by Jonis Agee
As the shock wore off, the noise began, families shouting and crying, and animals screaming in fright and pain. Graver and Larabee quickly dispersed the men to help wherever they could and to find the horses, although they all knew the animals would head back to the ranch and their own herd as soon as they got beyond the storm.
Graver watched Lucille wander the edges of the floor, pausing in front of the wall bearing her sister’s story, then continuing until she had traced the entire perimeter, before she turned and retraced her steps. This time when she stopped at the remaining wall, she seemed to stare for a long time at one picture, and then she reached up, snatched it off the wall, balled it in her fist, and dropped it. A frenzy seemed to break loose inside the woman because she began ripping down the posters, newspaper clippings, and photographs, shredding some, dropping others to be picked up by the breeze and sent across the floor into the street.
When the wall was bare, she stepped back, nodded, and said, “There.” Then she turned and walked across what was left of the room, stopping on the boardwalk to shake off the few bits of paper that clung to her long, faded black skirt. She squinted into the dark and tossed her head, then stepped down into the debris-littered street and headed east toward home. She didn’t bother to glance at Dulcinea, Rose, and Chance, who led a string of horses past her. The women looked around anxiously, while Chance seemed unmoved by the chaos.
Graver turned away before they spotted him. The girl from the basement still hadn’t appeared. He thought about leaving well enough alone, but it wasn’t in his nature, he supposed, so he sighed and went back down the stairs.
There was a half-full bottle of whiskey on the table in front of the girl now, and she was drinking from it with a determined rhythm, setting it down between each long swallow. Graver stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching. He wasn’t sure she even knew he was there. Finally, he simply lifted her off the chair and cradled her in his arms. When he turned toward the stairs she lifted the bottle off the table and pressed it into his chest with her head. She weighed next to nothing, only a little more than his eldest daughter had, and he was still thinking of his girl’s hazel eyes, like her mother’s, when he rose up out of the basement and stopped at the top with the girl in his arms. The whole street could see him, and when he lifted his eyes, Dulcinea, Rose, and Chance were five feet from where he stood, glaring at him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The lawyer tipped his hat with a smile. “See you found Pearl Stryker. Family’s probably looking for her.” Dulcinea appeared puzzled and the gray stallion chomped the bit. The girl in Graver’s arms stiffened and banged the bottle against his chest so hard he almost dropped her.
“Seems she’s done being rescued,” Chance said as he stepped from his saddle and handed the string of horses he led to Larabee.
“Put me down,” Pearl slurred and pushed against Graver’s chest. When he let her legs drop, she gave him a shove and almost fell. Her head came up and she squinted her eyes. “Where am I?” She turned to Graver, raised the bottle as if to crown him over the head with it. “What did you do?” she screamed. Larabee stepped up, took the bottle from her hand, and awkwardly patted her back. She snatched the bottle again, cradled it against her stomach, stepped off the boardwalk, and fell flat on her face in the muddy street in front of the horses.
“You men certainly have a way with women,” Dulcinea said. “You just going to leave her there?” Rose smiled and covered it with her hand.
The lawyer looped his reins over the hitching rail and stepped carefully through the mud to the girl. “I’ll take her home. I know Stuart and Mary must be worried sick about her.” He eased the girl onto her side and tried to sit her up, but she was floppy as a set of old clothes, so he bent down and lifted her over his shoulder and stood, ignoring the mud smearing his shirt and pants. Dulcinea beamed with approval and patted her horse on the neck.
Rose’s gaze followed the man. “Not many houses that direction . . .”
Graver pulled his hat lower and started down the block, where a crowd had gathered.
“Graver!” Dulcinea called after him.
He stiffened his shoulders and thought of that Tennyson poem he’d memorized when he was eighteen and living in a line camp one winter in Wyoming, nursing cows and trying not to go crazy. Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred . . .
He heard the stallion huff up next to him as he strode along the boardwalk, skirting debris. “Mr. Graver.” Dulcinea’s voice was high and nervous. “Please—”
Graver knew he should keep walking. “Lady,” he began. “You don’t own me. I’m going to see if those people up there need any help. If they do, I’m going to stay until the job is done. Now you take that fancy horse and your fancy manners and your orders and . . .” He looked at his hand, realized he had grabbed the rein and Dulcinea was trying to ease it away. When he suddenly let go, she tipped back and the horse rocked on its hind legs and reared.
Her face blanched as she urged the horse forward and down.
“I’m sorry—” He put one hand on the rein, the other on her foot. He could feel the tremor through her boot.
“I just wanted to know if you’ve seen my sons? They left right after you—” She turned to search the faces along the street.
“I’ll start looking now.” He knew in his heart those two would be fine. They were the kind always came away clean while everybody around them got taken down.
“I am sorry,” she said so softly he wasn’t certain he’d heard it. Rose, on the other side of her, stared intently at the scene. He remembered what Some Horses had said earlier. He’d have to convince Rose he didn’t murder her sister or J.B. before she made a mistake.
Irish Jim trotted up the boardwalk that had miraculously survived the powerful winds, waving at them. “Ma’am? Mrs. J.B.?”
Dulcinea turned her horse to face the cowhand, her eyebrows raised, a smile on her lips.
“It’s the blacksmith, Tom Farr, forge fell on him. Got himself a broken leg.” Irish Jim was sobered by the storm, and blood streaked his shirt and pants. “Doc’s busy with Omar’s wife gone into labor and Omar got himself a good knock on the head when the porch roof was took by the storm and the five little ones all tossed and tumbled around like to have barely survived they got so many cuts and bruises but no broken bones and their dog—”
Dulcinea held up her hand. “Where is Mr. Farr?”
Irish Jim looked confused for a moment, and then pointed toward the livery stable at the end of the street with the blacksmith shop beside it.
“I’m not a doctor, but I’ll do what I can.” She touched the stud into a light trot.
Graver glanced around at the torches and bonfires people had lit since the new electric streetlights were taken out by the storm. The two men cast huge jittery shadows that paced them across the buildings on the opposite side of the street as they followed the cyclone’s path.
“Where’s this new peace officer I keep hearing about?” Graver asked.
“Went to North Platte with the family. Says he thinks he’s solved J.B.’s murder.” Irish Jim shrugged. “Not sure about that. He’s the undertaker, you know. And dentist.” He opened his mouth and pointed to a black gap where one of his upper teeth used to be. “Slick as a whistle, that one.”
The men caught up with Dulcinea at a pile of debris that blocked the street, and their shadows paused briefly over her with a deeper darkness. It was the kind of moment Graver would later recall and ponder when Larabee’s drunken words came back: a bad thing never dies.
Tom Farr’s leg was crushed from the knee down, almost cut in half by the weight of the forge that had struck with quick annihilation and continued to pulverize the bones as he awaited rescue. When the men lifted the forge off his leg, he clamped his mouth shut. He was a massive man with bull-thick shoulders and neck, his broad face as red as the torchlight overhead. He’d had the foresight to wrap a harness rein above his knee and pull it tight to stop the blood flow,
which probably saved his life. His foot flopped unnaturally free on the crushed leg. It was obvious the tendons were severed.
Graver tried to thread his way back to where Dulcinea was tying her horse, but the group around the injured man was too tightly packed. She doesn’t need to see this, he repeated in his head, this isn’t necessary. But the crowd briefly opened its ranks for her with Rose following and then closed as if a trap had been sprung.
She staggered for a moment, her hand at her throat, at the sight of the thicket of bone shards bristling out of the torn flesh and dark thickening blood. Rose took her arm to steady her. Silent courtesy descended on the group, and Farr unclenched his jaw and spoke for the first time. “Ma’am? I won’t be any trouble, I’ll be taking a little nap now so you don’t have to worry yourself none.” His eyelids fluttered briefly and he fainted, mouth going slack, head rolling to the side.
“Nothing for it,” Haven Smith declared and began pushing out. “Thought I could bring him to heavenly ground, but sinners go the path they come through this life. Rare’s the day they give up their soiled ways.”
“He’s not fecking dead, Preacher,” Irish Jim said loud enough to raise a laugh from the other men.
Haven Smith stopped and shoved his way back to where Irish Jim and Graver stood. “I’m speaking of his spirit, you fool!”
Irish Jim’s face took on a serious expression, though his blue eyes were too bright. “You’re dead on, Father, and what say we have a toast to the dearly departed?” He pulled a battered tin flask from inside his shirt and, unscrewing the cap, started to drink, thought better of it, and offered it to the preacher for first honors.
Smith shoved the flask out of his face and glared at the crowd until the men separated and let him through.
“Never knew a man of the cloth to turn down a drop,” Irish Jim said and toasted the body again before taking a long drink, only to be interrupted by Dulcinea, who reached over and plucked the flask from his hand.
“We need this.” She gathered her riding skirt out of the way, knelt on the ground beside the injured man, and carefully doused the wounded leg with the whiskey. “Get me a knife,” she said and the man next to Graver pulled a bowie knife from a sheaf on his belt and handed it to her.
Graver stopped himself from stepping forward to take over when she lifted the remains of the pant leg to cut it away clear to the upper thigh. When the cloth was gone, she rocked back on her heels and looked up at their faces.
“Are you certain the doctor isn’t free now?”
A voice from the back of the group called out, “Just checked, ma’am, Omar’s wife’s in bad shape and Omar still hasn’t come round.”
“He’s the lucky one,” a voice commented.
Dulcinea sighed and looked at Tom Farr’s sweaty face gone pale now that he wasn’t fighting the pain. She used the sleeve of her blouse to blot his forehead and cheeks, took a deep breath, and released it slowly. “Here’s what I need, then.”
With Graver kneeling and holding the saw and a man sitting on his other leg and one on each side of the massive arms and Rose at his head holding it steady in case he awoke, Dulcinea directed the removal of the ruined lower leg. At the first bite of the blade below the knee, Graver felt a wave of weakness and wondered if he’d be able to do this. Despite her calm voice, Dulcinea’s hand trembled when she placed it on his arm for encouragement.
“I’m not strong enough to get through the bone quickly,” she said and lifted her hand. Graver pushed the saw forward and back, blocking the sound as it tore through skin, ligament, and bone. The men around him released a collective sigh of horror and fascination. He felt her breath on his ear, on his hair, on his neck and wanted to gather her away from the grisly scene.
“My mother’s father was a surgeon,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve seen this many times. Thought I would follow in his footsteps, you see, until I met J.B. Now take the knife and finish cutting the tendons cleanly.”
Graver tried to imagine haunches of beef and venison, anything but a human leg. Beside him he could hear her breathing in time with his effort and almost felt her hand on the knife as he worked the blade through the ropy tendon.
“Yes, that’s right, thank God that knife is sharp. Ah, there, now we’re done with that part. Now press this cloth over the stump while Rose and I prepare to suture. I only hope this heavy cotton thread is strong enough. Haven Smith isn’t very forthcoming to save a sinner, it seems.” She held up a spool of thick waxed black thread that looked like it could hold a saddle together. Graver kept his mouth shut. It was a damn sight better than he could come up with. She knelt beside him and lifted the rag over the stump, noting how the bleeding was now a slow leak. He wondered if she’d cauterize the wound, but she decided against it when Rose leaned forward and whispered to her. He rocked back on his heels, and then stood to give his aching knees a stretch.
Graver watched the two women, working opposite each other, take neat stitches, tucking the skin in around the stump and closing off the tendons and ligaments. He noticed how strong and efficient their fingers were despite the blood that slickened the needles and thread. Dulcinea swiped at a fly buzzing lazily around her face and left a smear on her cheek. There was no nonsense about her now, no hauteur, and Rose had lost her shyness. They were in charge, the men around them silent as they watched. How was the blacksmith to work now? What would become of him and his business? Graver looked into the shadows, thought he saw the two round frightened eyes of a dog cowering inside the first straight stall.
When it was done, Dulcinea stood and stretched her cramped legs, then rested a hand on Rose’s shoulder, and they stared at the still unconscious man. A tortoiseshell cat rubbed against Dulcinea’s ankle, edging closer still until its head shot out and it began lapping the puddle of congealed blood as if it were milk.
Rose picked up the cat and handed it over her shoulder to one of the men, ignoring the animal’s loud protests. She gathered the ruined limb in one of the rags that had been produced for the operation, wrapped it, and looked up at the men, who had given way somewhat, finally repulsed, made fearful by the spectacle.
“Sometimes a person wants to see the severed limb, make certain of its injury. Can someone pack this in ice for when Mr. Farr awakens?” Dulcinea said.
Haven Smith reappeared, pushing his way forward again. “I’ll take it.”
Dulcinea hesitated. As Rose handed it over, Irish Jim said, “Now you can start converting, you wee bastard,” but there wasn’t much humor in his tone.
The storekeeper blinked furiously behind his dirt-speckled glasses and cradled the leg in his arms like a newborn babe. “And you are a damned sinner, and a nincompoop.” He bowed his head as if he prayed over the baby Jesus, and then walked slowly toward his store. The men around Irish Jim slapped him on the back and nodded.
When Graver offered Dulcinea his arm, she refused, instead linked arms with Rose though she faltered as she turned to face the group. Irish Jim watched her with wonder on his face, as if she had performed a miracle and he was now her servant for all time. He glowed with pride while she looked at the blood caking her hands, filling the tiny cracks and pores and flaking off when she rubbed her palms together. Her fingernails were rimed in black-red, and the gold of her wedding band had disappeared.
“He needs to be helped to his bed and watched the next few days,” she said.
The men looked at the heft of the man, then the stairs leading to the set of rooms over the blacksmith shop, and finally at the ground.
Someone in the crowd said, “Might be best to leave him here till morning. We can take turns setting with him. Don’t think we can get him up them stairs in the dark, ma’am, that’s a mighty big man.”
She inspected them, not skipping a single one with her singeing gaze. “Make sure you tend to him. He dies, it’s on you, and you, and you—” She nodded at several of the men. “He wakes up, you get the doctor to give him some morphine for the pain. You have to go find him,
you do it, and you don’t let this man suffer, you hear? Part of his survival depends on the pain not overwhelming his body. Understand?”
At the sternness in her voice the men straightened their shoulders, lifted their chins, and resettled their hats.
Graver cupped her elbow as the men parted for her. “You and Rose did good, Mrs. J.B. Real good.”
She stopped next to the stallion, who dozed hipshot at the rail, and said over her shoulder, “And you make sure Haven Smith lets him see his leg if he asks.”
In the days to come, she was never told the town wags passed the withering, rotting leg between them like an artifact from a carnival freak show, leaving it on one man’s doorstep in the middle of the night, dropping it on another’s lunch table at the café, and strapping it to a saddle as if the rest of the body were invisible as the horse was led through town. Tom Farr never knew that his leg continued its journey into the larger world, made it all the way to Leadville and the Black Hills gold camp of Deadwood, then back again. Tom never asked for the limb, and it was finally lost on a deer hunting trip when the men got so drunk they thought it was driving away the animals. They took it out to the Badlands and threw it as far as they could, watching the hard blackened flesh topple end over end as it descended into a mudflat that later would yield the skeletons of animals so ancient they no longer walked the earth. Eventually, it ended up on the shelf of an amateur Sand Hills archaeologist/rancher who spent the rest of his life searching for the animal large and odd enough to possess such a severed limb, despite being told by the experts at the Museum of Natural History in Lincoln that it was from the remains of a human, possibly killed by a wild animal or Indian raid judging by the violence done to it.