Dust Off the Bones

the runaways—she hadn’t known the boy was Native Police. Had she foreseen what would happen, that they’d be the ones punished, the night terrors and day terrors the children would endure, she would not for one second have hesitated in turning the pair away. She should have suspected. They were so frightened and helpless, they must have been on the run. But the woman was expecting, and even Drew agreed—they had done the right thing by them, it all felt so unfair. In her weaker moments she would blame her husband, though she knew it wasn’t his fault. But all she saw as she’d watched from the house was him lay down his shotgun and stand there while those men torched their barn. Yes, she had called out to stop him, she admitted as much, she was worried he would get himself shot. But Drew had always been the type who would protect them, one way or another, or so Hannah had assumed. And he hadn’t. Hadn’t even tried. Didn’t say so much as a word. He had knelt on the ground and watched their livelihoods burn, and that was how she remembered him, from that day till their last: on his knees, in the yard, helpless. No matter how much she wished otherwise, she never looked at her husband the same way again.

*  *  *

For five hours they hauled the captives north, the woman flagging and falling and being yanked up by her chain, Rabbit beggingin broken English for their lives. Noone simply ignored them. Eyes fixed indifferently ahead. Many times Billy readied himselfto speak up on their behalf but the words withered on his tongue. It was pointless. Noone would not be swayed, and Billy wouldonly mark himself out. He hoped that at least the woman might be spared. She hadn’t done anything except fall for the wrongman.

In a nondescript patch of scrubland no different to any other, Noone called a halt and they dismounted and the pair were releasedfrom their neck chains. The woman tried to run immediately. Jarrah tripped her and dragged her back to the group; the othersgathered round. Rabbit spoke to the woman tenderly. Billy had no idea what he said. Rabbit pleaded: “Is Rabbit fault, Marmy.Not she. Not she,” and Billy tried to conjure some sympathy in Noone’s stare, some hope for them, but the truth was therewas simply nothing there at all.

“Hold him firm, the pair of you. Percy, get the gin.”

Jarrah and Pope pinned Rabbit between them by his arms. Percy grabbed the woman, her hands shielding her belly, her feet shuffling backward through the dirt. She began shouting, as did Rabbit, while calmly over both of them Noone said, “I am very disappointed, Rabbit. After all I have done for you—I made you a man. You might have told me about the child, but instead you sneak out in the night like a rat. That is unacceptable. I will not allow such behavior to stand. Percy, please step aside.”

Percy let go of the woman and before she even knew she was free Noone had drawn one of his revolvers and put a round directlythrough her hands and into her gut. She looked down at the wound, bewildered. Blood seeped between her fingers and she pattedit, as if trying to keep it all in. Rabbit screamed and began thrashing but the two troopers held him fast. He looked at themimploringly. His former colleagues, his former friends—they wouldn’t meet his gaze. The woman let out a wail of mourning thatfilled the plains, sky, and earth, then Noone abruptly silenced her with a bullet to the head.

She crumpled to the ground and lay motionless, and Noone turned to Rabbit, only upright thanks to the two troopers pinninghis arms, staring at his fallen lover, his mouth agape and webbed with strands of spittle in a long and silent cry.

“Gentlemen,” Noone said, “it’s been a pleasure,” and in one fluid motion, a quick three-beat movement as precise as a conductor’sbaton stroke, he shot Pope, Rabbit, and Jarrah plumb through the forehead, so swiftly they fell as one, their arms interlocked,first to their knees then pitching forward, facedown in the dirt.

Noone holstered the revolver.

“Dig the hole,” he said.

*  *  *

That evening they camped in the same stand of brigalow as they had the previous night, sitting around the same campfire, threemen instead of five. Numbly Billy stared at the empty spaces where Pope and Jarrah should have been, the low fire flickering,his food untouched in his lap. Noone and Percy chatted while they ate, like this was a normal day for them, which Billy realizedit probably was. He hated the both of them, for dragging him out here, for getting him involved—all he wanted was to leave.

Noone had made him take turns on the shovel when Percy needed a spell, jamming the blade into that rocky red earth, turning out soil onto the mound. Noone smoked and watched and ambled back and forth; the bodies bled out where they lay. Flies hummed, birds waited, Billy waist-deep in the hole, mud-smeared and sweat-slicked, cupping his nose with his sleeve against the smell. One of the bodies had shat itself. He didn’t know which one. Grimly he went on digging, still trying to process what he’d just seen. He couldn’t explain it—murdering his own men, loyal for all these years—other than the fact Noone was fucking crazy, and treated killing like a game. But what he kept coming back to, as he dug out their grave, was the fact he’d shot the woman in her stomach first. He’d killed the baby, deliberately. He’d wanted Rabbit to see, and maybe Billy too. Again he thought of Katherine, pictured her alone in the house with Noone. Pregnant. He could have done anything, to her, to their child. And Billy wasn’t there.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked now, in the moonlit clearing, a lattice of shadows from the leaves. “Why’d you kill your own men?”

Noone sighed like it was just one of those things. “I