Zeke and Ned (23 page)

While he was waiting for the spinning to stop, he felt something cool pressed against his temple. It was cool as Becca's hand, when she came in on a winter morning from drawing a bucket of well water.

But it was not Becca's hand: it was a gun barrel, and Moses Squirrel, a cheerful look on his face, was holding it to his head.

“You're caught now, you son-of-a-bitch,” Moses said affably.

Zeke had never enjoyed being cursed. He started to make a sharp reply, but found he was too tired to get sharp words out.

“You boys go home and don't bother me,” he said, in a weary tone. “It feels like you've kilt me anyway.”

“No, you ain't kilt, Zeke—it's just a flesh wound,” the polite Jim Squirrel informed him. “You might have a broke rib, that'd be about the worst.”

“Truss him up, Rat. We need to carry him out of this thicket so we can hang him proper,” Moses said. He had not withdrawn his pistol barrel from Zeke's temple, not yet. Zeke Proctor was known for his abilities at escaping desperate situations, and Moses Squirrel meant to see that he did not escape this one.

“What with? I ain't got no twine,” Rat replied.

“Why, I told you to bring plenty of twine, Rat,” Moses reminded him. “How can we hang a man proper if we can't tie him up first?”

“I lost the twine back on the road when Zeke run through us,” Rat admitted. “I had it out, all ready to tie him, but then he took that run at us and I ain't seen the twine since.”

Moses was nonplussed. Here they had their man down—dazed, bleeding, and weak—and they did not have the necessary equipment to securely tie him up long enough to get him to a hanging tree.

“Tie him with your suspenders, then,” he suggested, looking at Rat.

“My suspenders keep my pants up,” Rat reminded his brother, looking at Moses indignantly. “If I take 'em off, my pants will fall down.”

Rat had always hated to expose his legs, which were so white in color that they reminded him of a fish belly.

“Just take one of 'em off,” Moses suggested. “Zeke's shot anyway. One suspender's plenty for keeping your dern pants up.”

“I won't be tied with suspenders,” Zeke said. “I have not sunk that low. Pull that trigger, Moses, if you're determined to have me dead because of an accident I didn't intend.”

Moses wanted Zeke dead, but he did not pull the trigger. In their youth, he and Zeke had hunted coons together, and gone to many a horse race. Now the man sat before him, weak and bleeding. If they could have killed him in the heat of battle, that would have been one thing; but now that he was captured, it seemed to Moses that Zeke's death ought to be accomplished with the correct ceremony, which meant a hanging.

The only question was how to secure the prisoner until they could get him to an adequate tree. Most of the chinaberry limbs were either too skinny to hold a hefty body like Zeke's, or were too high off the ground to get a rope over. It was vexing, and the vexation was not diminished by his brother's reluctance to remove his suspenders.

“Cut a string off your saddle,” Moses said, impatient. “A good leather saddle string would hold him.”

Rat greeted that command with even greater reluctance.

“If I do that, I won't have nothin' to tie my slicker on my saddle with,” he said.

“Goddammit, Rat, quit your whinin'—I'm losin' my patience with you,” Moses said. “You was supposed to keep up with that twine, and now you've lost it. We got us a prisoner here who's gettin' weaker by the minute. He'll bleed out and die, if we don't hang him quick.”

Rat realized that he had better compromise. Moses was not a man whose patience could be trusted.

“I'll take off one suspender if you'll take off one, Jim,” Rat suggested, looking at his mild brother. “That way won't neither one of us have to go naked so's to hang Zeke.”

“Well, but mine are stretchy,” Jim Squirrel said. “If Zeke was to twist hard enough, I expect he could squirm loose, and then where would we be?”

At that moment, Zeke did squirm loose—not from bonds, but from the strange, enervating weakness that had seized him moments before. He felt his strength surge back, and with it his anger at being harassed and detained by the Squirrels. Moses was looking off for a moment, listening to his brothers discuss the suspender issue. The cocked pistol was not pressed against Zeke's temple, but was just hanging from Moses's hand. Zeke grabbed it suddenly and twisted it straight up, squeezing Moses Squirrel's hand until the pistol fired.

Moses fell backward, most of his jaw shot away. Zeke twisted the pistol loose and shot twice at Rat, who immediately turned and ran. Zeke's second shot nicked Rat in the hip, but Rat managed to get into the underbrush. Only then did Rat realize he had left his rifle propped against a stump while they were trying to think of a way to tie up Zeke.

Once Zeke saw that Moses was shot in the face and out of action for a while, he turned the pistol on Jim Squirrel, who just stood there holding his bridle reins, a disturbed look on his face.

“I didn't think this hanging would work,” Jim said. “I told the boys that, but Mo's stubborn, and Polly was his favourite.”

Zeke had been in the mood to shoot down all the Squirrels and put an end to the continual vexation they caused him, but Jim Squirrel was too polite to just shoot in the midst of a conversation. Zeke contented himself with disarming the man, an action which seemed to relieve Jim considerably.

“I guess you done for Mo, looks like,” he said, squatting down by his brother.

Zeke took a quick look, and formed a different opinion.

“Moses ain't dying,” he said. “He's just lost a piece of his jawbone. He'll have to chew his vittles on the right side of his mouth. I hope it will teach him to think twice about putting himself in my way when I'm in a hurry to get to Missouri.”

Zeke got up, caught his horse, and swung quickly into the saddle.
He wanted to be mounted in case the strange weakness came over him again. Once safely in the saddle, he pulled up his shirt and inspected his wound. He saw at once that Jim Squirrel had been accurate—the bullet had made a furrow in his side, probably smacking into a rib in the course of its travels. The bullet had gone out the other side, and the bleeding had almost stopped. He felt confident he could make it to Becca without serious inconvenience.

“I wonder where Rat's run off to?” Jim Squirrel inquired, looking around for his brother. “He's going to have to help me get Moses on his horse, or Moses is apt to lie here and bleed to death.”

“Now Jim, it's just a shot-off jaw,” Zeke repeated. From the vague look in Jim's eye, he thought the man might be suffering a spell of weakness himself. “I've done stopped bleeding, and Moses will too, after a while.”

Jim Squirrel continued to squat by his brother, a faraway look in his eye. Though still annoyed at Moses, Zeke could muster no rancor toward Jim Squirrel. If it had not been for his great need to get to Becca, he might have tried to help the man put Moses on a horse.

“If I see Rat, I'll tell him to get on back here,” he assured Jim. “He was pretty scairt. He's probably run on up the road by now.”

“Well, if you see him, Zeke, tell him to get on back,” Jim said. “I need his help. Moses is going to be fractious once he comes to and notices he's lost one of his jawbones.”

Zeke was nearly to the trail when he noticed Rat Squirrel hiding behind a red haw bush. It was not much of a bush; Rat was in plain sight.

“Rat, can you walk?” Zeke called out.

“Yes, and I can run, too,” Rat informed him. “If you try shootin' at me again, I mean to run faster than I run the first time.”

“I wanted you to leave off trying to hang me, you fool!” Zeke told him. “If you can walk, get on back to that clearing and help your brother.”

Rat, confused for a moment, looked at Zeke as if he could barely remember he
had
a brother.

“Jim's tending to Moses,” Zeke told him. “Your brother needs your help—now get on back. I have no more time for palaver.”

Rat stood up without another word and trudged on back into the thicket. He had a bloody pants leg where the bullet had nicked his hip, but otherwise, he looked fit.

Zeke put the bay gelding back into his long, easy lope and got along toward Missouri. Annoying as it was that the Squirrels thought they had the right to interfere with him on a public trail, it occurred to Zeke that being wounded slightly might not be a bad thing. It might help his case with Becca. After all, not every man would ride all the way to Missouri after being shot in the ribs. He even began to regret that the wound had stopped bleeding so soon. If he arrived drenched in blood, Becca could hardly turn him away. He thought he might stop a mile or two from the farm where she was staying and try to squeeze some fresh blood from the wound. Becca had always hated for him to be sick; the slightest ailment brought out the nurse in her. She would brew up teas and soups and other healthful concoctions, until his health improved. Zeke did not believe she could harden herself when faced with his injury, particularly if he could make it drip some just when he arrived at her door.

It amused him to think what fools the Squirrel boys were. They set out to hang him, and ended up doing him a favour instead, besides which Moses Squirrel would be eating one-sided for the rest of his life. He could hardly wait to tell Ned Christie the story.

Ned would laugh and laugh.

“H
IS BREATH'S BARELY COMING
, D
ALE
,” N
ED SAID, LOOKING DOWN
at the white, silent body of Tuxie Miller.

All the children were outside crying. Jewel was there; Ned had brought her over to help Dale with the nursing. But Jewel was just staring, like her husband Ned. Tuxie's fever had raged for five days, and they were all tired from fetching springwater in their attempts to keep Tuxie cool at night.

Old Turtle Man had come personally, at Dale's insistence. He was down at the barn by himself, making a poultice out of some weeds and thistles he had gathered on the Mountain. Ned's view was that Dale and Old Turtle Man had got there too late. The wound had too much of a start, and now Tuxie Miller was dying as a result.

“You best give up on him, Dale,” Ned said, gently. “I expect he's lost the struggle.”

Dale did not even look. She would sit for hours, not taking her eyes off Tuxie. She preferred it when the others left, so that there was no
racket in the room—nothing that would keep her from hearing her husband's faint breathing. As long as she could hear his breathing and Tuxie could hear hers, a sign that his wife was right there with him, she was convinced that Tuxie would not die.

Old Turtle Man came and went frequently with fresh potions. Tuxie was so ill that Old Turtle Man was gone a day and a night, traveling to the next district in order to trade with another medicine man for more powerful concoctions. Dale's job was to see that Tuxie kept on breathing until the potions gained on the infection.

Dale meant to do it, too. Tuxie would not die, unless she allowed it, and she did not mean to allow it. Ned Christie could think what he liked.

Ned drew Jewel aside, so he could whisper to her without arousing Dale.

“I'm gonna go dig the grave,” he told Jewel. “It'll save time.”

“But he ain't dead,” Jewel said, shocked by Ned's decision.

“He's barely drawing his breath,” Ned whispered. “I expect he'll go by nighttime. I'd rather do the grave digging in the daylight. That way, I can make a tidier grave.

“Don't tell Dale,” he added. “I'll dig it 'round behind the barn, where she can't see what I'm doing.”

With that, Ned slipped out the door and walked off toward the barn. Jewel did not try to stop him, though she did not agree with what he was doing. Dale had not given up on her husband; Ned ought to let her fight her fight before he started digging graves.

When Ned came racing home to get her, Jewel was so glad to see him that her heart fluttered in her breast, like it always did at the sight of her tall husband after his leave-taking. She was so excited that she was more talkative with him than usual. But sitting by Tuxie's bedside watching him fight for his life was an experience that frightened Jewel so badly, she had barely spoken. She did her best to stir up mush now and then for the children's meals, but all she could think about was how lost she would be if it were Ned who was sick and dying—and he
could
be sick and dying, what with all the fighting in Tahlequah. Jewel knew that she did not know as much as Dale; she might not be able to do the right thing to save Ned, under the same circumstances. Dale had ridden over the Mountain, on a dark night, and found Old Turtle Man; she had even persuaded the old man to follow her home and
treat Tuxie personally. Without Dale, Tuxie would already be dead— Ned was right about that. Jewel knew she needed to learn as much as she could from Dale, in case she had to nurse her own husband back from a serious wound someday.

She did not like Ned's determination to get the grave digging started. To Jewel, it seemed like giving up. If someone tried to dig a grave for Ned while he was still breathing, she would resent it bitterly, even if the act was kindly intentioned.

Jewel was with child now, a fact she had not revealed to her husband. Watching Ned stride down toward the Millers' barn, Jewel felt hot tears well up in her. It was such a hard task, keeping men alive, what with all the fighting and wounds and sickness life could produce. Now she had a baby within her, a new life that she had to keep alive as well. She wanted to be as strong as Dale Miller, strong enough to keep a man alive who rightly ought to be dead—strong enough to carry nine children and keep them alive and healthy, too. But she knew she was not as strong as Dale, not yet. She was fearful when Ned was away from her, so fearful that she could scarcely sleep. She needed Ned as much as Dale needed Tuxie, yet all Dale's skill and force was barely enough to keep Tuxie breathing. Thinking about it was so worrisome that it gave Jewel a shivering feeling, deep inside her. She wanted to be strong for Ned's and the baby's sakes, but with the shadow of death hanging over the Millers' cabin, she could not feel strong. All she felt was the coldness of fear, deep inside.