Zeke and Ned

by Larry McMurtry

  Ned laughed, when Jewel spoke to him about her fear of bears. He traded for a good rifle, and gave Jewel a few shooting lessons, but he did not take the talk of bears seriously.

  “If a bear shows up, just bang the frying pans together,” he said. “Bears don’t like loud noise.”

  “Maybe I ought to have waited till you grew up to have married you,” Ned told her, one of the times when she was trying to explain how scared she got when he was away. He tried to make her laugh by saying it, but it only made her more nervous.

  Jewel gave up trying to make Ned understand her fear. She knew he would only laugh that much louder if she tried to tell him that the wood sounds—the owls, and coyotes, and other varmints—scared her when he was gone.

  Jewel’s worst fear went so deep she never talked about it with Ned: that was her fear of men. Her father had told her that bad men sometimes changed themselves into owls, so they could travel under dark cover and commit their evil deeds at night, when no one could see them. Rough men, most of them white men, traveled on the Mountain—whiskeysellers, bandits, men on the run from the law. Some of them knew where Ned lived, and some of them probably knew he had married. They might spy on the two of them; they might know when Ned was away from home. What if they came, in the night? Tuxie Miller’s house was three miles away. She could not run for help, if a harmful man showed up. She would have to fight alone. What if two or three whiskeysellers or a few bandits came at her, all at once?

  Jewel was a wife now, and she knew what men wanted of women. She belonged to her husband, and the thought of another man being with her that way made her feel sick and shaky. It was just such a worry that made her shake when she saw Ned cleaning his guns. What if rough men came while her husband was gone? Once or twice a week, some hungry traveling man would show up at their door, wanting a little grub. With Ned around, it made no difference—but with Ned gone, Jewel could hardly be trusting enough to offer a stranger grub.

  The fear built in her for a week. Finally, the night before the trial, it filled her so full that she could not contain it.

  “Take me with you to town, Ned—I fear to stay alone,” Jewel blurted out, when they were getting ready for bed.

  “I’ll ride the mule,” she added. “I’ll even walk. I’m a fast walker, I can keep up.”

  Ned looked at her with astonishment. They had a farm—chickens, a pig, two heifers, a mule, a garden to tend. Did Jewel think they could just walk off from a farm? Zeke Proctor was her father; Zeke had livestock and poultry and a farm. Jewel must know there were responsibilities that could not be shirked, once a man took a mate and began to live the married life.

  “Jewel, you’ve got to stay here and tend the place,” Ned said, trying not to sound angry. Jewel was but a girl, just sixteen. He ought not to expect her to be a forceful woman on the order of Dale Miller; in fact, he was sure he would never want her to be that forceful. But he did want her to recognize that she could not merely follow her whims. She was married now, and her place was at home. He could not be letting her traipse off to Tahlequah, even if she could walk fast.

  Jewel knew that was what Ned would say, and yet, disappointment hit her like a blow. It meant she would have to miss him, and he had no notion how painful that missing would be. Even before he was out of sight, it would begin—and it would not relent until she saw him walking up the path to their door.

  Despite herself, tears flooded out, so copiously that they wet the front of her old gown. She cried silently. Ned had already blown out the lantern and could not see her tears. It was only later, once they lay down, that Ned felt the wetness on her gown.

  “Jewel, honey, did you spill something?” he asked. Then he touched Jewel’s wet cheek, and realized the wetness was tears. Jewel did not cry often, but when she did her eyes got as big as cups, and the tears fell down in a flood.

  “Why, what is it?” Ned asked. He had already forgotten her desire to accompany him to the trial. He thought she might be sick.

  Jewel did not answer him for a while. She was torn between her need to tell her husband the truth, and her conviction that he would not like it if she did tell him. She started to lie, to tell him the tears were tears of homesickness. The fact was, she often did pine for news of her mother, and Liza, and the triplets.

  But her tears, this time, were tears of sadness and dread. Without meaning to, she had come to love Ned too much, so much that it hurt not to have him with her, not to have him touch her. She knew that people came and went in life; men, particularly. Errands had to be run, and visits made. Ned was a senator, too—he had told her on the ride home, that he would have to be going to Tahlequah from time to time to sit in the Senate and have his say about tribal matters. At the time, Jewel paid little attention to his words, she was so filled with her feelings about going home with him to the Mountain, and being his wife.

  Now, her caring and her need were an embarrassment to her. They were feelings too strong to hide. She had not meant to become so attached, and yet she had.

  Ned was peering at her, but could not really see her. The night was moonless, and the room was pitch black. He felt a certain fear himself. When women took ill, they often died, and died quick. Lacy, his first wife, had only been ill for a day and a night when she passed on. Jewel looked healthy, but then so had Lacy up until the infection took her. What if Jewel had taken ill? What if she died?

  “Are you sick, Jewel?” he asked, his voice full of concern. “If you’re sick, I better fetch Old Turtle Man.”

  Old Turtle Man was an ancient Cherokee healer, with long white hair and a crouchlike walk. He had come along the Trail of Tears from Georgia in 1838, at the same time as Zeke Proctor and his family. He lived in a dirt house five miles from Ned’s place. He was called Turtle Man because he caught turtles and terrapins and kept them in his cave. He even had a snapping turtle in a washtub. It was said that he used the liver of his turtles in his potions, though no one knew for sure. The healing knowledge the old man carried around in his head was considered sacred, and the mixing of potions and such was done in the privacy of his cave.

  Old Turtle Man could follow animals when they were old, or sick and on their way to die; he would speak to the animals, whether dog or deer or bear, and take organs from their bodies once they had passed on to the other side. When Lacy got so sick the old man had been away on a journey, gathering roots and spiders. He had been seen in Stinking Water with a jar full of spiders and a big bundle of roots and leaves on his back. Ned had the notion Old Turtle Man might have saved Lacy if he had not gone on his journey just when she took ill.

  Jewel had seen Old Turtle Man only once. His old hands were twisted from having spiders bite him. He had come to Becca, when she was sick; his voice was low, like the voice of a frog, and he smelled like wet weeds.

  “I ain’t sick,” Jewel told her husband, conquering the desire to lie. “I just get scared when I know you have to go away.”

  Ned relaxed at once, though he was a little vexed. Jewel was young, but she ought to know better. He would have no place to board her, even if she did go; he himself meant to bunk under a shed. Besides, if Zeke got acquitted and the Becks decided to make a fight of it, the last thing he needed was his wife in the middle of a shootout.

  “Dern it, Jewel, I told you to bang the pans if you see a bear,” he reminded her. “What else is there to scare you, way up here on the Mountain?”

  Jewel did not want to tell him about her fear of men. He would scoff at her, probably—Ned’s marksmanship was feared throughout the District. He felt that the mere fact she was his woman would scare off any ruffians that happened by. He had told her once, after their passion, that he would kill any man who offered her insult.

  Jewel had no doubt that Ned meant what he said: he would kill any man who offered her insult. But the killing would come later—it would not spare her the insult. She knew, too, that there were men traveling through this country who had little fear of Ned Christie; there were men who had
never even heard of him. A man might come from Missouri or Tennessee or even farther away, and all he would see was a woman alone.

  “Leave me some bullets, Ned. I need to practice with that rifle,” Jewel said, in the morning. Ned was saddled up and ready to leave, and Jewel was determined not to cry until he was out of sight. She could ill afford to talk much at such a time. The sadness might get into her voice and ruin her plan not to cry.

  Ned counted out twenty bullets and gave them to Jewel in a little pouch. He was pleased that she meant to practice, but he was in a hurry to leave. The trial was bound to be lively, and he was excited to be heading for town.

  After he rode away, Jewel climbed up in the loft and cried herself out. Some crows settled in the big sycamore tree behind the house and set up a violent cawing, while she cried. Jewel’s great-grandmother Sixkiller had told Jewel how the Cherokee people were all descended from seven clans, and that her own people were part of the Bird clan. By the time Jewel was ten, she knew the names of all the birds in the Going Snake District, and could identify each one of them just by hearing their songs.

  Today, though, Jewel was in such a low mood, she began to grow irritated with the cawing crows. She did not want to listen to their cawing all day, not when she was sad.

  When Jewel was a little girl, she had been prone to bad dreams. Once, when she was not quite six, she woke from an awful nightmare. Her father tried to comfort her with a story about how the doves and the whippoorwills flew dreams from one place to another. Then he lit a candle, and put it on her windowsill, saying that the light would draw the birds close and bring her sweet dreams.

  That night, before she went to bed, Jewel lit a candle and put it in her bedroom window.

  23

  MARSHAL BILL YOPPS WAS IN A SHOCKING STATE OF DISARRAY WHEN the Beck brothers finally found him, though not much worse disarray than the muddy community of Stinking Water itself.

  Two cows had died in the street of Stinking Water the month before, and nobody had bothered to remove them, unless one counted the four turkey buzzards, who were removing the cows piecemeal.

  Marshal Yopps himself had been removed, in a sense. His woman, Belle Blue, a notorious whiskeyseller, had removed him from the shanty where she lived to the chickenhouse behind it. Belle Blue had a white mother and a Cherokee father, both of whom had come from the Carolinas up the Trail of Tears. She was Old Mandy Springston’s major competitor for the whiskey market in the Going Snake District. Belle’s main occupation was madam, and so it was in her best interests to serve decent whiskey to the men who came to call. It was a known fact that women made the best whiskey, in the Going Snake.

  Marshal Yopps had been in a near perpetual state of drunkenness for several years. Belle Blue told the Becks frankly that she could not have Marshal Yopps any closer than the chickenhouse. He was too prone to making inroads on the corn whiskey she had to sell.

  “Pouring whiskey into that man is like pouring water into a post-hole,” Belle informed the Becks. “He just soaks it right up.”

  Belle herself was plump and uppity.

  “T. Spade could marry her” Willy suggested, as they were walking toward the chickenhouse.

  Frank Beck, who considered himself a good judge of women, was appalled by the suggestion—it showed how naive his brother Willy was, when it came to matters of the flesh.

  “That woman would make short work of T. Spade,” Frank said. “She’d finish him before the wedding bells even stopped ringing.”

  Sam Beck thought that one over, but was puzzled by the reference to wedding bells. So far as he knew, T. Spade owned no bell of any kind.

  “Davie, now . . . Davie might hold his own with her,” Frank added.

  Marshal Yopps was snoring when they found him. He had white chicken feathers in his brown beard, and the wound in his shoulder had leaked a dark rusty stain down one sleeve of his shirt.

  “He looks played out to me, boys,” Willy said. T. Spade had lagged a bit behind, far enough that he had not heard the conversation about Belle Blue making short work of him.

  “Wake up, Bill, we want to hire you to kill Zeke Proctor!” T. Spade announced in a loud voice, whereupon Marshal Yopps promptly woke up and looked around.

  “Zeke? I’ll kill him for thirty dollars,” he replied. “I don’t like that rascal anyway.”

  “Why not?” Frank wondered.

  “He’s got that snappy little dog, that’s why not,” the Marshal said. “That dog’s charged at me more than once.”

  “You’re free to kill the dog while you’re at it,” Willy told him. He thought making the dog available for slaughter might prompt the Marshal to lower his price.

  “You’ll have to work quick,” T Spade warned. “The trial’s tomorrow.”

  Marshal Yopps did not like the sound of that. It was a sunny day in Stinking Water, a good day to lay around and drink. Perhaps the bright sunshine would cause Belle Blue to be a little cozy with him. In any case, he wanted to move slow until he was fully awake and had his wits about him. The process of collecting his wits often took half a day, and he could not start it properly until he had several swigs of whiskey. Now here were the Beck brothers, looming over him and trying to hurry him. He did not appreciate it. He crawled out of the chickenhouse, and began to brush the feathers off his person.

  “Why, I’d rather not hurry, T.,” he said. “I can kill him just as dead after the trial.”

  “No, he might get acquitted, and we don’t want that,” T. Spade informed him. “He’s just sitting there in Tahlequah, and it’s only a ten-mile ride. Go get him and bring him back to us. We’ll soon give the scamp what he deserves.”

  Marshal Yopps quickly foresaw complications with that plan.

  “What if Charley Bobtail won’t give him up?” he asked. “It’s a dern sight harder to take a man out of a jail than it is just to ambush him while he’s watering his horse or having a shit behind a bush.

  “More expensive, too,” he added, after a pause.

  Willy Beck got rubbed the wrong way by that information.

  “Thirty dollars is enough to pay for a killing,” he said firmly. “It’ll only cost you one bullet, if you shoot straight. That’s profit enough, whether you take him out of jail or not.”

  Bill Yopps looked disgusted. Amateurs were always quick to ignore the legal complications when they wanted some scoundrel killed. Zeke Proctor was Charley Bobtail’s prisoner—Charley would have to be handled skillfully, else he might refuse to give him up.

  “You could say you’re from Judge Parker,” T Spade suggested.

  The mere mention of Isaac Parker’s name was enough to cause Bill Yopp’s blood to boil. He kicked irritably at a speckled hen that was following him a little too closely, looking like she might be ready to peck him.

  “That goddamn Judge Parker, he’s too goddamn tight,” he said. “I won’t hunt up prisoners for him.”

  One reason he was sleeping in the chickenhouse behind Belle Blue’s was because Judge Parker had dismissed him from the marshaling force over a quarrel concerning expenses—a fact he did not volunteer to the Becks. Bill Yopps had engaged a blacksmith to shoe his horse and had sent the bill to the court. The bill was for seventy-five cents, which Judge Parker considered profligate. He called Bill Yopps into his chambers, and looked him in the eye.

  “Marshal Yopps, do you understand the procedures involved in horseshoeing?” the Judge had asked. He was not asking friendly, either. He had a raspish growl in his voice.

  “Why, of course—do you take me for a child?” Bill Yopps replied, indignant. “I can shoe a horse.”

  “That’s what I expected,” the Judge said. “You look able bodied to me, although you smell of whiskey. Why would you put this court to the expense of a blacksmith, when you could have shod the animal yourself?”

  “I was in a hurry,” Bill Yopps replied. In fact, he hated shoeing horses, and always engaged a blacksmith if one was sitting idle.

  “Did you imbibe
liquorous spirits while you were waiting for this work to be done?” the Judge inquired.

  “I don’t recall,” Marshal Yopps said, though in fact, he had drained the better part of a jug while the smithy was at his work.

  “Dismissed then, for a poor memory,” the Judge had said. “I won’t employ a marshal who can’t remember what he’s done.”

  Bill Yopps was stunned. Marshaling was his only source of income. He had been planning to arrest a skillful whiskeyseller within the next few days, and earn a big reward in the process. Now the Judge was asking for his badge.

  “What if I pay back the money?” Bill Yopps asked, a feeling of desperation coming over him. If the Judge made good the dismissal, he soon would not even be able to afford Belle Blue, who demanded the same fee as the blacksmith.

  “Too late for that,” the Judge answered. “This is a poor court. I won’t have able-bodied men hiring out work they can do themselves.”

  The Judge had stood firm—so firm that Marshal Yopps soon pulled himself together and entered into serious negotiations with the Becks about the matter of Zeke Proctor. The plan was to wait until the trial was about to start and take Zeke as he was walking from the jail to the courthouse. The opinion of the Becks was that Marshal Yopps ought to engage a few deputies.

  “Zeke’s got friends,” T Spade reminded him. He made no mention of Ned Christie. Men with stiffer backbones than Bill Yopps might waver if they thought the task meant taking on the best marksman in the Going Snake District.

  “He ain’t the only one with friends,” Marshal Yopps said. He had interrupted negotiations long enough to persuade Belle Blue that he would soon be prosperous again.

  “Thirty dollars, Belle,” he said. “Now think of that. We can do some horseshoeing when I get back from town.” Since discovering that Belle Blue and the blacksmith cost the same money, he had started calling what he wanted to do with Belle horseshoeing. Belle was not won by the term or by the man, but she did like the sound of $30.