Zeke and Ned

by Larry McMurtry

  “I don’t want to,” Moses told them. “I don’t like being in stifling rooms.”

  “Then why did we ride so fast to get here?” Rat inquired, puzzled.

  “Because I hadn’t thought of a better plan yet,” Moses informed him. “Now that I’m here, I’ve thought of a better plan.”

  “What would that be?” Jim asked.

  “Let the Becks fight first,” Moses said. “I expect Ned will kill most of ’em, but one of ’em might get lucky and kill Ned. If Zeke gets off, he’s got to go home sometime. We can ambush him, and blow a hole in his gut.”

  The Squirrel brothers all looked around at one another. Although they had been eager for days for the big trial to begin, the thought of Ned Christie and his marksmanship put a serious damper on their enthusiasm. They remembered the day Ned had stood by Zeke in the street, when they were warning Zeke to stay away from Polly. Ned had made it clear that he would fight with his Keetoowah brother. Only the shootings at Old Mandy Springston’s had got them out of that little scrape without loss of life—or at least, loss of blood.

  “Ned’s a two-handed shooter,” Rat observed. “He rarely misses, whether he’s shooting with the left hand or the right.”

  “I don’t much like stifling rooms, either,” Jim Squirrel allowed.

  “There’s a passel of folks waitin’ to go into that trial,” Rat said. “There won’t be no place to spit, unless you get near a spittoon.”

  “Well, I ain’t too good to spit on the ground,” Moses said. “This is as close to that trial as I want to get. There’s plenty of good places to ambush Zeke, if it comes to that.”

  “I spit on somebody’s leg once, chawin’ in a crowded room,” Rat mused. “The fellow didn’t like it none, neither.”

  With that, the Squirrel brothers dismounted, tied their horses, passed a thick, black plug of tobacco around, and sat down under a good shade tree to await developments.

  “I’d be a fool to risk spittin’ on somebody’s leg agin,” Rat added, after a moment. “Next time, it might be fatal.”

  27

  NED HAD NOT DISMOUNTED, AND WAS LOOKING OVER THE CROWD.

  The Becks stood together, and Marshal Yopps was still across the street with the three ruffians. Ned thought he recognized one of them, a bandit named Slow John. Slow John took an inordinate amount of time searching his victims, once he decided to rob them. He required the men to undress, and insisted that women take off their shoes. It was his belief that precious jewels were most likely to be concealed in ladies’ shoes. He was known to murder at will, should a victim become impatient with his lengthy searches. The other two ruffians Ned did not recognize, but they looked like the sort of men that were likely to be found at the Cave on the ridge of Walk Back Mountain. Ned tried to observe the Becks to see if they were signaling Bill Yopps or the ruffians, but the Becks were just standing by the hitch rail, waiting to be admitted to the court.

  Judge Sixkiller ushered Chilly Stufflebean inside so that he could be lining up chairs. Then he came back, and spoke to Ned.

  “If you plan to attend this trial, I’ll make you foreman of the jury,” the Judge said. “I know you are friendly to the defendant, but I believe I can trust you to rule fairly, once the evidence is heard.”

  “I accept, but the Becks won’t like it,” Ned said, slipping off his horse.

  “I do not run my court to suit the Becks,” the Judge informed him. He could see the Becks—they were already exhibiting signs of displeasure from the mere fact that he was holding a conversation with Ned Christie. They were frowning, and he had no doubt that curses were on their lips.

  But Judge B. H. Sixkiller had more important concerns to voice. He stepped a little closer to Ned Christie so that what he had to say would not carry into the crowd.

  “This is a Cherokee court,” he said. “It has the right to be independent, and I aim to keep it independent. But the federal government wants it—they don’t want us to try our own crimes. I mean to see that this is a fair trial conducted in a professional manner. We cannot afford to give the federal government any excuse to come in here and interfere with our system of laws.”

  “I agree, Your Honour,” Ned said. “They’ve got no business interfering.”

  “Judge Parker has been good enough to loan me his bailiff,” the Judge said. “I want him to disarm the crowd. He’s not known in this community, and I expect the Beck faction to balk. There may be others that balk, for their own reasons. I want you to stand at the door with the bailiff and see that the firearms are handed over.”

  “Yes sir,” Ned assured him. “I expect that will thin out the crowd a little. There’s people here who feel undressed without their weapons.”

  “They’ll have to come naked of armament, if they want to spectate in my court today,” the Judge said.

  He turned to go inside, and then looked back at the crowd in the street.

  “I hope a few of them do go home,” he said. “It’s more crowd than will fit in my courtroom. You stack them guns neat now, and advise the bailiff to do the same. We don’t want to damage anyone’s weapons.”

  There was a stirring in the crowd. Heads turned back toward the jail, as Sheriff Charley Bobtail, using two of his sons-in-law as deputies, walked Zeke over from the jailhouse. The sight stopped conversation for a moment; in the silence, Pete could be heard, barking furiously. He had been left in the jail, and he made his displeasure clear. Zeke was handcuffed. He walked right past the Beck brothers without even turning his head. Then he looked up and saw Ned, his face brightening. Ned nodded at him as he passed, and Zeke nodded back.

  Once Zeke had passed safely into the courthouse, Chilly came out and stood next to Ned.

  “This is a fast judge,” he said. “He’s already got his robes on. We better hurry up and seat the crowd.”

  “Come on, folks, it’s time to have this trial,” Ned said, in a voice that carried well down the street. “The Judge wants this to be a peaceful trial. Every man of you will have to check guns when you come through the door—and that means boot guns, too.”

  “Boot guns?” Chilly asked. “We don’t have such as that over in Fort Smith. If I had to carry a gun in my boot, it would blister my ankle.”

  Several rowdies turned red in the face upon being told they would have to check their pistols.

  “What about you, Christie?” a man named Fry Morgan yelled. Fry was a brawler who had once wrestled a three-hundred-pound catfish out of the Arkansas River with his bare hands. He was round as a barrel of nails, and almost as heavy.

  Ned had expected the question. Everyone in the District knew he carried two .44s. He immediately took the pistols out of his pockets and handed them to Chilly, who looked surprised.

  “There, now, I went first,” Ned said. “Mine are checked. Get yours out and hand them over if you want to come in.”

  To his surprise, the Becks were the first to comply. T Spade, Sam, Willy, Frank, all calmly handed Chilly their weapons and filed in, followed by two of Polly Beck’s sisters, the only women to venture into the court. They were countrywomen, subdued by the unfamiliar setting. Ned felt sorry for them—he had lost a sister himself, to pleurisy.

  The arms check went rapidly, so rapidly that Chilly was hard put to keep up with the crowd. Judge Sixkiller had cautioned him twice not to damage the guns he was handed. His court could not afford bills for gun repair. Chilly arranged the pistols carefully along two benches in the foyer. Ned had to help him, since some of the men handed over as many as five pistols. Fry Morgan himself had a gun in each boot, two in his pockets, and one in his belt.

  Fry was a man of high temperament; the fact that Ned had checked his own .44s did not completely mollify him.

  “This is a damned nuisance. The Becks are the only ones mad at Zeke,” Fry said. “I say disarm the Becks and let the rest of us stay comfortable.”

  “It was the Judge’s rule, not mine,” Ned pointed out. “He’s strict, and this is his court. Let’s get a mov
e on, so we can get this trial started.”

  After a moment’s reflection, a disgruntled Fry Morgan yanked off his boots and handed over the last of his pistols.

  28

  BILL YOPPS AND HIS RUFFIANS MADE NO MOVE TO COME IN, A FACT that worried Ned considerably. Bill Yopps stood beside his horse, but the other men were mounted. All had rifles as well as pistols, and Bill Yopps had a shotgun, to boot.

  Ned quickly went inside the courtroom, and spoke to the Judge.

  “Your Honour, you need to post a guard while this trial is going on,” he said.

  “Why?” the Judge asked. “A guard would just be expense.”

  “The Sheriff’s done called up two deputies,” Ned reminded him.

  “Make ’em stand on the porch. There’s some men over by the dry goods store that I don’t trust. I expect the Becks have hired a few killers.”

  Ned Christie’s apprehension struck him as sound. The Becks themselves were behaving suspiciously well. As a clan, they were not noted for correct behaviour; what was even more suspicious was that the wild one, Davie, wasn’t even present.

  Judge Sixkiller laid his pocket watch on the table. It was already ten past nine, an affront to his sense of punctuality. To make matters worse, Zeke’s lawyer had not arrived.

  The Judge motioned to Sheriff Bobtail, who stood at the back of the room with his two sons-in-law.

  Just as he was about to order the Sheriff to ask the two deputies to stand guard, peace with the Becks suddenly came to an end.

  “Who’s running this goddamn trial, B.H.?” T Spade asked, standing up. “Is it you, or is it Ned Christie?”

  T. Spade had got to his feet to speak. He began to shake as if he had the palsy, and his face was as red as if he’d been stung by bees.

  “Sit down, sir, and control your profane language,” the Judge admonished. “I run this court, and I will not tolerate profane bluster in my courtroom. Mr. Christie is merely a juryman.”

  This was too much for Willy Beck—he popped up, just as T Spade sat down.

  “Juryman? Why, if he’s a juryman, I ought to be a juryman, too,” Willy proposed.

  “Sit down, Mr. Beck!” the Judge ordered, annoyed. “I will not have spectators jumping up and down. The jury will be fairly chosen once Mr. Proctor’s attorney arrives.”

  “Hell, Your Honour, start without him,” Zeke said.

  Zeke was suffering from stomach cramps. He wanted to get the trial over with so he could go try to persuade Becca to come home. He wanted to see Becca so badly that he had even considered paying the Becks blood money to square with them, if possible, about Polly Beck. But Snelson Alberty, a lawyer from Arkansas, had come by the jail one day and persuaded Zeke to engage him as counsel. Snelson was a small man with a fast mouth; Zeke decided to hire him mainly because of his fast mouth. A lawyer who could talk lickety-split might make the trial go faster, which was the only thing Zeke cared about. The quicker the trial was over, the sooner he could get his family back home.

  The Judge, though very annoyed by the late start, knew he owed the defendant some good advice.

  “You’re charged with a serious crime, which is murder, Mr. Proctor,” the Judge reminded him. “It could be that your attorney’s horse went lame. And it may be in your best interests to wait a few more minutes.”

  “No, get her started, Judge,” Zeke said. “I’ll take my oath and tell the truth, and we’ll leave it to the jury.”

  Sheriff Charley Bobtail had started forward two or three times and then stopped, as the Judge and the Becks were wrangling. Finally, he approached the bench to see what the Judge wanted.

  “Post them deputies on the front porch,” the Judge ordered. “Tell them not to admit intruders.”

  Ned Christie stood back a few steps, just to the left of the Judge. He was beginning to experience a powerful disquiet. Many a time in the summer, he had watched clouds build up in the great western sky, and grow darker and darker—all he could hear at such times was the low rumbling of thunder that was soon to come. The animals would tense up at such times, and so would the humans. Then came the storm: first a few splatters of rain; and then, within moments, limbs would be snapping from the wind and thunder would break and crack, like a mountain falling apart. Lightning would flash, and hailstones the size of apples would pour from the clouds.

  In the courtroom, looking at the silent crowd, Ned felt the same tension building. Something was about to happen—something violent. He began to wish for his guns. A step at a time, he began to walk back to the benches where the guns were stacked. He felt a fierce need to have his .44s in his hands.

  Another factor which contributed to his potent apprehension was that Tuxie Miller had not yet arrived, and Tuxie had promised him faithfully that he would be at the trial. Once a promise was extracted from Tuxie, even Dale could not force him to break it. Tuxie Miller was a man of his word. Yet the trial was under way, or about to be, and there was no sign of Tuxie.

  It crossed Ned’s mind that the Becks might have set an ambush along the trails to Tahlequah. Davie Beck was known to be skilled at ambush. The fact that Davie was nowhere to be seen might account for the absence of the lawyer—it might account for the absence of Tuxie, as well. Tuxie was a careless traveler. His mind wandered, he sang hymns that popped into his head, and he would be unlikely to notice an impending ambush, particularly if it was set by an ambusher with the wiles of Davie Beck.

  Ned quickened his step. He wanted his .44s, and this fact was not lost on the Beck brothers—all of whom promptly leaped to their feet.

  “Watch that damn Ned, he’s headin’ for the guns,” T. Spade announced. A moment later, Frank Beck shot at Ned with a derringer he had managed to conceal in his hat. The little bullet hit a spectator named old Tom Alston on the very tip of the nose. Old Tom had not heard the pop of the gun, and was surprised to discover himself with a profuse nosebleed. Frank Beck quickly fired his second barrel; this bullet grazed Ned’s hand, but did no more damage than a hen peck.

  In two more strides, Ned was at the bench and had his pistols. For a moment, he considered turning back to the courtroom but was deterred by the sound of three horses outside, coming at breakneck speed. He jumped out the door so fast that he knocked one of the newly appointed deputies flat on his face and into the street.

  Sure enough, one of the racing riders was Tuxie Miller. Ned saw at once that he had been wounded—one pants leg was red with blood. Two men were pursuing him, about fifty yards to his rear. One of them was the maniac Davie Beck, and the other an old man Ned could not immediately identify, with long, white hair and no hat. Davie Beck was not shooting, but the old man was popping at Tuxie with a six-shooter. Davie was waving what looked like a saw as he rode, and the old man with the streaming white hair was holding a big bowie knife between his teeth.

  The deputy Ned knocked over had dropped his Winchester. Ned picked it up, and immediately shot Davie Beck’s horse. The fatally wounded animal went down in a heap, with Davie underneath it. Ned thought that would stop the old man, but it did not—the old fellow ran right over Davie, just as Davie was trying to struggle out from beneath his fallen mount. Tuxie Miller reached the courthouse and spilled off his horse, almost into Ned’s arms.

  Tuxie was white as a ghost, from loss of blood or fear or both, Ned reckoned.

  “Shoot, shoot, it’s White Sut Beck!” Tuxie gasped, before stumbling into the courthouse, his wounded leg pouring blood.

  Ned remembered then that the Beck clan had a patriarch somewhere. Ned had heard no mention of the old man in years, and supposed he was dead. White Sut was said to live in a shack under a tree in an obscure spot west of the Mountain—he was said to keep a bear and a buzzard as pets, and among his many eccentricities was a fondness for hunting wild pigs barefoot, armed only with a knife, probably the very knife he was now gripping between his teeth as he bore down on the courthouse, white hair streaming. Davie Beck lay run over in the street beside his dead horse. He was not moving a m
uscle.

  Ned had to act quick. The easiest thing was to shoot the old man’s horse out from under him, which Ned did. But his horse, a stout sorrel, did not die clean and immediate. Instead, it began to run in circles, pouring blood from behind a foreleg and nickering a wild, high nicker of distress. Then, to old White Sut’s extreme annoyance, the sorrel quit circling and went off in a dead run back toward where it had come from, the old man cursing and sawing at the reins all the while.

  That’ll fix him, Ned thought, keeping an eye on Davie Beck, who had still not moved a muscle since being run over by old White Sut. It struck Ned as odd that Davie had ridden in carrying what looked like a saw, but he had no time to brood on the matter.

  Bill Yopps and his ruffians had suddenly vanished.

  29

  NED RAN BACK INSIDE THE COURTROOM, JUST AS SHOTS ERUPTED. AS he passed the bench with the guns on it, Ned scooped up two or three more pistols.

  When he jumped into the courtroom, he was not surprised to see Bill Yopps climbing through a window, his shotgun cocked. Without delay, Ned shot him. Marshal Yopps fell backward, discharging the shotgun directly into the chest of quiet Sam Beck, who had been helping him get through the window.

  The ruffians who had been with Bill Yopps were handing pistols and rifles inside to the Becks. As soon as he could get his pistol cocked, T Spade turned and fired at Zeke, who had been on the prisoner’s bench. But Zeke was no longer on the prisoner’s bench, and T Spade’s bullet took Judge B. H. Sixkiller in the throat.

  The Judge did not feel the bullet at first. He stood up, and tried to rap his gavel. It was a court of law he was conducting, and a court of law had to be conducted with propriety. Men were not to be climbing in windows and using firearms in his court. Ned Christie had been right about the deputies, but now the deputies were outside, when the Judge needed them inside. He tried to rap for order, but dropped his gavel.