Free Bone River by Megan Chance Page B

be.”
    I laughed a little. “I’m a good ways from knowing any of that, I think. But I suppose that gives you some time to get to know your father.”
    “I know as much of him as I want. The story is more important.”
    “It’s a long way to come for just a story.”
    “Well, they’ll pay me enough to keep my father-in-law happy for a bit.”
    I looked up in surprise. “You have a wife?”
    He shook his head and threw a handful of oysters a little too violently. “Not yet. A fiancée.”
    “Oh. Will she mind your staying here for a time?”
    “Not if it means we can be married,” he said. And then, “So who’s the Indian?”
    “Lord Tom. He’s been with us since my father and I first came here.”
    “A hired hand?”
    “Much more than that.”
    Daniel raised a questioning brow, and I found myself saying, reluctantly, “Papa and I found him at our door one night. His whole family had been taken by smallpox a few months before, and he was very sick with fever. He had no one else, and there was no doctor for miles, so we took him in. When he got well, he taught us the ways of his people—salmon fishing and smelting and things like that, and he was very good at trading, which was helpful to my father. After a while, we couldn’t do without him, and he was devoted to us both. When Papa died, Lord Tom stayed with me.”
    Daniel nodded. I expected him to say something like, “But he’s a savage,” or to protest that I kept an Indian so close, but heseemed to accept it without question. For a few moments there was nothing but the sound of shoveling, the clatter of oyster shells falling to the pile. Then Daniel said, “He doesn’t like you with that mummy. He spent the whole morning frowning at the barn.”
    I was startled that he’d noticed it. “Tom’s like all his people. They’re afraid of dead bodies.”
    “Why?”
    “Because spirits are tricksters. They lure the living to the land of the dead.”
    “Does he think she’s Indian?”
    “I don’t know what he thinks except that her spirit is powerful and dangerous and will bring nothing but bad luck. No matter that she’s probably a century dead at least, and her spirit’s already passed over.”
    Daniel glanced up from the oysters, his eyes the only color in a face washed pale by the cold. Again I thought of how like his father’s they were. He frowned. “What?”
    “The Chinook believe the spirit passes after five years, and then it can’t come back. At least, that’s what all the stories say,” I explained. “So I don’t know why he’s so disturbed about this one.”
    “So what do you mean to do with her?”
    “Study, describe, answer what questions I can. Then Junius wants me to send her to Spencer Baird at the Smithsonian.”
    Daniel tossed another handful of oysters. “What will this Baird give you for her? How much does one make on the dead?”
    I didn’t like the way he’d worded it; his contempt of me was in every syllable. “I don’t know. But I’m certain Junius has some idea.”
    Just then, Lord Tom brought the last shovelful, and he and Junius came aboard, their boots dripping water as they tried not to slip on the piles of oysters. I lowered the basket of broken shellsover the side to keep in the cold water until we returned from Bruceport, and then focused on sorting what was left, glad for the chance to ignore Junius’s son for a bit. His questions had been a bit too sharp—it was hard not to think that Junius was right about him. But I told myself that wasn’t fair. I hardly knew him, and he had reason to dislike us both. I couldn’t blame him for showing it.
    We were well under way by the time the sorting was done. I tucked my gloved hands into my armpits to try to warm them. It was useless; they were too far gone, and I was looking forward to a visit to Dunn’s saloon once we’d sold the oysters, the warmth of many bodies, no matter how stinking the air.
    Once we got closer to Bruceport, the wildlife