The Bones of Paradise Read Free Page B

remembered. He glanced at the man again, a man who had been lucky for so long it felt outrageous for him to die so effortlessly. Graver started to tuck the picture back in J.B.’s shirt pocket, then stopped and slipped it inside his own instead. He would have to find her, make sure she had nothing to do with this. He didn’t want to get involved, but that was the hell of it, now he was.
    The Indian girl looked much the same, only she appeared to be a more recent kill. Her eyes still moist in the corners, a silvery tear streak visible on her cheek, a fly drinking from it.
    Graver waved away the fly, rocked back on his heels, and lit another cigarette, smoking it to the brown nub, the glowing tip pinched between his filthy broken nails. He remembered the day in March when Bennett had brought a mule to his soddy, and dropped the lead rope at his feet.
    â€œWhat’s this?” he said.
    â€œUse him or eat him,” Bennett replied.
    â€œNo.” Graver had to swallow the spit rising in his throat at the thought of roast mule haunch. He could imagine his sick, starving children, sitting listlessly in the dirt, unable to muster enough energy to play.
    Bennett put his spurs lightly to his horse and was trotting away before Graver could thank him. The mule brayed once, a long sucking roar that made Bennett’s horse twitch its ears and bunch up like it might decide to buck and run. He reached down and patted its neck.
    It was too late, of course. The mule made them all so sick it finished off the youngest the first night, and his wife lasted long enough to see to the other two as they passed, one by one, starving, stomachs bloated with indigestible meat. He was the only one who fought off the cramps and runs, eating his way through thenausea to a newfound strength. Enough to burn the few goods they had in a little bonfire that served to smoke and dry the rest of the mule meat in long strips for the trip out of the hills. With every bite he tasted the clothing, bedding, even the rag-stuffed dolls his girls made, tasted the peculiar bitterness of the bone button nose, the sharp, scalding paint of the blue eyes and red mouths.
    Graver shook his head and looked at the midday sun in the cloudless sky. He wanted nothing to do with that Indian girl and whatever she was to Bennett. He walked back to the horses, stood staring at them for a minute, considering the value of the saddle and bridle, the rifle still in its scabbard, and finally the sleek, high-bred horse that could carry a person quick as fire out of the hills. Then there was the picture of the wife, Dulcinea, he remembered now, and the sharp edges of the photograph scratching his chest.
    He reached to untie the reins to Bennett’s horse, only to stop and start to bend when he saw something that looked like the red pipestone Sioux used.
    The shot passed through his old horse’s nose and plowed into its chest with the sound of a fist punching a sofa, the noise echoing under the delayed boom of the gun as the animal simply dropped like a tree felled by an axe. Bennett’s horse screamed and tried to break away, but the knotted reins held, and Graver used its frantic motion to grab the rifle off the saddle and slither over the crest of the ragged hill.
    He lay there panting, gorge rising to his mouth, before he remembered to check the load in the rifle and chamber a round. He’d be damned if he was going to get left in these hills by some coward ambusher. He looked for the shooter. Judging from the bullet that took the old horse, the shot came from the north, which meant the shooter was somewhere beyond the windmill and tank. Maybe he’d been lying in wait the whole time and Graver should have paid more attention to the shadows. He did a quick estimate of distance and figured it was twenty to twenty-five yards. He’d be ready if the man showed himself.
    After a few minutes the gnats and flies found him, and he was brushing them out of his