He felt a fool for having left home in the first place. He should have stayed home and enjoyed his wife; now, when he wanted nothing more than to stay home and do just that, he would have to be off in search of Old Turtle Man. If he could not manage to find the old healer quick, the white law would not need to send more of its marshals after Zeke Proctor—Zeke Proctor would be dead.
“I’ll go get Turtle Man, Zeke,” he said. “You lay there and try to get warm.”
“No . . . no,” Zeke said, reaching up a weak hand. “I don’t need Turtle Man.”
“Yes, you do—he can cure you,” Ned said. “He cured Tuxie, and he was worse off than you.”
“No, Ned . . . I need Becca,” Zeke said.
Both girls came and stood behind Ned, listening to their father. Liza began to cry when her mother was mentioned. With her father so ill, she realized that she missed her mother badly.
“Zeke, Becca’s at your place,” Ned pointed out. “I just come from there. It’s thirty-five miles. I could have Old Turtle Man here in three hours, if I catch up with him early.”
“No, Ned . . . I need Becca,” Zeke insisted. “I done Becca bad. I need to see her and make it right . . . if she’ll let me.”
His feverish eyes fixed Ned with a look he could not ignore. It was the look of a man who might be dead before the day was out. The request that had been put to Ned was not one he could refuse.
“All right, then, Zeke . . . I’ll go for Becca,” Ned said. “My horse is tired, though, I rode him all night.”
“Mine’s lame, or you could take him,” Zeke said—then he took such a fit of coughing that he could not speak for several minutes. He coughed and coughed, rolling on the pallet. At one point, he coughed so hard Jewel had to stop him from rolling into the fireplace.
Ned went outside, stripped off, and poured a bucket of springwater over himself, to get himself better awake. Jewel came out while he was dripping wet. She brought him a clean shirt and pants, and helped him dry off. The thought of the seventy-mile ride to Zeke’s place and back made Ned feel disheartened.
“I mean to stop off at Tuxie’s and see if he’ll go fetch her for us,” Ned told Jewel. “Tuxie might not mind making the trip, if Dale will let him go.”
“Then I could go look for the healer,” he added.
“Jewel, Pa’s coughing bad,” Liza yelled from the doorway. Then she saw that Ned did not have his pants on yet, and ran back into the house.
When Ned rode away, Jewel stood watching her husband until he was out of sight. Though she was way down by the well, she could hear her father coughing. The sound made her afraid—and so did the sight of Ned leaving again. When Ned got home, the fear inside her left; but this time, the fear had stayed.
“Jewel . . . come inside, he’s bad,” Liza yelled again from the doorway, in a panic.
Jewel turned, and hurried back toward her house, wondering if there would be a time in her life when she did not have to be afraid.
25
TAILCOAT JONES WAS RESTING IN BED WITH TWO YOUNG WHORES, when Beezle knocked on the door.
Both whores were plump and cheap, which was the way Tailcoat liked his women. It irked him to pay cash money for the use of a skinny woman, and he rarely did so, unless desperate. Bony hips were a particular affront to him. Fortunately, the two young whores in bed with him, both stout girls from Alabama, had hips as wide as boats, amply covered with flesh. He could pleasure himself with them at length, and never get jabbed by a hip bone.
“I’ve a thirst, hurry on in with that whiskey,” Tailcoat said. “You took your goddamn time fetching, I’ll say that.”
Beezle had knocked softly, and then—as a prudent move—had taken a few steps back down the hall. It was not wise to stand squarely in front of the door when delivering whiskey, or anything else, to Tailcoat Jones. Once, during the War, Tailcoat had been surprised while in bed by a contingent of Yankees, one of whom shot him in the collarbone before Tailcoat killed him and two of his comrades. The collarbone had never healed properly, and the fact of that surprise left Tailcoat with a nervous attitude about doors. Often as not, he would put a shot or two through the door when someone knocked, just to be on the safe side.
Beezle believed in being on the safe side, too, which was why he usually trotted back down the hall a few steps after knocking on Tailcoat’s door.
“Don’t shoot, I’m comin’ in,” he said, edging back toward the door.
Nelda, the younger of the two whores in the bed with Tailcoat, pulled the covers up over her eyes when Beezle stepped in to bring Tailcoat his whiskey bottle. Nelda had an aversion to Beezle because of the thick, bristly red hairs which stuck out of his nostrils and his ears. The hairs in Beezle’s nose and ears seemed like pig bristles to Nelda. She did not like seeing stiff little pig hairs sticking out of a man’s nose, and did her best to keep under the covers when Beezle was in the room.
“Judge Ike wants to see you,” Beezle said, handling Tailcoat two bottles of fresh whiskey.
“Well, I’m home, let him come,” Tailcoat said.
Beezle had been woman-shy all his life, and he did not enjoy having to palaver with Tailcoat when the man had two fat girls naked in his bed. One of the whores had the good sense to cover her face, but the other, Darcie, had so little shame that she was lolling half under the covers with her bosoms exposed. Beezle had to hand the whiskey right over her bosoms in order to pass it to Tailcoat.
“I did not speak to Judge Ike myself,” Beezle admitted. “His man came running up to me in the street and said the Judge was in a hurry to talk to you.
“I think he needs a marshal,” Beezle ventured.
“Cover up, Darcie. Beezle can’t afford you, so you oughtn’t to be tempting him,” Tailcoat chided. He pulled the quilt over Darcie’s generous young bosom and sat up in bed in order to sniff the whiskey Beezle had just brought him. In country towns such as Fort Smith, he found it wiser to sniff whiskey before sipping it. There was whiskey to be had in the more raw parts of Arkansas so strong that it could render a man temporarily blind, or permanently insane. With a lucrative marshaling job to be had, Tailcoat did not think he could afford either state.
“I expect it’s them killings, over in Indian Territory,” Beezle suggested. “I imagine Judge Ike wants us to go round up the killers.”
“This whiskey smells mighty fresh,” Tailcoat said, wafting his hand over the open jug so as to get a proper whiff of its contents. “Why don’t you go downstairs while I drink it? Darcie and Nelda might have some work to do yet. We can go see Judge Ike this afternoon.”
“What’ll I do while I wait?” Beezle asked.
“Well, you could traipse over to the hardware store and see if they have any new Winchesters,” Tailcoat suggested. “If we have to deputize a posse and go after violent Cherokees, we might have to invest in some new rifles.”
As soon as Beezle left the room, Nelda lowered the covers a little. It had been hot under the covers, but being hot was better than looking at a squatty man who had red pig hairs sticking out of his nostrils. She looked over at Darcie and saw that Darcie was having one of her blue spells. Nelda felt as close to Darcie as she would have if Darcie had been her own sister. She would have liked to hug Darcie, and help her with her blue spell, but she could not hug her because Tailcoat Jones, an old, sour-breathed man, was between them in the bed.
“I don’t know if I ought to drink too much of this whiskey,” Tailcoat commented. “It smells strong enough to take the paint off a board.”
Then he spat the cork from the first bottle halfway across the room, and began to drink the whiskey anyway.
That was fine with Nelda: smelling strong whiskey was better than smelling Tailcoat Jones’s old sour breath.
26
THE MORE JUDGE PARKER THOUGHT ABOUT THE PRESIDENT’S telegram, the more out of sorts he became. The President had as much as ordered him to hire ten marshals, which in practical terms meant hiring ten outlaws and sticking badges on the
m. When the President had still been a general, he had mainly operated in theatres where he had an abundance of able subordinates—a luxury the Judge did not enjoy, as he made plain to Chilly Stufflebean, when Chilly came back to report on the situation with Tailcoat Jones and his man, Beezle.
“The fact is, Chilly, there ain’t ten able lawmen left for hire in the whole Territory,” the Judge said. “If I had the entire Treasury to spend on this matter, I wouldn’t be able to find ten competent men to employ.
“It’s mostly crooked timber we’ve got left down here in Arkansas now, when it comes to lawmen,” the Judge reiterated. “Tailcoat Jones is a case in point. He’s little more than a killer himself—he has yet to come before my court to answer for one of his killings, but if he ever does I expect I’ll hang him.
“In fact,” the Judge added, “if I had my choice I’d rather hang him than hire him. But I don’t have my choice. I ain’t the President, and that’s that.”
Chilly had rarely seen Judge Parker in such a continuous state of distemper. Three times in half an hour, he had watched the Judge take his whiskey bottle out of his drawer, pour himself a tumbler full, and drink it straight down. Of course, court was not in session; the Judge had always been more prone to repair to his whiskey bottle in times of boresome idleness than when he was holding court. But three tumblers of whiskey in half an hour was an exceptional rate of whiskey drinking, even on an idling day.
“His man said he’d be here this afternoon,” Chilly said. “I asked him why not this morning, and the man didn’t answer.”
Personally, he considered Tailcoat Jones to be a disrespectful person, for making the Judge wait. Of course the Judge frequently made people wait, if he happened to be reading his Milton, or poking through his lawbooks trying to locate a statute or a law of some kind. But the Judge was the Judge—if he made people wait, it was in the interest of eventually producing better law.
Tailcoat Jones, in Chilly’s opinion, had no excuse. He was making the Judge wait for no better reason than whores and whiskey, which was rudeness, pure and simple. He knew there was such a thing as contempt of court and wished the Judge would lay it on Tailcoat for dawdling and insolence. Chilly himself did not go so far as to suggest it, however. Judge Parker rarely welcomed suggestions about the law, or about anything, unless he specifically asked, and he welcomed even fewer when he was freely imbibing whiskey. Chilly had enough sense to know that any man’s temper would be at a simmer after inhaling three tumblers full of whiskey. In Judge Parker’s case, a little more whiskey or an ill-timed suggestion would be sufficient to bring his temper to a full boil, a condition Chilly wanted to avoid if at all possible, since he himself was the one most likely to be scalded if the Judge’s temper boiled over.
About midafternoon, with the sun blazing down on the street, the Judge saw Tailcoat Jones, wearing the long, dusty coat that had given him his nickname, come out of the hotel and saunter toward the courthouse. His man, Beezle, soon fell in beside him, leading Tailcoat’s grey horse. Though it was not more than seventy-five yards from the hotel to the courthouse, Tailcoat Jones evidently decided that the walk might be oppressive. He mounted the grey and came trotting along briskly, riding right under the window where the Judge sat watching the broad street.
Tailcoat Jones was a man with a personality exactly like his demeanor—and he looked arrogant and hard. He had no more feeling for his fellow human beings than he did for a stick of firewood. He was but one of the many unrestrained ruffians who prowled the border states after the War, ruffians who thrived on robbery, rape, and murder. The necessity of employing such men to do the work of honest lawmen disturbed Judge Parker to the point of indigestion, and on this particular day it had caused him, already, to drink far too much whiskey. The Judge had no doubt that Tailcoat Jones was worse than most or perhaps all of the men he was sending him after—he was a practiced killer, whereas most of the trouble in Tahlequah had only been caused by erring humans who had let their passions get the best of them. They deserved apprehension, and if convicted, punishment. In the Judge’s opinion, however, it was unlikely that they deserved Tailcoat Jones.
“He’s a hard-looking sort, ain’t he?” Chilly remarked, after Tailcoat had ridden past the window.
“Yes, but President Grant ain’t met him,” the Judge said. “The President’s used to better help than we got down here in Arkansas.”
A moment later, Tailcoat appeared at the door of the Judge’s chambers. The Judge did not rise to greet him, but he did gesture for Chilly to leave. He did not want his youthful bailiff to have to witness such a sordid transaction as the one he was about to conduct. He did not want Chilly to go sour on the law; he wanted the boy to believe that the law was a thing of dignity, or even majesty—and such a view might not survive too much palavering with the mercenary who stood in the doorway.
“Hello, Your Honour, what’s the chore?” Tailcoat inquired.
The Judge had spent the morning preparing his charges from a mass of gossip and wild accusation about the Tahlequah killings. He had winnowed out five names that he thought might warrant indictments. These he had carefully printed on a single sheet of tablet paper. The names were Willy Beck, Frank Beck, Davie Beck, Zeke Proctor, and Ned Christie.
“Am I welcome to a seat, or am I expected to stand like a goddamn nigger?” Tailcoat asked, from the doorway.
The Judge gave the man a sharp look.
“If you’ll avoid vulgar profanity, you can sit, Mr. Jones,” the Judge said, in his stiffest tone. It was a tone that would have cowed most men, but if it made any impression on Tailcoat Jones, the Judge could not tell. He strode in, jingling his military spurs, and took a chair. Then he struck a match on his boot-heel, fished the stub of a cigar out of a pocket in his long coat, and lit the stub.
Once the thick cigar smoke drifted away from Tailcoat’s face, the Judge faced him squarely. He did not offer the sheet with the five names on it.
“I was about to offer you a commission from President Grant,” the
Judge said. “If your aim is to be disrespectful to this court, then I won’t offer it.”
Tailcoat despised the old judge. In fact, he despised all judges. He would rather have sawed the old man’s throat open with a dull knife than listen to a minute of his sass; but financially, he was not in a position to act on his impulse. A simple-looking stagecoach robbery north of the Natchez Trace had failed to come off as planned. A resilient posse had appeared out of nowhere and had hung on tenaciously in pursuit, chasing them nearly fifty miles and wounding three of his men in the process. All three of the men died, leaving Tailcoat, Beezle, and a gaunt renegade named Jerry Ankle to flog their tired horses to safety in Arkansas. Not a cent had been earned in the process, and the future for random robbery did not look bright.
Though Tailcoat had boldly sent Beezle off to the hardware store to see if there were enough new Winchesters available to equip a force of deputies, the action had been a bluff. He did not have enough money to buy a box of cartridges, much less a fine Winchester rifle. So far, all of his whoring and drinking in Fort Smith had been done strictly on credit. His reputation still intimidated pimps and saloon keepers, but there was no likelihood that this state of matters would last forever. Several worms had turned on him in his time, and one or two of the worms had been surprisingly hard to subdue.
It was mainly for reasons of finance that Tailcoat felt he ought to take a mannerly approach to Judge Ike Parker, at least until a few expense chits were signed and in his possession.
“I didn’t mean to rile you, Judge,” he said. “It’s just that I prefer to take the weight off my ankles, whenever I can.”
“Understood,” the Judge answered. “It’s the profanity I grudge you, not the chair. You’ve heard about the troubles in Tahlequah, I expect?”
“No, I prefer not to fill my head with slanderous gossip,” Tailcoat said. “Beezle said some Cherokees shot off their guns in the courthouse. That’s all I know.”
r /> “Twelve men died on that occasion,” the Judge informed him. “I sent Dan Maples to arrest the known culprits, and somebody killed him.”
“It must have been quite a fracas, if it’s got Ulysses S. Grant stirred up,” Tailcoat remarked.
“President Grant,” the Judge corrected. “He’s stirred up enough that he’s ordered me to send ten deputies into the Going Snake District to apprehend the suspects.”
Reluctantly, he handed the sheet of paper with the five names on it across the desk to Tailcoat, who glanced at it briefly.
“Ten deputies for five men?” Tailcoat said, lifting an eyebrow. “They must be scrappers, Your Honour.”
“Know any of them?” the Judge asked.
“Well, I met this Zeke Proctor once or twice during the War,” Tailcoat said. “I recall that he liked to race horses, but I don’t think he was much of a shot. Of course, shooting in a courtroom is close-range shooting.”
The fact that the killer sitting across from him had been so rude as to call the President of the United States by his first name irked the Judge considerably, once he thought about it. He felt his indigestion getting worse, from the mere fact that the man was taking up space in his chambers.
“These men are the suspects that interest this court, Mr. Jones,” he said. “They may be innocent men, for all I know. Your job is to arrest them—that’s all. There’s been too much gunplay already. More would not be welcome.”
“I wouldn’t welcome it myself, Judge,” Tailcoat said. “There’s men over in that country who don’t welcome arrest, though . . . what if I meet up with one or two of those?”
“I’ll repeat what I’ve already told you,” the Judge said. “I will tolerate gunplay only as a last resort.”