Zeke and Ned (25 page)

Dan Maples made no reply to his wife's remark—an unwarranted remark, in his view. He considered the best compliment a man could make about his wife's cooking was to eat it. He cleaned his plate at every meal. That was comment enough.

Wilma was annoyed with Dan for being so stiff with Cracky, a good-hearted man who meant no harm. Cracky just happened to be cursed
with a mean wife, Myrtle Lou. It was Wilma's opinion that any man married to Myrtle Lou needed all the kindness he could get from his fellow man. She knew Cracky fancied her; it was the kind of fancying that was flattering to her as a woman without threatening her as a wife. Dan was often gone for a month at a time, when he was marshaling. It was reassuring to have a neighbour who would stop by once in a while. If he looked at her with some appreciation while he was taking a meal, then so much the better, in Wilma's view.

Dan Maples might not see it that way, but Wilma did not care. Dan had explained to her several times that it was his job as a lawman to be suspicious of everybody. A lawman could not be too suspicious, not in his book.

Wilma Maples lived by a different book, however. It was her opinion that Dan would have been suspicious of everybody, even if he had been just a blacksmith and not a marshal. Several times during their marriage, he had infuriated Wilma by accusing her of selling eggs, a suspicion so foolish that it made her wonder if she had been wise to marry the man. Their farm was five miles from a road—who would she sell eggs to, even if she
wanted
to sell eggs?

“Why would you think that, Dan?” she asked him, each time he accused her.

“We keep a dozen hens,” he reminded her each time. “A dozen hens ought to be producing more eggs than I ever see. I expect you're selling them to get money for bonnets or ribbons. You
do
like bonnets and ribbons, Wilma.”

“I like bonnets and ribbons. And skunks and badgers and plenty of other varmints like to eat hen's eggs,” Wilma pointed out. “Besides that, we got nervous hens—they know they'll get eaten by a varmint themselves if they ain't careful. Half of them don't lay regular as it is.”

Dan usually desisted, but Wilma knew that did not mean he was convinced. He still suspected her of selling eggs, and nothing she said ever really convinced him otherwise. Sometimes when Dan was not busy, he would wander around the place looking for hen's nests. He meant to chart their laying places so he could check for himself as to whether a given hen was laying or not. This annoyed Wilma to no end. She had been a loyal wife to the man for fifteen years, and he still suspected her of selling eggs!

Sometimes, at night, laying in bed thinking about his accusations, Wilma would get so mad it would be all she could do not to leave Dan.

Once, in the night, she got in such a state of anger that she jabbed Dan with her elbow and woke him from a solid sleep.

“What would you do if it was true?” she asked.

“If what was true?” Dan mumbled—he was a sound sleeper.

“True that I sell eggs,” Wilma replied. “Is it such a crime that you'd feel you had to divorce me? Or would you just report me to the Judge?”

“Why, I . . . uh . . . I guess I'd divorce you,” Dan said, after a moment's foggy consideration. “I wouldn't be able to tolerate it.”

Wilma became silent, more silent than Dan could ever remember her being. Her silence was so deep that it seemed to have a weight to it. He could not remember a time when his wife's silence felt so heavy to him. She was silent the next morning, too.

They got through the next three days with very few remarks passing between them. Dan felt that Wilma was wanting him to take back his remark about divorce, but he did not intend to take it back. After all, she had awakened him from a solid sleep to ask the question. If she was not going to like the answer, she should have left him asleep. What would any man do if he caught his wife stealing eggs? All he had done was render an honest opinion.

To his puzzlement, married life had changed the night Wilma woke him up and asked him her question. Wilma did her wifely chores well enough, and was mostly cheerful in speech; but it seemed to him that she kept the heavy silence between them from then on. She did not complain—Wilma Maples was no complainer, never had been—but she did not confide in him, either. Only once, at breakfast, did she turn to him with a flash of anger and say a thing that badly startled Dan Maples.

“If I was to want to sell eggs, I'd do it and you'd never catch me,” Wilma informed him. “You can wear that marshal's badge till it rusts to your shirt, and you'd never catch me.”

“This badge is nickel, Wilma. Nickel don't rust,” Dan replied. Wilma looked at him scornfully and went on about her business. Dan was never able to puzzle out why she took the whole matter of the eggs so severely. He had not said he would arrest her; it was not exactly a crime to sell eggs. He had only said he would divorce her, which was proper, in his view. A wife who went against her husband's commandment could expect no less.

For some reason, Wilma's remark about him not catching her if she
wanted to sell eggs came into Dan's mind as he was tying his bedroll onto his saddle. Wilma walked out of the house to see him off. Cracky came out, too, and hitched himself up on his old red mule for the ride home.

While Dan was waiting for Cracky to ride off so he could give Wilma a kiss in farewell, a rather odd thing happened. A big crow had been cawing from atop a sycamore tree, down by the barn. The bird took off and circled around a few times, still cawing. Dan Maples paid no more attention to the big crow than he would to any other bird, though this particular bird commanded an exceptionally loud caw, a caw loud enough to grate on the ear. The big crow flew over the house and then dipped suddenly, landing on the chimney and cawing for all he was worth.

Dan had yet to mount. He was fingering his girth, hoping Cracky would hurry up and leave, but what slowed Cracky down was that his big red mule decided to empty its bladder before departing. That mule must have a bladder the size of a barrel, Dan thought, for the emptying went on several minutes, the large black bird cawing all the while.

The mule finally finished; Cracky waved; and Dan started toward his wife, stepping carefully over the yellow stream of mule piss that was coursing down the hill. The crow's caw was so irritating that Dan was tempted to shoot it, just to shut it up. But before he could pull his gun, the crow left the chimney, flapped once, and coasted down over Cracky, the red mule, and Wilma, heading straight for Dan Maples himself. At first, Dan thought the crow must be going to light on his saddle, though he had never known a crow to do such a thing. But it was not the horse the big crow meant to land on; it was Dan Maples's shoulder he was aiming for. Before he could so much as flinch, the big crow landed on his right shoulder and cawed in Dan Maples's face, his two black eyes not six inches from Dan's own eyes.

“Pshaw, crow . . . git!” Dan said. He reached to knock the brash bird off his shoulder. But before he could, the crow flew straight up, up and up, into the sky, high as a hawk would fly, or even an eagle. The crow went up and up, until it was almost out of sight—just a speck, in the bright morning sky.

Dan Maples was so disconcerted by what had happened that for a moment he doubted his senses. Was he awake and about to ride off to Fort Smith? Or was he still in bed, dreaming about giant crows landing on his shoulder? No bird had ever landed on him before in his life,
though now and then a chimney swallow might come down the chimney and be unable to find its way out of the house.

But a chimney swallow getting lost and confused was not the same order of thing as having a big crow land on his shoulder and caw right in his face. Dan looked to see if either Cracky or Wilma had noticed the occurrence, and saw at once that they were both as astonished by it as he was. Cracky Bolen had stopped his mule and sat on it with his mouth gaping like a grain chute, looking up at the sky where the crow had disappeared. Wilma stood not ten feet away, a dishrag in her hand, looking pale as a ghost.

“Well, now, that was a sight, I guess,” Dan said, walking over to his wife.

“It's an omen, Dan,” Wilma said suddenly. “You mustn't go.” Seeing the black bird land on her husband's shoulder upset her so deeply that she had begun to shiver. The hairs on her arms stood up, and a bad feeling clutched her stomach.

Dan was surprised by the look on Wilma's face. She was a resourceful woman who rarely looked frightened, but there she stood, looking scared as a cornered jackrabbit.

“I have to go, Wilma, I have a living to make,” he told her.

“No, Dan—it was an omen,” Wilma insisted. “Don't you see?”

“An omen of what?” Dan asked.

“Death!” Wilma cried. “An omen of death! Crows know when a person is about to die, don't you know that?”

“Pshaw,” Dan said, again. “It's a fine sunny day, and I ain't about to die. I'm just goin' off to Fort Smith to do a little marshaling.”

Cracky came trotting over on his mule to join the conversation.

“Dan, you're a pure fool if you go riding off into the fighting after you've had a sign like that,” Cracky told him.

“I expect it was a pet bird that got lost from its owner,” Dan said, annoyed that both his wife and his neighbour were suddenly trying to persuade him to neglect his duties. He was particularly annoyed with Cracky, the very man who had passed Judge Parker's request on to him. A lawman who expected to make his living marshaling did not lightly disregard Judge Isaac Parker's requests.

Cracky looked upward as high as he could look, but he saw no sign of the big crow.

“It wasn't a pet bird, it flew right up to heaven,” he told Dan Maples. “When a dern black bird sits right on your shoulder and caws
at you and then flies straight up to heaven, it means your hour is close. If I were you, I'd stay right here at home and keep my gun cocked for a few days.”

“Nope. I'm due in Fort Smith, and I've wasted enough time already,” Dan said. “That crow must have got loose from a circus. I heard there
was
a circus, over in Little Rock.”

Wilma did not say more. Dan had set his jaw, and when Dan set his jaw, argument was useless. Cracky Bolen knew it, too. He turned to Wilma with a look of sympathy, and then rode off on his red mule. The moment they had privacy, Wilma came close to Dan and hugged him tight. Though she was cold with fright, she held Dan close, and even tried to tempt him with a soft kiss. Tempting seemed her only hope of keeping her husband. Despite his suspicious nature, he was a decent man, and she loved him as deeply as she had when she came home with him as a bride. Now the bird of death had marked him. If she lost his touch now, she would lose it forever. He would die in the mud in some Cherokee village, and she would be a lonely widow with a farm to keep, no joy in her days, and no pleasure in her nights. There were no children between them; she had not been able to conceive. If she let her man ride off to his death, she would have no one.

“I don't want you to go, Dan!” Wilma insisted, clutching him tight. “I'll beg you to stay with me if I have to.”

But Dan Maples had set his jaw. He stepped back from Wilma and mounted his horse. Wilma was not crying, but she had a look of anguish on her face as she looked up at him. It was vexing to him, the way Wilma had of getting upset just at the wrong time. He had hoped for a swift departure, and yet an hour had passed and he was still at home. First it had been Cracky; now it was because a big black bird had upset his wife.

“Now, Wilma, go on back in and tend to your chores,” he said. “We can't be losing money because of a crow.”

Wilma did not respond. She did not even say good-bye. When Dan turned at the foot of the hill and looked back, she was still standing right where she had been, the dishrag in her hand.

Dan Maples waved, but Wilma, his wife, did not wave back.

L
ONG BEFORE
C
HILLY
S
TUFFLEBEAN FINALLY STRUGGLED BACK INTO
Fort Smith, a week and a day after the courthouse massacre, Judge Isaac Parker and everyone else who knew Chilly had given him up for dead. Several witnesses had seen him leave Tahlequah the morning after the massacre, but no one in the vicinity of either Tahlequah or Fort Smith had seen him since.

“Ambushed, probably,” Marshal Maples concluded, as he sat talking the matter over with the Judge. “I expect one of the Becks waylaid him, or else one of the Squirrel brothers.”

“I ought not to have sent him into such a hostile situation,” Judge Parker mused. “He was too young for the job.”

The Judge had reproached himself a good deal in the matter of Chilly Stufflebean, and his wife Mart had chipped in a healthy measure of reproach herself. The Judge felt so bad about the young man that he was considering offering a reward out of his own pocket for information about Chilly's whereabouts or his fate, as the case may be. Five dollars was the sum Judge Parker was thinking of offering, though he realized $5 might seem puny in relation to the large rewards available for the capture of whiskeysellers. He was not a wealthy man, however, and $5 was all he felt his budget would allow.

He was working up to mentioning the reward to Marshal Dan Maples when he happened to glance out a window and see none other than Chilly Stufflebean himself, walking toward the courthouse. Chilly was still some fifty yards away, but it was evident to the Judge that his bailiff was in a bedraggled state. For one thing, he was barefoot—a surprising thing, since the Judge had staked him a new suit and a sturdy pair of shoes just prior to sending him off to do the bailiffing for Judge Sixkiller in Tahlequah.

“Well, I guess he wasn't ambushed. Or if he was, all they got was his shoes,” the Judge said to Marshal Maples. He found that his sorrow at the contemplation of Chilly's possible demise was rapidly turning to vexation at the thought of the young man's carelessness. The Judge's temper was not soothed by the thought that he had just been about to waste $5 hard-earned cash as a reward for information about a young scamp so careless that he could not keep track of shoes he had been given as a gift.