Every Hidden Thing

by Kenneth Oppel

  “We’ll find something.” Where was he? Why wasn’t he here to stand beside me?

  “He will not love you, my dear.”

  “How can you dare say that?” I retorted, and then realized I’d just asked a question.

  “He’s only a boy. A rash boy from a rash, obsessive father who will soon ruin himself. All I’m asking is for you to come back with me and think it over, and then make your decision when you’re clearheaded.”

  “I’m perfectly clearheaded.”

  “I would take care of you.”

  My voice was hoarse with anger. “So I can be your helpmate?”

  “So you can go to university and become a paleontologist.”

  I faltered a moment, then sniffed. “Last time we spoke you said I was unsuited for university.”

  “I did say that, and I was mistaken. I was speaking out of anger, and concern for you. But I’ve given it a great deal of thought since. And I think the world of science would be the poorer if you were not properly trained.”

  I watched him like he was an unfamiliar reptile. “I want to make sure I understand you. You’re offering to send me to university if . . .”

  “Yes, if you choose to put this foolishness with Samuel Bolt behind you. You’ll be free to pursue your true passion. I know you, my dear, better than you think. Right now you are in the throes of a passion yes yes, I know, even I know. But it will wane, and your circumstances will become a terrible burden. Poverty. A feckless, restless husband. Perhaps he’s made you promises of education and opportunity. But I can deliver these things much more reliably.”

  I couldn’t speak and knew I was on the verge of tears.

  “There, there, my dear. Don’t cry. Things can be made right.”

  “I am crying,” I said, “because you would never have offered me these things normally. Even now I don’t know whether to trust you. And you’re unkind to try and tempt me when I’ve already made a hard choice.”

  “Look, there’s something I brought to show you.”

  He’d taken my elbow and was leading me back to the camp. Withrow looked at me questioningly. I smiled weakly. Father bent down to his saddlebag.

  “We’ve made some very promising finds near our new camp.”

  “You’ve moved?” I asked.

  He undid the buckles. “Downriver. We needed better forage for the horses. And so I decided to take the Sioux boy at his word. His directions, you remember. We found the hoodoos he described and started digging. And look.”

  With both hands he lifted out a single bone, a massive vertebra. But what I noticed most was its color—the same silvery black as the Black Beauty’s tooth.

  “Who found that?” I demanded.

  I’d just walked into camp, and there were Withrow and Browne huddled together with Rachel and Professor Cartland. The mere sight of him made me angry—and angrier still when I saw what he cradled in his hands.

  Withrow answered, “The professor’s showing us a bit of bone they dug up.”

  “Manganese oxide in the rock, no doubt,” said Cartland, talking to Rachel like I wasn’t there. “Reminds me yes yes of that tooth of yours? Seems that Sioux boy might have been telling us the truth.”

  I stepped closer, drawn by the black bone. I felt hollowed out, like some gutted bit of taxidermy. My mouth went dry. By the looks of it, it was a caudal vertebra from some creature’s mighty tail. I wanted to touch it so badly. Our rex?

  “How much have you dug up?” I heard Rachel ask, like she was in a trance.

  “We found this only yesterday,” Cartland replied. “We’re just turning our full attention to the site now. We could use your help, my dear.”

  I looked at him sharply, then Rachel, waited a heartbeat, then another, for her reply. When it didn’t come, I said, “Rachel’s not going anywhere.”

  It sounded bullying, and when she turned to me, I wasn’t sure if there was relief or dislike in her expression. I realized I’d never been very good at reading her.

  “Or were you planning on kidnapping her?” I asked Cartland.

  “If there was any kidnapping,” the professor replied, “it was not done by me.”

  “We eloped,” Rachel said. “I wasn’t abducted.” She glanced at me. “And I don’t think Papa means to try now.”

  “I’m very encouraged by this find,” Cartland said placidly, replacing the vertebra in his saddlebag. “A shame we lost the tooth, though. I suspect the Sioux boy took it when he escaped. Incredible that he knew to look in my tent!”

  Cartland was watching me as he said this. I pretended my face was a fossil, and I was only looking out through the eye holes.

  “He must have been very stealthy,” Rachel said.

  “The Sioux heads went missing too. The lieutenant thinks he likely had an accomplice. Setting free an army prisoner is a very serious offense.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” I asked.

  “Maybe they were hoping to get something in return,” Cartland replied.

  I was good at staring. I learned it playing cards with my father. If Cartland knew, he had not a scrap of proof, or the lieutenant would have been here to arrest me. Cartland looked away first.

  “Well, my dear, I must be off. Shall I wait while you gather your things?”

  He smiled at his daughter, and I realized I’d never seen a smile on his face before. It contracted soon enough when Rachel slowly shook her head.

  “I see. I want yes yes the best for you, but you must know it’s impossible as long as you remain with young Bolt here. Quite impossible.”

  Her eyes were wet. “I am staying here.”

  Stiffly he said, “Well, if you change your mind, I’m not far.”

  As her father walked away to his horse, I went and put my hand on her shoulder, but she felt stiff and far away from me. She watched Cartland ride off with the Pawnee scout.

  Withrow said, “What was that bone he showed us?”

  “A vertebra. Maybe a piece of the lower spine, the tail. It could’ve come from all sorts of dinosaurs.”

  “The Black Beauty?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t measure it.”

  “Looked pretty big to me.”

  “Yes, it was big!”

  “The color,” he said.

  “The color was right,” Rachel said.

  I said, “Doesn’t mean he has the Black Beauty.”

  “We sure don’t have it,” Withrow said.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “You didn’t tell us the Sioux boy spouted out two maps.” He said it casually enough, but there was accusation in his voice.

  “Because he was lying the first time,” I replied. “Why would he tell the truth to someone who’d beaten him and tied him up?”

  “To get untied maybe,” said Hobart, who looked like he’d probably been tied up a few times himself .

  “But I untied him,” I insisted. “And got his things back. Why would he lie to me?”

  Withrow stared into his tin cup. “I’ll be honest; I’m starting to worry that your Sioux boy just made some squiggles in the sand.”

  Starting to worry. I’d been worried for days. Every time I took a break and stared out over the blistered landscape, I worried. The noise of the cicadas had become a song of worry in my head. I worried in time to the beat of my heart. I was a little boy again in my father’s house, everyone watching and the clock running out and me not being able to piece the bones together.

  I said, “There’s still plenty of ground we haven’t covered.”

  Of the three buttes, we’d prospected two of them pretty thoroughly, and the third we’d only started working.

  “Maybe another two or three days,” said Withrow.

  I nodded.

  “And if we don’t find anything?” he asked.

  “I could retrace the routes of your men—they might have missed something.”

  Hobart smiled at me unkindly.

  Withrow said, “And after that we’re in the shi
t, aren’t we?”

  When he touched me beneath the covers, I said, “It’s my time of the month.”

  “Oh.” He withdrew his hand. “Does it matter? Neither of us is squeamish.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  He pulled away and turned over, and I thought what a clod he was for not even holding me. He could still have kissed me, wrapped me up. I thought he was already asleep when he said, “Were you tempted to go with him?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “I think you were.”

  I said, “Of course I was tempted.”

  “I could tell.”

  “He isn’t much of a father, but he’s the only one I have. My whole life he was the only person who took care of me!”

  He turned over to face me. “I take care of you!”

  “I stayed, didn’t I?”

  “Am I supposed to thank you? I’m your husband.”

  “And I stayed for you.”

  “I can’t believe you were even tempted.”

  “Maybe it’s easy for you to part with your father, but for me it’s a wrench. Is that hard to understand?”

  “He would’ve put our baby in an orphanage!”

  All of a sudden my eyes welled up. My face crumpled. He kissed my eyes, put a hand to my cheek.

  “It’s all right,” he said, his voice gentle at last. “He’s not coming back. I’m going to take care of you. Our baby will not end up in an orphanage.”

  Before I could stop myself I said, “I don’t want a baby.”

  The touch of his hand on my cheek changed. A sudden stillness, a stiffness, like something dying.

  “What do you mean?” he said. “Why not?”

  “I’m . . . not ready. Once I’m pregnant I’d have to stop working, and I don’t want to stop working.”

  “Only for a bit . . .”

  “We were supposed to be partners. But when the baby comes, I’d have to look after it. I’ll become just another person in a room. I didn’t want to go from my father’s rooms to yours. That’s not what I wanted.”

  “All right,” he said. “You don’t want a baby yet.”

  “Every time we lie together I could have a baby.”

  “I can withdraw myself and . . . when we get to town I can buy a rubber.”

  “I think that would be a good idea,” I said, and was quiet then.

  But my mind roiled with all that I hadn’t said. I thought of being poor; I thought of us fighting all the time; I thought of me being trapped in a room, while my husband went out and did the things I wanted to do. I thought of Professor Bolt, drinking and cavorting with a slattern on a train; I thought of Samuel’s white knuckles on the geological hammer.

  I thought about how I wasn’t sure I wanted a baby with Samuel now—or ever.

  That night I dreamed of the Black Beauty again. I dreamed of her silver-black bones laid out like jewels in a velvet case. Each bone was free of stone, all its surfaces polished smooth, gleaming, their identities so obvious that no labels were necessary. I could easily build her back together. There would be no trick pieces.

  There would be not a single piece missing.

  26.

  THE SIOUX

  DRAGGED BACKWARD, MY HEAD JOLTING against the ground, I cried out as I woke. Canvas smacked my face as I tried to twist round to see who was hauling me out of my tent, still inside my bedroll. Against the colorless dawn sky, an Indian loomed. He gripped my ankles, black and white feathers jutting from his braided hair.

  A second Sioux man pulled out Samuel, kicking and swearing, his eyes wide with confusion and rage—and then fear. He saw me and tried to scramble closer, but the Indian grabbed him and threw him down so his head hit the ground hard. He went still.

  I cried out his name, and after a few seconds he shifted and blinked. His eyes focused on me briefly and then darted back to the two Indians towering over us. The one with the most feathers held a four-foot club. At one end was a horsehair tassel; at the other was an oblong stone the size of an ostrich egg.

  There were more Indians in the camp. Hollering, Withrow and Browne and Thomas were yanked from their tents. Hobart was already crumpled on the ground by the smoldering fire. Blood matted his hair. They must’ve snuck up on him and knocked him out. An Indian was coming out of an empty tent, collecting rifles. Another Indian hopped up into the wagon. Things flew out the back into the dirt. All of them had knives in beaded sheaths strapped to their breechclouts. They were bare chested, barefoot, and some wore buckskin on their legs.

  “Thomas!” shouted Withrow from the ground. “Talk to them! Tell them we’re not army!”

  Standing slowly, hands out, Thomas spoke. The Sioux seemed startled at first. They turned and listened, but then it seemed to make them angry. They shouted at him, and he tried to keep talking, but they yelled over him. I didn’t understand. Didn’t they believe him? That we were just prospectors, that we had nothing to do with the army? Or maybe all they cared about was that we were Wasicu—and one of their own was a traitor for helping us. My eyes kept getting pulled back to the Indian’s club, imaging the long arc of its swing, the impact of stone against skull.

  Two Indians strode closer to Thomas, chests thrown out, faces belligerent. They plucked contemptuously at his cotton shirt. They yanked his short hair and slapped his face, then pushed him to the ground. One pulled a knife from his sheath and stepped on Thomas’s chest, bending lower.

  Thomas lashed out with his fists. The other Indian struck him hard, pinned his arms with his knees, and took hold of his hair.

  “Stop!” I shouted. Everyone was shouting now, two languages battering against each another.

  “Please! Don’t! Wait!”

  Samuel started to rise, and the Indian with the club glared at him. His fist tightened on his stone-headed club, lifted it high.

  I heard another shout, rising above the others. The Indian with his knife at Thomas’s scalp hesitated and pulled back. Everyone looked over as the Sioux boy walked into camp. It was the same boy who we’d beaten and tied up, the one Samuel had set free.

  The Sioux boy’s eyes flicked over me and rested on Samuel, then went to the Indian with the stone club. The boy pointed at Samuel while he spoke. Harshly the bigger man replied. Their words sounded like an argument to me, and I was amazed the boy could talk to his elder with such force.

  Then, from the corner of my eye I saw Hobart shift near the campfire. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw his hand twitch and reach for something under his clothing. I caught a glimpse of gunmetal. If Hobart started shooting now, we were all doomed. I couldn’t catch his eye.

  The Sioux boy and the older man were still talking, and the longer they talked, the more worried I got. Suddenly the boy looked at Sam and shouted in Sioux.

  “What did he say?” Desperately he looked over at Thomas.

  “He said, ‘Go home.’ He said there are many more coming, and they won’t know you. They won’t know how you set him free.”

  I glanced at Hobart; he still had the gun in his hand, concealed in the folds of his clothing.

  “We’ll go!” I cried out. “Tell him, Thomas.”

  Why wouldn’t Hobart look my way, the fool? I needed to shake my head at him, tell him not to shoot.

  Fiercely the boy spoke again, and Thomas translated.

  “He says you’re on Indian land. There’s a war coming. He says we’ll be killed if we stay.”

  “Thank you,” Samuel said. “Tell him thank you, Thomas.”

  With relief, I watched as Hobart hid his pistol in the folds of his clothing.

  The Indians started to leave the camp. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t stop myself. The boy had just spared our lives, and I didn’t want to anger him, but he was right here, right here at the spot he’d described to Samuel.

  “Thomas, ask him where exactly his father found the tooth.”

  Samuel looked at me in surprise, and then at Withrow, who jerked his head at Thomas and said, “Go ahead. Do it; as
k him!”

  The boy was already walking away when Thomas spoke.

  He stopped; the man with the club stopped too. They looked at each other, then turned back. It was impossible to know what they were thinking, but I worried I’d made a terrible mistake.

  The boy ignored me and spoke to Samuel.

  “He says he doesn’t know why you look,” Thomas translated. “There’s no power in those bones without a vision.”

  Samuel nodded. “Yes. But do you know where?”

  It was a wild hope I had that he would just point. There, he would say.

  The Indian boy scoffed. He said he didn’t know. Not even his father knew exactly where he’d fought his battle. It was in darkness, but he said the Sisters were the first thing he saw when he saw the sky again.

  He turned and walked after the others. They’d taken all the rifles but left our horses.

  Samuel rushed to me and held me tight. Everyone stayed on the ground for a bit, bewildered, like we’d just survived a tornado.

  I touched Sam’s temple, and he winced. There was a bit of blood. “Just another bruise for your collection,” I said.

  “Still got my pistol at least,” said Hobart, looking at it happily. I wasn’t too happy thinking our one gun was owned by the craziest-looking of Withrow’s men.

  I wrapped a blanket over my nightdress and stood, my legs shaky. I started up the slope of the closest butte.

  “Where you going?” Samuel asked.

  “I want to see them.”

  He came with me. From the first ledge I caught sight of the Indians down in a defile, now astride their horses. They must’ve left them down there so they could creep up and surprise us. Deeper in the distance, beyond a range of low hills I glimpsed a long convoy of Sioux. Some of the horses trailed pole sledges carrying bundled belongings. Dogs ran excitedly among the ponies. They were all heading north.

  “They’re going to die.”

  I turned to see Thomas beside me, watching them.

  “There are too many of you,” he said. By “you” I knew he meant Wasicu.

  “They should know when they’re beat,” Hobart said, climbing up. It seemed everyone was coming up the slope now.