“I wish Dale was here . . . I wish Dale was here,” Tuxie said, with alarm. The sight of all the blood that had trickled out of him convinced him he was dying. He might never see his nine young-uns again, or watch Dale put on her heavy socks prior to getting in bed.
“You ain’t dyin’, Tuxie, you just need to be still till we can get you to a bed,” Ned told him. “Why’d you let Davie get close enough to saw on you?”
“He fell on me out of a tree,” Tuxie said. “I thought he meant to steal my horse, but then he started sawing my leg with that saw blade. If the horse hadn’t reared and pitched him off, I guess I’d be one-legged now.
“I doubt Dale would put up with a one-legged husband,” he added, reflecting that it took him all day to get the chores done, even with two legs.
“Dale would stay with you even if you was blind and deaf and foolish,” Ned assured him. “Dale’s your wife, and she plans to stick with you.”
Tuxie sighed heavily. He was not so sure.
31
NED WENT TO WHERE THE JUDGE LAY, AND PUT HIS EAR AGAINST THE Judge’s chest, hoping for a heartbeat. But Ned was disappointed: Judge B. H. Sixkiller, his own wife’s great-grandfather, was stone dead.
Zeke was looking out the window.
“There’s a pile of bodies under the window, Little Eli’s on the bottom,” Zeke said. “He’s movin’ like he ain’t quite kilt.”
“I didn’t shoot Little Eli,” Ned said. “I imagine somebody fell on top of him. I shot Yopps, and I shot Slow John. If there’s others dead, then I didn’t kill ’em.”
“Dammit, here comes old White Sut,” Zeke said. “He’s got his bowie knife between his teeth. We better get ready.”
Ned jumped to the window. Sure enough, White Sut Beck was charging back through Tahlequah on the big sorrel.
“I shot that horse, I would never have expected him to run at such a pace,” Ned said. “He run off with the old fool, but I guess White Sut finally got him turned.”
Chilly stood at the window, too. He had never seen such a wild sight as the one he faced at the moment: an old man with long, white hair and a flopping coat racing at them on a bloody horse, a huge knife between the old man’s front teeth.
Watching the crazy old man race toward them on the wounded horse gave Chilly the sad sense that he was in the wrong place. Somehow, while trying to do his duty as a loanout bailiff, he had come to a place so wild that the law had no chance of prevailing. Dead bodies lay all around him. Now and then, he heard a groan from someone wounded, but not yet dead. He himself had killed a man, a man maddened by grief for his dead wife. Somewhere back in Little Boggy Creek, Judge Parker’s favourite mule was slowly drowning. Chilly had intended to take Ned Christie’s advice, borrow a winch, and go save the mule. But with so many dead to lay out, and then the wounded to attend to, he knew he would probably have to let the mule go. He longed deeply to be back in Fort Smith, and he wished the day he was living had not really happened. He wished he could be waking up on his bench in Judge Parker’s courtroom, ready to carry the spittoons down to the Arkansas River and let the river water wash them all clean.
There were disputes in Fort Smith, to be sure—there were even gunfights—but they seemed mild things, compared to the bloodbath he had just witnessed and survived. Tahlequah was a place of wild men, wild like the old man who was racing toward them at the moment on the bloodstained horse.
Zeke Proctor had only met White Sut Beck once in his life. He had accidentally stumbled on the old man while he was brewing whiskey, and the old man had tried to set a sow bear on him. He had the sow bear chained to a tree, but White Sut unchained her and sicced her on him. Zeke had to put spurs to his mare and make a run for it. Even then, he might not have made it if he had not been to a horserace in Dog Town. He had happened to be astride his fastest filly, who had better wind than White Sut’s sow bear.
Zeke had supposed the old man was dead, though occasionally he would hear tales of a wild old hermit who lived on Raw Rock Mountain with a bear and a buzzard. He supposed the tales were hyperbole, a not-uncommon thing in the Going Snake District. Now he was forced to realize that not only was White Sut still alive, he was feisty and bent on mayhem and murder—his lifelong interests, so far as Zeke could discover.
“Shoot that dern horse, Ned, or we’ll have to choke that old fool down like I choked Davie,” Zeke said. “He’s killed eight or ten men with that big knife of his. I don’t know how many he’s killed with guns.
“He set his sow bear on me once, I don’t want to mess with the old lunatic,” Zeke added, annoyed that Ned was merely watching the old man descend upon them. Ned ought to be shooting, Zeke thought.
Ned finally lifted his pistol and aimed at the big sorrel horse again. But before he could shoot, Davie Beck himself, clutching his mashed throat but clearly far from dead, staggered into the street and tried to wave White Sut down. While Zeke and Ned had been watching the spectacle of his old kinsman, a badly choked but still alive Davie Beck had managed to crawl out the courthouse door, unobserved. He was staggering and stumbling, sucking air for all he was worth. He still had his saw blade in one hand, and he was bent on escape.
“Why, dammit, I thought I had Davie choked all the way dead,” Zeke said, amazed to see a man he had just spent ten minutes strangling rise up and wander down the street.
“Davie must have learnt that trick of rolling his eyes up in his head,” Zeke reflected. “Usually when a man’s eyes roll back like that, he’s thoroughly kilt.”
“The Becks are hardy,” Ned observed. “They’re like cockroaches— you might think they’re dead, and then before you know it, they’ve done crawled off. You have to keep checking once you have ’em down, to make sure they’re dead.”
Ned watched as White Sut Beck slowed long enough to pull Davie up behind him on the bloody horse. The sorrel was beginning to favour her wounded leg, but she still managed a crooked lope as the Becks turned and headed out of town. They passed in easy pistol range, but Ned did not shoot. He knew they were dangerous men, men he might have to reckon with again. But for the moment, they posed no danger.
“Shoot, you can still hit ’em,” Zeke said, but Ned shook his head, and put his guns back in his pockets.
“I’ve done enough killing for one day, Zeke,” he said. “We’ve got the wounded to attend to, and the dead to lay out for their kin. Then we need to get on home to our womenfolk.”
Ned looked around at the carnage, shaking his head.
“There’ll be hell to pay on the Mountain, because of this,” he said.
32
ZEKE SAT DOWN ON A BENCH IN THE COURTROOM, WEAK ALL OF A sudden—so weak he could not have held a pistol straight enough to shoot if his life had depended upon it.
What Ned had just said was true. There would be hell to pay on the Mountain and throughout the Going Snake District because of what had happened in Tahlequah that day: a judge was dead—the most respected judge in the Cherokee Nation.
Zeke had survived, but surviving had momentarily sapped his strength. He stood up briefly, and tried to help Ned and Chilly turn over the bodies that lay facedown so the dead could at least be identified. But he was too weak to even turn a body. He felt drained, and it was all he could do to sit upright. If one of the Becks came charging back through the door bent on vengeance, he would be able to put up no resistance. Ned or the skinny bailiff from Fort Smith would have to stop them, if they were to be stopped.
“Zeke, this is terrible,” Ned said. He had tried to help a wounded man named Jackson Lowry sit up, and the man had coughed lightly and died, as Ned was holding him.
“How many dead?” Zeke inquired. He had once herded stock with Jackson Lowry. They’d had much trouble with a brindle cow on a trip back from Kansas with some beeves.
“I make it eleven, counting Jackson,” Ned said. “But there’s three wounded, one of them bad. I expect it will be a dozen dead folks before the dying stops.”
“Dale didn’t
want me to come,” Tuxie said, in his weak, bled-out voice. “I ought to start listening to Dale, she knows what she’s talkin’ about.”
Chilly had been dragging the body of Sam Beck over to the line of dead that Ned Christie was arranging along one wall of the courtroom. Sam Beck was the worst shot up, for his guts were exposed. Chilly’s stomach came up, suddenly—he had to drop Sam Beck’s legs and run to the window to vomit. Then, once the heaving stopped, the same weakness that had hit Zeke Proctor hit Chilly, too. He sat down by the window, numb and stunned. It seemed impossible to him that he would ever recover enough strength to make it home to Fort Smith.
Judge B. H. Sixkiller’s felt hat was hanging on a peg behind the bench. Ned took it down, and placed it over the Judge’s face. He would have to go home and inform Jewel that she had lost her greatgrandfather. It would be a sad, sad task, not merely sad for Jewel, but for the community and the District. Judge Sixkiller had been their best man, indeed the only man with authority to turn back the white marshals when they came looking for Cherokees they wanted to hang.
Outside the courthouse, more people were leaving than were staying. Ned looked out the window and saw little groups of men mounting up and riding slowly out of town, toward the hills. Some were in wagons; a few walked. Several men stood in the street, not talking, just waiting. A few women stood together by the church. It was a bright day, the sun shining on the hills without the interference from so much as a single cloud. The whole courtroom smelled of gunpowder and human blood, and yet, the hills were bright with sunlight.
While Ned was looking, another of the wounded men died. He was a skinny fellow with a hole in his pants. Ned noticed the odd fact that he wore one boot and one shoe—maybe he had been in such a hurry to get to the famous trial that he had not been able to locate the correct footgear before he left home. It did not matter now; he had left home forever. Being as the day was hot, the skinny man would probably have to be buried wearing a boot and a shoe, unless his womenfolk lived close and could get the matter corrected while the graves were being dug.
Ned looked at Chilly Stufflebean, who still sat by the window, a blank look on his face.
“When you feel better, would you go out and see if you can persuade some of those men to get started with the buryin’?” Ned asked.
“But I don’t know ’em,” Chilly replied, weakly.
“Sir, it’s a chore for the bailiff,” Ned told him. “And you’re the bailiff. Zeke and me have got to go. If I can free that mule when I go back across the creek, I’ll leave it tied there for you.”
“I expect it drowned during all this killing,” Chilly said.
He felt a hopelessness take him. He had failed at the job Judge
Parker had sent him to do. Probably no bailiff during the long course of the law had ever failed worse. Despite his best efforts to disarm the crowd and keep the peace, twelve people, at the very least, were dead. It was an awful thing to have to go tell Judge Parker, and he would likely have to walk all the way to Fort Smith. Chilly had a wish that he had never been orphaned, never been allowed to sleep on a bench in the courthouse. What it had all led to was a hot courtroom that stank of blood.
In spite of his weakness and his hopeless feeling, he had no trouble, once he went out to the street, in finding men who were willing to go in search of a doctor for the wounded—and willing, even eager, to dig graves for the dead.
In fact, he soon had more gravediggers than there were spades. Ned Christie himself walked over to the hardware store and borrowed three shovels so the digging could go quicker. Once equipped, the men fell to with a will—Ned even dug for a while. After all, it was common work, the work that all mortals would need to have done for them, someday. It took Ned’s mind and the minds of the other men off the killing they had witnessed. Turning over the dark earth, lifting out spade after spade of dirt, was a relief.
Yet, it was not proper to simply drop these people in the ground without their wives, husbands, and kinfolk being summoned to weep over them and pay final respects. A minister was found, but some of the dead had trekked to the trial from as far as thirty miles away, and the day would not be long enough for runners to scour the Mountain and bring the kin to Tahlequah for the burial, too.
Zeke Proctor, after sitting with his hands limp and his head drooped on his chest for many minutes, finally found enough strength to walk outside and sit on the steps in the warm sun. He did not take part in the grave digging; even if he could hold a shovel, he knew he did not have the strength to dig. Neither did Chilly Stufflebean, who got a long case of the dry heaves. Over and over, in the shelter of the bushes south of the courthouse, his stomach tried to crawl up and out of his throat. He knew he was too weak to attempt Fort Smith that night. He might bog in that treacherous little creek, and drown, like Judge Parker’s mule.
Once the graves were dug to a decent depth, Ned came back and loaded Tuxie Miller onto his horse. Tuxie had been dozing fitfully on a bench in the courtroom. He felt feverish to Ned—the cut was deep, and Davie’s old saw blade might have been rusty. Ned knew that he had best get Tuxie home to his resourceful wife, Dale, as quickly as possible. The doctor who finally showed up had tried to disinfect the wound, but he was an old doctor, and not as competent as Dale Miller—not in Ned’s view.
“I got to be going, Zeke,” Ned told his friend. “If Tuxie was to get blood poisoning, it would be touch and go if he’d live.”
Zeke sat looking toward the hills to the west, where the sun was just beginning to dip. Pete, subdued by his master’s lack of interest, lay comatose at Zeke’s feet.
“Do you have a horse here still?” Ned asked. “You’d best come with me.”
“No, I’m goin’ to get Becca now,” Zeke informed him. “I need my wife.”
“Go get her, but hurry and come to my place,” Ned suggested. “You know how fast news travels in these hills.”
Zeke did know, and being reminded stirred him enough that he immediately got to his feet. Already, the runners and the riders would have crested the hills with the news. A fast horseman might, even then, be nearing the Arkansas River. By morning, one or more men would be at the courthouse; by the afternoon, an army of marshals might be on their way to Tahlequah. One thing was certain: nothing, now, would stay Judge Isaac Parker’s hand.
“I guess my horse is still in the livery stable,” Zeke said. “Go on, get Tuxie home. I’ll be fine.”
To Ned, Zeke still looked pale and slow. He did not look like a man who was fully able to take care of himself.
“Don’t linger now, Zeke. Go get Becca if you want, but then you come and find me. We’re going to have to go on the scout.”
“On the scout,” Zeke repeated, with a nod. Then he and Pete started walking slowly toward the livery stable, passing the twelve narrow graves as they went.
It occurred to Zeke, then, that though a dozen people were dead, he had still not been tried. Zeke counted the gravediggers and found that they numbered thirteen—an adequate number to make a full jury, plus one.
Ned Christie was just about to leave, when Zeke called out to him.
“Ned, you’re a senator. Can’t you pick a jury?” Zeke asked.
Ned was taken by surprise. He wanted to get Tuxie home to Dale before blood poisoning set in his wound. He did not wish to concern himself with judicial matters.
“A jury to do what?” he asked, still horseback.
“To try me. I need to be tried, and there’s enough men here to make a fine jury,” Zeke said.
“I’m a senator, but I ain’t a judge, Zeke,” Ned reminded him. He was taken aback by Zeke’s unorthodox suggestion.
“It’s the jury that decides to convict or not. That ain’t the judge’s job,” Zeke said. “I want to be tried right now, otherwise the marshals will never let me rest.”
They won’t anyway, Ned thought—but he decided he might as well humour his friend. Besides, when the white marshals did come, it would not hurt to be able to say that judgm
ent had been rendered in the matter of Zeke’s crime, even if it was a judgment handed down by a bunch of gravediggers.
“Well? Are you men willing?” Ned asked, looking at the gravediggers.
Nobody spoke, either to agree or to object. Ned was irritated at having to take the time to prompt them, when his friend’s life hung in the balance from his bad wound.
But Zeke Proctor would not relent, or withdraw his request. He wanted to be tried, then and there.
“Swear them in, Ned,” he insisted. “Scratch off old Tom, he’s got part of his nose shot off. The rest ought to make a decent enough jury.”
“All right, raise your hands,” Ned said. “Swear to render a fair verdict on Zeke Proctor and the matter of Polly Beck.
“You don’t have to, Tom,” he added to the old man, the end of whose nose occasionally still dripped blood. “You ought to head on home and patch up that nose.”
The other men raised their hands. Though they had been digging with a will, the heavy weight of judicial responsibility seemed to weigh their arms—a few could barely get their hands higher than their elbows.
“All for acquittal, raise their hands again,” Ned said, hoping that his instruction bore some resemblance to proper jury procedure.
All twelve jurors raised their arms.
“Be sure, now,” Ned urged. “We want to tell the whites we done this right.”
Nobody said a word. Two or three men went back to their digging. Ned thought of asking them to vote one more time, just to be on the safe side, but after a moment, he decided against it. The whites probably would not take the vote anyway—not without argument.
“Acquitted, then,” Ned said. “Go on now, Zeke, and get Becca.”
“I thank you,” Zeke said. He shook hands with each of the jurors, before proceeding to the livery stable.
Zeke pondered the events of the day as he walked, the arbitrariness of life weighing heavily upon him. Who would have thought that his wanting Polly Beck for a second wife could have turned into so much bloodshed? He guessed that the patriarchs had been wrong about the matter of more than one wife; he guessed that Becca had been right to bring him a Bible to the jail, instead of a pork chop. He shook his head, as he approached the livery stable, at his own folly.