Zeke and Ned (58 page)

T
HAT NIGHT
, J
EWEL MADE ME A GOOD CORN MUSH AND SOME
flavorful beans with a little pork rind in them. It was an old recipe of her mother's. Ned allowed a little of the honey to be used to sweeten the mush, but he put the rest in a barrel and nailed the lid on. He had a good potato pit, and a great pile of corn stored. I could see he was preparing for a long siege.

But the meal had put us in a friendly mood and I let the quarrel go, for Jewel's sake. We brought out the checkerboard and played several games, though the house was too dim for fine concentration on checkers. The fireplace didn't cast much of a glow, and Ned would allow only one lamp.

Jewel stood behind him, and rubbed his head while we played. One reason for the dimness was that Ned's one good eye was variable. He saw bright lights in his head, and got headaches and cramps in his neck. Jewel had a little oil of some kind that Old Turtle Man had given her. She rubbed the oil on Ned's neck, while I lost three checker games.

“You ain't the checker player you used to be, Zeke,” Ned remarked.

“No, because I ain't an owl or a bat,” I said. “I play better checkers when I can see the board.

“I can't even see my hand,” I added. “I might be making moves I don't want to make, for all I know.”

“I have to save this one eye,” Ned explained, in an easier tone. “I can see sharp and shoot fine, but it waters up if I strain it. I like to rest it, when I can.”

“All right, but what about your whistling?” I asked. “Learned any new tunes while you're sitting around in the dark?”

He hadn't. Ned still bested me at whistling—always had—but it still didn't keep me from attempting a tune. My whistling was so paltry that Jewel smiled. It was the only time I saw her smile, during our whole visit.

What I noticed as we sat by the fireplace was that Jewel and Ned were close now. Before the battle, my feeling was that the two of them had not quite settled into the married life yet. They were nervous, and rarely stood near one another, or touched in public.

Now, it was the opposite: they were seldom out of hand's reach of one another. Ned had taken to smoking an old pipe. Jewel brought him his tobacco, and drew on the pipe a time or two herself, while she tamped it for him. Before they went up to sleep, she soaked a rag and laid it over his eyes for a few minutes. Ned was always reaching out to hold her hand for a moment, and Jewel didn't draw away. I guess adversity had brought them close together, only it seemed to me that too much damage came along with the closeness.

I would rather they could have stayed nervous, and spared them the wounds. They would have settled into the married way, once they
got a little older. Time—not raping and shooting—would have brought them closer.

After we gave up whistling, the two of them went up to bed. Jewel held the lamp. At the top of the stairs, she turned. Just for a moment, I saw her white face looking down at me. It was just a glimpse; Jewel soon followed Ned on to bed. But seeing her face like that haunted me so that I couldn't get to sleep. I sat by the fire in Ned's fort, watching the embers cool, until the roosters began to crow and the day birds flutter.

I was not one to talk much to my children, I guess. I yarned with them, and sung them songs, but I left most of the talking to Becca.

That night, though, I waited, hoping Jewel would come down a minute, so we could chat. It wasn't one thing in particular I wanted to talk to her about, and I don't know if there was anything in particular Jewel wanted to say to me. I just know that her look, from the head of the stairs, unsettled me. For years after, when Jewel's face came to me, whether in day thoughts or night dreams, it was that look I remembered.

The next morning, Ned took me through his fort and showed me the rest of his preparations. He had acquired plenty of rifles, and enough gunpowder and bullets to have fought the Civil War all over again. He had even dammed a little stream and rechanneled it, so it would flow through the fort. He had barrels to catch rainwater as well, and had rubber hoses attached to them so he could siphon water inside.

Ned had prepared careful, but I got melancholy seeing all the fortifying he had done.

“You ain't just ready for war, Ned—you
want
war!” I told him. That was the point that troubled me.

Ned didn't deny it. He had the eagle look again.

“I was a farmer till the whites done what they done,” he said. “Now I'm a warrior, and I intend to be a fine one.”

“I expect you will, Ned,” I told him.

Jewel got upset when she saw me getting ready to leave.

“I wish you could just stay one more night, Pa,” she said.

“I can't, hon—your ma's poorly,” I told her.

Jewel looked sad. On impulse, I asked her if she was with child. I don't know what feeling brought those words out of my mouth—but Jewel just shook her head.

Later, riding away, I wished I hadn't asked, for she got the distant look when I did. She looked past me, and shook her head.

Jewel was not yet eighteen. I don't know what I thought the hurry was for her to have a child, especially after the bad business with Tailcoat Jones and his gang of white ruffians.

Ned wore a big-brimmed hat in sunlight, to shield his eyes. He was practicing shooting, when I left. He had walked over to the woods and was shooting crabapples off a tree. He didn't miss a one, not while I was looking.

T
UXIE'S WAS ON THE WAY HOME
. I
THOUGHT I'D STOP AND GET HIS
opinion and Dale's about Ned's war. They were his close friends, and I thought maybe they'd want to speak to him, too, about the possibility of squaring things with the old judge.

But I arrived at a bad moment. The Millers had just buried their baby girl Sarah, the one who had been at the breast the day they were burned out. Losing babies was common, in that time; but it was the Miller family's first loss, and they took it hard. The children were all howling, and Tuxie was so upset he could barely spade the dirt over the little grave. Dale didn't speak at all. She was staring away, like Jewel. Tears had made ruts in her cheeks, from heavy crying.

“I swear, Tuxie. What did the tyke die of?” I inquired, speaking soft.

“I don't know, Zeke. She just didn't wake up this morning,” Tuxie said.

“Well, I swear,” I said, again.

There was not a thing I could do for a family with such a fresh loss. I left them to their grief, and rode on home.

Years later, Dale Miller mentioned to me that the baby's digestion had never been good, after the raid.

“She spit up my milk, couldn't hold it down,” Dale said. “I expect she got too scared, with me trying to nurse her while I was chasing around.”

I guess that baby girl was one more victim of Tailcoat Jones and his raid.

W
HILE THE OLD
J
UDGE WAS IN MOURNING, THE
G
OVERNOR OF
Arkansas, evidently an old fool, sent five marshals after me for the killing of Marshal Lee Chaney.

I guess the Governor hadn't heard about the Cherokee Militia, when he sent those marshals after me.

After the outrageous affair at the horserace in Dog Town, with Marshal Chaney blazing away for no reason before he even produced a warrant, there was a boom in recruiting. Before I knew it, the Cherokee Militia numbered over thirty men. Partridge McElmore joined up, and three of his brothers. Victor Horsefly volunteered, and so did Edley Springston. Then there was Cooley Silk and his brother Arley, and Lightning Boles, along with several Cherokees I scarcely knew.

I was particularly proud to have got Victor Horsefly into the Militia. Victor was so big, he was an outcast. He weighed so much—over four hundred pounds—that he had to be weighed on a cattle scale. The only horse in the District stout enough to carry him was a draft horse he had journeyed all the way up to Wisconsin to purchase. Victor was a quiet fellow who didn't rage often, but when he did, snapping a spine would be no more to him than snapping a twig. He once kicked the whole front off a saloon in Fort Smith, after which he swam the river and walked home. Nobody said a word about arresting him, although the saloon had to be totally rebuilt. When they ran over to the courthouse after Victor kicked down the front of the saloon, Judge Parker took one look at Victor out his window, and promptly ruled that saloons were beyond the protection of the law.

“A man that large is best left to his own devices,” the Judge said— or at least that's what was reported to me.

The leader of the marshals the Governor sent to arrest me was named Coon Rattersee. Coon was fresh from a raid against the Starr boys, and was said to have wounded two Starrs in a chase that went on for fifty miles.

It was rainy the day Coon and his deputies rode into Tahlequah in their yellow slickers. I only had about three hours' notice that they were coming, but I was able to put twenty-five well-armed militiamen in the street to greet him.

I was at the head of them, armed with a ten-gauge shotgun. Seeing what a shotgun had done to Sam Beck that day in the courtroom
convinced me that the fowling piece should not be scorned as a weapon.

Coon Rattersee had convinced himself that he was the equal of the Starrs, which he wasn't. I knew him slightly. We had once hunted turkey together, but we quarreled because the rash son-of-a-bitch claimed an old gobbler
I
shot. Now here he was in Tahlequah, in a yellow slicker.

I don't believe he had expected resistance—at least not to the extent of twenty-five armed Cherokees.

“Now, what's this, Zeke? A goddamn war party?” he asked. He started to ride over to me, but stopped when he saw the ten-gauge.

“It's the Cherokee Militia, Coon,” I informed him. “It's our task to keep order in the Going Snake.”

“Why, I expect it'll be orderly enough, once you're arrested,” he declared.

“You'll not arrest me today,” I told him.

Coon reddened in the face. He had done the same, when I refused him the gobbler he tried to claim.

“My warrant is from the Governor of Arkansas,” he said. “I don't suppose you're wicked enough to disobey the Governor of Arkansas, are you, Zeke?”

“I don't live in Arkansas, don't know the Governor, and don't care to,” I said bluntly. “The marshaling profession has lost seven men in the Going Snake lately. I'd hate to see it lose five more, but it could happen, if you don't turn around and go home.”

Milo Creekmore trotted up to Coon, at that juncture. Milo was a deputy marshal of some experience who had the good sense to tread lightly when faced with a broad disadvantage in numbers.

The other three marshals were just young sprouts. They looked green as sycamore leaves.

“Hold up, Coon. Let's stay nice and calm, while we talk this over,” Milo said.

“That's good advice, Milo,” I agreed.

Coon Rattersee, though, was full of bluster. He didn't appreciate Milo's advice.

“You can go home if you're so goddamn interested in staying calm,” he said. “I was sent here by the Governor of Arkansas to arrest a felon, and there he sits.”

Coon pointed a rangy finger at me. But being a man of experience,

Milo had encountered bluster before. He had a chaw in his mouth the size of a turkey egg. When he spit, a man didn't want to be anywhere near him, unless he fancied tobacco splatter.

“I see him, Coon,” Milo said. “There he sits. And then what?

“Them boys with him don't seem friendly toward us,” he added. “If I had known we was up against twenty-five men, I would have ordered my coffin before I left home.”

“We hope not to shoot you, Milo,” I said.

“I hope you don't neither, Zeke,” Milo agreed. “Why don't you just surrender, and make Coon happy?”

“I don't care whether the fool is happy or not,” I said. “He has ridden in here on a foolish quest. As you can see, you're considerably outnumbered. A quick trip home would be what I'd advise.”

Coon Rattersee swelled up and got red—so red, that I leveled my shotgun at him, hoping the threat of a chest full of buckshot would keep him from going for his gun. If Coon started shooting, the three green boys would think they had to back him up, in which case my militiamen would cut them all down. There'd be a bunch more bodies to pack off to Fort Smith.

“Why, goddamn you! You're a worse rascal than I thought,” Coon said.

I held my peace, but I didn't lower my shotgun. Coon had ridden up a little too close when he thought he could cow me. At such a near distance, a shotgun blast would go right through him, just as it had through Sam Beck. Coon Rattersee knew it, too.

He frothed, but he didn't try for his gun.

“When did you get up your militia, Zeke?” Milo asked, in a mild tone of voice. I think he considered the crisis over, and wanted to engage in a little neighbourly conversation to cool the atmosphere.

“We've had it awhile, Milo,” I replied.

Coon, now that he had decided not to make a fight of it, blustered a little more, mostly for the benefit of the young marshals, I guess.

“Now goddammit, Zeke. What am I gonna tell the Governor of Arkansas?” he asked. “He's the Governor. He expects cooperation, when he sends a troop of marshals to place suspects under arrest.”

“I don't care what you tell him, Coon,” I said. “I guess you can tell him the Cherokee Militia stood you down.”

“Now, Coon,” Milo said. “Now, Coon.” I think he was afraid there might be a flare-up yet.

“Who said you could get up a militia anyway?” Coon asked. “You look like a bunch of goddamn pea farmers, to me.”

“Well, Coon, be that as it may,” I said, “we're the Cherokee Militia, and that's that.”

There wasn't much more to talk about. The little posse of marshals in the yellow slickers milled around a little on the other end of town. While they were milling, Victor Horsefly walked down to the blacksmith's and pitched the anvil out into the middle of the street. Then he picked it up again, and pitched it back. In idle moments, Victor liked to pitch anvils around. It was his favourite pastime. He was far too strong just to pitch horseshoes, like the rest of us did. When Victor pitched a horseshoe, that was the last you saw of the horseshoe. He could sail a horseshoe halfway across the District, he was that strong.