The Romance of Certain Old Bones Page 6

  “In my family, they do. But people with snake-medicine are almost always maxpé-batsé—medicine men.” Stanley pursed his lips, as if deciding how much to say. “Most regular people have dreams or visions of their medicine spirit. Sometimes if a boy or girl get near to grown and hasn’t had a vision, they go into the mountains to fast and bleed their flesh, so the One Who Made Everything will take pity and send them a helper. But usually the spirit appears in the form of a man, and reveals itself later.”

  “You bleed to get a vision?” Jacob glanced at Stanley’s bandaged hand. “Is that where you been all day?”

  Stanley gave him a scornful look. “Ain’t you ever scourged yourself for a vision? I hear Catholics like to do that.”

  Jacob was taken aback, and then laughed darkly, appreciating the boy’s brass. “I been scourged. And I get visions whether I want them or not. I don’t mean to pry into your business, son, but you been gone all day and you come back less a finger or some— How do I know you ain’t been prayin to water-monsters?”

  “I wasn’t praying,” Stanley said. “Not like you mean. I had to find my grandfather.”

  “Are they camped near here?” The thought was mildly worrisome; although the Crow were known to be friendly to whites, Jacob couldn’t assume that all of them were, and their presence might draw attention from other, less-friendly parties.

  “Not camped, no.” Stanley made a steering gesture with the bandaged hand, and they turned up a narrow coulee that led off the main canyon. “Spirit-talking isn’t common, you know. Even among my people. And some who are called refuse to answer. People are afraid of holy men, even though they need them, and not all maxpé-batsé are good people. We have witches and sorcerers, just like you do. I cured my first case of snakebite when I was five, and Grandfather said I ought to start training right away, before I got any bad ideas.”

  Jacob’s father had said something similar just before he sent him away to seminary. “Then how come you got sent off to school? I’d think they’d want to keep you around.”

  “They do. But some of the elders think it’s more important now for the young people to learn English and get a white man’s education.”

  There was merit to that idea, Jacob had to admit. “Well, you learnt it good. I didn’t believe you were born out here when I first met you.”

  Stanley shrugged. “Part of my spirit-gifts is speaking and understanding, like you. And I told you not to follow if someone called your name!”

  “I know you did, and I know better. But this one tricked me. It sounded like Boz.”

  “Why wasn’t he with you?”

  Jacob told him about the poppet in Bosley’s bedroll, and the splinter of bone that had stuck in his hand. And his sudden overblown anger toward Jacob.

  Stanley looked interested. “Do white men use dolls to put bad medicine on people?”

  “I’ve heard of it. Never seen it work, til now.”

  “Grandfather said the Sioux used bits of monster bones—fossils—to shoot curses into people. He called it stinging their hearts. But I never heard of using a doll to do it.”

  “Do you know how to cure it?” Jacob asked.

  “Probably. I’m good with poisons. But it depends if Boz wants to be cured. If Ryan poisoned him against me, too, we might have to tie him down.”

  “You think Ryan can hear the voices?”

  “He must, or the bulukse’e couldn’t tempt him. But I think he must not hear as clear as you and me, or he’d know what it was, and fear it.”

  “It tells him what he wants to hear,” Jacob said. “He thinks it’s his own idea.”

  Stanley paused near a keyhole in the passage and looked at Jacob approvingly. “I never met a white man who could talk to the spirits. And now there are two of you, out here digging up monsters. You think that’s an accident? Don’t you think maybe God led you here?”

  “I think you led us here,” Jacob said. “And I think you got some other purpose you ain’t told me yet.”

  Stanley grinned suddenly and ducked through the keyhole. It opened into another of those chambers, smooth and bell-shaped from ages of wear by wind and water. But this one, unlike the rattlesnake den, gave Jacob a feeling of welcome and safety, almost like a cathedral. And it was like a church in another way—there were several stone columns lining the walls, a dozen or so of those strange undulating formations that seemed to be particular to the badlands. They looked as if something had dug a spiral out of the earth and then filled it with concrete. Hope said they were the fossilized taproots of some great tree, but the Yalies called them “Devil’s corkscrews.”

  Whatever their origin, Stanley’s mules stood placidly among the columns, chewing a small armload of hay. They still had the water-barrels strapped to their backs. Jacob knocked on the nearest one and heard it was full. “You ain’t left these mules standin all day while you were out galavantin around?”

  “Course not. I took ‘em with me to ride. I filled the barrels on the trip back, like always.” Stanley crossed the cavern floor and used two of the corkscrews for footholds as he clamboured up to a ledge near the ceiling. “I got back less than an hour ago, and I knew you were in trouble so I came straight to you.”

  “How’d you know I was in trouble?”

  “The beavers told me.” Stanley leaned into the niche, groping.

  “These beavers must get around some, seein as how there’s no water down here.”

  Stanley smirked down at him, before dragging his leather satchel from the ledge. “I forget you have no training, white man.” He dropped to the ground and began to work open the strings of his pack. He nodded at the nearest corkscrew. “Put your hand on the bottom, there.”

  Jacob did as he was told, and heard the friendly echoes of sleepy critters, hibernating for a lot longer than just the winter. “They’re old beaver-burrows,” he said, surprised and pleased. “Is this where you come to talk to them?”

  “One of the places. When the Thunder Spirits struck down the water monsters, they knew the bulukse’e would always seek a way to escape.” Stanley took a gingham shirt from his pack and pulled it over his head. “The Thunder Spirits asked the creatures of the earth for volunteers to protect the people from the bulukse’e. The beavers agreed to stand guard.”

  Jacob watched as Stanley changed his moccasins for boots. “So if you just got back an hour ago, where you been all day?”

  “I told you, I had to find my grandfather.” Stanley reached into his pack and carefully pulled out a parcel of soft buckskin, wrapped around something hard and spherical. Head-sized.

  Jacob felt a flinch in his guts and opened his mouth to say I hope that’s not what I think it is, but he held his tongue when he saw the reverent way Stanley held the bundle, and the bloody rag on his left hand. Jacob abruptly remembered that Indians were reputed to lop off a finger joint as a sign of mourning.

  “The problem with the white man’s school,” Stanley said slowly, weighing his words, “is they want to turn us into white men’s dogs. They teach us English so we can obey their orders. They cut our hair, change our names, beat us if we speak our own language. They want us to forget who we are.” He looked down at the bundle in his hands. “Grandfather warned me it would be bad, but we both thought I should go. I was older than most of the kids, and I already had seven years of training. He knew I wouldn’t forget.” The boy ducked his head for a moment, his voice steady, if gruff. “I’d been at the mission two years when he died. Nobody told me, but last leaf-fall he came to me in a dream, said it was time he handed down his powers. But I had to come out here to see to his bones.”

  Jacob could surmise the rest. “And you knew the Sioux and the soldiers were riding all over this area, so you waited around Yankton til you found a party of white men foolish enough to make the trip out here.”

  “Not fools,” Stanley said firmly. “There were plenty fools headed to the Black Hills. But Boz listened when I spoke. And when I met you, I knew you were like me, but af
raid of your power. And Grandfather says, one of the duties of a medicine man is to help people find their destinies.”

  “Does he now,” Jacob said, eyeing the bundle in Stanley’s hands. Despite his best efforts to be respectful he felt revulsion curling his lips.

  Stanley smiled slightly. He patted the bundle before tucking it back into his pack. “Grandfather says not to push you. He says you’re not ready yet.” He drew the bag strap over his head and made as if to stand, but hesitated. “Don’t tell Hope I’ve got this.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Stanley nodded, and got to his feet. He went to the mules and gathered up their picket-line in one hand. “So why do you pretend not to hear the spirits? I guess the priests beat you, too, if you talked about it.”

  Jacob chuckled, but it was gallows humor. “No, I didn’t hear them as a boy. Not til the war, when I was wounded. And I don’t talk about it because bad things happen when I do.”

  “Is that why you don’t want Boz to know?”

  “Yeah. And don’t you tell him, either.” He watched the boy’s face twist into thoughtful lines and said sharply, “Don’t tell him, Stanley. Promise me. Everyone who’s found out about my curse has died from it.”

  “Boz don’t believe in spirits. He only believes what he can see.”

  Jacob opened his mouth to say it didn’t matter, but the thought drew him up short. It could be said that everyone who’d died of his curse had believed in it, or at least believed in the possibility of ghosts and curses. He didn’t know it for a fact, but— “I don’t care. Boz is the first person in years that I… Maybe it’ll save him, if he don’t believe. I don’t mind him thinkin I’m crazy, I just don’t want him knowin the truth.”

  The look Stanley gave him was pitying, but full of a world-weariness that sat ill on such a young face. “All right. It’s your secret.” He tugged at the lead-mule’s rope, and they started up out of the cauldron. “If something happens and I’m not around, ask the beavers for help. They’ll tell you what to do.”

  “What do you think’s gonna happen,” Jacob said, “that I might need to ask for help?”

  “I don’t know,” Stanley admitted. “I’m still kinda new at this.”

  14

  They led the mules up the last bit of trail to the camp-ground as the first stars were appearing in the east. There was a fire in the pit near the chuckwagon, as always, and the boys were gathered around it, as they usually did before bed. Jacob could hear them talking and laughing from across the butte.

  Only one long rangy figure was on his feet, pacing back and forth between the trail and the fire, smoking a cigarette and darting frequent glances down the draw into the gathering darkness.

  Jacob knew immediately the moment Boz spotted them, because the tension drained out of his shoulders and he started across the grass.

  “Where the hell’ve you two been?” he demanded.

  “Stanley’s been savin my bacon,” Jacob said, and to Boz’s quizzical look. “Ryan tried to drop me into a nest of rattlers.”

  That required a bit of explanation, which Stanley provided, while he unhitched the mules and Jacob put the water-barrels upright in their stands. Boz stood by and watched, shooting twitchy glances at Jacob as if expecting to find the latter pointing a gun at his head, and then looking confused when it didn’t happen. Stanley told the story of the rattlesnakes in fine dramatic form, with ominous references to evil spirits throwing voices and splinters of bone planting evil in a man’s heart. Boz clearly didn’t buy a word, but he grasped that Jacob had had a narrow escape, and that Ryan had gone completely round the bend and was not to be trifled with.

  “I knew somethin was goin on,” Bosley muttered, scratching at the palm of his hand. “Crazy peckerhead claims he found a cache of everybody’s missin plunder, down there in one of the canyons.” He shot another of those wary, wondering looks at Jacob. “Says there’s no way o’knowin who put it there, but he’s makin side-eye cracks about darkies in the woodpile and Indians in the hills.”

  “Are they listenin?”

  “Not yet. But they’re drinkin hard and startin to get restive.”

  “You two go on back to the tent,” Jacob said, and started through the grass toward the campfire.

  They were all there except Hope. Seven well-bred, well-fed white boys, sitting around in slouch hats and dirty Levi’s, grinning and joshing with each other, passing around brown glass bottles that Jacob had never seen before. Hope and Ryan were determined teetotalers, and none of the others had seemed to imbibe much; they all worked too hard and slept too hard to need it. But now Jacob could smell the white-lightning reek of the booze—it almost covered up the other smell, an animal stink of damp and fetid mud.

  “Hey, Boss Tracy!” Matheson hailed him, and Ryan’s head jerked around in annoyance. “Where you been?”

  “Gettin fitted for a pair of snakeskin boots,” Jacob said blandly. “Where’d y’all get the coffin varnish?”

  “Ryan found it,” Matheson said. “Found a whole crate of it, hid down the way along with our stuff.”

  “All our missing do-diddles,” Timothy added, and giggled. “Made up in weird little poppets.”

  “Look at this,” Ebury said, holding up his razor, which had been wrapped with grass, sticks, and twine to make a miniature effigy. “Does that look like some heathen mischief or what?”

  “Like some kind of hoodoo curse,” Duessler said and belched loudly, which prompted rough laughter from the group.

  Jacob did not like the way their eyes were shining, reflecting the gold light of the fire. He did not like the smell surrounding them all, like swamp-rot and fish-guts. And he really did not like the cold-blooded smile on Ryan’s lips, although that, at least, was something he understood.

  “I expect your papoose brought out the whiskey,” Ryan said lazily. “In hopes of selling it to the Sioux and making himself a nice profit.”

  “Mind if I have one of those?” Jacob said, and Ryan wafted a hand over the open crate beside him. Clark tossed him a bottle and Jacob caught it. “Night, boys. Don’t stay up too late.”

  “Sure thing, Pa,” one of them muttered, and there was more laughter, but Jacob was already walking away.

  He lifted the flap on their tent to find Stanley and Boz sitting on opposite cots, a small reflector lamp between them as Stanley bent over Boz’s hand and scraped at it with the point of a knife.

  Stanley clucked his tongue. “Can’t get it. Have to suck it out.” He glanced up and saw Jacob with the bottle in his hand. “Oh, so that’s where they got the booze.”

  “You packed this out?” Jacob asked.

  “No, Charlie did. Charlie Blackwater.” Stanley put his head half in his pack and rummaged through it. “One of the Hidatsa with March’s party. I knew him back in Minnesota.”

  Jacob caught Bosley’s eye and they burst out laughing. “I thought they were Sioux,” Boz said.

  “So does March,” Stanley said, taking the bottle and breaking it open. “March wanted Sioux scouts, so Charlie told him they were Sioux. Big Chief Bone Hunter don’t know the difference.” He gestured for Bosley’s hand back, splashed a bit of the alcohol over the cut. Then he looked at Jacob consideringly, and offered up Boz’s hand, as if it were a chalice. “See if you can suck that splinter out.”

  Jacob was startled, but he thought he understood what Stanley was doing. And Boz made no protest, just an amused sound as Jacob pressed his lips to the calloused skin.

  All the really important transactions between folks were done by mouth, he thought fleetingly. Kissing, speaking, feeding from mother to child, giving of medicine sometimes—and of course, sucking out poisons. Bosley’s blood was sweet and salty, human and vibrant with life. Jacob felt a tiny sliver of bone graze the tip of his tongue; he trapped it against the back of his teeth and turned his head to spit in the grass outside the tent.

  Something changed within the canvas walls, subtle, like realizing a headache had lifted.
Boz let out a long breath and relaxed visibly as he took his hand back to inspect the wound. “Thanks,” he said, and the glance he cast at Jacob was grateful, even apologetic. “That thing was drivin me crazy.”

  “I bet it was.” Jacob picked up his canteen to rinse his mouth.

  “Now if I suck your blood, we’d be blood brothers.”

  “Hah.” Jacob felt oddly touched by the idea, even if it was a joke. “Well, you wouldn’t want me. I only ever had the one brother, and we can’t stand each other.”

  “I had one, when we were kids,” Boz said. “Blood-brother, I mean. He was really my cousin—our mams was sisters. He got the whooping cough, when we were twelve.” The tightening of his lips told the end of that story. “You kinda like him. ‘Cept lighter.”

  Jacob laughed. “I remember some of the boys in our parish got up to that idea, but my old man got wind of it and threatened to tan my jacket if I went playin at such heathen ritual.”

  “Your old man sounds about as much fun as a pole-cat at a picnic.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Stanley was looking back and forth between the two of them. “What are you talking about? What ritual?”

  “The blood-brothers vow,” Jacob explained. “That’s where two knights or soldiers—”

  “Or partners.”

  “—mix some of their blood in a cup and both drink from it, and they make a vow to stand together as brothers, just like they were born family. I think the Scythians used to do it.”

  “I heard it was the Nubians,” Boz said.

  Stanley looked thoughtful. “It’s a good idea. It should bind your spirits together, so Ryan can’t come between you again. Or anyone else.”

  Jacob lifted an eyebrow at Boz, embarrassed and about to make a joke over it, but Boz held out his left palm to the boy without hesitation, his smirk somewhere between mischief and challenge.

  Stanley didn’t bat an eye. He snapped out his jackknife and made a short cut in the meat of Boz’s palm, then reached for Boz’s tin cup, on top of the trunk they used for a table, and squeezed out a few drops of blood into the cup. “Roll a cigarette,” he said, as he gestured for Jacob’s hand.