“Yep,” Zeke said. “That sorrel.”
“I don’t know why he thinks that horse can run,” Ned said. “I’ve seen mules who can outrun that horse.”
“There’s the Squirrels, too,” Zeke reminded him. “If I’m sitting there in jail, with no better guard than Charley Bobtail, what’s to stop the Squirrels from coming in that jail and shooting me like a possum in a trap—or, if not the Squirrels, then the Becks?”
Ned had forgotten about the Squirrels. He had been wanting to get along and marry Jewel the day the Squirrel brothers warned Zeke in Tahlequah. Now it came back to him: Polly Beck had been a Squirrel, and Zeke was right to be cautious about surrender. Moses Squirrel was capable of immediate murder, in Ned’s view, and Rat Squirrel was not much better than an egg-sucking dog. That left Jim, who was friendly unless he was drunk. When he was drunk, he liked to curse and strike out.
While Ned watched, Zeke’s head drooped down on his chest. Jewel noticed, too. She quickly made her father a pallet by the fireplace. She did not want Ned to be worrying him about going to jail until he had a good night’s rest.
Ned was of the same opinion—Zeke looked like he was about to topple into the gravy.
“Go on and rest, Zeke,” Ned advised. “We can go see the Judge tomorrow.”
Zeke was grateful for the pallet. He lay down, but kept his three guns handy. He had locked his dog Pete in the springhouse before he left for the Beck mill. He was afraid Pete might get barky and give him away. Now, he lacked his watchdog, just when he needed him.
“Pete’s cooped up in the springhouse. I hope Becca remembers to let him out,” he said, just before he fell asleep.
11
THE NEXT MORNING, THE MEN SPENT OVER AN HOUR CLEANING their guns.
On the Mountain, the only weapon Ned usually carried was his old single-shot squirrel gun, unless he was after deer, in which case he took his Winchester. This morning, though, Ned cleaned his two .44s and his Winchester, and Zeke did the same with his three weapons. There was no talk at the table. The men took their coffee and biscuits, but then concentrated on their weapons.
Jewel was used to lots of attention from Ned in the morning. He was always grabbing her, kissing on her, looking at her with eager eyes. Sometimes, he tried to get her to come back with him to the mattress, but Jewel resisted. Such things belonged to the nighttime, she felt, and besides, she had chores to do.
This morning, she felt apprehensive. Ned and her father were preoccupied with their guns. Ned asked once for more coffee, but he did not look up when he asked. Soon, both men went outside to saddle the horses. Jewel felt such a nervousness that she could not get her mind on the chores. She meant to churn butter, but had mislaid the top to the churn. She started three times to look for it, but then forgot what she was about.
Ned had not left Jewel at night since he brought her home to be his wife. She did not want him to leave her, either. She was scared of the Mountain at night. There were bears, for one thing, and wild pigs that might come at her. With Ned there to hold her in his arms, the fear was not bad, but now Ned was saddling up to go. What if he failed to get back by dark? What if there was gunplay, and he was killed? Ned was her husband now. The thought that he might not return to her alive was so upsetting that she could not keep her mind on the churning. Ned was butter crazy—the slabs he spread on his biscuits were thicker than the biscuits themselves. Anyway, why make butter if Ned was going off?
For a moment, Jewel was afraid the men were just going to ride away without telling her what to expect. Zeke had ridden off from Becca plenty of times without telling her whether he would be gone an hour or a month—but finally, Ned came back into the house to look for the whetstone.
“That whetstone must have legs, it was right here on the hearth last night,” he told Jewel.
“I can’t find the churn lid, either,” Jewel admitted.
Then Ned gave her a kiss, taking his time about it, too. They were kissing so long that Jewel got a little embarrassed; after all, her father was standing right outside the door, with his bridle reins in his hands. What would he think of such kissing? She did not really want Ned to stop; when he stopped, he would be riding away. Ned had the power to confuse her, to make her want two things at the same time. Her heart still fluttered like a bird when he came to her, or even when he just looked at her across the table. On occasion, Jewel would go outside and cut firewood when they did not need firewood, in order to calm herself. Even when it got dark, she did not trust the fluttering in her breast, for she felt like she might be getting to love Ned too much. Becca told her it was the things you loved too much that you were sure to lose. Jewel could not stand the thought of losing Ned. Sometimes, deep in the night, when even the woods were silent, she would wake up with the fear that Ned had died. She would put her face against his chest, to feel his heartbeat; but even the feel of his strong heartbeat did not always reassure her, nor did the feel of his warm breath on her cheek. A heartbeat could stop, and breath could cease. Becca, her own mother, had two husbands die, and now Zeke was in trouble—so much trouble that Ned felt he had to take all his guns to town.
Finally, Ned left off kissing her. He looked once more for the wandering whetstone, but did not find it.
“If you see that whetstone, put it back where it belongs,” Ned said. He liked things orderly. Everything in the house had a place where it was supposed to be. The churn lid was supposed to be on the churn, the whetstone on the mantel. He hated to go off with a dull knife, but with the whetstone missing, there was not much he could do about it.
Jewel went outside and hugged her father. He had the distant look he always got when he was impatient to be someplace. Ned had the look, too: they were off to do men’s business.
“Let’s stop at Tuxie’s, he might want to go,” Ned remarked, once he mounted.
Jewel wanted to ask when they would be back, but managed to hold her tongue. Ned probably did not know when he would be back, and even if he knew, he would not appreciate being asked. Men did not like to account for themselves that way.
“Don’t let that pig out till we’ve been gone awhile,” Ned instructed, as he was turning to leave. “That pig will follow horses—if it wanders off too far, it might run into a bear and we’d be out our meat.”
Jewel did as instructed. She sat by the pigpen on an old bucket until the men had been gone long enough to be all the way to Tuxie Miller’s. The pig grunted at her while she sat. It wanted to get out and go looking for acorns; then, when she did let it out, it stood by the back door for an hour, hoping for some slop.
Right after she finished churning, Jewel found the whetstone. It was under the pallet she had made for her father. Jewel wished there was a way she could let Ned know it had been located.
But there was no way. He was already gone.
12
DALE MILLER WAS FORCEFUL. THERE WAS A RIGHT AND A WRONG, and she could tell them apart. Tuxie could not, and in fact, most men could not, which is why it was important that they marry. Single men, in her view, were just a nuisance to the community, for even if they were sober, they usually could not tell right from wrong, and single men were rarely sober anyway.
She was a white woman, married to a Cherokee man, the daughter of missionaries who had traveled the Trail of Tears with the largest contingent of Cherokees to come up from Georgia and Tennessee. Dale was born in the Cherokee Nation, raised and educated at the missionary school her parents established in the Going Snake District. She set her eye on Tuxie Miller early, though she had demonstrated a brief fascination with Ned Christie, the handsomest man Dale had ever seen. Ned was sweet natured and shy, but strong willed; Dale knew that marriage to a man like Ned would mean a considerable amount of their married life would be spent head-butting. Ned seemed to care for her, but his pride was such that she never really knew where she stood with him. Dale herself was forceful to the point of rudeness, at times, but she was good-hearted and loyal, and her judgment as to a man’s char
acter was acute.
It was said that in 1828, gold had been discovered on a creek which ran right through the middle of Tuxie’s grandfather’s property back in north Georgia; that incident was what set the whites to overrunning the Old Nation and finally forcing the removal of the Cherokee people from their homeland ten years later. Tuxie was orphaned out—one of the several hundred Cherokee children who had lost their families during the worst part of the winter trek in 1838—and was raised in the orphanage just outside of Tahlequah. Tuxie Miller, mild mannered and easygoing, was the perfect mate for Dale, and she knew it.
Dale marched right out to Zeke Proctor, and proceeded to explain the right and wrong of his situation to him.
“Zeke, you need to get home and make it up with Becca,” Dale informed him, without preamble.
Zeke looked startled. Like everyone else, he was unprepared for Dale’s forceful way of putting things.
“Make it up for what?” he asked. “I get along fine with Becca.”
“If you get along fine with her, why were you slipping off to see that red-haired slut?” Dale asked. “Now you’ve shamed Becca in front of the whole community.”
Zeke did not answer. He felt considerably aggravated. Why had they stopped at Tuxie Miller’s anyway? Dale Miller was known throughout the District for her contrary ways. All he wanted to do was get to town and settle his legal problems. The last thing he needed was to have Dale Miller lecture him on his behaviour.
Tuxie felt embarrassed—after all, Zeke was a guest. The hospitable thing to do would be to ask him to get down and take some coffee. But Dale was Dale: speaking her mind usually took precedence over the rules of hospitality.
“Becca’s poorly, she needs help with the triplets,” Zeke said, finally. “I had every intention of marrying Polly before the accident happened.”
“Where I come from, you hire help—you don’t marry it,” Dale said.
Dale had little tolerance for the loose habits that prevailed out west. Now here sat Ned Christie, armed to the teeth, going off to do battle if need be on behalf of Zeke Proctor, though he had a young bride at home, a girl just sixteen years old who would have to fend for herself on the Mountain while her husband was gone.
“Cleave to the wife of your bosom, that’s what the Good Book says,” Dale quoted. She looked right at Ned when she said it.
Ned grinned. Dale was always trying to back him into a corner by quoting scripture. He got along with her fine, but he refused to back. The nine children began to slip out of the house to observe the company. They were as shy as mice. Ned was jealous of Tuxie, for having produced nine children, while he himself had yet to produce even one. He meant to remedy that, now that he had his sweet Jewel. What he did not want to do was waste half a day arguing scripture or anything else with Dale Miller. Dale had little patience, and would argue for a week once she got wound up.
“Tuxie, are you coming?” Ned asked. On the ride over, his mind had conjured up an army of Becks and Squirrels who might be waiting for them in ambush, or else in Tahlequah. Tuxie possessed a 10-gauge shotgun that would give them an advantage in close-range shooting. Tuxie had once managed to kill twenty-two ducks with only one barrel of the shotgun, though, of course, the ducks had been tightly bunched. Having him and his shotgun along might discourage a suck-egg like Rat Squirrel from trying to sneak in close.
Before Tuxie could answer, Dale turned and gestured at her children. All nine of them were now lined up in front of the cabin: four boys, five girls.
“No, he’s not going,” Dale said. “I’ll not take a chance of having my children orphaned over some foolishness of Zeke’s.”
“Besides that, I’ve got a cow with bloat up the hill half a mile,” Tuxie said. “I’ve got to poke a knife in her and see if I can let out the bloat. She’s our milk cow, the younguns depend on her.”
Dale’s pique was subsiding a little. Zeke had no colour in his face; he looked tired, and sad. Dale remembered that Zeke had been a good friend to her father when her father was dying. Zeke had ridden twenty-five miles on a sleety day to get some medicines from an old healing woman. The medicines had not saved her father, but Zeke had shown himself to be a loyal friend by making that ride. Though it annoyed her when people could not always be good, the fact was, sometimes they just could not.
Zeke Proctor was no more all of a piece than most men. There was good in him, as well as bad. The older men got, it seemed to Dale, the more prone they were to making bad mistakes, particularly if they did not have a strong wife to show them the Christian way.
Ned Christie was a fine man and a good neighbour, willing to pitch in and help when there was work to do. Dale had set her cap for Ned, but then she took the cap off when she discovered how headstrong he was. Since she knew herself to be no less headstrong, Dale chose Tuxie when she decided to marry. Tuxie she could bend; life with Ned would have been one head butt after another.
“If you men are fearful of a scrap, you better eat first,” she said, looking up at them and moderating her tone. “We got corn cakes.”
Tuxie was relieved. Dale had remembered her manners, and just in time, too. It would have been an embarrassment if she had sent his friends away hungry. Dale mostly did remember her manners; it was just that she would have her say first. Zeke had little appetite, but Ned ate his share, and most of Zeke’s.
“I don’t know why he would marry a woman like that,” Zeke remarked, as they rode on toward Tahlequah. “I’d just as soon marry a badger.”
Ned just chuckled. He liked Dale.
13
JUDGE B. H. SIXKILLER WAS ANNOYED THAT ZEKE HAD LET TWENTY-FOUR hours elapse before presenting himself in Tahlequah.
In twenty-four hours or less, one of the Becks could have ridden to Fort Smith and called for the white law. If that had occurred, there would be a squabble, at the very least, and the Judge was too old to enjoy squabbles. B. H. Sixkiller had curly white eyebrows, and had been much admired by the women in his day—four of them had married him, but they were all dead now, and the rheumatism in his joints pained him so badly on wet days that he had not applied himself to finding a new wife. When he got a little respite from his duties as a judge, he usually went fishing.
Zeke Proctor looked plenty repentant when he told his story, but the Judge was stern with him anyway. Crimes resulting from marital irregularities were a particular annoyance to him. He had gotten along fine with all four of his wives, and as a result deplored concubinage and other loose arrangements. Women’s shapes might differ, but their natures did not—not in the Judge’s view. Now Zeke had sown discord in the community, merely because he wanted a woman different from the one he had.
“Zeke, you’re a damned reprobate!” the Judge said. “Your trial will be in two weeks. Take him off to jail, Charley!”
Sheriff Charley Bobtail’s heart sank when he heard the order.
“You mean I have to keep him for the whole two weeks?” he asked. As sheriff of the Going Snake District, his responsibilities were large and wide ranging. In respect to the jail, he had to function not only as sheriff, but as jailer, janitor, and cook. He did not look forward to having Zeke Proctor as a prisoner for two long weeks.
The Judge was writing up the Affidavit of Trial. If he got it posted soon enough, so that everybody knew Zeke would be held accountable for the killing, maybe the white law would leave them alone. Speed was of the essence, which was why Zeke had been a fool to waste a day before he made his report. If white law got hold of him, he’d be lucky to escape the noose.
“I’m not such a fool as to want to feed this man for two weeks,” the Judge said, looking up from his affidavit. “If the marshals show up, it will probably be tomorrow. If we’ve got him in jail and the trial date’s set, they’ll have to leave without him. Then you can let him out, and he can take his chances.”
Zeke was relieved by that news, and he saw the Judge’s point about the marshals. If they ran into him on the Mountain, or caught him at home, they?
??d probably just kill him, unless he killed them first. But he still did not savour the notion of being in the Tahlequah jail for any length of time. He had been in it once or twice for minor scrapes, and knew it to be a drafty place with hard bunks. He missed Becca, Liza, and the triplets, and wanted to get home to them as soon as possible. Becca would be worried, and the triplets would be more than a handful, with only Liza to help.
Charley and Zeke went out. Ned started to follow them, but when he took a step toward the door, the Judge looked up and frowned. Ned stopped—he had great respect for the law that emanated from Judge Sixkiller.
“Are you in a hurry, Mr. Christie?” the Judge asked.
“No, I’m just here with Zeke,” Ned replied. Being in the presence of Judge Sixkiller made him feel solemn, for some reason.
“I see you’re fully armed,” the Judge observed.
“Yes sir,” Ned said.
“It’s better to live in peace with your neighbours and not be shooting at them,” the Judge said.
“I ain’t shooting at ’em,” Ned said.
“A man who carries three guns is likely to end up shooting at somebody, sooner or later,” the Judge observed. “A peaceable man ought to be content with fewer guns.”
“I was afraid there’d be trouble with the Becks or the Squirrels,” Ned informed him.
The Judge ignored this reasoning. He looked out the window, and saw that Sheriff Bobtail and Zeke Proctor had yet to make it to the jail. They were standing in the street talking, which was incorrect procedure, and a distraction from the matter at hand.
“You married my granddaughter. Why’d you do it?” the Judge demanded to know, in the tone he might use with a felon.
Ned was so taken aback by the question that for a moment he lost his bearings. Judge Sixkiller was looking stern. Ned was at a loss for what to say, his mind having suddenly gone blank. Why had he married Jewel? Ned felt like he would rather be in jail with Zeke than to face Judge Sixkiller and his questions about his new wife.