Zeke and Ned (22 page)

“What's the grub, Sully?” he asked, ignoring Sully's remark about the horse tracks.

“Corncakes,” Sully replied, a little hurt that Zeke was so abrupt. “I been fryin' up that weevily corn. It's that or hunt, and I'm not goin' off huntin', not with the Becks on the loose. T. Spade shot at me once, and he didn't miss me by enough. I won't take the risk again.”

“There'd be no risk, T. Spade is dead. A bailiff shot him,” Zeke informed him.

“A what?” Sully asked.

“A bailiff, he's a person who works for the court,” Zeke said. “I had hoped for better grub than weevily corn. Surely there's pork in the smokehouse.”

“No, there ain't. Didn't you hear about the whirlwind?” Sully asked.

“I been in jail,” Zeke reminded him. “News was sparse from up this way.”

“A whirlwind hit the smokehouse and blew it away,” Sully said. “I hid in the root cellar, or it would have got me.”

Zeke, devastated by this news, dashed out the door and ran up the slope, only to discover that for once Sully Eagle was not exaggerating: his smokehouse was certainly gone. Sully ambled up, just as Zeke sat down on a stump to collect his wits.

“What about the meat? It might blow the smokehouse away, but surely the meat's somewhere,” Zeke reasoned. Not only had his wife left him, but his smokehouse was gone, too. It was a poor homecoming.

“A bear got the meat,” Sully said. He did not comment further.

“Why didn't you shoot it, Sully?” Zeke asked. “There was two pigs
in that smokehouse, and a full quarter of beef. That's too goddamn much meat to give to a bear.”

“It was dark, and I was still in the root cellar,” Sully told him. “I don't like to shoot at bears when it's dark, it's apt to rile them up.”

“Well, this has riled
me
up!” Zeke announced. “I lost my smokehouse, and all my meat, too. If you'd just banged the frying pan, that bear would have gone away.”

Sully concentrated on frying up the corncakes. There was no point in trying to reason with Zeke Proctor when he was out of sorts. Zeke's temper was erratic, which was why he had got in trouble in the first place. Now he had shown up at home, expecting everything to be perfect, despite the absence of his wife and the prevalence of such things as whirlwinds and bears. Sully decided that the best thing he could do was concentrate on his cooking, and pick as many weevils out of the corncakes as he could before passing them to Zeke.

“I thought there'd be grub here, I hate losing meat,” Zeke said several times, as he was consuming the corncakes. Though anxious in the extreme to get Becca back home, he nonetheless felt out of sorts with her suddenly, for going off to her people and leaving the farm management to strange old Sully Eagle—a man who, it appeared now, could not be counted upon to take even the most rudimentary steps toward the upkeep of his farm—steps like shooting a bear that was making off with all the pork.

“Once I get Becca home, I intend to track that goddamn bear and kill it,” he said, his annoyance growing as he attempted to choke down the tasteless corncakes. The corncakes were so dry that he had to soak them with molasses in order to make them palatable.

“One of them shoats is growin' fast,” Sully ventured. “It'll be big enough to butcher in another month.”

“I doubt it,” Zeke said. He was in a mood to disagree with everything the old man said, just on principle. Sully, a dependable man when Zeke was right minded, became more and more undependable in Zeke's mind, as Zeke became more and more irked.

Since Zeke was almost as testy as a bear himself, Sully decided to abandon any attempt to make conversation for the evening. He wandered off to his shed, over by the livestock lots. It was filled with corn-shucks and made a comfortable resting place. Occasionally, he heard the rustle of a big rattlesnake, from somewhere down in the shucks, but he had never been an enemy of the snake people and rested at
ease, despite the proximity of the large snake. Once in a while, on warm days, he would see it resting on a flat rock by the cistern. Pete would trot down and yip at the snake sometimes, but Pete knew better than to go for it. The old snake was tolerant, but not so tolerant as to put up with much insult from a fat black dog.

In the morning, Zeke hauled a couple of buckets of water up from the well and set about cleansing himself. He had intended to heat the water and indulge in a proper bath, but when the time came his impatience was such that he skipped the heating and just bathed cold, shaved cold, and did not even bother to trim his moustache. Sometimes, if she was in an especially good mood, Becca liked to trim his moustache herself. Perhaps she would be pleased that he had left it for her to trim.

As Zeke was saddling up, Sully wandered down the hill carrying a possum he had cornered in the outhouse. It was a fat, young possum; Sully had already skinned it and had it ready for the frying pan. Zeke decided the day was young enough so that he could wait and have a bite of possum before setting off.

“I'm seeing too many horse tracks that don't have any business being around here,” Sully remarked, as they were finishing the possum meat. Zeke had grease on his moustache from his greedy approach to the possum.

“You said that last night,” Zeke reminded him. “Don't be worrying me about horse tracks—half the Becks are dead. Don't be lazy about hunting, either. The Becks that are left have better things to do than shoot at you.”

He then favored Sully with a quick report on the courthouse massacre.

“Twelve kilt? Why, that's half the community!” Sully exclaimed. “I am sorry to hear that White Sut Beck escaped. Davie's bad, but White Sut is worse.”

“Ned could have killed him, I don't know why he didn't,” Zeke told him.

“White Sut lives way over by Salt Hill, with his bear and his buzzard,” Sully said. “They say he sleeps in the salt. Maybe that's why he's crazy.

“I think the Squirrel brothers made them horse tracks,” Sully added.

Though Zeke was impatient with more mention of horse tracks,

Sully thought it best to remind him that the Squirrel brothers were still on the prod. They were nowhere near as mean as the Becks, but Moses Squirrel was a fair shot, capable of putting a bullet in Zeke, mean or not.

“I have no interest in the Squirrels, and I'll tell 'em so if they attempt to interfere with me,” Zeke said, as he mounted to leave. “I want you to sweep out this house and mop it down. Becca won't like it if she has to come home to a dirty house.”

“What if she don't come back, Zeke? Who will you wife with?” Sully inquired.

Zeke was so annoyed by the question that he rode off without a reply. What grounds did Sully Eagle have to suppose that Becca might not consent to come back home? He was putting himself out to the extent of riding forty miles to see her; why would she not return with him? He was a wanted man, too. He should be putting distance between himself and the white marshals who would soon be showing up to look for him. Surely Becca would want to come back, once she realized what a risk he was taking for her.

She might not, though—that was a fact Sully Eagle had been impolite enough to remind him of. Women could do what they pleased, and he could not force Becca to come back if she did not want to come back. He remembered her last look in the jail: her look had been cold and steely as a gun barrel. What if he rode all that way and Becca met him with the gun-barrel look? What would he do then?

Zeke's worry increased, as he rode north. The fact was, Becca had metal in her. She could stiffen like steel in response to offenses he had not intended. Mainly, she had been a dutiful, hard-working wife—she kept a tidy house and was a fair cook when she put her mind to it, and she had never refused his embraces. Past a point, though, Becca felt free to ignore orders she did not like, and would not be told what to do. He had been raised to believe that a wife ought to love, honour, and obey her husband. He knew Becca loved him and supposed she probably honoured him; but when it came to obeying, she felt free to walk her own trail.

Zeke hated courting women. He was too busy for it. If Becca refused to come back home with him, he would be in a pickle. He had accidentally killed the only other woman he fancied—Polly Beck— and he would be hard put to know what to do for a female if Becca showed him her gun-barrel side.

He was not a man to sleep well in an empty bed, either. The sap rose too strongly in him at night, and the thought of having no companion at the supper table except old Sully Eagle did not please him in the least.

As Zeke rode off, he could hear Pete flinging himself at the walls of the springhouse, where he had locked him. Becca was not fond of dogs and was particularly short of affection when it came to Pete. If she saw him riding up with Pete in front of his saddle, it might prejudice his case before he got to speak to her.

Sully had orders to let Pete out in a few hours; no doubt Pete would fling himself at the springhouse wall the whole time. Pete never stopped trying to get his way, not until he was completely exhausted.

Zeke had saddled his big bay gelding for the long ride up toward Missouri. The bay had an easy lope, a gait he could sustain for miles without slacking. Zeke was loping along working over in his mind what he was going to say to Becca, when he came atop a little ridge and had to pull up to keep from plowing right into the Squirrel brothers, the three of whom were planted squarely across the trail. All three had their guns drawn and were no more than twenty yards away, killing distance even for poor pistol shots such as the Squirrels. To make matters worse, Rat Squirrel was aiming a Winchester rifle at him. Though Rat might have missed with a pistol, Zeke regarded it as unlikely that he would miss with a Winchester rifle—not at that distance.

Zeke stopped the bay, looking a good deal chagrined. He realized he should have listened to Sully, who though old and boresome, was capable of telling which horse tracks belonged on the property, and which did not. Still, it was just the Squirrels. He had bluffed them in the past, and he felt confident he could bluff them again. His desire to get Becca back home gave him even more brass.

“You boys don't be pointing weapons at me,” he said. “The trial is over, and I'm acquitted. Get out of the way and let me pass.”

“The only place you're passing to is hell, Zeke,” Moses Squirrel said. “Disarm him, Rat.”

“You
disarm him, Jim,” Rat Squirrel replied. “I have to keep him covered with this rifle.”

“Just throw your guns down, Zeke, and that'll be that,” Jim Squirrel said politely. Jim had always been a good deal more pleasant than his brothers.

“No, I was acquitted proper, and I won't give up my arms,” Zeke countered. “I am going to get my wife, and I need my weaponry. You boys know there's always bandits up Missouri way.”

He was considering what his chances were of busting through the Squirrels and making it to a chinaberry thicket not more than a quarter of a mile away. Once in the chinaberries, he felt sure he could out-shoot the Squirrels, though it was a damn nuisance to have to take the time to do it on the day he had an urgent need to reclaim his wife.

“You may have got a passel of gravediggers to hold up their hands, but you ain't acquitted in our book,” Moses said. “We intend to hang you in the name of our sister. We'd rather not shoot you first, but we will if we have to.”

Zeke felt a red-eyed anger coming on. Here were the damn Squirrels, making a nuisance of themselves over Polly Beck, whom he had killed entirely by accident. It was an outrage to him that they would block him on a public trail at a time when he sorely needed to see his wife. Without further delay, he put spurs to the bay and charged straight at Rat, drawing a pistol as he came.

Unnerved, all three of the Squirrels fired and missed. Rat's shot knocked a crabapple off a tree fifty yards behind Zeke, who bumped Rat and nearly knocked his horse down as he came busting through the line of men. Zeke fired a pistol right at Rat Squirrel's head, but missed due to rapid movement.

The Squirrels recovered quickly from their surprise at Zeke's sudden charge. In a moment, Zeke heard their horses behind him, but was not greatly worried about being overtaken before he made the thicket. A factor in his favour was that the Squirrels were notoriously cheap when it came to purchasing horse-flesh: they had no mount to match his bay.

He was almost into the woods, when he felt a jolt in his ribs—a strong jolt—as if a post oak limb had whacked him. But it was a chinaberry thicket he was approaching; there were no post oaks in sight. The jolt caused him to lose a stirrup, an unfortunate thing, since the bay charged right into the thicket as if it were merely shrub, breaking limbs and jumping fallen logs.

“Whoa! Whoa! You've got to slow down now,” Zeke said to the horse. The command came too late: the bay jumped a tangle of logs and underbrush, causing Zeke to lose the other stirrup. A moment later, a limb took him in the chest and swept him off the gelding as
cleanly as if he had hit a wire. Zeke grabbed for his rifle as he went off, but missed. He came crashing to the ground on his back, armed only with a pistol. When he rolled over, he saw a smear of blood on the grass and felt a warmth on his right side. That jolt had most likely been a bullet smacking into his ribs, he thought. The bay stopped when Zeke fell off, and stood a few feet away. Zeke knew he ought to mount and get a little deeper into the copse of trees, deep enough that he would be safe from the Squirrels while he took his shirt off and assessed his wound. But to his dismay, a weakness like that which had come over him in the courtroom assailed him again. He sat up, but could not seem to get his legs under him. There was not much blood on the leaves, and Zeke did not suppose himself to be badly hurt—but the weakness slowed him so that he was losing time. When Zeke looked up, his head began to swim. One moment he saw his gelding, and the next moment he did not. The trees seemed to be circling him, pulling in closer and closer. When he looked up at the sky, it was only a pinpoint. He heard footsteps and knew it must be the Squirrel brothers, moving into kill him. But the fact that the trees were circling closer and closer, and the sky receding higher and higher, worried him more.