“I thought there’d be grub here, I hate losing meat,” Zeke said several times, as he was consuming the corncakes. Though anxious in the extreme to get Becca back home, he nonetheless felt out of sorts with her suddenly, for going off to her people and leaving the farm management to strange old Sully Eagle—a man who, it appeared now, could not be counted upon to take even the most rudimentary steps toward the upkeep of his farm—steps like shooting a bear that was making off with all the pork.
“Once I get Becca home, I intend to track that goddamn bear and kill it,” he said, his annoyance growing as he attempted to choke down the tasteless corncakes. The corncakes were so dry that he had to soak them with molasses in order to make them palatable.
“One of them shoats is growin’ fast,” Sully ventured. “It’ll be big enough to butcher in another month.”
“I doubt it,” Zeke said. He was in a mood to disagree with everything the old man said, just on principle. Sully, a dependable man when Zeke was right minded, became more and more undependable in Zeke’s mind, as Zeke became more and more irked.
Since Zeke was almost as testy as a bear himself, Sully decided to abandon any attempt to make conversation for the evening. He wandered off to his shed, over by the livestock lots. It was filled with corn-shucks and made a comfortable resting place. Occasionally, he heard the rustle of a big rattlesnake, from somewhere down in the shucks, but he had never been an enemy of the snake people and rested at ease, despite the proximity of the large snake. Once in a while, on warm days, he would see it resting on a flat rock by the cistern. Pete would trot down and yip at the snake sometimes, but Pete knew better than to go for it. The old snake was tolerant, but not so tolerant as to put up with much insult from a fat black dog.
In the morning, Zeke hauled a couple of buckets of water up from the well and set about cleansing himself. He had intended to heat the water and indulge in a proper bath, but when the time came his impatience was such that he skipped the heating and just bathed cold, shaved cold, and did not even bother to trim his moustache. Sometimes, if she was in an especially good mood, Becca liked to trim his moustache herself. Perhaps she would be pleased that he had left it for her to trim.
As Zeke was saddling up, Sully wandered down the hill carrying a possum he had cornered in the outhouse. It was a fat, young possum; Sully had already skinned it and had it ready for the frying pan. Zeke decided the day was young enough so that he could wait and have a bite of possum before setting off.
“I’m seeing too many horse tracks that don’t have any business being around here,” Sully remarked, as they were finishing the possum meat. Zeke had grease on his moustache from his greedy approach to the possum.
“You said that last night,” Zeke reminded him. “Don’t be worrying me about horse tracks—half the Becks are dead. Don’t be lazy about hunting, either. The Becks that are left have better things to do than shoot at you.”
He then favored Sully with a quick report on the courthouse massacre.
“Twelve kilt? Why, that’s half the community!” Sully exclaimed. “I am sorry to hear that White Sut Beck escaped. Davie’s bad, but White Sut is worse.”
“Ned could have killed him, I don’t know why he didn’t,” Zeke told him.
“White Sut lives way over by Salt Hill, with his bear and his buzzard,” Sully said. “They say he sleeps in the salt. Maybe that’s why he’s crazy.
“I think the Squirrel brothers made them horse tracks,” Sully added.
Though Zeke was impatient with more mention of horse tracks,
Sully thought it best to remind him that the Squirrel brothers were still on the prod. They were nowhere near as mean as the Becks, but Moses Squirrel was a fair shot, capable of putting a bullet in Zeke, mean or not.
“I have no interest in the Squirrels, and I’ll tell ’em so if they attempt to interfere with me,” Zeke said, as he mounted to leave. “I want you to sweep out this house and mop it down. Becca won’t like it if she has to come home to a dirty house.”
“What if she don’t come back, Zeke? Who will you wife with?” Sully inquired.
Zeke was so annoyed by the question that he rode off without a reply. What grounds did Sully Eagle have to suppose that Becca might not consent to come back home? He was putting himself out to the extent of riding forty miles to see her; why would she not return with him? He was a wanted man, too. He should be putting distance between himself and the white marshals who would soon be showing up to look for him. Surely Becca would want to come back, once she realized what a risk he was taking for her.
She might not, though—that was a fact Sully Eagle had been impolite enough to remind him of. Women could do what they pleased, and he could not force Becca to come back if she did not want to come back. He remembered her last look in the jail: her look had been cold and steely as a gun barrel. What if he rode all that way and Becca met him with the gun-barrel look? What would he do then?
Zeke’s worry increased, as he rode north. The fact was, Becca had metal in her. She could stiffen like steel in response to offenses he had not intended. Mainly, she had been a dutiful, hard-working wife—she kept a tidy house and was a fair cook when she put her mind to it, and she had never refused his embraces. Past a point, though, Becca felt free to ignore orders she did not like, and would not be told what to do. He had been raised to believe that a wife ought to love, honour, and obey her husband. He knew Becca loved him and supposed she probably honoured him; but when it came to obeying, she felt free to walk her own trail.
Zeke hated courting women. He was too busy for it. If Becca refused to come back home with him, he would be in a pickle. He had accidentally killed the only other woman he fancied—Polly Beck— and he would be hard put to know what to do for a female if Becca showed him her gun-barrel side.
He was not a man to sleep well in an empty bed, either. The sap rose too strongly in him at night, and the thought of having no companion at the supper table except old Sully Eagle did not please him in the least.
As Zeke rode off, he could hear Pete flinging himself at the walls of the springhouse, where he had locked him. Becca was not fond of dogs and was particularly short of affection when it came to Pete. If she saw him riding up with Pete in front of his saddle, it might prejudice his case before he got to speak to her.
Sully had orders to let Pete out in a few hours; no doubt Pete would fling himself at the springhouse wall the whole time. Pete never stopped trying to get his way, not until he was completely exhausted.
Zeke had saddled his big bay gelding for the long ride up toward Missouri. The bay had an easy lope, a gait he could sustain for miles without slacking. Zeke was loping along working over in his mind what he was going to say to Becca, when he came atop a little ridge and had to pull up to keep from plowing right into the Squirrel brothers, the three of whom were planted squarely across the trail. All three had their guns drawn and were no more than twenty yards away, killing distance even for poor pistol shots such as the Squirrels. To make matters worse, Rat Squirrel was aiming a Winchester rifle at him. Though Rat might have missed with a pistol, Zeke regarded it as unlikely that he would miss with a Winchester rifle—not at that distance.
Zeke stopped the bay, looking a good deal chagrined. He realized he should have listened to Sully, who though old and boresome, was capable of telling which horse tracks belonged on the property, and which did not. Still, it was just the Squirrels. He had bluffed them in the past, and he felt confident he could bluff them again. His desire to get Becca back home gave him even more brass.
“You boys don’t be pointing weapons at me,” he said. “The trial is over, and I’m acquitted. Get out of the way and let me pass.”
“The only place you’re passing to is hell, Zeke,” Moses Squirrel said. “Disarm him, Rat.”
“You disarm him, Jim,” Rat Squirrel replied. “I have to keep him covered with this rifle.”
“Just throw your guns down, Zeke, and that’ll be that,” Jim Squir
rel said politely. Jim had always been a good deal more pleasant than his brothers.
“No, I was acquitted proper, and I won’t give up my arms,” Zeke countered. “I am going to get my wife, and I need my weaponry. You boys know there’s always bandits up Missouri way.”
He was considering what his chances were of busting through the Squirrels and making it to a chinaberry thicket not more than a quarter of a mile away. Once in the chinaberries, he felt sure he could out-shoot the Squirrels, though it was a damn nuisance to have to take the time to do it on the day he had an urgent need to reclaim his wife.
“You may have got a passel of gravediggers to hold up their hands, but you ain’t acquitted in our book,” Moses said. “We intend to hang you in the name of our sister. We’d rather not shoot you first, but we will if we have to.”
Zeke felt a red-eyed anger coming on. Here were the damn Squirrels, making a nuisance of themselves over Polly Beck, whom he had killed entirely by accident. It was an outrage to him that they would block him on a public trail at a time when he sorely needed to see his wife. Without further delay, he put spurs to the bay and charged straight at Rat, drawing a pistol as he came.
Unnerved, all three of the Squirrels fired and missed. Rat’s shot knocked a crabapple off a tree fifty yards behind Zeke, who bumped Rat and nearly knocked his horse down as he came busting through the line of men. Zeke fired a pistol right at Rat Squirrel’s head, but missed due to rapid movement.
The Squirrels recovered quickly from their surprise at Zeke’s sudden charge. In a moment, Zeke heard their horses behind him, but was not greatly worried about being overtaken before he made the thicket. A factor in his favour was that the Squirrels were notoriously cheap when it came to purchasing horse-flesh: they had no mount to match his bay.
He was almost into the woods, when he felt a jolt in his ribs—a strong jolt—as if a post oak limb had whacked him. But it was a chinaberry thicket he was approaching; there were no post oaks in sight. The jolt caused him to lose a stirrup, an unfortunate thing, since the bay charged right into the thicket as if it were merely shrub, breaking limbs and jumping fallen logs.
“Whoa! Whoa! You’ve got to slow down now,” Zeke said to the horse. The command came too late: the bay jumped a tangle of logs and underbrush, causing Zeke to lose the other stirrup. A moment later, a limb took him in the chest and swept him off the gelding as cleanly as if he had hit a wire. Zeke grabbed for his rifle as he went off, but missed. He came crashing to the ground on his back, armed only with a pistol. When he rolled over, he saw a smear of blood on the grass and felt a warmth on his right side. That jolt had most likely been a bullet smacking into his ribs, he thought. The bay stopped when Zeke fell off, and stood a few feet away. Zeke knew he ought to mount and get a little deeper into the copse of trees, deep enough that he would be safe from the Squirrels while he took his shirt off and assessed his wound. But to his dismay, a weakness like that which had come over him in the courtroom assailed him again. He sat up, but could not seem to get his legs under him. There was not much blood on the leaves, and Zeke did not suppose himself to be badly hurt—but the weakness slowed him so that he was losing time. When Zeke looked up, his head began to swim. One moment he saw his gelding, and the next moment he did not. The trees seemed to be circling him, pulling in closer and closer. When he looked up at the sky, it was only a pinpoint. He heard footsteps and knew it must be the Squirrel brothers, moving into kill him. But the fact that the trees were circling closer and closer, and the sky receding higher and higher, worried him more.
While he was waiting for the spinning to stop, he felt something cool pressed against his temple. It was cool as Becca’s hand, when she came in on a winter morning from drawing a bucket of well water.
But it was not Becca’s hand: it was a gun barrel, and Moses Squirrel, a cheerful look on his face, was holding it to his head.
“You’re caught now, you son-of-a-bitch,” Moses said affably.
Zeke had never enjoyed being cursed. He started to make a sharp reply, but found he was too tired to get sharp words out.
“You boys go home and don’t bother me,” he said, in a weary tone. “It feels like you’ve kilt me anyway.”
“No, you ain’t kilt, Zeke—it’s just a flesh wound,” the polite Jim Squirrel informed him. “You might have a broke rib, that’d be about the worst.”
“Truss him up, Rat. We need to carry him out of this thicket so we can hang him proper,” Moses said. He had not withdrawn his pistol barrel from Zeke’s temple, not yet. Zeke Proctor was known for his abilities at escaping desperate situations, and Moses Squirrel meant to see that he did not escape this one.
“What with? I ain’t got no twine,” Rat replied.
“Why, I told you to bring plenty of twine, Rat,” Moses reminded him. “How can we hang a man proper if we can’t tie him up first?”
“I lost the twine back on the road when Zeke run through us,” Rat admitted. “I had it out, all ready to tie him, but then he took that run at us and I ain’t seen the twine since.”
Moses was nonplussed. Here they had their man down—dazed, bleeding, and weak—and they did not have the necessary equipment to securely tie him up long enough to get him to a hanging tree.
“Tie him with your suspenders, then,” he suggested, looking at Rat.
“My suspenders keep my pants up,” Rat reminded his brother, looking at Moses indignantly. “If I take ’em off, my pants will fall down.”
Rat had always hated to expose his legs, which were so white in color that they reminded him of a fish belly.
“Just take one of ’em off,” Moses suggested. “Zeke’s shot anyway. One suspender’s plenty for keeping your dern pants up.”
“I won’t be tied with suspenders,” Zeke said. “I have not sunk that low. Pull that trigger, Moses, if you’re determined to have me dead because of an accident I didn’t intend.”
Moses wanted Zeke dead, but he did not pull the trigger. In their youth, he and Zeke had hunted coons together, and gone to many a horse race. Now the man sat before him, weak and bleeding. If they could have killed him in the heat of battle, that would have been one thing; but now that he was captured, it seemed to Moses that Zeke’s death ought to be accomplished with the correct ceremony, which meant a hanging.
The only question was how to secure the prisoner until they could get him to an adequate tree. Most of the chinaberry limbs were either too skinny to hold a hefty body like Zeke’s, or were too high off the ground to get a rope over. It was vexing, and the vexation was not diminished by his brother’s reluctance to remove his suspenders.
“Cut a string off your saddle,” Moses said, impatient. “A good leather saddle string would hold him.”
Rat greeted that command with even greater reluctance.
“If I do that, I won’t have nothin’ to tie my slicker on my saddle with,” he said.
“Goddammit, Rat, quit your whinin’—I’m losin’ my patience with you,” Moses said. “You was supposed to keep up with that twine, and now you’ve lost it. We got us a prisoner here who’s gettin’ weaker by the minute. He’ll bleed out and die, if we don’t hang him quick.”
Rat realized that he had better compromise. Moses was not a man whose patience could be trusted.
“I’ll take off one suspender if you’ll take off one, Jim,” Rat suggested, looking at his mild brother. “That way won’t neither one of us have to go naked so’s to hang Zeke.”
“Well, but mine are stretchy,” Jim Squirrel said. “If Zeke was to twist hard enough, I expect he could squirm loose, and then where would we be?”
At that moment, Zeke did squirm loose—not from bonds, but from the strange, enervating weakness that had seized him moments before. He felt his strength surge back, and with it his anger at being harassed and detained by the Squirrels. Moses was looking off for a moment, listening to his brothers discuss the suspender issue. The cocked pistol was not pressed against Zeke’s temple, but was just ha
nging from Moses’s hand. Zeke grabbed it suddenly and twisted it straight up, squeezing Moses Squirrel’s hand until the pistol fired.
Moses fell backward, most of his jaw shot away. Zeke twisted the pistol loose and shot twice at Rat, who immediately turned and ran. Zeke’s second shot nicked Rat in the hip, but Rat managed to get into the underbrush. Only then did Rat realize he had left his rifle propped against a stump while they were trying to think of a way to tie up Zeke.
Once Zeke saw that Moses was shot in the face and out of action for a while, he turned the pistol on Jim Squirrel, who just stood there holding his bridle reins, a disturbed look on his face.
“I didn’t think this hanging would work,” Jim said. “I told the boys that, but Mo’s stubborn, and Polly was his favourite.”
Zeke had been in the mood to shoot down all the Squirrels and put an end to the continual vexation they caused him, but Jim Squirrel was too polite to just shoot in the midst of a conversation. Zeke contented himself with disarming the man, an action which seemed to relieve Jim considerably.
“I guess you done for Mo, looks like,” he said, squatting down by his brother.
Zeke took a quick look, and formed a different opinion.
“Moses ain’t dying,” he said. “He’s just lost a piece of his jawbone. He’ll have to chew his vittles on the right side of his mouth. I hope it will teach him to think twice about putting himself in my way when I’m in a hurry to get to Missouri.”
Zeke got up, caught his horse, and swung quickly into the saddle. He wanted to be mounted in case the strange weakness came over him again. Once safely in the saddle, he pulled up his shirt and inspected his wound. He saw at once that Jim Squirrel had been accurate—the bullet had made a furrow in his side, probably smacking into a rib in the course of its travels. The bullet had gone out the other side, and the bleeding had almost stopped. He felt confident he could make it to Becca without serious inconvenience.
“I wonder where Rat’s run off to?” Jim Squirrel inquired, looking around for his brother. “He’s going to have to help me get Moses on his horse, or Moses is apt to lie here and bleed to death.”
Zeke and Ned Page 17