Zeke and Ned (31 page)

J
EWEL'S GOTTEN BAD ABOUT ME LEAVING HOME
, N
ED SAID TO
Tuxie. “She dern near had a fit the other day. Is Dale bad to have fits, when you leave?”

Tuxie's leg had healed to the point where he felt strong enough to pay his friend Ned an occasional visit.

“Dale used to be bad about it,” Tuxie admitted. “Since I've been laid up with this poison blood, I ain't been able to leave home. I guess Dale's tired of me now—she didn't even look up when I said I was going to see you.”

“Jewel ain't tired of me. I feel like I got a log chain on,” Ned said. He could see Jewel down by the barn, milking a big, smelly nanny goat. Her ma, or somebody else, had told her goat milk was good for her, if she was expecting a child. Liza was with her, chattering away as usual. Liza was supposed to be slopping the pig, but so far, the slop was still in the slop bucket. The pig was looking at Liza impatiently, and Ned could not blame the pig.

“Does Dale have any sisters?” he asked. Since Liza had come to stay with them, he had begun to realize what a hard thing marriage
was. For one thing, it involved tedious and boresome in-laws, such as Liza.

“Yes—Dot,” Tuxie informed him. Ned had given him some tobacco, and he was enjoying a chaw, something Dale had not permitted him during the time of his illness.

“Does she talk much?” Ned asked.

“Oh, no, she never talks, Dot's dead,” Tuxie said. “I get plenty of conversation from Dale.”

“Jewel's not a talker,” Ned admitted. “That don't mean she's easy to live with, though.”

“Why, where'd you get the notion that women are easy to live with?” Tuxie asked. “Women are a passel of trouble, though I need my Dale.”

“I wish Jewel would let up about my leaving,” Ned said. “I need to go to town once in a while. It's boresome, getting drunk at home.”

“Ned, it's no time to be going to Tahlequah,” Tuxie reminded him. “Old Judge Ike Parker's got marshals on the roads.”

“I don't have to travel the roads to get to town. I can keep to the high paths,” Ned said. “Anyway, the marshals got no case on me. All I did was shoot in self-defense.”

Ned was not really interested in what Judge Ike Parker thought— not at the moment. What interested him was relieving the constricted feeling he got in his throat, when he was wanting to leave and could not because of his young wife. He had lived a free life all his years so far, even when he was with Lacy. He was not disposed to give it up because Jewel had a baby inside her. Sometimes, he liked to drink whiskey with the boys, any boys who happened to be available for a drinking party.

Tuxie Miller was still weak from his illness, and needed frequent naps. There was a good cane-bottomed rocking chair on the porch that had belonged to Ned's grandfather and had been carried all the way from the Old Place. Tuxie made himself comfortable in it, and was soon nodding. Just before he nodded off, he remembered that Dale had pointedly reminded him to ask Ned if he had made arrangements with a preacher to marry him and Jewel proper. Dale was firm in her conviction that Ned and Jewel ought to be married before a preacher, and soon, before the baby inside Jewel grew large enough for the general public to notice.

Tuxie asked his question, and Ned said no—he had not located a preacher as of yet.

“I don't know what general public Dale is talking about,” Ned said. “Jewel don't ever leave home. Nobody from the general public could see her, unless they had some good spyglasses, and then they'd mostly have to spot her through a window.”

Tuxie accepted that answer, and went quietly to sleep. Then, while Ned was brooding about the impertinence of Dale Miller for presuming to tell him what was proper, as if he did not know himself what was proper, it occurred to him suddenly that Dale's impertinence might have provided him with a key to his freedom—or at least, to a trip away from home. He needed to find a preacher; why should he not go look for one?

Ned sprang up, ran to the lots, and within minutes had his horse caught and saddled. Jewel had just finished milking her nannies, and she looked alarmed when she saw him saddling up. Ned, through, had his story ready.

“I got to go, Jewel. Tuxie says there's a preacher living over at Stump Town now,” Ned told her.

“What? Where's Stump Town?” Jewel asked. Though apprehensive about him leaving, she was pleased at the thought of a preacher. It thrilled her that Ned was still on the lookout for one.

“Ain't you been to Stump Town? It's over by Mule Water,” Ned said, lying rapidly. “Stump Town's not much of a place, but they do a lot of preaching there.”

“Why, if it's not much of a place?” the nosey Liza inquired.

“Because it's on the flats, Liza. It's easier for preachers to get to places on the flats,” Ned said. He was aware that he had just created two places that did not exist, but he was so eager to get to Tahlequah and hear some town talk that he felt little guilt about the lies. Before mounting his horse, he strode over and gave Jewel an ardent kiss, ardent enough that it left her a little flustered. Since their quarrel about his absences, Jewel had been more welcoming of ardent kisses, and had even given him a few of her own. She was aware that Ned had a powerful restlessness in him, so in their private moments, Jewel was as sweet as syrup now. She wanted Ned to be happy, and considered that the only thing she had to give him was herself. She gave him what he wanted, when he wanted it, even if it meant making excuses to

Liza, or leaving Liza with no one to chatter at in the early morning or the afternoon.

“Will you be back by dark, Ned?” Jewel asked. Even her desire to be married proper did not cancel out all her fears about staying on the Mountain without Ned.

“I doubt it . . . it's a far piece to Stump Town,” Ned said. “Maybe Tuxie will stay the night. The way he's snoring in the rocker, he might not wake up till then, anyway.”

“I'll cover him with a quilt, if that's the case,” Jewel said. Before she could say more, Ned was loping away. Despite her knowledge that he was going on an errand which would officially join them as man and wife, Jewel's heart sank at the sight of Ned leaving. It sank and sank, until she was close to tears, standing there by the livestock lots. She lost interest in the foaming goat milk she had just taken from their smelly old nanny. Jewel felt so low for a few minutes, that she wondered if it had been right of her to have ever left home. She was so bound to Ned Christie that she could not be happy an hour unless he was there. She knew that kind of strong feeling could not be right, for men had to have their times to roam. But the desire to keep Ned with her every day was the strongest feeling she had ever felt, and she found herself helpless before it.

Once, during a haying time, a wild bull had burst out of the forest and knocked over three wagons in its charge. Jewel felt that her feeling for Ned was as strong as that bull had been. She could not stop it, or even direct it—the feeling raced through her with an awful force, dragging her this way and that. She knew there must be something wrong with her that she felt so much and was so helpless with feeling; she also knew she would have to moderate it somehow, once their child came, in order to give the baby decent mothering. But at the moment, there was nothing she could do about it. Ned, her husband, was not even out of sight, and she already felt desolate with missing him. As for Tuxie, he was welcome to stay, but having him as a guest was not the same as being able to sleep with her husband's strong arms around her.

She sat the milk bucket down, grabbed the slop bucket from Liza, and went to slop the pig. At least it was a moment of something to do. Ned expected her to keep up the place and not neglect the chores. Doing the chores meticulously and thoroughly, and seeing that all the
animals were well were the only things that gave her any consolation when Ned was away. She might be bleak in her heart and too fearful to sleep at night, but she kept up with the chores and was a good wife, even if extraordinarily lonely.

“Are you going to have Ma over to the wedding?” Liza asked. “Ma's spirits might pick up if she could come to your wedding.”

“Ma's way over past town,” Jewel pointed out. “I doubt I could get her here in time. If Ned shows up with a preacher, I guess we better just do the wedding as soon as we can.”

“I'll be here, at least,” Liza said. “I wish Ned had a brother, so I could marry, too.”

“What if his brother didn't want to marry you?” Jewel posed. “He might not like your yapping.”

“I guess I could be quieter, if I was married,” Liza said. She had given up her notion of marrying Tuxie Miller, if his wife should pass away. Getting wounded so severely had aged Tuxie, and to Liza he looked too old now to be her husband.

“I doubt it—you're a born yapper,” Jewel said, a little unkindly. She was annoyed with her sister for being so neglectful of the pig.

W
ILLY
B
ECK'S STAY IN THE
T
AHLEQUAH JAIL WAS BRIEF—JUST AS
long as it took him to walk in the front door, through the jail, and out the back door. Sheriff Charley Bobtail was so upset at having a dead white marshal presented to him for burial by a live white marshal that he merely told Willy to go inside and put himself in a cell, while he discussed legal arrangements with Marshal Dan Maples.

Willy, seeing that the back door of the little jailhouse was unlatched, simply walked through it, strolled into the woods, and went home, a walk that took him a brisk nine hours.

Now he was high on the Mountain, watching his fierce brother Davie try to drag some wolf cubs out of a den they had located. They had ridden up on the Mountain with White Sut, who was looking for his runaway bear. White Sut had taken to sleeping in the fireplace at night. He was covered with soot and ashes, and had singed his white mane of hair in several places by resting his head too close to live coals. He meant to kill the bear for desertion if he found him, and also to recover the good log chain the bear had taken with him in his flight.

A black she-wolf, recently whelped, crossed their path on the Mountain, and Davie killed her, not twenty yards from her den. The notion of having a pack of pet black wolves immediately took hold of Davie.

“If I had a black wolf pack running with me, I doubt any man would oppose me,” Davie said.

“Don't but one man oppose you now—Ned Christie,” Willy reminded him.

It was not ten minutes after he said it, while they were both on their knees trying to reach in the wolf den, when they heard a horse loping along the high trail to Tahlequah. Willy stood up, thinking it was probably White Sut in pursuit of his bear. The old man had muttered when Davie had asked him to help them dig out the wolf cubs. When White Sut muttered, his kinfolk, including Davie, left him strictly alone, for the old man's mutterings were usually a prelude to violent fits. But the rider Willy glimpsed loping along the old narrow trail through the post oak thicket was none other than Ned Christie himself—the one man living who had bested Davie Beck in a fight.

The old trail was twisted through a post oak thicket with abundant underbrush. Not many people knew of it, and very few chose to use it. There were several easy roads in the District. If Ned Christie chose to make his way to town by such a difficult route, it was probably to avoid the very fate which had fallen Willy Beck himself: arrest.

“Davie, it's Ned, he's going to Tahlequah on the old trail,” Willy said, excited. Maybe they could get ahead of Ned. If they hurried, Davie might be able to ambush Ned, and avenge his disgrace.

But Davie had his arm so deep in the wolf den he did not understand what Willy was saying, at first. He extracted one wolf pup and stuck his arm in to get a second, when he suddenly gave a wild shriek and jerked his arm out, a full-grown badger attached to his hand. The badger had come in the other entrance to the den and was about to feast on black wolf pups, when Davie grabbed him—a mistake he instantly regretted. The badger bit clean through Davie's hand with eight sharp little badger teeth. Davie jumped up and began to run in circles, trying to sling the badger off his hand. But the badger held on grimly, until Willy finally clubbed him with a pistol butt. Then, before they could kill it, the badger scuttled back into the wolf den, spoiling Davie's plan to accumulate a pack of black wolves. He had to be content with the one pup already captured, which Willy secured with twine and put in his saddlebag.

The badger also spoiled any hope they might have had of ambushing Ned Christie. Davie's hand was pouring blood; soon, his pants and all his gear were bloody. When he finally realized he had missed a chance to shoot Ned Christie in the course of being badly chewed on by a badger he could not even manage to kill, Davie Beck's fury was so extreme that he picked up a stick and began to beat his horse— though his horse was blameless in the whole affair.

“Why are you beating your horse?” Willy inquired. The inquiry was a mistake, as Willy soon discovered. A second later, Davie knocked him flat with the same stick, breaking it in the process. In Willy's view, the fact that he was being beaten with a weak stick was all that saved him from a first-class beating.

Later, when Davie was calmer, they began to speculate about Ned Christie. The old trail that Ned was using ran along a shoulder of the Mountain that early settlers called Idiot Ridge. It was said that the first woman to settle on the Mountain had lost her mind from loneliness and had become an idiot, wandering on the ridge and eating berries and nuts, until a black wolf killed her. That at least was the story; it had all taken place long before, when White Sut was a young man. At the time, White Sut worked for a slaver, who brought slaves over the Mountain from Mississippi. When questioned about the idiot woman, White Sut was not forthcoming. He had been an adept slaver, and knew the old mountain trails better than anyone alive, unless it was Old Turtle Man. But unlike the healer, White Sut was seldom in the mood to impart useful knowledge to his many nephews and grandchildren. White Sut had sown his seed liberally throughout the District and beyond, but he had no interest in the human crop that resulted.