Zeke and Ned (24 page)

Dale sat by the bedside, holding one of Tuxie's hands. Once in a while, she would press one of his fingers, and Tuxie would respond, pressing his finger against hers, just enough so that she could feel it. In Dale's mind, the fact that Tuxie still pressed her finger was a signal that he did not want her to let him go. She knew death was near, and it might be that Tuxie would get so sick that he would have to leave her, but as long as he pressed her finger, Dale knew there was a chance that he would stay. Although Tuxie was so weak that his breath came only faintly, the wound itself looked a little better to her. Old Turtle Man had mixed up a few hard blackberries he had found on the Mountain with some squeezings from the glands of a toad. He had smeared the mash into the wound as deeply as he could get it, and it seemed to Dale that it had leeched some of the poison out of the ugly red gash. She knew she had to keep the closest watch she
was capable of; her eyes went constantly to Tuxie's face. She knew her husband was walking a thin fence rail between life and death, and she did not want to withdraw her attention for a second, lest he tip to the death side while she was looking off.

Ned Christie had walked off somewhere; maybe he had left to go kill Davie Beck. Ned had told her several times that he meant to put Davie Beck in his grave for what he had done to Tuxie. He spoke of vengeance while they were considering taking off Tuxie's leg. Dale had weighed carefully the matter of amputation and rejected it on instinct, but she had paid little attention to Ned's talk of revenge. Ned could worry about vengeance if he wanted to—Dale had to devote her attention to keeping her husband alive. She had nine children, and she would not desert them or skimp on their raising. Tuxie was the man she had pledged herself to, and Dale knew she faced a long, bleak widowhood, if he died. Tuxie was a good man, and she needed him. She knew she would wither without Tuxie.

She pressed Tuxie's finger again, her heart in her throat, and waited for Tuxie to press back. For several long seconds, he did not. Then Dale felt the faint pressure of his finger against hers, and her heart lifted.

Old Turtle Man arrived with a cup of bitter herbs he had been brewing in springwater. At first, Tuxie seemed too weak to swallow the black potion, but Dale got behind him and lifted his body. Finally, Old Turtle Man got a few drops in him. Dale saw Tuxie's Adam's apple move when he swallowed, and was grateful that the old healer had persisted.

Then Old Turtle Man went out the door, and began chanting one of his healing songs, while Dale wiped Tuxie's forehead with a cool rag.

“Where did Ned go to?” Dale asked, when Jewel came timidly back to the bedside.

“He went off,” Jewel replied. She did not want to blatantly lie, but neither did she want to reveal that Ned was behind the barn with a shovel and a pick, digging Tuxie's grave.

Dale liked Jewel, but a low feeling came to her when she looked at the girl, so young and timid and scared. She knew Jewel had no sense yet of the power that would be hers someday, as a grown woman—no girl could know much of that power, until it arrived. It was not the
natural fact of her innocence and ignorance that troubled Dale when she looked at Jewel; it had more to do with things Dale did not really know herself, apprehensions that rose in her when she thought of Ned Christie. Ned and Tuxie had been friends from boyhood, and Dale knew there was no separating them. She knew, too, that Ned was as true and loyal a friend as Tuxie would ever have. Dale cared for Ned and might have married him herself, if he had been forthright enough to come to her with his need. But Ned had held back, pretending he was not needy of her. Tuxie had walked right past Ned and plunked his longing in her lap as if it were a bushel of snap beans. Before they had ever touched, Tuxie had made her feel that his need for her was so great that he might die if she refused him, so she let all thought of the handsome Ned go and opened herself to Tuxie. She had not regretted it, either, for all Ned's handsomeness and dash. Tuxie was the more gentle man, a man she could be sure of.

There was even more than that to Dale's concern. Ned seemed to be making Jewel a decent husband; he might have made a decent husband to her as well. Dale's disquiet was not about Ned Christie's character—it was about his fate. She thought it unlikely that Ned and Jewel would ever know the kind of peace she felt with Tuxie and their children. Ned would not know peace, and now young Jewel would not, either. The killings in Tahlequah merely confirmed something Dale had always felt about Ned Christie: bloodshed was his fate— bloodshed and death. Now the blood had begun to flow in the Tahlequah courthouse. Ned had killed some of his enemies, but he had not killed them all, nor had the white law from over the Mountain been heard from just yet.

There would be more battles, of that Dale felt certain. Young Jewel would have to grow into womanhood quick if she was to guard and protect her husband, and pull him out of conflict before it was too late.

Dale was lost only for a moment in her apprehensive thoughts. While she was looking at Jewel, Tuxie suddenly squeezed her hand. It was such a surprise that Dale jumped. When she looked back at her husband, Tuxie's eyes were open. Not only that, they had a faint light in them.

“What's the grub, Dale?” he asked. “My belly feels like it ain't got nothing in it.”

“It don't have much, hon,” Dale said. “You've been too ill to eat.”

Tuxie turned his head slightly, and looked out the window. The day was bright, and the sun was vivid in the afternoon sky.

“I have never liked to be in bed in the daytime,” he said. “I'd try to cut some firewood if I didn't feel so lank.”

Then he noticed Jewel, and looked at her in surprise.

“Why, Jewel,” he said. “When'd you come to visit?”

Then, having said his little say, Tuxie sank back into deep sleep. His breathing came so regularly that Dale did not have to listen for it. She shook her head, and dripped tears of relief onto the quilt that covered Tuxie's legs. It had been a hard struggle, harder even than childbirth, and related, she felt. As she sat through the five nights holding Tuxie back from departure with her will and the strength of her body and her love, it had been her children's birthings that she thought most about. Getting a child to come—keeping a man from going— those were the poles of her struggle. It was a grim struggle, one that required her to reach into the deepest center of herself and find the strength to prevail against Tuxie's illness. Listening to Tuxie's calm breathing made Dale wish it was nighttime. She wanted to lay down with him and rest, from all the straining. Her insides had got so knotted up with worry that she felt a good night's sleep beside her husband was what she needed to put her right.

Dale looked out the window and saw that Old Turtle Man was gathering up his pouches and his materials, getting ready to leave.

“Hurry, Jewel, go stop him,” Dale said. “I'll be out in a minute. I need to thank him, and the children need to thank him, too. He come all this way and saved their pa.”

Jewel went out quickly, but not quickly enough. The Turtle Man, so old that he was frail and bent with age, nonetheless had slipped away into the forest. When Jewel asked the children, now playing by the woodpile, where the old man was, they all looked blank. None of them had seen Old Turtle Man leave.

Jewel hurried to the barn. She was apprehensive that Dale would somehow discover what Ned was doing. Sure enough, he stood waist deep in the grave he was digging, his blue shirt as wet with sweat as if he had been dipped in a creek.

“Ned, stop—you don't have to dig any deeper,” Jewel said.

“I do, too,” Ned said. “I've only got it about three feet. A good
grave needs to be six feet, at least. There's varmints that can dig down three feet, if they're hungry enough.”

“No, that ain't what I meant,” Jewel told him. She felt a little vexed with Ned for being so quick to disregard her advice. There were times when he just did not seem to hear what she had to say.

“Tuxie ain't going to die,” she told him. “He just opened his eyes, and he's breathing better. Dale's up there crying, she's so glad.”

Ned was stunned—and more than a little abashed. Jewel had tried to keep him from hasty digging, but he had not listened. Now he was standing three feet down in a half-dug grave, with no corpse to put in it.

“Are you certain?” he asked, remembering the white, silent Tuxie he had left scarcely more than an hour before.

“He opened his eyes,” Jewel repeated. “And he asked for grub.”

“I guess he's well, then,” Ned told her. “Food's always the first thing on Tuxie's mind.”

“Come back with me, you'll see,” Jewel said. “Old Turtle Man left. I guess he knew Tuxie was well.”

“I can't come back yet,” Ned said. “I've got to spade all this dern dirt back in this hole. I need to do it quick, too. If Dale finds out I jumped the gun on Tuxie's grave, she'll be at me about it for the rest of my life.”

“Ned, you shouldn't have given up so soon,” Jewel said.

“Soon? It's been five days since I brought him home,” Ned responded, annoyed that Jewel thought he was a man who quit too easily.

“You shouldn't have given up so soon!” Jewel repeated. They were the first words of criticism she had ever spoken to her husband, but she was too upset inside to keep herself from saying them and then repeating them. What if the child inside her got as sick as Tuxie had been? Was he going to give up on their baby and start digging a grave?

Ned was surprised. Jewel had never spoken so sharply to him before. He was too shocked to respond.

Jewel, suddenly afraid of how Ned might take her moment of anger, turned and hurried back to the house.

A
S SOON AS
C
RACKY
B
OLEN SHOWED UP WITH THE NEWS THAT
Judge Isaac Parker wanted to see him, Marshal Dan Maples got ready to go. He rolled his bedroll and cleaned his gun, his mood improving by the moment. There had been no marshaling to speak of for three months now, which meant there had been no cash money for three months, either. Wilma, his wife, had not even been able to buy seeds enough to plant an adequate garden, which meant victuals would most likely be scarce before the next winter was over.

Dan was soon ready to go—Wilma had even packed him a little cold pork and a roasting ear to eat on his travels—but then had to delay his departure because Cracky Bolen settled down at the kitchen table and showed no signs of being eager to go on to his own farm, just five miles into the Blue Hills.

“Fifty people were killed over there in Tahlequah. That's the figure I heard,” Cracky said, salting a cold roasting ear Wilma had offered him.

Dan Maples did not believe that figure for a moment, and he also did not believe it was the death figure that really interested Cracky Bolen. The figure that interested Cracky was Wilma's figure, a generous, womanly figure by any standards, and particularly so by Cracky's standards, since his own wife, Myrtle Lou, was skinny as a weed, and about as unfriendly.

Dan did not blame Cracky Bolen for admiring Wilma's figure, and he did not distrust either his neighbour or his wife. Nonetheless, he was not about to ride off on a long errand and leave Cracky Bolen sitting there eating roasting ears and directing his long, lonesome gaze at Wilma's figure.

There was such a thing as courtesy, though, and Dan Maples tried to practice it. Cracky had been a reliable neighbour over the years, if tiresome in his adoration of Wilma. Dan sat patiently while Cracky ate three roasting ears, some bacon, and a tasty plate of cobbler; but that was all the patience manners demanded. After all, he was not the only unemployed marshal in the Arkansas hills. While he was watching Cracky gaze at Wilma's figure, swifter lawmen might already be riding into Fort Smith. In the wake of such a crisis, Judge Parker might hire whoever got there first.

The minute Cracky consumed the last mouthful of vinegar cobbler, Dan stood up and hefted his rifle.

“I've got to be going along and you best traipse on up the road too, Cracky,” Dan said. “I expect you've got chores to do and some of them probably won't keep till dark.”

Cracky was a little put out by the brusque tone in Dan Maples's voice. He had ridden out of his way to deliver important news and did not feel it quite neighbourly of Dan to rush him out before the last bite of cobbler had slid down his gullet. Still, he had to admit that if he had happened to marry a woman with a figure like Wilma Maples's, he, too, might be reluctant to go off and leave a neighbour sitting at his table. In any case, Dan Maples had never been overly friendly, Wilma or no Wilma. He seemed to feel that it was wrong to get too friendly with his neighbours, since at any moment one of them was apt to commit a crime that might require him to hang them, or at least arrest them. It was an attitude Cracky had come to resent over the years. He had helped Dan Maples slaughter pigs; helped him put up a barn; and had returned quite a few stray livestock to him, livestock that might have been lost forever. It was irksome to be treated as if he were going to take up banditry on the roads, by a man he had known for at least twenty-five years.

“No, Dan. No chores today,” Cracky said. “That's why I had young-uns, so I wouldn't have to do the damn chores every day of my life. I intend to take the biggest jug of whiskey I can find and go fishing, when I get home.”

“Well, I hope you catch a nice, fat catfish then,” Dan said. “Many thanks for bringing me the news from the Judge. I can use the marshaling, if there's any left to do.”

“If there was fifty dead in Tahlequah, there'll be plenty of work for marshals for a while to come,” Cracky informed him. “Many thanks for the roastin' ears, Wilma, not to mention that cobbler.”

“Oh, you can mention the cobbler, all right,” Wilma said. “You can compliment my cookin' all you want to. Dan's forgot how, I reckon. If he was to accidentally say something nice about a dish I cooked, I'd more than likely drop dead from surprise.”