Zeke and Ned

by Larry McMurtry

  “The next question is, do you think you can locate ten able deputies?” he asked.

  “If the President can afford it, I can,” Tailcoat admitted. “I ain’t had my breakfast, Judge, and it will soon be sundown. Let’s strike a deal. Then I’d like to go eat a good thick beefsteak, at Ulysses S. Grant’s expense.”

  “President Grant—I told you to watch your tongue, sir!” the Judge said, sharply. He noted a flicker of amusement in the killer’s eyes when he said it, a fact that did not help his indigestion.

  Nonetheless, he was acting on presidential orders. Within the next half hour, he struck a deal.

  27

  “NOPE. TUXIE AIN’T GOING ON ANY LENGTHY ERRANDS,” DALE MILLER said firmly, when Ned showed up to ask if Tuxie would go fetch Becca Proctor to her husband’s bedside.

  That was the response Ned had expected, but it annoyed him anyway. The most annoying thing about it was that Tuxie himself merely sat there, not even trying to pretend he was the boss of his household—Tuxie just looked at Dale, and smiled.

  Ned himself would have loved to give Dale Miller a good shaking, but she was Tuxie’s wife, not his.

  “Dale, I just come from there, only I didn’t know Zeke was sick,” he said. “Why can’t Tuxie go fetch her?”

  “Because Davie Beck might drop out of another tree and saw his other leg,” Dale said. “I ain’t risking it, Ned, and that’s that!”

  Tuxie was friend enough to loan him a fresh horse, at least, though it did little to improve Ned’s mood. While he was saddling up, he could not restrain himself from complaining to Tuxie about Dale’s high-handed behaviour.

  “Why, you’re no better than a slave, Tuxie,” Ned remarked. “That woman tells you when you can butter your biscuit, and when you can’t.”

  Tuxie did not care to argue the point. He knew his friend thought he ought to be a more forceful husband, for they had debated this same problem several times before.

  “I nearly died, Ned,” Tuxie reminded him. “Dale’s right to try and keep me off the roads. You may be a match for Davie Beck, but I ain’t—and we got nine little ones to think of. I’d go fetch Becca for you if the roads were safe, but they ain’t, and they won’t be while Davie’s on the prowl.”

  “I hope I see that fool. I’ll draw his damn fangs, if I do!” Ned replied.

  He left the Miller farm in a high lope, annoyed by the difficulties women could create for a man. He could not recall his own mother ever making such difficulties for his father. She worked hard, kept to her place, and said little. Ned could not imagine her being so bold as to tell his father he could not go someplace he might need to go.

  Now, though, he himself was constantly being jerked about by the obstinacies of women. His own wife had thrown a cup of scalding coffee at him, for no better reason than that he had proposed to leave. Dale Miller’s balk where Tuxie was concerned meant that he had to ride thirty-five miles over a road he had just traversed, in order to try and persuade yet another obstinate woman to come to her own husband’s bedside.

  Ned had not forgotten Becca’s chilly response when he inquired about Zeke, on his recent visit. Becca had exhibited no concern, and no curiosity, either—though Zeke was her wedded husband. Ned did not suppose that Zeke was a perfect mate; no doubt he slipped out with women, and more than likely had been slipping out with the Beck woman before he accidentally killed her. Ned did not approve of such behaviour himself, but he was realistic enough to know that these were the ways of men.

  Though Ned loved his Jewel and was eager for their child to come, he wondered for a few minutes, as he set off up the long trail north, if he had been wise to marry into Zeke Proctor’s family. It meant that he had to deal not just with his pretty Jewel, but with her chilly mother and her yappy sister as well. That was three women right there, to be drains on his energy and his patience—and Dale Miller made a fourth. Dale was not an in-law, but she was a neighbour and the wife of a close friend. Just neighbouring with a woman as strong-willed and direct-spoken as Dale could be a wearying thing.

  Ned soon worked himself up into a lather of irritation, at the thought of how put upon he was by naggy womenfolk. He pushed the horse as hard as he could, eager to get his errand finished and behind him.

  When he was about three miles from Zeke’s place, he came upon Sully Eagle once again. This time, Sully was not falling out of a tree; he was sitting on the ground, playing with a stack of bones.

  “Dern if you ain’t always on the road, Sully,” Ned said. “A fellow would think you lived out here and slept in a thicket. Is Becca home?”

  “She was last time I looked,” Sully replied. “You’re back quick, Ned. What’s the news?”

  “Zeke’s taken ill, he’s at my place,” Ned said. “I’m here to fetch Becca, if she’ll fetch.”

  Sully was studying the stack of bones, and did not seem eager to comment about Becca.

  “Do you think she’ll fetch?” Ned asked, finally. He was nervous about Becca, now that he was so close to the Proctor homestead, and would have appreciated a word of help from Sully.

  “Becca’s working in the garden . . . I don’t know about the fetching,” Sully admitted. He had no intention of commenting on Becca’s willingness to go tend to her husband. Of course, he knew Becca was on the outs with Zeke at the moment, but he did not suppose that meant the condition would be permanent. To Sully, relations between husbands and wives were like the weather—some days good, some days bad; some days better, some days worse. He himself had seven wives, over the course of his life, all of whom had often been on the outs with him, though they had each and every one stayed with him until they died. His last wife died over two years ago—a cold stretch of time to be womanless—but he was too poor to afford another wife. Sully was optimistic, however, and still had hopes that an affordable wife might turn up. Meanwhile, he was sleeping in the corn-shucks with the big rattlesnake. The last thing he wanted to concern himself with was Becca’s problems with Zeke, or Zeke’s problems with Becca.

  The fact was, Sully had his own problems with Becca Proctor, the main one being that she expected him to work in the garden all day and some of the night. Sully did not mind gardening, up to a point— but he had other things to do with his life, such as think about the bear bones he had stumbled onto up on the hill. It was rare to find bear bones laying out on the grass, for bears usually went underground to die. Sully had located quite a few of the bones from the bear’s paws and had them spread out on the ground before him, trying to fit them together so he could get a sense of what the bear had been like when he was alive. It was slow work—he had to concentrate on the bear, as he arranged the bones on the grass before him. And it was important work, too—bears were powerful, and needed to be understood. The bear who had left his bones on the hill might have descendants or kinsmen close by. Sully could not be bothered with pulling weeds out of Becca’s garden when he should be thinking about the bear, so he had run off for the day. He did not mind young Ned Christie stopping and palavering for a moment, since he liked Ned. But he did not intend to deflect his attention from serious study of the power of bears, in order to speculate about Becca and Zeke—a pair of stubborn, contrary humans.

  “If you see Zeke, tell him his dog’s pining for him,” Sully said. “Pete just lays there under the porch all day. He won’t hardly even eat.”

  “I have to get on and fetch Becca,” Ned said. “I ain’t got time to worry about Zeke’s dog.”

  When Ned rode up to Becca, she was on her knees in the garden, planting spuds.

  Becca was badly startled to see Ned Christie back so soon. Her first thought, when he rode up, was that Zeke might be dead, or else captured by the white law.

  In the time since her husband had been gone, Becca had had many lonely nights in which to probe her feelings, and inside, slowly, her heart was changing in its feeling for Zeke. She had studied her Bible, particularly the part that said a husband and wife should cleave to one another. Reading th
e Bible had left her with a feeling of guilt; Zeke had been wrong, but she had not been a perfect wife to him, either.

  The ghost of her caring for Zeke had come back to haunt her. She had gone to bed every night for the last week hoping that Zeke himself might come home.

  She was the wife he had taken vows with, and he ought not disrespect her. Still, she had come to recognize that she had been sour with her husband—and, after all, men were only men. She thought she might manage a change of heart, if he would only come home to her again. The sight of Ned caused a sharp fear to stab her. What if Zeke was dead? He would never know her forgiveness, and she would be left forever with the knowledge that her sourness had driven her husband away, to die alone.

  “Is he dead?” Becca asked at once, her fear rushing into her mouth.

  “Well, no, Becca,” Ned said. “He is bad sick, though. He’s at my place. I believe you better come, if you don’t mind.”

  Becca dropped the spade she had been digging with, and started immediately toward the house.

  “Would you saddle me that sorrel mare, and catch the little mule, Ned? We’ll have to take the triplets over to Zeke’s sister Susan, on the way,” she said, as she passed him. “Susan will look after them. I can’t leave them with Sully. He’s so old he loses track of them a week at a time.”

  Ned scarcely had time to catch the mare, saddle the little mule, and water Tuxie’s gelding, before Becca was back with her things. The triplets trailed behind her, and she had Pete in her arms, a look of surprise on the dog’s face.

  “Is his fever high? If Zeke’s poorly, we don’t want to linger,” she said, as they rode off. “He always runs them high fevers when he’s sick.”

  “It was up when I left,” Ned said. “Maybe the girls have got it down by now.”

  “I’ll get it down myself,” Becca said, in a determined tone.

  Ned was surprised by the change in her manner, and much relieved. He had not relished the thought of having to face Zeke without her, when Zeke was so sick. Pete rode in front of her saddle, his tongue lolling out as they moved along.

  “I expect seeing you and Pete will cheer him up,” Ned commented.

  Becca did not answer. She urged the mare into a high trot, ready to go heal her husband, and bring him home.

  28

  OLD MANDY SPRINGSTON DID NOT LIKE MEN TO BE RATTLING HER door in the middle of the night. Her temper shot up at the sound, and she crawled out of bed with a mouthful of curses ready to spew at men nervy enough to disturb her rest. She meant to deny them whiskey, whoever they were; the time for selling whiskey was before her bedtime. Most of the drinkers in Tahlequah knew that and bought their whiskey by sundown, or a little bit after. These strangers would soon find out, too—Old Mandy meant to give them a tongue scalding they would not soon forget. What right did they have to be milling around in her yard, shining lanterns in her window, when it was too late for even owls to be making noise?

  “Noisy fools!” she said, when she flung her door open. It was as far as she got with the tongue scalding.

  Jerry Ankle stood there, a hard killer from the Natchez country. The men behind him, in their long coats, silently holding lanterns, looked just as hard if not harder. Bill Pigeon, at the moment dead drunk on her back porch, had once raided with Jerry Ankle. According to Bill, Jerry Ankle had once taken against a whore in some shantytown in the Arkansas Flats. He had tied her to a wild mule, and chased the mule through cane thickets until the whore was dead.

  Now Old Mandy was facing not only Jerry Ankle, but seven or eight more silent men. She forgot about cursing the intruders; she was too scared even to talk. When hard men with long coats showed up in the middle of the night, it was best to walk small.

  “We need Bill Pigeon,” Jerry said. “If you got him, rout him out.”

  “What do you want with Billy? He’s drunk,” Old Mandy said.

  A tall man stood a little ways back from Jerry. She could not see his face. All that was really visible was the red end of the cigar in his mouth. She heard a clicking sound—a gun was being cocked, and uncocked.

  “We’re marshals of the law,” the tall man said. “We need the man, and we need him prompt.”

  Old Mandy did not want them to take Billy. Though he had done a few bad things in his life, he was not a killer—he was soft, compared to the men who stood in her yard. She was afraid that if they took him, he would die on the trail and she would never see him again. Her one hope was that Billy would be too drunk to be of any use to the men. Though all he did was lay on her back porch and drink all day, he was her Billy. Without him, she would be bereft, just an old woman who sold whiskey out of a chicken-house.

  “I expect he’s on the back porch,” she told them. “I don’t know if he’ll wake up—Billy’s hard to rouse, when he’s heavy drunk.”

  “We’ll rouse him,” Jerry Ankle said.

  They did rouse Billy Pigeon, but not quickly.

  “Who’s that? I’m asleep,” Billy said, when they yanked him off the porch, trying to get him on his feet. A short stub of a man cuffed Billy soundly three or four times, but the cuffing had no effect. The moment the men turned loose of him, Billy’s legs went out from under him and he fell full out in front of them, snoring loudly.

  “Why, the damn sot—he’s worthless. Let’s leave him,” Jerry Ankle said.

  “No. I want him along,” the tall man said. “These dern Cherokees all look alike to me. I don’t mind shooting Indians, but I’d rather shoot the Indians we’re getting paid to arrest. It’s the practical thing. We need this fellow to point out the men the Judge wants.”

  “But he won’t wake up,” Jerry Ankle said. “A dern sot like this will slow us down, Tail.”

  The tall man strode over and looked down at Billy. Old Mandy began to whimper, afraid the tall man was going to kill Billy for sleeping too hard. Instead, the man took a whiskey bottle out of his long coat and poured the liquid liberally over Billy’s legs.

  “This liquor tastes like kerosene. Let’s see if it’ll burn as good,” he said. “Strike a match to him, Beezle. If he don’t wake up, we’ll just cook him. He looks like a damn fat sausage anyway.”

  “Don’t burn Billy,” Old Mandy said, but one of the men backhanded her, and knocked her onto the woodpile. Her head spun, and her lip poured blood. The stubby man named Beezle lit the match. In a second, blue flames shot up from Billy’s pants legs. Billy snored on, but then he sat up abruptly, looked down, and realized his legs were on fire.

  “I’m afire, boys!” he screamed. “Put me out!”

  No one moved to help him, so he jumped up and ran for the horse trough, twenty yards away. Several of the marshals’ horses were watering at the trough, but Bill Pigeon shoved right through them and jumped in the water.

  “That’ll teach the damn sot to snore at me when I’m in a hurry,” the tall man said.

  Old Mandy ran over to Billy, who was moaning loudly. His pants had stopped burning, but his legs were badly scorched. As soon as Mandy helped him out of the horse trough, two of the men grabbed him and threw him on a horse. Pieces of his scorched pants were stuck to his legs.

  “I’m burnt, Mandy . . . where are they taking me?” Billy asked. He assumed he would soon be murdered.

  He started to moan again, but Jerry Ankle rode up to him, cuffing him hard.

  “Shut up that whining, we don’t want to wake the whole town,” Jerry said.

  “Who’s that man who burnt me? I swear he’s a hard one,” Billy said.

  Jerry Ankle was silent.

  Soon Billy was gone into the darkness. All Old Mandy could do was cry.

  29

  JEWEL WORKED ALL DAY TO KEEP HER FATHER FROM DYING BEFORE HER mother could get there. She remembered that when Tuxie Miller’s fever was high, Dale had instructed that he be laid in the creek so the chill water would cool him. She and Ned had done it twice, before Dale got back with Old Turtle Man.

  They did not have a creek, and she and Liza could no
t have carried Zeke to it anyway, but the water from Ned’s well was cool enough. Jewel bathed her father in it frequently, and kept the mustard plasters fresh.

  “I’ve smelt so much of this mustard that I doubt I’ll ever be able to smell proper again,” Liza complained—but Jewel paid her no mind. She kept working on keeping her father alive. She had observed Dale Miller closely during her five-day struggle to save Tuxie, and was convinced that Dale had saved him mainly by paying attention. Dale had not wandered off, not even to make water—Jewel made Ned fetch her a bucket just for that purpose. She did not sleep, or eat, except to sip a little coffee occasionally. Dale never looked off long enough for Tuxie to slip away from her and die.

  Jewel meant to be as careful with her father. She helped him to sit up; he did not cough quite so hard when he was upright. His abdomen was swollen, and he complained that his bowels were stopped up. Jewel remembered a prune syrup that Ned’s mother had left with her, in case Ned had such a complaint. Jewel gave a few spoonfuls to Zeke, and the syrup worked; by the middle of the afternoon, Zeke took a turn for the better, enough of a turn that he was able to walk to the outhouse with her and Liza’s help. He stayed in there so long that Jewel grew worried—she thought he might have worsened, and died. She was about to go peek in on him, when he opened the door and stumbled out. He was moving slowly, but he no longer looked like a man on the verge of death. When they got back in the house, Zeke sat up on his pallet and asked for his guns and some rags. He began to clean the guns, now and then humming a little tune while he worked. His fever had dropped, and an hour later he announced that he felt his appetite coming back. He asked Jewel to kill a hen, if she could spare one. He took off his filthy clothes and asked Liza to wash them. Jewel gave him one of Ned’s nightshirts to put on until his clothes dried.

  The hen was promptly killed and plucked, and while Zeke was eating it, Jewel remarked that Ned ought to be back with her mother pretty soon. Zeke, who had been eating with a good appetite, suddenly lost it. It occurred to him that Ned had probably told Becca he was at death’s door. When Ned had left to go fetch her, it was quite true—he had never felt so sick in his life. He had not expected to ever look upon his wife’s face again. While he knew he would not be at full strength again for a few days, he was not dying, not with a good bellyful of his daughter’s chicken and taters. Becca, who was suspicious by nature, was likely to think she had been chicaned.