Zeke and Ned

by Larry McMurtry

  Ned made sure Tuxie Miller was secure in his saddle, and went at an easy pace out of Tahlequah. Tuxie’s leg had stopped bleeding, and he did not want bumpy traveling to make the bleeding start up again.

  “Oh, Lord, it’s been a bloody day, ain’t it, Ned?” Tuxie remarked.

  “Hush talking, Tuxie. It’s still a long ways home,” Ned told him. “You need to be quiet now, until I get you to Dale.”

  Ned kept the easy pace, until darkness closed over them. As he was crossing Little Boggy Creek, his horse nickered—so did Tuxie’s. There, not far from the creek, was Judge Parker’s mule. It had freed itself somehow, and was grazing peacefully beside the trail to Fort Smith. Ned tried to catch it, so he could leave it for the bailiff as he had promised, but the mule was skittish from its ordeal in the mud. It would not be caught.

  Ned was forced to leave it. He hoped it would stay close to the road as it grazed, so the tired deputy, Chilly Stufflebean, would not have to walk all the way back to Arkansas.

  BOOK TWO

  ON THE SCOUT

  Now you have covered her over with loneliness. Her eyes have faded, her eyes have come to fasten themselves on one alone. Let her be sorrowing as she goes along, and not for one night alone. Let her become an aimless wanderer, whose trail can never be followed.

  —Cherokee Hymn

  1

  A FERRYBOAT MAN NAMED LONNIE VONT WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO bring Judge Isaac Parker news of the massacre in Tahlequah. Lonnie had awakened to find a muddy mule nosing around his ferryboat— Judge Parker’s own brown mule, in fact. He had ferried the same animal to the east side of the river two days earlier, when it was on loan to Chilly Stufflebean. Chilly Stufflebean, though, was nowhere to be seen.

  Lonnie Vont thought Judge Parker might want his mule back, with or without his young bailiff. The Judge might even want it back bad enough to offer a tip. But just before he started across, two wagoneers traveling from Memphis took passage to the west bank of the Arkansas. In the course of the trip, not a long one, the more voluble of the two men mentioned that there had been a terrible massacre in a Cherokee town up in the hills. Forty men had been killed, in a shootout in a courtroom. They had heard about it from an old coloured man who farmed a small spread on the flats near the Greater Boggy River, a stream that sometimes flooded and washed out his crops. The coloured man had once been a slave to one of the chiefs of the Choctaw Nation. The chief had freed him out of consideration for long and loyal service.

  “Forty men? Are you certain of the number, sir?” Judge Parker asked, when the news was conveyed to him later that morning. He looked at Lonnie Vont sternly. Lonnie chewed leaf tobacco, uncured; he had just crammed a leaf in his mouth about the time the Judge put his question to him. He hastily removed the chaw before answering.

  “Forty, Your Honour, that’s what the old nigger told the wagon boys,” Lonnie Vont said, more than a little unnerved by the Judge’s stern look. The likelihood of a tip for mule return seemed to be getting slimmer by the minute.

  “It would take a Gatling gun to slaughter that many men, and I doubt Judge Sixkiller would permit a Gatling gun in his courtroom,” Judge Parker said.

  “Why, I don’t know about that, Judge. I wasn’t there,” Lonnie told him. “Forty’s the nigger’s figure, not mine. I just thought you might want your mule home quick. I don’t usually ferry this early.”

  “So now you want a tip, is that the reason you’re standing there like you’re planted in the ground?” the Judge asked.

  Lonnie Vont was so taken aback by the tone of the question, let alone the content, that he stood with the half-chawed tobacco leaf in his hand, unable to phrase a reply.

  “I consider tippage wasteful economics. The fact is, that mule can swim faster than you can winch your boat,” the Judge said. “I would not own an animal too incompetent to find its way home. I thank you for the information, though I doubt its accuracy.”

  Judge Parker’s doubts about the accuracy of the death count had to be voiced several more times during the course of a long day, as a stream of enthusiastic informants poured out of the hills and into his courtroom to tell him about the great gun battle in Tahlequah.

  One man, a giant German named Dieter DeBrugge who traded in hides, assured the Judge solemnly that a Cherokee woman had told him the dead numbered over fifty

  “Fifty? Why, we’ll be up to the Gettysburg figure before long,” the Judge remarked. “If it was much more than ten, I’d be surprised, and ten’s bad enough. I’ve held court on this frontier since I was twenty-three years old, and I’ve never had a fatality in my courtroom.”

  Dieter DeBrugge was not too interested in the massacre. He thought the Judge might appreciate a change of subject.

  “Skunk hides make good muffs,” he announced, to the Judge’s surprise. “I’ve got plenty of skunk hides. Does your missus need a muff?”

  “If she does, she can catch her own skunk,” the Judge informed him. “I don’t waste money on the hides of common varmints.”

  Dieter felt a little hurt. He had some excellent hides in his wagon, and at the least he had hoped to sell Judge Parker enough of them to make a muff.

  Once Dieter—gloom in his face—left the courtroom, the judge shut his door and spent a few hours looking out the window. Though he did not believe fifty men were dead in Tahlequah, or forty men, either, he was firmly convinced that something had gone very wrong at Zeke Proctor’s trial. Even if two or three men had been killed, it still ranked as a calamity of major proportions for both Judge B. H. Sixkiller specifically, and local law in general. For a court trial to be interrupted by violence was a terrible, terrible thing, whether it was one person killed, or a hundred. Judge Parker wanted no more exaggerated gossip. He wanted to hear the story from Chilly Stufflebean, or someone equally reliable.

  The fact that the mule had come back without Chilly was a troubling thing. It might mean that Chilly himself was among the dead. The mule arrived muddy to the shoulders, and the Judge could not recall whether Chilly knew how to swim. If he had not been shot, it might be that he drowned. It was worrisome indeed. The Judge chided himself for having sent an inexperienced young man on such a difficult mission. The Judge’s wife, Martha, doted on Chilly. Mart would chide him worse if the young man failed to return.

  Outside the courthouse, a knot of men gathered to discuss the bloody news. As more and more of the curious or the frightened rode into Fort Smith, the knot grew and grew. The Judge’s muddy mule was scrutinized for clues, and though none were found, it did not stop the more imaginative members of the crowd from concocting wild theories about what had happened at Tahlequah.

  A mountaineer named Cracky Bolen, a man who lived largely on pine nuts and squirrels, said he had a dream about an uprising of the nations a night or two before. In his dream, hundreds of Cherokees and Choctaws and Creeks and Seminoles had painted themselves up with war paint, like warriors of old, and they had come pouring down from the hills and into Tahlequah, yelling battle cries as they came, wiping out everybody in the courthouse there.

  Cracky Bolen’s theory was so popular that other members of the crowd took it up and expanded on it. Soon, the common view was that the Cherokees had completely wiped out Tahlequah and several other communities as well. Talk arose of a general uprising that threatened the whole of Arkansas. The talk became so urgent that several of the men hurried over to the hardware store and bought new rifles.

  Judge Parker stayed in his chambers all day with the shades pulled. When he walked out of the courthouse to go home for supper, he was highly annoyed to see a mob filling up the street. The mob was armed to the teeth, and ready for battle.

  “Here, now—what’s this? Why are you crowding up the street?” the Judge asked, impatient. “I need to walk this mule home, and I don’t need a hundred people to help me!”

  “But Judge, there’s Indian trouble,” one skinny fellow said. “We’ve heard the Cherokees have wiped out Tahlequah.”

  “That’
s a peculiar statement,” the Judge answered, staring at the man without warmth. “Tahlequah is a Cherokee town. They own it. They people it. Why would they suddenly take a notion to wipe themselves out?”

  The Judge’s plain statement immediately took the steam out of the crowd. Somehow, most of them had managed to lose track of the fact that Tahlequah was a Cherokee community. The skinny man who had spoken up looked at Cracky Bolen accusingly.

  “Well, Cracky said it. I don’t know where he got his information,” the skinny man said.

  “I had that bad dream, and then there was news of the shootin’,” Cracky said, his voice falling off at the word “shootin’.” Judge Parker had caught his mule and was proceeding up the street with him. He clearly did not expect a horde of Indians to sweep down on Fort Smith. Cracky felt foolish—and he was not alone in the feeling.

  Then the Judge stopped, and turned to the mob again.

  “Don’t you men be causing the spread of foolish rumours,” the Judge said. “The truth of this is something I don’t know, but I will know it by tomorrow, I expect. Is anyone heading up in the direction of the Blue Hills?”

  Cracky Bolen himself lived in the Blue Hills.

  “Why, me, Judge,” he said. “Would your missus like some squirrels?”

  The Judge thought it odd that his wife Mart had been offered both skunk hides and squirrels in the same afternoon. It annoyed him. If Mart had a desire for varmint hides, she could soon be well supplied.

  “My missus can catch most of what she needs herself. I can supply the rest personally,” the Judge replied tartly. He did not like a common mob making reference to his wife. “What I need is for somebody to contact Marshal Dan Maples. I need to see Marshal Maples, and I need to see him soon!”

  “Why, Dan’s my neighbour,” Cracky said. “I’ll go by and tell him in the mornin’.”

  “If it’s on your way home, tell him tonight,” the Judge said bluntly. “Much obliged.”

  With that, he led his mule on up the wide street, wondering what had become of his young bailiff, Chilly Stufflebean.

  2

  THE MINUTE DALE MILLER FELT TUXIE’S HOT FOREHEAD AND LOOKED closely at the red, ugly wound in her husband’s leg, she turned white. She even smelled the leg, putting her nose right down against the wound.

  “I told you not to go off. But you went off, and now you’re dying, Tuxie,” Dale said, a quaver in her voice. Neither Ned nor Tuxie could remember when Dale’s voice had quavered so.

  She glanced once around the room at her nine silent children, and immediately took off her apron and put on her old blue raincoat.

  “Put my saddle on your horse, Ned. I got to go,” Dale ordered.

  “Go where, honey?” Tuxie asked, startled. It was night, and pitch black. Where would his wife be going, on a pitch black night?

  “I’ve got to find Old Turtle Man,” she said. “He’s our only chance.”

  Ned had every intention of rushing right home and spending the night in Jewel’s warm, smooth arms, but Dale’s look stopped him. She looked wild in the eyes, like a panicked cow. Ned knew a saw wound was bound to be dangerous, yet Tuxie did not appear that sick to him, just feverish. He had even made a certain amount of conversation with Ned, on the way home.

  Now Dale was proposing to seek out Old Turtle Man, a task not easy to accomplish, even in bright daylight. The old man wandered the hills and creek beds, returning only now and then to his hut on the highest ridge on the Mountain. Dale Miller might be forceful, but that was no guarantee she could find Old Turtle Man very quickly.

  “Why, let me go, Dale,” Ned proposed. “It’s over ten miles to that hut of his, and it’s black as pitch out. That old man wanders. You might ride all that way, and still not find him.”

  Dale tied a rough shawl over her head, and was ready to go.

  “Just saddle the horse, Ned—don’t be objecting,” she told him. “I’ll find that old man because I have to. If I don’t, I’ll lose my husband.”

  “It’s just a fever, Dale,” Tuxie protested. But his wife did not bother to answer.

  “If somebody has to go, it ought to be me,” Ned insisted. “I know the Mountain about as good as anybody around.”

  “No,” Dale replied, firm. “Tuxie is my husband. I’ll go. You wouldn’t know what to ask if you found Old Turtle Man. He might ask you questions you don’t know the answers to and send you back with the wrong potions.”

  “And he might even ask you a question you don’t know the answer to,” Ned said, irritated by Dale’s conviction that she was the only one in the world with any sense.

  Dale found a hamper to take with her so she could bring back whatever wild medicines Old Turtle Man might gather for her. She looked at her children again, and saw that they were frightened. In this instance, she could be of little help to them, for she was frightened, too.

  “There ain’t no question about my husband I don’t know the answer to,” she told Ned Christie. “The only thing I don’t know is how to save his life. If that fever goes much higher, you’ll have to take him down to the creek and lay him in the water. It’s the only thing that might cool him.”

  She looked once more at Tuxie, but she did not let the look linger. Knowing that he might die before she got back would only make it harder to leave.

  “Build a fire down by the creek, Ned. Put Tuxie on a pallet,” she said, once the saddle had been switched and she was mounted. “When his fever gets too scorching, put him in the creek. Leave him in the water till his teeth start chattering, then wrap him up again.”

  “My place is right on the way,” Ned reminded her. “Could you yell to Jewel when you pass by to let her know I’m here? She might want to ride over tomorrow and help me nurse Tuxie.”

  Dale Miller had already whirled the horse, and put it into a lope.

  In a moment, the darkness swallowed her up.

  3

  I BEEN SEEING HORSE TRACKS AROUND HERE THAT DON’T BELONG, Sully Eagle told Zeke the minute Zeke rode up to his own house and jumped off his horse. Since his home was on the way to where Becca was, Zeke thought he’d spend a night in his own bed and maybe clean up a little before going to get his wife back.

  His days in the Tahlequah jail had been so boresome that he had completely lost interest in his appearance. He’d let his whiskers grow; he’d failed to trim his moustache; his long hair was tangled; his long underwear was filthy; and there might even be a louse or two about his person—none of which would help him with Becca, a woman to whom cleanliness was truly next to godliness, as she had so often pointed out to him.

  On his way to the house, he made a hasty tour of the lots and determined that at least some of his livestock were still alive. The mule was present; a few shoats had been born; and the milk cow was jingling her bell from somewhere in the meadow. Sully Eagle had done a reasonably good job of keeping the place in order, it seemed, despite which Zeke was in no mood to listen to Sully’s theories about horse tracks. All he wanted was to spend the night, change his underwear, trim his moustache, and be off to see Becca as soon as it was light.

  “What’s the grub, Sully?” he asked, ignoring Sully’s remark about the horse tracks.

  “Corncakes,” Sully replied, a little hurt that Zeke was so abrupt. “I been fryin’ up that weevily corn. It’s that or hunt, and I’m not goin’ off huntin’, not with the Becks on the loose. T. Spade shot at me once, and he didn’t miss me by enough. I won’t take the risk again.”

  “There’d be no risk, T. Spade is dead. A bailiff shot him,” Zeke informed him.

  “A what?” Sully asked.

  “A bailiff, he’s a person who works for the court,” Zeke said. “I had hoped for better grub than weevily corn. Surely there’s pork in the smokehouse.”

  “No, there ain’t. Didn’t you hear about the whirlwind?” Sully asked.

  “I been in jail,” Zeke reminded him. “News was sparse from up this way.”

  “A whirlwind hit the smokehouse and b
lew it away,” Sully said. “I hid in the root cellar, or it would have got me.”

  Zeke, devastated by this news, dashed out the door and ran up the slope, only to discover that for once Sully Eagle was not exaggerating: his smokehouse was certainly gone. Sully ambled up, just as Zeke sat down on a stump to collect his wits.

  “What about the meat? It might blow the smokehouse away, but surely the meat’s somewhere,” Zeke reasoned. Not only had his wife left him, but his smokehouse was gone, too. It was a poor homecoming.

  “A bear got the meat,” Sully said. He did not comment further.

  “Why didn’t you shoot it, Sully?” Zeke asked. “There was two pigs in that smokehouse, and a full quarter of beef. That’s too goddamn much meat to give to a bear.”

  “It was dark, and I was still in the root cellar,” Sully told him. “I don’t like to shoot at bears when it’s dark, it’s apt to rile them up.”

  “Well, this has riled me up!” Zeke announced. “I lost my smokehouse, and all my meat, too. If you’d just banged the frying pan, that bear would have gone away.”

  Sully concentrated on frying up the corncakes. There was no point in trying to reason with Zeke Proctor when he was out of sorts. Zeke’s temper was erratic, which was why he had got in trouble in the first place. Now he had shown up at home, expecting everything to be perfect, despite the absence of his wife and the prevalence of such things as whirlwinds and bears. Sully decided that the best thing he could do was concentrate on his cooking, and pick as many weevils out of the corncakes as he could before passing them to Zeke.