Jewel tried to believe that Ned was not dead. It was only two miles from their house to the creek where the men had brought her. Over the treetops, she could see the smoke rising, as her home burned. Seeing the smoke made her hopes crack; they cracked, and then split. If Ned had been badly wounded, he could be in their house right this moment, burning up. She had to choke down a sob that was fighting to rise in her throat.
But then she remembered how strong Ned was, and how clever. He had shown her his crawl space; maybe he was still in there, in his little hiding place, merely wounded. If only the men would let her go, she might be able to rescue him yet. She knew he must be badly wounded, or he would have come to her aid. But then Tuxie Miller had been badly wounded himself, and now he was well. If only the possemen would not kill her, she could nurse her husband back from any wound—if he was alive. She would do what Dale had done: sit by him, day and night; make her water in a bucket; hold his finger and press it, to remind him that she was there with him. She would endure whatever the men decided to do with her in order to stay alive and help Ned.
Jewel kept her eyes down, but she could feel the men looking at her—they were looking at her in a way that made the hair raise on the back of her neck.
She knew they were men without pity. One of them, a stout one with broken teeth in his mouth, had smashed in Liza’s skull because she was yelling in fright. Jewel had a deep fright, too, but she managed to stay quiet. It was her worst fear—that rough men, strangers, would show up and look at her in that way—or do worse than look. In her frightened imaginings, it had always happened at night. Ned would be gone on an errand, and men would come and grab her when her husband was not around to protect her.
Now it was happening, not at night, but in broad daylight. If she ran, they would catch her—and when they caught her, they would be even angrier than they had been with Liza. She knew her only hope was to try and be as small as possible, to try and shrink inside herself. If she was quiet enough, maybe they would get to talking of other things and not notice her. Some of them began to drink whiskey, to dull the pain of their wounds. Maybe they would get so drunk they would go to sleep, and she could slip off.
But the red-headed man—the one who had been cuffing Lyle— was not drinking. He was the one who had pulled her out of the root cellar, tearing her dress in the process, right in front at the bodice. Jewel was holding the dress together with one hand.
The red-headed man kept looking at her.
“Tail . . . here’s his squaw,” Beezle said. “We took his squaw.”
Jewel had never been called a squaw before now. It shocked her. She knew it was the word white men used to shame Indian women. But the few white men she saw when she was growing up had always treated her with respect. No one had ever called her a squaw, not until this moment. Though it was only a word, the way the red-headed man said it sickened her—it felt as bad as it had felt when he tore the front of her dress, pulling her out of the cellar.
“I see her,” Tailcoat replied, indifferently.
In fact, he had not taken time to look at Jewel, until that moment. His wound had preoccupied him. He had been a young man when the Yankees broke his collarbone, and it had taken him a year to recover. One shoulder still drooped, from the way the bone had healed. The thought that another bone might be broken, and in almost the same place, concerned him more than any squaw. He could ill afford another slow recovery.
After examining himself, he came to the conclusion that the bullet had missed the bone. If he escaped infection, getting shot by Ned Christie would leave him not much worse for wear.
He looked over at the squaw, and saw that she was tall and shapely, though no more than a girl. She was keeping as still as possible, which demonstrated intelligence on her part. She was the woman of a formidable warrior—a warrior who, fighting alone, had decimated his own well-equipped force. But the warrior had fallen; now, she was in the hands of his enemies. Keeping still was about all she could do, but keeping still would not save her.
“I see her sitting there, Beezle—what’s your point?” Tailcoat said, again.
Beezle was infuriated by his leader’s indifferent manner. What did the man think his point was, with a ripe young squaw sitting there, her dress already torn open?
“We want to take her up the hill,” Beezle said. “Back where the bushes are thick.”
“Why?” Tailcoat asked. “What can you do with her up on the hill that you can’t do right here by this creek?”
“Well . . . he killed half of us, and wounded most of the rest,” Beezle said, looking at the woman.
“Yes, I know that, Beezle. I’m one of the wounded,” Tailcoat informed him, in a tone that made it clear he considered his assistant hopelessly simpleminded. “What’s that got to do with the squaw?”
Beezle hated it when Tailcoat played talk games with him, just to confuse him. Tailcoat could outtalk him by a long shot. In fact, he could outtalk anybody, excepting maybe Judge Parker. Why did the man have to be so hard to get an answer from, when all they were talking about was a Cherokee squaw?
“We want to do her,” Beezle answered curtly. “We’ll hold her, if you want to be first.”
Jewel tried to keep herself still, though she wished she could stand up and run as fast as she could—away from this place by the creek, with these rough white men who called her squaw. Three of the men had moved closer to her, as the conversation between their leader and the red-headed man went on. She could feel them, just behind her. One of them was a heavy man—she could smell his sweat, as he stood behind her.
“Nope, I’m a whore lover,” Tailcoat said. “I’ll pass.”
Beezle looked around at the rest of the men. They were waiting impatiently, their lust rising. He himself was confounded with Tailcoat Jones, and a little nervous. Why would Tailcoat refuse to do the woman? It would make all of them feel easier about the matter, if their leader would go first.
“But she’s free, Tail. It would save cash,” he pointed out. “We’ll put her on a blanket, if that’s what you need.”
The moment Beezle said it, he realized he had made a mistake— though he was not exactly sure how.
“I don’t need anything I can’t buy,” Tailcoat said, in his chilliest voice. “You don’t make no enemies when you buy a whore. But you make at least two, when you rape a woman.”
“Two?” Beezle repeated, puzzled.
“That’s the count—two,” Tailcoat said. “One’s the woman, the other’s her man.”
“But this one’s man is dead,” Beezle reminded him. “You heard the boy say so.”
Tailcoat put his shirt on, and lit a cigar.
There was a long silence. Beezle looked at the men. Then he looked at the squaw. He had seen her young breasts that morning, when he tore her dress pulling her out of the root cellar. Some of the other men had seen them, too, and they were not in a mood to relent and ride on, just because Tailcoat Jones preferred to pay for a woman.
“Well, but you don’t care . . . do you? If we take her up the hill?” Beezle ventured, attempting a conciliatory tone. “You’re still welcome to go first, if you change your mind.”
Tailcoat puffed a little smoke Beezle’s way.
“Beezle, if you want me to order this rape, you’re wasting your time and mine,” he said. “I don’t order it, and I don’t forbid it. It’s a free country. If you’re disposed to have this woman, and you’re all men enough, then do it.”
Beezle waited a moment. No one spoke.
“I guess we’ll take her up the hill,” Beezle said, finally.
“Why bother with the walk?” Tailcoat said, again. “Have her right where she sits, and save yourself the stroll. I ain’t a deacon. I won’t pray at you.”
Then he turned his back on them all, and opened his pants to tuck in his shirttail. When he finished, he took his gun out of its holster and clicked the hammer a few times. Every man took a step back, when he started clicking—injury usually accompanied
Tailcoat’s clicking his gun hammer.
But when he turned back to them, he was grinning.
“Just seeing if my gun hand still works,” he said.
“You boys are slow,” he continued, sitting down on his saddle. “I’ve rode with gangs that would have spread this little squaw all over the place by now.”
“I think we’ll take her up the hill,” Beezle said, a fourth time. Hot as he was for the squaw, he felt it would not be wise to handle the woman in front of Tailcoat Jones, not with Tailcoat in his present mood.
As they were walking Jewel up the hill, the large man who stank suddenly caught her dress and ripped it away. Other men started grabbing at it, too. The only thing she had left to cover with, when they finally threw her down, was the little piece of bodice she had been holding together all day.
Jewel clutched the scrap of cloth tight, and was still clutching it when, three hours later, the men left her on the hill and rode away.
38
“I SUSPECT HE AIN’T DEAD—AND EVEN IF HE IS DEAD, HE AIN’T,” Judge Parker said. Tailcoat Jones, his shoulder freshly bandaged, had come to the court to give his account of the expedition against Ned Christie. The Judge was visibly irked with Tailcoat Jones, for the man had been back in Fort Smith for a night and half a day before showing up at his courthouse to report. He and his men had spent last evening in the saloon, and from the information relayed to Judge Parker by his bailiff, Tailcoat Jones’s report today would contain little, if any, good news.
The Judge sat looking out his window, displeased, a fact that did not surprise Tailcoat.
“I suppose I’m dense,” Tailcoat said. “I don’t follow your reasoning.”
“I wasn’t reasoning,” the Judge informed him. “You were in the War, were you not?”
“I was right in the thick of the War, yes,” Tailcoat admitted. “I enlisted the first day.”
“I don’t care to hear your war stories,” the Judge said. “Have you encountered people who believe that Stonewall Jackson is still alive?”
“Why, yes—a few,” Tailcoat said. “I guess folks don’t want to admit old Stonewall’s gone.”
“Because he was a hero,” the Judge pointed out. “And now you’ve made Ned Christie a hero, whether you killed him or not. If he’s dead, there’ll be Cherokees who won’t believe it. They’ll fight in his name, dead or not.”
“They can, but I doubt they have his ability,” Tailcoat said. “I don’t have his ability, and I’m a goddamned good fighter.”
“Don’t swear in my courthouse, sir,” the Judge ordered. “Not unless you want to spend a few days locked up.”
“You’re a hard old cud to get along with, I’ll say that,” Tailcoat complained, annoyed by the reprimand.
“I’ve heard that opinion before,” the Judge said. “Let’s get back to your report. You fired the man’s house, but you don’t know if you killed him?”
Tailcoat nodded. “A neighbour’s boy claimed to have seen him dead inside the house—under the circumstances, that was good enough for me,” he said.
“Under what circumstances?” the Judge inquired.
“Under the circumstances that he already killed four of my men outright, and had wounded three more—me included,” Tailcoat said. “I only had two able-bodied men left. If I’d sent them in and he was hiding, he would have killed them, too. I didn’t choose to risk it.”
Judge Parker took a deep breath, to calm himself before asking the next question.
“I understand a girl was killed. Why?” the Judge asked.
“She was yapping and yelling. To keep her quiet, one of the boys tapped her with a stick of firewood,” Tailcoat said. “I guess he tapped her a little too hard by accident.”
The Judge had been whittling a willow stick, but he stopped abruptly and put the stick and his pocketknife back in the drawer. Prolonged exposure to Tailcoat Jones was making him want to get down to the river and smell a fresh breeze.
“You’ve made a disgrace of this, and I’m disgraced for hiring you,” he told the man. “You could have brought me some Becks, and left Mr. Christie for last. Poor strategy, I’d call it.”
“Well, the Christie place was on our way,” Tailcoat said. “I expect the Becks are tame compared to Ned Christie. We can round ’em up at your convenience.”
“My convenience is to dismiss you on the spot!” the Judge hissed.
“I’ll have my pay, then,” Tailcoat said, considering one of his fingernails.
“You don’t have to pay for the dead men—that’ll save you some cash,” he added, with just a shadow of sarcasm in his voice.
“We’ll determine the issue of pay, once I’m sure who all’s dead over in the Going Snake,” the Judge informed him.
With that, he got up and walked out, leaving Tailcoat Jones in the act of striking a match on his boot-heel.
The day was cloudy, and the river was grey—but the Judge took a long walk anyway. He did not pause to chat with the fishermen, as was his wont, for this was one of those times when the sorrows of life weighed heavily upon him.
Across the river, toward the Indian lands, it was raining on the dark hills. He was reminded of the grief of women who had lost their men before their time. Wilma Maples, Mart’s second cousin, had become entirely demented, and had been sent away to an asylum. Now Ned Christie’s young wife—the great-granddaughter of the late Judge B. H. Sixkiller, a decent and respected Cherokee, and a fine judge himself—had probably lost her husband, too. What other degradations had she suffered as a result? And what about the girl who had been hit too hard with a stick of firewood, all because she had been too frightened and too young to know she was in the hands of ruthless mercenaries—the known killers he himself had sent to catch men who had only been suspected of being killers. Had that been the wise course?
An old black woman, Ellie Bratcher, came walking up from the river with three perch on a string. Ellie’s husband, Isaiah Bratcher, had been a slave owned by a prominent Cherokee family who had come up the Trail of Tears back in 1838. Soon after arriving in their new homeland, Isaiah’s Cherokee masters had realized they would barely be able to provide for themselves, and so they gave Isaiah both their blessings and his freedom. Isaiah moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he found a job and Ellie. During the Civil War, when a contingent of Rebs accused Isaiah Bratcher of stealing one of their horses, he had been lynched from a tree behind the hardware store where he worked. The horse Isaiah was supposed to have stolen trotted up to the Rebs’ camp a few hours after Isaiah was hung. Ellie, his widow, could be seen fishing at the river almost every day since.
“Why, Aunt Ellie,” the Judge said. “Nothing but them bony little perch biting today?”
Ellie Bratcher stopped, and held up her three small fish.
“Nothing but perch, Judge,” she said, shaking her head. “I reckon I’ll just have to watch out for them bones.”
BOOK THREE
NED’S WAR
as told by Ezekiel Proctor
Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
1
NED CHRISTIE’S WAR BEGAN THE DAY ME AND BECCA RODE HOME on that slow mule. That same day, the white law came over the Mountain from Arkansas, burned Ned’s house, killed our Liza, took turns with our Jewel, and shot out Ned’s left eye.
It was Ned’s war; yet I fault myself for it some. I seen that light on the Mountain, and I had a feeling, then, that it might be a posse. I ought to have waited and made sure, but I had Becca with me, and because I wanted my wife home and happy, I put it out of my mind.
In the evening of that same day, I got her home. Ned’s mule was a balker; the trip was terrible slow.
“I can walk faster than this mule,” Becca said, at one point. Becca was ever impatient. She got off, and walked five miles, taking Pete with her—she and Pete got way ahead of the mule, too. But then she wore out, and had to get back up and let the mule carry her the rest of the w
ay.
Frank Beck was waiting on our porch when we got home. From the looks of his horse, he had ridden hard.
“Now what is he wanting? We didn’t invite him,” Becca said. She was put out with all the Becks. It went back to Polly, I guess.
But Frank Beck was decent. Even Pete hardly barked at him, when he got down from in front of my saddlehorn. The minute I saw Frank, I had the fear that he had come with bad news . . . mostly I felt it for my not making sure about that light.
“Hello, Zeke . . . it’s terrible news,” Frank said.
When he told it, Becca began to cry to the saints. Her cries rent the air so that all the chickens ran out from under the porch and hightailed it. Pete crawled under the porch, and we didn’t see him again until nighttime. Becca fell down on her knees, from grief.
“We lost our Liza, Zeke!” she shrieked. “We lost our Liza!”
“I know, Bec . . . ,” is all I said. There was no comfort I could offer her. One moment I felt like crying myself; then the next moment, I wanted to jump on my horse, find Tailcoat Jones, and kill him. He was a raider and a raper in the War, and he’s a raider and a raper still.
“I had better be going, Zeke,” Frankie Beck said, after Becca sank to her knees.
“I would offer you a meal if I had one, Frank,” I said. “I thank you for taking the trouble to come. . . .”
I wanted Sully Eagle to pasture the mule. I had Rebecca to tend to.
“Have you seen Sully anywhere?” I asked Frank.
“Sully? He’s dead,” Frank informed us. I don’t really think Becca heard him, when he said it.
“Dead?” I said, still stunned by his account of the attack on Ned’s place. “Dead of what?”
“Just dead of death, I guess,” Frank replied. “He’s in the corncrib.”
“Well . . . I swear,” I said.
Frankie’s information was accurate: Sully was dead in the corncrib. The big rattler that lived in the shucks was coiled on his chest when I went to look. The rattler rattled at me till I was of a notion to shoot it. But finally, the old snake just crawled away.