call you Dulcinea?” the judge began, as if he hadn't sat at her table and drunk her husband's brandy of a night.

She waved her hand impatiently and concentrated on the wart on his chin in an attempt to still herself while her fingers worked J.B.'s ring on her thumb, twisting it back and forth until it began to saw her flesh.

“Let me say that we're all real sorry about what happened to your boy.” He glanced over at Drum, who wouldn't meet his eyes, but the tremor in his fingers increased. “I know how broken up both you and his grandfather have been.”

The ring sprang off and she felt around in her lap before it could
drop to the floor. The room was warm and stuffy and her breath wouldn't quite come.

The judge snuck a look at the lawyers, carefully avoiding Drum, who still stared at his hat, although his face, burned from the days living outside, burnished to a deep red.

“Be that as it may”—the judge raised his finger in the air as if to punctuate his speech from a campaign platform—“we in the hills have long-standing traditions,” he began in a sonorous tone, and it was all she could do not to reach across the table and grab his lapels. “We, the founding families, like to keep things, our holdings, our business, among our families and friends. We don't need outsiders, folks who don't know or appreciate our ways—you understand.”

She nodded, and remembered how long it was before anyone would do more than say a polite hello when she'd married J.B.—and when Drum took Cullen she couldn't find any lawyer interested in helping her get him back.

“We have business to conduct here, and it behooves you to listen. Please.” He smiled to lighten the words and she clenched the ring in her fist.

“Just get to the point,” Drum finally said, and she was grateful.

“All right. Your lawyer sent the gas and oil contracts to you, so you know what we need here. The deal only works if all of us in this room allow for the exploration and eventual bringing to the surface. Now”—he raised his hand to stop her interruption—“in return, Drum here drops the inquiry into the legitimacy of your husband's will. Yes, yes, I know it's valid, but I'm not acting as the court here and your father-in-law wields enough goodwill with the court to delay your possession for a long time.”

She started to stand, and Chance came off the wall and put his hand none too gently on her shoulder, pushing her down. “It's best you listen.” She slid the ring on her thumb and began twisting it so hard she felt it on the bone.

Drum startled awake. “No, damn it, that's not the way we talked about it.” He glared at the other men, then fixed his half-mad expression
on her. “Dulcinea, I know this is sitting hard, and what I'm about to say will sit even harder, but you need to consider Hayward and all J.B. worked for here more than your needs. You mean to sell the ranch, I know that, especially—” He brushed his hand as if to push recent history aside. “But I can't let that happen. Now I don't have the cash to buy you out, you know that, it's a cow business, not a bank. So here's what I figure, and it's only to keep the Bennett name alive, after J.B. and Cullen—well, I figure you might owe something here, too.”

She pushed her fingers into her purse, and felt for anything sharp she could stab through his heart.

Drum put his hat flat on the table, took a deep breath, and leaned toward her. “I think we should get married.”

The judge's and banker's heads jerked up from reading the papers on the table. Harney Rivers had to stop himself from laughing, she noticed. Chance, still behind her, placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Since she didn't try to kill him, Drum continued.

“I've thought long and hard about our problems and it's the only thing for it. Merge our two places, make it one of the biggest spreads in the hills, and I can help finish raising Hayward and together he and I can run the ranches while you go off to Europe or wherever—that is, you'd be my wife in name only. You'll continue to be supported as you were when my son was alive.” He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest.

She shuddered at the thought of Drum's proposal, the obscenity of it. The other men looked surprised and a little scared as they watched. They were probably wondering the same thing she was: Had he lost his mind?

“Marry the murderer of my husband?” She clenched the edge of the table, ready to leap at him. For his part, Drum's head snapped up and he stared at her in shock.

“No,” he groaned, “I never—”

She leaned back in her chair, watching him.

Stillhart finally filled the awkward silence. “We're aware of your
financial situation, Mrs. Bennett. J.B. was trying to ride out the poor markets like everyone else, and he would've made it if, well, if he hadn't been sending you such a generous allowance.” Here the banker's eyes slid toward Drum and back, a move as quick as a lizard's tongue. “He wound up selling off that piece on the other side of the Dismal River, and I know for a fact he was facing having to sell a thousand-acre parcel this fall if he couldn't ship again.” He held up his hand, and then let it slap the table to quiet Drum. “You need to sign the contract, Mrs. Bennett. It just doesn't make sense that you won't.”

He had a kind face, one that was interested in the experiences of others, but his mouth was thin and set, and his eyes stared at her blank as a grasshopper's. Was she food or was she food? He reminded her of the traveling dentist who visited the ranch years ago, who sat each of them in a straight chair and tapped each tooth with a metal pick, asking, does that hurt, does that hurt? The dentist had some kind of sweet scent on his breath, a combination of licorice and clove, and when his tap produced a howling nerve, the smell made her want to vomit. She wanted to vomit now.

She gave J.B.'s ring a vicious turn on her thumb and felt her finger grow slick. “To tell you the truth, I guess I need to think about it.” She gazed at the mannequin faces. “Just a day or two.”

She pushed back her chair. This time Chance didn't attempt to stop her as she crossed the small distance to the door. She paused with a hand on the knob, glanced at the men, and left. They had her and they knew it. She wanted to sign, she wanted to, but something stronger told her no. Maybe it was Graver, who had reminded her that they would tear this land apart, J.B.'s land, their land, the fragile Sand Hills she loved as much as she hated for what they had cost her.

And Drum's offer was monstrous. Even if he didn't kill his son, he didn't protect him as he'd promised.

Underneath all of her protests, though, remained her desperation, pinching, gathering her corners and pulling them in so tight
she could barely move or breathe, as if she would die of suffocation. What could she sell? The stallion and mares wouldn't bring money out here—people would laugh at her. Jewels? She never cared for jewelry. How did J.B. have the cash to buy that telescope? She could sell that, except the image of Hayward fascinated by the possibility of the night sky intruded. Her parents? Never. She hadn't asked them for money since she left home to marry. She was a grown woman. Besides, her father had to borrow most of her money over the past few years. Then she remembered the men who worked for her, trusted that if she used their backs, she would uphold her end of the bargain and pay them. Graver said he would work without pay, he was used to starving, but she had seen the condition he was in when shot and she couldn't push him back to that. She'd have to sell a parcel of land, as J.B. had done, but the idea brought the memory she worked so hard to forget: the day she learned about the contract. No, she couldn't sell the land piece by piece, she couldn't even sell the ranch . . . then it would all mean nothing, her son's life, her husband's, her sacrifice, nothing.