Zeke and Ned (14 page)

“We're looking for a marshal, have you seen any?” T Spade asked, looking down at Sully, the latter still in his thinking posture.

It was a well-known fact that Sully Eagle knew the whereabouts of practically everyone in the Going Snake District. If a bribable marshal was handy, it would save them a long trip to Fort Smith.

“Yes, Bill Yopps is in Stinking Water, visiting his ma,” Sully said. “He's wounded in the shoulder, though. A whiskeyseller shot him.”

“Did Bill kill the whiskeyseller?” Willy inquired.

“No, that whiskeyseller ran off,” Sully said, getting to his feet. He was glad Davie Beck was not in the company. Davie Beck did not like him. Of all the people in the Going Snake District, Davie was the
hardest to keep up with. Everybody knew him, but nobody could keep track of him. Yesterday, he had been in Dog Town, trying to make a saw into a knife, but today he might be riding the roads, looking for someone to beat with a club. Sully decided to walk down into the woods. He might find a log to sit on, while he thought. With frustrated people like the Becks on the loose, it was not wise to stop and think in plain sight.

“I don't like Bill Yopps, he don't pay his bills,” T. Spade informed them. “Is that the only marshal you've seen, Sully?”

“Oh, I ain't seen Bill,” Sully said. “The last marshal I seen was Dan Maples, and that was last week. He was north of Tahlequah, tracking a horse thief.”

With that, he walked slowly into the woods, in search of a log to sit on. As he was walking, he got an uneasy feeling, uneasy enough that he stopped to look back.

Sure enough—T Spade Beck was pointing a rifle at him.

Sully got moving, in order to take full advantage of the cover. T Spade shot three times. One of the bullets clipped a red leaf, right by Sully's head; the other two went wild. Sully hurried on deeper into the trees. When he considered it safe to look back, the Becks were gone.

After such an experience, Sully felt nervous. He decided it was not a good day for reasoned thought. Besides, now that Becca had taken her daughter and the triplets and gone north to her people, there were chores aplenty around the Proctor home—chores aplenty, and nobody but Sully to do them. A bobcat had already got one of Zeke's geese, the turkeys were nervous, and three of the red hens had stopped laying. Sully could hardly wait for the trial to be over, and Zeke to be freed. Zeke needed to get home, and help out with the chores.

“If you needed to shoot at Sully, you should have hit him,” Willy Beck complained. “Now he'll tell everybody that we're out gunning for folks. It'll make it a sight harder to hire a marshal.”

“I don't recall asking your advice,” T Spade responded. “Sully's the one who told Zeke about the weevils. If that old fool had kept his mouth shut, I wouldn't be having to do my own cooking.” In fact, he had not at first intended to shoot at Sully. But then rage flared at the thought of the loss of Polly, and the poor cooking he'd been required to subsist on, and he flashed off the three shots.

“I expect Zeke would have noticed them weevils for himself, T,”

Frank Beck said cautiously. “
I'd
notice, if somebody weeviled up my corn.”

“You can go home if you intend to yap, Frankie,” T. Spade replied. “Let's go hire Bill Yopps—he might be the best we can get.”

“But the man's down in the shoulder,” Frank Beck said. “Dan Maples is around somewhere, and he's able bodied. I'd rather hire him.”

“I'm putting in four dollars,” the newly voluble Sam remarked.

“Why, Dan Maples won't bribe—any fool would know that,” T. Spade said. “He's only interested in rounding up whiskeysellers. He may
like
Zeke Proctor, for all we know.”

“I thought you didn't like Bill Yopps,” Frank reminded his brother. “You just said the man didn't pay his bills.”

“He don't, but we're in a hurry, that trial's day after tomorrow,” T. Spade reminded them. “Stinking Water's a lot closer than Fort Smith—let's go sound him out.”

“I'm for it,” Willy said. “If the man's only got one arm, maybe he'll cut his price.”

“Willy, he's still got two arms hanging on his body,” Frank said. “Sully only said he was crippled in the shoulder.”

Still, the economic argument had strong appeal to Willy—it always did.

“It won't hurt to ask,” he said, as they headed off to corral Bill Yopps.

W
HEN
J
EWEL SAW
N
ED CLEANING HIS GUNS, SHE BEGAN TO SHAKE
.

Zeke Proctor's trial was the next day, and it meant her husband would be leaving again. Jewel did not know if she could stand it. Ned had been away four nights when he rode with Zeke to Tahlequah to see the Judge. For Jewel, they had been nights of loneliness and fear. The sounds of the woods, sounds she scarcely noticed when she lay warm in Ned's arms, became sounds of danger and menace. Bears, wolves, panthers—all lived on the Mountain. She knew that wolves and panthers were shy and rarely seen, but she had always feared them anyway.

Bears, however, were her prime fear. Her mother had once told her to stick close to the house and lots when she was in her time of the
month, for bears could smell the blood. Long ago, during the time of the Trail of Tears, Jewel's old grandmother had known of a woman who was taken by a bear during her time of the month. No one could remember the woman's name. Her grandmother had known the woman, though her name had been forgotten.

Ned laughed, when Jewel spoke to him about her fear of bears. He traded for a good rifle, and gave Jewel a few shooting lessons, but he did not take the talk of bears seriously.

“If a bear shows up, just bang the frying pans together,” he said. “Bears don't like loud noise.”

“Maybe I ought to have waited till you grew up to have married you,” Ned told her, one of the times when she was trying to explain how scared she got when he was away. He tried to make her laugh by saying it, but it only made her more nervous.

Jewel gave up trying to make Ned understand her fear. She knew he would only laugh that much louder if she tried to tell him that the wood sounds—the owls, and coyotes, and other varmints—scared her when he was gone.

Jewel's worst fear went so deep she never talked about it with Ned: that was her fear of men. Her father had told her that bad men sometimes changed themselves into owls, so they could travel under dark cover and commit their evil deeds at night, when no one could see them. Rough men, most of them white men, traveled on the Mountain—whiskeysellers, bandits, men on the run from the law. Some of them knew where Ned lived, and some of them probably knew he had married. They might spy on the two of them; they might know when Ned was away from home. What if they came, in the night? Tuxie Miller's house was three miles away. She could not run for help, if a harmful man showed up. She would have to fight alone. What if two or three whiskeysellers or a few bandits came at her, all at once?

Jewel was a wife now, and she knew what men wanted of women. She belonged to her husband, and the thought of another man being with her that way made her feel sick and shaky. It was just such a worry that made her shake when she saw Ned cleaning his guns. What if rough men came while her husband was gone? Once or twice a week, some hungry traveling man would show up at their door, wanting a little grub. With Ned around, it made no difference—but with Ned gone, Jewel could hardly be trusting enough to offer a stranger grub.

The fear built in her for a week. Finally, the night before the trial, it filled her so full that she could not contain it.

“Take me with you to town, Ned—I fear to stay alone,” Jewel blurted out, when they were getting ready for bed.

“I'll ride the mule,” she added. “I'll even walk. I'm a fast walker, I can keep up.”

Ned looked at her with astonishment. They had a farm—chickens, a pig, two heifers, a mule, a garden to tend. Did Jewel think they could just walk off from a farm? Zeke Proctor was her father; Zeke had livestock and poultry and a farm. Jewel must know there were responsibilities that could not be shirked, once a man took a mate and began to live the married life.

“Jewel, you've got to stay here and tend the place,” Ned said, trying not to sound angry. Jewel was but a girl, just sixteen. He ought not to expect her to be a forceful woman on the order of Dale Miller; in fact, he was sure he would never want her to be
that
forceful. But he did want her to recognize that she could not merely follow her whims. She was married now, and her place was at home. He could not be letting her traipse off to Tahlequah, even if she could walk fast.

Jewel knew that was what Ned would say, and yet, disappointment hit her like a blow. It meant she would have to miss him, and he had no notion how painful that missing would be. Even before he was out of sight, it would begin—and it would not relent until she saw him walking up the path to their door.

Despite herself, tears flooded out, so copiously that they wet the front of her old gown. She cried silently. Ned had already blown out the lantern and could not see her tears. It was only later, once they lay down, that Ned felt the wetness on her gown.

“Jewel, honey, did you spill something?” he asked. Then he touched Jewel's wet cheek, and realized the wetness was tears. Jewel did not cry often, but when she did her eyes got as big as cups, and the tears fell down in a flood.

“Why, what is it?” Ned asked. He had already forgotten her desire to accompany him to the trial. He thought she might be sick.

Jewel did not answer him for a while. She was torn between her need to tell her husband the truth, and her conviction that he would not like it if she
did
tell him. She started to lie, to tell him the tears were tears of homesickness. The fact was, she often did pine for news of her mother, and Liza, and the triplets.

But her tears, this time, were tears of sadness and dread. Without meaning to, she had come to love Ned too much, so much that it hurt not to have him with her, not to have him touch her. She knew that people came and went in life; men, particularly. Errands had to be run, and visits made. Ned was a senator, too—he had told her on the ride home, that he would have to be going to Tahlequah from time to time to sit in the Senate and have his say about tribal matters. At the time, Jewel paid little attention to his words, she was so filled with her feelings about going home with him to the Mountain, and being his wife.

Now, her caring and her need were an embarrassment to her. They were feelings too strong to hide. She had not meant to become so attached, and yet she had.

Ned was peering at her, but could not really see her. The night was moonless, and the room was pitch black. He felt a certain fear himself. When women took ill, they often died, and died quick. Lacy, his first wife, had only been ill for a day and a night when she passed on. Jewel looked healthy, but then so had Lacy up until the infection took her. What if Jewel had taken ill? What if she died?

“Are you sick, Jewel?” he asked, his voice full of concern. “If you're sick, I better fetch Old Turtle Man.”

Old Turtle Man was an ancient Cherokee healer, with long white hair and a crouchlike walk. He had come along the Trail of Tears from Georgia in 1838, at the same time as Zeke Proctor and his family. He lived in a dirt house five miles from Ned's place. He was called Turtle Man because he caught turtles and terrapins and kept them in his cave. He even had a snapping turtle in a washtub. It was said that he used the liver of his turtles in his potions, though no one knew for sure. The healing knowledge the old man carried around in his head was considered sacred, and the mixing of potions and such was done in the privacy of his cave.

Old Turtle Man could follow animals when they were old, or sick and on their way to die; he would speak to the animals, whether dog or deer or bear, and take organs from their bodies once they had passed on to the other side. When Lacy got so sick the old man had been away on a journey, gathering roots and spiders. He had been seen in Stinking Water with a jar full of spiders and a big bundle of roots and leaves on his back. Ned had the notion Old Turtle Man might have saved Lacy if he had not gone on his journey just when she took ill.

Jewel had seen Old Turtle Man only once. His old hands were twisted from having spiders bite him. He had come to Becca, when she was sick; his voice was low, like the voice of a frog, and he smelled like wet weeds.

“I ain't sick,” Jewel told her husband, conquering the desire to lie. “I just get scared when I know you have to go away.”

Ned relaxed at once, though he was a little vexed. Jewel was young, but she ought to know better. He would have no place to board her, even if she did go; he himself meant to bunk under a shed. Besides, if Zeke got acquitted and the Becks decided to make a fight of it, the last thing he needed was his wife in the middle of a shootout.

“Dern it, Jewel, I told you to bang the pans if you see a bear,” he reminded her. “What else is there to scare you, way up here on the Mountain?”

Jewel did not want to tell him about her fear of men. He would scoff at her, probably—Ned's marksmanship was feared throughout the District. He felt that the mere fact she was his woman would scare off any ruffians that happened by. He had told her once, after their passion, that he would kill any man who offered her insult.

Jewel had no doubt that Ned meant what he said: he would kill any man who offered her insult. But the killing would come later—it would not spare her the insult. She knew, too, that there were men traveling through this country who had little fear of Ned Christie; there were men who had never even heard of him. A man might come from Missouri or Tennessee or even farther away, and all he would see was a woman alone.

“Leave me some bullets, Ned. I need to practice with that rifle,” Jewel said, in the morning. Ned was saddled up and ready to leave, and Jewel was determined not to cry until he was out of sight. She could ill afford to talk much at such a time. The sadness might get into her voice and ruin her plan not to cry.