12 THE BUNKHOUSE

Even though J.J. had asked me not to tell anyone what I was doing, I couldn’t figure out how to investigate the disappearance of the necklace without getting the help of at least one of the Krautheimers. I didn’t know the property or the staff well enough, and I had only a limited amount of time. It had already been a few hours since the necklace vanished, and I had made little progress.

Evan was the most obvious choice. To begin with, he was another boy my age. It made sense that the two of us would be hanging out together; in fact, our parents had been hoping that we would. I had noticed both sets looking disappointed each time Evan opted to play video games rather than spend time with me.

However, once Evan learned that I was looking for a possible thief, he was excited to help. He also felt there was something strange about Sasquatch’s entry into the house that morning. After all, he had lived in that house his entire life, and a bear had never broken in before. The fact that Kandace’s jewels had gone missing afterward seemed suspicious to him as well.

The first thing I wanted to do was see the bunkhouse, and after breakfast, it was empty. Jasmine and Gavin were busy making sure that none of the bison herd had been hurt during the stampede, while Arin and Zach had eagerly gone off with J.J. to see if Sasquatch was really in the abandoned gold mine.

I wasn’t sure if visiting the bunkhouse would be allowed or not, but it turned out to be no big deal. Since the Krautheimers owned the building, it wasn’t unusual for one of them to enter it. “When we were kids, Melissa and I were over there all the time,” Evan explained as we walked to it. “It was kind of like our playhouse. And Jasmine would watch us there when our parents went out. Although, it’s been a while since I was last over there.” He grew a little wistful as he said this.

“How long?” I asked.

Evan shrugged. “A year maybe. We used to have two other hands who lived there, up until last year. Tom and Grady. They were always cool to Melissa and me. But they each got foreman jobs on other ranches, so they took off… and Melissa and I don’t need anyone looking after us anymore. So I just stopped going. Times change.”

The bunkhouse was a one-story building situated a short walk from the ranch house, in the midst of the same great meadow of grass, next to a series of holding pens for the bison. The path to it was easy to follow, a mostly straight line where the grass had been worn away by the constant stream of people moving back and forth over the years.

The bunkhouse wasn’t even locked. The front door led into a common room, where there was a kitchenette, a dining table with six chairs, and a couch facing a TV with a video game system. From there, a hallway led back to the private apartments. Unlike the ranch house, there were no animal heads on the walls or elk-horn chandeliers. In fact, little attention had been paid to decor at all; it looked as though all the furniture had been found at yard sales. None of the chairs at the dining table matched. Still, the building appeared to have been remodeled somewhat recently; the fixtures, the carpet, and the paint job all looked relatively new.

“Originally, this was all one big room,” Evan explained. “There were just bunks in here, and a common shower down that way.” He pointed in the direction of the apartments. “Although, obviously, that wouldn’t work for us now. Not with Jasmine here. But women didn’t work on ranches back when this was first built.”

“Is it very common now?” I asked.

“More and more. Though I can’t think of many other ranches with a woman as foreman.”

“Do the guys working here have a problem with it?”

Evan paused. “I don’t know. I never really thought about it. Want to see their rooms?”

“Sure.”

We passed through the common room to the apartments. There were six, although of course only four were being used. The door to each could be locked, although four hung open. Two were for the empty apartments, while two were for ranch hands who apparently weren’t very concerned about anyone getting into their room.

Evan led me to the first open door. “This is Gavin’s room,” he said.

The apartment was small, with only enough space for a twin bed, a desk, a chair, and a dresser. There was a bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and a stall shower. The room was cramped, but then, I figured it was still much better than communal bunk beds and showers would have been.

Gavin’s apartment was extremely tidy. The bed was made with military precision. There were almost no personal possessions, save for a surprising number of cowboy boots. Gavin owned twelve different pairs, and each was buffed free of dirt, then lined up against the wall. Three library books were on the desk: two Zane Grey westerns and a nonfiction book about building the transcontinental railroad.

“Are all the apartments the exact same as this?” I asked.

“Exactly. Should we go through Gavin’s stuff? To see if the necklace is in here somewhere?”

I hesitated before answering. It certainly made sense to search the rooms while we could, although it also seemed somewhat wrong to me, like we were violating the trust of the ranch hands. “I don’t know.”

“C’mon,” Evan prodded. “If the necklace is here, this is our best chance to find it.”

“I guess,” I said.

We made a quick search of the room. It didn’t take long, as Gavin had so few belongings. We just had to do a cursory search of the dresser and turn each boot over to see if anything fell out. We even checked the water tank of the toilet. But we came up empty.

The room had a narrow window over the bed. If Gavin—or any of the other hands—had wanted to slip out in the middle of the night to run off to the ranch house and steal Kandace’s necklace, they could have come and gone that way without passing through the common room. Except for Zach, possibly. I wasn’t sure the former linebacker could have fit through such a narrow window.

Although, it probably would have been easy to just walk out through the common room without being noticed. Arin had said everyone went to bed right when they got back, which meant that no one would have been sitting up in the common room anyhow. Assuming Arin was telling the truth.

“How well does your family know your ranch hands?” I asked Evan as we left Gavin’s room.

Evan shrugged. “It depends who you’re asking about. My parents have known Jasmine her whole life. She’s like an older sister to me and Melissa. But the other guys… not so much.”

“Even though Gavin’s been working for you even longer than Jasmine?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Gavin’s not exactly what you’d call friendly. And Zach and Arin only started here this summer.” He led the way into the other open apartment. “This is Zach’s room here.”

I froze in the doorway. The room was a disaster area. The desk chair was knocked over and dirty clothes were strewn everywhere.

“Looks like a bear got in here,” I said, concerned.

“Nah,” Evan told me. “Jasmine says Zach’s room always looks like this. He’s a slob.”

I didn’t keep my own room particularly clean, but even I was shocked by how messy Zach’s room was. The chimpanzees at FunJungle kept their living space tidier. I could barely see the floor through all the dirty clothes; garbage was everywhere—except in the garbage can; and there were dozens of partially eaten food items on the desk, some of which had entire colonies of mold and fungus growing on them. The room reeked of spoiled food and body odor.

“I guess we should search this room too?” Evan asked, sounding slightly frightened by the idea, as if spending too long in there could give us an infection.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

We did our best to search the room without touching anything, kicking aside the dirty clothes and garbage. It wasn’t as though we had to worry about leaving everything the way we’d found it; I doubted Zach would notice a difference in the mess. I came across one pair of socks so encrusted with dirt that they had hardened into a piece of sculpture, but no necklace. I also noticed that Zach didn’t have a single book in his room.

“What do you think of Zach?” I asked.

Evan grunted noncommittally. “He’s okay, I guess. He doesn’t spend that much time here when he’s not working. He was really popular in high school, so most nights, he still goes to town to see his friends. The other hands are here a lot more. They even eat with us a lot.”

“What’s Arin like?”

“He’s nice enough. His room’s right over here.” Evan quickly led the way out of Zach’s room and took a big gulp of fresh air.

Arin’s apartment was one of the locked ones, but Evan had brought a master key from his house. He unlocked the door and opened it.

Entering an apartment that had been locked felt like an even bigger violation of trust than searching the apartments that had been left open. I hesitated uncomfortably in the doorway for a bit.

Arin’s room wasn’t as shipshape as Gavin’s, but not as messy as Zach’s. (Although, I had seen garbage dumps that were less messy than Zach’s room.) The walls were adorned with posters of cricket teams while framed photos sat atop the dresser: group shots of what must have been his family and portraits of a pretty blond woman who I assumed was his girlfriend. Manuals about ranching lay on the desk, alongside yellow pads where Arin had taken detailed notes. There were also several very thick engineering textbooks.

“Is Arin an engineer?” I asked.

“That was what his family wanted him to do,” Evan explained. This time, he didn’t even ask if we should search the room. He just started going through it. “That was why they sent him all the way to Montana State from Bangalore. But when he told them he wanted to be a ranch hand instead… I don’t think they were happy. He’s had a tough time with it. Plus, I don’t think people around here have been that nice to him.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause he’s from India. The ranch hand community is pretty tight and mostly local. So they haven’t let him forget he’s different.”

I nodded understanding. I knew from experience how hard it could be to come into a community as an outsider. When I had first moved to Texas, my school had been in a small town where everyone already knew one another. Most of the other kids hadn’t been interested in making new friends—and a lot of them had been pretty cold to me.

“I mean, my family’s pretty different too,” Evan went on. “There aren’t many Jews around here. But no one can tell I’m Jewish by looking at me. Arin can’t hide the fact that he’s Indian.”

“Do your other ranch hands treat him differently?” I asked.

Evan thought about that for a bit. “I have no idea what Gavin thinks. And Jasmine’s used to being an outsider too. Obviously, there’s a lot more Native Americans around here than Indians, but still, it can be tough. And she’s a woman, while most of the ranch hands are men. So I think she’s been nice to Arin. As for Zach… I’d doubt it.”

“You think he’s racist?”

“Not exactly. Just…” Evan took some time to pick his words. “When Zach goes to hang out with his friends in town, he never takes Arin along. I don’t think it’s ever even occurred to Zach to invite him. Doesn’t look like the necklace is in here, either.” Evan finished rifling through Arin’s dresser and shoved the final drawer closed.

I hadn’t found anything either. Since the apartments were so small and the ranch hands didn’t have many belongings, it didn’t take much time to go through everything.

Evan led me out of the room and locked it behind him. Then he moved to the door to Jasmine’s apartment, key in hand, but hesitated before unlocking it.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I just don’t think Jasmine would have stolen the necklace. Like I said, she’s like a big sister to me. And she’s nicer than my real sister.…”

“We don’t have to go in if you don’t want.”

Evan stood there awhile, considering this, then put the key in the lock. “We’ll do a quick search. To prove that Jasmine wasn’t behind it.”

Jasmine’s room was almost as clean as Gavin’s, but not quite. She had more things than anyone else: jewelry boxes, makeup, a rack full of scarves, framed family photos, a collection of snow globes from all over America, and lots more books than any of the others. The walls were adorned with black-and-white photos of stark landscapes. Even though I was supposed to be quickly searching the room, I found myself drawn to them.

“Those are Jasmine’s photos,” Evan said, poking through her drawers.

“They’re really good.”

“Yeah? I like color photos myself.”

One photo in particular was really arresting. It was an older Native American couple, standing in front of a clapboard shack on a desolate plain. It looked as though it might have been taken in the 1880s—except that the couple’s clothes seemed relatively new. “Do you know where this is?”

“Sure. That’s Jasmine’s grandparents. Daisy’s mother and father. That’s their house.”

“They live there?” I asked before I could catch myself. I failed to keep the shock out of my voice.

Living in Africa, I had seen plenty of people who lived in shacks like this. Sadly, in the shantytowns around major cities like Nairobi and Johannesburg, millions of people lived that way. But I had never seen a home like that in America.

“That’s on the reservation,” Evan explained, sounding upset himself. “I know. It’s a shack. Daisy grew up there with five brothers and sisters. Some of them are still living on the res, in places not much bigger than that.”

I peered closer at the photo. “Do they even have electricity?”

“No,” said a voice from the doorway.

Evan and I turned, startled, to see Arturo Creek standing there.

“There’s no running water or sewers, either,” Arturo continued. “The government promised the tribe they would build them, but never delivered on that. And that’s not unusual. Nearly fifteen percent of homes on reservations in this country don’t have electricity.”

Evan had turned bright red, embarrassed to have been caught in Jasmine’s room. “We came in here looking for Jasmine,” he said.

“Oh, I know exactly what you’re doing in here,” Arturo said. Then he stepped aside so we had room to leave. He didn’t tell us to get out, but it was clear that’s what he wanted us to do.

Evan and I filed back into the hall. As we passed Arturo, he held his hand out.

Once again, Evan knew exactly what he expected. He set the master key in Arturo’s palm.

Arturo locked Jasmine’s door, then ushered us into the common room. “Life isn’t easy on a lot of reservations. Poverty is high. Crime is high. Alcohol and drug abuse is high too. Lots of folks act like that’s the fault of the Native Americans, but the deck was stacked against us from the beginning. We got kicked off our homeland and forced onto land we didn’t have any connection to. We were told we couldn’t practice our traditional ways of life. Our populations were decimated by disease. And we never got half the things white folks take for granted: water, power, roads, hospitals. The Indian Health Service operates on a shoestring, and our schools have the lowest funding of any in Montana. The only way you can get a leg up in a place like that is to leave it. And even doing that costs money that most people don’t have.”

Evan led the way outside. In the short time that we had been in the bunkhouse, it felt as though the temperature had shot up twenty degrees. It was turning into a hot day.

Arturo locked the bunkhouse door, then pocketed the master key. “Why don’t you boys find something more productive to do today than invading people’s private space?” he asked, then started up the trail toward the ranch house.

Evan and I dropped in behind him, though we kept our distance. Once Arturo was too far away to hear us, Evan asked me, “So, is that it for our investigation?”

“Not at all,” I told him. “We’re just getting started.”