When he came upon the bonepickers he’d been riding three days in a country he’d never seen. The plains were sere and burntlooking and the small trees black and misshapen and haunted by ravens and everywhere the ragged packs of jackal wolves and the crazed and sunchalked bones of the vanished herds. He dismounted and led the horse. Here and there within the arc of ribs a few flat discs of darkened lead like old medallions of some order of the hunt. In the distance teams of oxen bore along slowly and the heavy wagons creaked dryly. Into these barrows the pickers tossed the bones, kicking down the calcined architecture, breaking apart the great frames with axes. The bones clattered in the wagons, they plowed on in a pale dust. He watched them pass, ragged, filthy, the oxen galled and mad-looking.
None spoke to him. In the distance he could see a train of wagons moving off to the northeast with great tottering loads of bones and further to the north other teams of pickers at their work.
He mounted and rode on. The bones had been gathered into windrows ten feet high and hundreds long or into great conical hills topped with the signs or brands of their owners. He overtook one of the lumbering carts, a boy riding the near wheel ox and driving with a jerkline and a jockeystick. Two youths squatting atop a mound of skulls and pelvic bones leered down at him.
Their fires dotted the plain that night and he sat with his back to the wind and drank from an army canteen and ate a handful of parched corn for his supper. All across those reaches the yammer and yap of the starving wolves relayed and to the north the silent lightning rigged a broken lyre upon the world’s dark rim. The air smelled of rain but no rain fell and the creaking bone-carts passed in the night like darkened ships and he could smell the oxen and hear their breath. The sour smell of the bones was everywhere. Toward midnight a party hailed him as he squatted at his coals.
Come up, he said.
They came up out of the dark, sullen wretches dressed in skins. They carried old military guns save for one who had a buffalo rifle and they had no coats and one of them wore green hide boots peeled whole from the hocks of some animal and the toes gathered shut with leader.
Evenin stranger, called out the eldest child among them.
He looked at them. They were four and a halfgrown boy and they halted at the edge of the light and arranged themselves there.
Come up, he said.
They shuffled forward. Three of them squatted and two stood.
Where’s ye outfit? said one.
He aint out for bones.
You aint got nary chew of tobacca about your clothes halve ye?
He shook his head.
Nary drink of whiskey neither I dont reckon.
He aint got no whiskey.
Where ye headed mister?
Are you headed twards Griffin?
He looked them over. I am, he said.
Goin for the whores I’ll bet ye.
He aint goin for the whores.
It’s full of whores, Griffin is.
Hell, he’s probably been there more’n you.
You been to Griffin mister?
Not yet.
Full of whores. Full plumb up.
They say you can get clapped a day’s ride out when the wind is right.
They set in a tree in front of this here place and you can look up and see their bloomers. I’ve counted high as eight in that tree early of a evenin. Set up there like coons and smoke cigarettes and holler down at ye.
It’s set up to be the biggest town for sin in all Texas.
It’s as lively a place for murders as you’d care to visit.
Scrapes with knives. About any kind of meanness you can name.
He looked at them from one to the other. He reached and took up a stick and roused the fire with it and put the stick in the flames. You all like meanness? he said.
We dont hold with it.
Like to drink whiskey?
He’s just talkin. He aint no whiskey drinker.
Hell, you just now seen him drink it not a hour ago.
I seen him puke it back up too. What’s them things around your neck there mister?
He pulled the aged scapular from his shirtfront and looked at it. It’s ears, he said.
It’s what?
Ears.
What kind of ears?
He tugged at the thong and looked down at them. They were perfectly black and hard and dry and of no shape at all.
Humans, he said. Human ears.
Aint done it, said the one with the rifle.
Dont call him a liar Elrod, he’s liable to shoot ye. Let’s see them things mister if you dont care.
He slipped the scapular over his head and handed it across to the boy who’d spoken. They pressed about and felt the strange dried pendants.
Niggers, aint it? they said.
Docked them niggers’ ears so they’d know em when they run off.
How many is there mister?
I dont know. Used to be near a hundred.
They held the thing up and turned it in the firelight.
Nigger ears, by god.
They aint niggers.
They aint?
No.
What are they?
Injins.
The hell they are.
Elrod you done been told.
How come them to be so black as that if they aint niggers.
They turned that way. They got blacker till they couldnt black no more.
Where’d you get em at?
Killed them sons of bitches. Didnt ye mister?
You been a scout on the prairies, aint ye?
I bought them ears in California off a soldier in a saloon didnt have no money to drink on.
He reached and took the scapular from them.
Shoot. I bet he’s been a scout on the prairie killed ever one of them sons of bitches.
The one called Elrod followed the trophies with his chin and sniffed the air. I dont see what you want with them things, he said. I wouldnt have em.
The others looked at him uneasily.
You dont know where them ears come from. That old boy you bought em off of might of said they was injins but that dont make it so.
The man didnt answer.
Them ears could of come off of cannibals or any other kind of foreign nigger. They tell me you can buy the whole heads in New Orleans. Sailors brings em in and you can buy em for five dollars all day long them heads.
Hush Elrod.
The man sat holding the necklace in his hands. They wasnt cannibals, he said. They was Apaches. I knowed the man that docked em. Knowed him and rode with him and seen him hung.
Elrod looked at the others and grinned. Apaches, he said. I bet them old Apaches would give a watermelon a pure fit, what about you all?
The man looked up wearily. You aint callin me a liar are ye son?
I aint ye son.
How old are you?
That’s some more of your business.
How old are you?
He’s fifteen.
You hush your damn mouth.
He turned to the man. He dont speak for me, he said.
He’s done spoke. I was fifteen year old when I was first shot.
I ain’t never been shot.
You aint sixteen yet neither.
You aim to shoot me?
I aim to try to keep from it.
Come on Elrod.
You aint goin to shoot nobody. Maybe in the back or them asleep.
Elrod we’re gone.
I knowed you for what you was when I seen ye.
You better go on.
Set there and talk about shootin somebody. They aint nobody done it yet.
The other four stood at the limits of the firelight. The youngest of them was casting glances out at the dark sanctuary of the prairie night.
Go on, the man said. They’re waitin on ye.
He spat into the man’s fire and wiped his mouth. Out on the prairie to the north a train of yoked wagons was passing and the oxen were pale and silent in the starlight and the wagons creaked faintly in the distance and a lantern with a red glass followed them out like an alien eye. This country was filled with violent children orphaned by war. His companions had started back to fetch him and perhaps this emboldened him the more and perhaps he said other things to the man for when they got to the fire the man had risen to his feet. You keep him away from me, he said. I see him back here I’ll kill him.