When he bent to pick it up, he noticed blood on his hands; worse than that, the bending did not quite work. He could not reach the gavel, which lay right at his feet. But the gavel moved, or he did—one moment it was below him; then suddenly, it was at eye level. Judge Sixkiller got his hand on it, and began to rap it on the floor. It made him feel better to be rapping the gavel. He meant to rap it until people stopped clambering about and put away their firearms and settled down and behaved, like people in a courtroom ought to. When he turned his head toward the crowd, all he could see was feet—feet in farmer’s shoes and feet in boots. He saw a body laying not far away; it looked like one of the Becks, but he had never known the Becks well, and could not say which Beck it might be. He rapped the gavel again, and began to wave for the bailiff Judge Parker had so kindly loaned him. He wanted the bailiff to wade into the crowd and get them seated. Because Zeke Proctor’s lawyer had been late, the trial was already well behind schedule.
It was a thing that bothered the Judge grievously, too, for throughout his career he had insisted on punctuality. He meant to explain to Judge Parker the next time he saw him the chain of circumstances that had led to the trial slipping off schedule. Above him there was shooting and shouting, but the Judge, watching the feet, occasionally rapping his gavel, slipped beneath the racket into a place of quiet. He was the judge; he still had his gavel; and the gavel represented the law he had long tried to serve. He was confident he could eventually bring the trial to order and see that the matter before him was judged in a dignified manner. He loved the dignity of the law and always had, even when he had to do his judging in a plank schoolroom somewhere in the District and hand down rulings involving milk cows and goats. All the shouting and clambering going on around him would have to stop—and it would stop, he knew, once people heard the rapping of his gavel. It was a good gavel, oak wood, solid; he had ordered it special from a law store in Chicago, Illinois, and had waited six months for it to reach the District. Once they heard it rapping, the crowd would respond.
But now, just for a moment, it was good to rest, in the quiet place beneath the clambering and the shouting. He needed to rest, just for a moment—it might be a long trial.
“My God, T. Spade just shot the Judge!” Ned said. He could see no sign of Zeke. Maybe Marshal Yopps’s ruffians had dragged Zeke out the window and cut his throat, or taken him off to hang. But there was sign of Tuxie, who sat scrunched up in a corner, trying to get his leg to stop bleeding.
“Where’d Zeke go?” Ned asked. Then he took a shot at Slow John, whose head had just appeared in the window. Slow John disappeared, though Ned had shot high, nervous about hitting some innocent in the crowd, most of whom still sat on benches, bewildered.
“Zeke ain’t passed this way,” Tuxie said. “Loan me a weapon, I’m unarmed.”
“You stay down like you are,” Ned said. “They can’t hit you if you’re down. I got to find Zeke.”
Meanwhile, the Becks—all except Sam, who was dead—had equipped themselves with the firearms handed in through the window.
“Give up, Zeke, you’re surrounded,” Willy Beck yelled. “There’ll be innocent folks killed if there’s too much shooting in this courtroom!”
Then Willy saw a man about the height of Zeke and immediately shot him, only to realize when the man fell that it was not Zeke at all—it was a skunk trapper named Bully Lanham, a fellow he knew only slightly. Oh, Lord, I should have waited till he turned around, Willy thought. He realized that he had just fulfilled his own prophecy. Bully Lanham was a man with few friends who had probably just wandered into the trial out of curiosity.
Slow John made the mistake of trying to hand another gun through the window, this time to Frank Beck, who already had so many guns in his hands that he was having a hard time figuring out which one to shoot. Ned saw Slow John out of the corner of his eye; he jumped on a bench so as not to risk firing across the crowd at too low an angle. Slow John saw him and ducked, but not quickly enough or far enough. His hat fell off, and Ned’s bullet hit him dead center in the top of his skull. Slow John fell back out the window and was seen no more until after the battle, when the bodies were counted.
It was Tuxie Miller, trying to keep low in the corner, who first spotted Zeke Proctor. Zeke, still handcuffed, was inching along on his belly, well protected by a forest of legs and feet.
That Zeke, he’s sly, Tuxie thought. He waved at Zeke, but Zeke had his head down, trying to avoid notice.
30
CHILLY STUFFLEBEAN HAD BEEN IN THE MIDDLE OF AN AISLE WHEN the shooting started.
He had been trying to persuade an old man with a face so weathered that it looked rusty to move closer to the window so he could do a tidier job of getting rid of his tobacco juice. The old man had spat on the floor twice, a thing that would have earned him immediate expulsion from Judge Isaac Parker’s courtroom, for Judge Parker supplied spittoons in adequate numbers and expected them to be used. The old fellow was resistant to Chilly’s polite suggestion that he move over to a window. In fact, he ignored Chilly so rudely that Chilly had a notion to grab the old man by the scruff of his neck and carry him outside.
He was attempting polite suggestion, when he looked over and saw a man handing guns through the window to T Spade Beck. That was highly irregular and would have to be stopped at once, but before Chilly could move to stop it, Ned Christie shot Bill Yopps, who discharged his shotgun square into Sam Beck. The blast knocked Sam in among the spectators, one of whom fell backwards onto Chilly’s legs, knocking him down.
As he fell, Chilly saw Judge Sixkiller put his hand to his throat. From that moment on, Chilly’s main effort was to avoid being trampled. He heard more gunshots—a lot more gunshots—so many, in fact, that he soon concluded being knocked over might be a blessing in disguise. He was close to the Beck side of the courtroom, and when he risked looking up saw that all three of the remaining Becks were firing steadily across the courtroom. He could hear their bullets thunking into the walls, which indicated to him that the Becks were inexpert marksmen. They were firing point-blank in a crowded area, and all they were able to hit was the other side of the room.
Ned Christie stood boldly on the bench he had jumped upon, and drew the same conclusion. The Becks were shooting hell out of the walls. Zeke was nowhere to be seen; Tuxie was losing too much blood; the Judge was down, though not necessarily dead; one Beck was finished; and he himself had accounted for Bill Yopps and Slow John. He needed to get a tourniquet on Tuxie’s leg before the man bled to death. It was time to end the bloodshed.
“Here, now!” he yelled, leveling both pistols at T. Spade Beck. “You Becks give it up, or I’ll kill every damn one of you!”
At that moment, there was a wild howl from behind him. Ned turned to see Davie Beck, his forehead bloody, trying to fight his way through the crowd. Davie was still waving the saw blade in front of him like a sword. A crude effort had been made to shape it into a long knife, but it nevertheless looked like a saw blade to Ned.
“Let me through, you goddamn pullets!” Davie yelled. He was practically frothing at the mouth, in his frustration at not being able to plow a path through the gaggle of spectators.
“Ho, Davie—ho, now!” Ned cried, leveling a gun at him.
“I’ve come for your liver, Christie, and I’ll take your damn balls while I’m at it!” Davie bellowed, pushing two frightened muleskinners aside.
“You won’t saw me, Davie!” Ned replied, cocking his pistol. He raised his gun to shoot, but before he fired, Zeke Proctor suddenly rose out of the crowd just behind Davie Beck. He threw his handcuffed arms over Davie’s head, and sank his teeth hard into Davie’s right ear. When Zeke’s teeth bit into his ear gristle, Davie screamed like a banshee. He tried to turn and saw at his attacker, but Zeke began to choke him with the handcuff chain, still biting hard on his ear. The two men went down in the crowd, rolling over and over, not far from where Tuxie Miller sat—looking far too pale, and feeling increasingly faint.
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“Here, Christie, take this to hell with you!” T. Spade yelled, leveling a long-barreled Winchester rifle at Ned.
Ned swung his pistol toward T. Spade, but then saw that T. Spade did not know how to work the rifle. In his haste, he jammed a shell halfway in the chamber, a fact that frustrated him so that he began to pound the stock of the rifle onto the floor. The third time he struck, the gun went off—the bullet struck Thelma Grimmet, Polly Beck’s older sister, who was trying to squeeze past her brothers-in-law and run away. Like Sam Beck, Thelma was hit at point-blank range and was dead before she hit the floor, a fact that horrified Frank Beck. Here they’d come in force to the courthouse to kill Zeke Proctor, having gone to the expense of hiring Bill Yopps and three ruffians, and so far they had only managed to kill two members of their own family. If they did not manage to get their wits about them, there’d be no Becks left at all.
“Hell, we’re only killin’ off one t’other!” he told his brother. “Let’s jump out that window while some of us are alive!”
“I’m willin’, but what about T.?” Willy Beck ventured.
Frank Beck had developed a sudden and powerful urge to live. Before anyone could stop him or offer him argument, Frank Beck jumped out the window, landing right on top of the two remaining ruffians from the Cave, both of whom were squeezed up against the building awaiting developments. The one development they had not expected was to have Becks raining down upon them. Willy Beck, his pistol empty, took only a moment to follow Frank’s lead. Willy landed right on a thin ruffian named Eli Ross, damaging Eli’s spine so badly that he was never able to walk fully upright again.
Ned thought the fact that T. Spade Beck had been flagrantly deserted by his brothers might cause the old man to give up. But in that assumption, Ned was wrong. Exasperated by the Winchester which had caused him to slaughter a harmless sister-in-law, T. Spade grabbed two of the pistols that had been handed in to him and began to fire in the direction of Zeke and Davie, who were still rolling around on the floor locked in mortal combat. T. Spade knew he might hit his brother, but thought the risk well worth it. He disliked Davie only slightly less than he disliked Zeke, though Davie was his own blood.
Ned started to shoot him, but the crowd was on its feet by this time, and even from the bench he could not fire without considerable risk to the spectators.
“Ned, I’m dyin’, take the news to Dale if you get time,” Tuxie Miller requested.
Ned knew better. Tuxie was merely wounded in the leg, but Tuxie had gone ghost white and did need attention. While Ned hesitated, hoping for a clear angle that would allow him to put T Spade down before he killed more spectators, Chilly Stufflebean struggled to his feet. Just before he left Fort Smith, Judge Parker had lent Chilly a small pistol—a .32-caliber, with a three-inch barrel.
“I doubt you’ll need this, Chilly,” Judge Parker told him, “but feel free to use it if you find yourself in a desperate situation.”
Chilly figured this was what the Judge had meant by a desperate situation. T. Spade Beck stood not ten feet away, firing point-blank into a crowded courtroom. Any moment, he could swing the gun in Chilly’s direction. But Chilly knew it was his duty as a bailiff to try and stop indiscriminate manslaughter, whether T. Spade pointed a gun at him or not. Judge Parker had never permitted slaughter in his courtroom.
“Put down your gun, Mr. Beck,” Chilly said. His voice could barely be heard over the din.
Chilly stood firm, knowing that Judge Parker would expect firmness. T. Spade shot twice and missed twice. Both bullets whizzed under Chilly’s arm; one of them nicked his black coat, and then struck Lotte May Grimmet, Polly Beck’s other sister. Lotte May and Thelma had both married Grimmets. Chilly heard Lotte May gasp and fall, but he could not afford to turn and look: T. Spade was moving toward him, cocking the pistol for a third shot. Chilly saw from T. Spade’s red-veined, demented eyes that he was beyond reason. The man was not going to stop shooting until his gun was empty. He had missed so far, but he might not keep on missing.
Chilly lived a moment that seemed like a year—at least there was autumn in it, and winter—for he was going to have to take a life, or else lose his own.
“Mr. Beck . . . ,” Chilly said; then he broke out of the other end of the moment that had stretched on through the seasons, pulled the trigger, and shot T. Spade Beck just above the left eye. T. Spade died with a look of wild rage still on his face. He lurched back a step, and then fell right at Chilly Stufflebean’s feet.
Chilly immediately stuck the .32 pistol back in his pocket. He had an overwhelming urge to have Judge Isaac Parker step into the courtroom and take charge. He was sure Judge Parker could stop the carnage and get the trial finished in an orderly fashion, if only he were there.
But it was a hopeless wish. Judge Parker could not be there, and Judge Sixkiller was either dead or dying. Chilly himself had just killed an old man he had never even properly met, an old man driven crazy by the death of his wife. Chilly had not intended to kill, when he rode over to Tahlequah at Judge Parker’s request; in fact, the thought had never crossed his mind. Yet, now he had killed. He himself felt so relieved to be alive that he could hardly gulp air into his lungs fast enough. He had not quite realized what a precious thing life was, until he saw people all around him losing it and felt T. Spade’s bullets pass just beneath his arm.
Ned, across the room, thought the death of T. Spade would probably mark the end of hostilities. Several more men were down, injured, or killed in T. Spade’s last burst of shooting. To his surprise, he saw Lotte May Grimmet, the woman he had bought his pig from the year before, get up, climb over T. Spade’s body, and start to crawl out the window her two brothers-in-law had leaped through. One of her arms was dripping blood onto the floor. Ned liked Lotte—she raised fine shoats—and called out to her as she was halfway through the window.
“Hold up, Lotte, don’t jump out that window,” he said. “You’re dripping blood, you may be hurt bad.”
Lotte turned briefly.
“I oughtn’t to have stood so close to the boys. Now Thelma’s dead, and I’m shot,” she replied, before climbing on out the window. Though wounded, she dropped to the ground and walked the nine miles back to her farm. Ned was not to see her again until the next summer, when he bargained with Lotte for two more shoats.
The spectators, most of whom had been jumping up and then sitting back down throughout the shooting and attempting to stay at the safest elevation, got up silently and began to hurry out of the courtroom. Many of them had to hop over the struggling bodies of Zeke Proctor and Davie Beck in order to get out the door. Zeke held the advantage, due to the fact that he had his handcuff chain tight against Davie Beck’s Adam’s apple. Davie’s face was purple, and his eyes rolled back in his head until only the whites were visible, from having his airflow choked off so long.
Ned quickly knelt by Tuxie Miller, and cut the pants off his bleeding leg. When he did, he saw that Davie Beck had not shot Tuxie; he must have attacked Tuxie with the saw blade. Tuxie’s leg was sawed to the bone, just above the knee. Ned took his own bandanna and quickly made a tourniquet, twisting it with his pistol barrel.
“Zeke’s about got Davie choked to death,” Tuxie observed. Even half fainted, Tuxie was amazed at the fury in Zeke’s face as he tried to choke Davie, who, taken by surprise, had been unable to employ his saw blade in his own defense.
“Tuxie, I’ve got to get this bleeding stopped, or you’ll be dead and
I’ll have to answer to Dale,” Ned informed him. “This gunfight has been bad enough. I don’t want to have to ride up there and tell Dale I let you bleed to death in order to stop Zeke Proctor from choking Davie Beck.”
Tuxie understood that. He was nervous himself about having to explain to Dale how he had ridden into an ambush and got one of his legs half sawed. Dale expected him to keep both legs healthy for the plowing, Tuxie was certain.
Chilly Stufflebean, looking dazed, walked over to Zeke, who was still as
traddle Davie Beck, choking him hard.
“I think you’ve kilt him, Mr. Proctor. His eyes have turned up in his head,” Chilly observed.
“Unlock these handcuffs, I got a cramp up my arm,” Zeke said. As far as he was concerned, the ornery Beck clan was responsible for his worst problem, which was that his wife had left him. Becca was a good sixty miles away, if she was an inch. When Chilly got the handcuffs unlocked, Zeke bounced Davie’s head off the floor a couple of times for good measure and started out of the courtroom, only to be met by an indignant Pete, who came charging in. Pete had managed to wiggle out a window in one of the cells and jumped at his master, expecting to be picked up and scratched. Pete was badly disappointed in this; his master did not even glance at him.
Most of the spectators had managed to get out of the courtroom by then. With the room almost empty, Zeke got his first good look at the scene of carnage. The moment he had seen Bill Yopps’s face appear in the window and saw the shotgun in his hand, Zeke had hit the floor and begun to crawl in amid the crowd. It did not surprise him that the Becks had hired Marshal Yopps, or that they soon armed themselves and began to shoot. He had expected trouble to break out some time during the trial, and had decided in advance that his best bet was to stay low.
Now, looking around, he knew that he had been wise: bloody bodies lay everywhere. The only man left in the courtroom other than Ned and Tuxie was old Tom Alston, who had evidently had the end of his nose shot off. Old Tom sat quietly on a bench, still under the impression that he was merely suffering from a nosebleed.
“Zeke, go see about the Judge,” Ned requested. “He may be bad hurt, I think T Spade got him in the neck.”
“He’s worse than bad hurt—he’s dead,” Chilly said, squatting for a moment by Judge Sixkiller.
“The man’s right. B.H. ain’t drawin’ his breath no more,” Zeke said. “Now the goddamn Becks have killed our judge.”