Zeke and Ned (49 page)

“One night won't hurt her,” Ned assured her. “I expect this matter to be settled in the morning.”

“I wish Ma and Pa hadn't left,” Liza said. “They wouldn't dare bother us if Pa was here.”

The comment reminded Ned that he was vexed at Zeke. He thought Liza overrated her father's reputation. The white law would not be likely to turn and ride off, just because Zeke Proctor was in the house. Very probably they had an arrest warrant for Zeke, too. But Liza was Zeke's daughter, and it was natural for her to think her pa was the most fearsome man in the land.

As soon as Lyle Miller woke up, he began to whine to go home. When Ned informed him that he could not go back just yet, a fit of homesickness took the boy—a fit so severe that he burst into tears.

“But I miss Ma, and it's getting night,” Lyle whimpered. “I've always slept where Ma's at. I'm gonna be scared, sleeping away.”

“One night won't hurt you, Lyle,” Ned told the homesick youngster. “Maybe Jewel will make you some more flapjacks in the morning.”

Jewel put her arms around Lyle and tried to comfort him, but the boy continued to sob, somewhat to Ned's annoyance.

“Dale's tied that boy to her apron strings so tight he's afraid to spend one night away from her,” Ned whispered to Jewel. “When I was his age, I was camping all over the Mountain by myself. If I kilt game, I'd be gone for a week at a time sleeping out.”

“Everybody ain't independent like you, Ned,” Jewel reminded him. “I never left my ma till I came here . . . Liza, neither.”

They made a light supper on some potatoes and a little cold bacon left over from breakfast. Ned kept his rifle in his lap throughout the meal. Afterward, he took a jug of whiskey and went upstairs. When Jewel came up, he was sitting by the window, sipping from the jug.

“Ned, don't you be getting drunk, with those white men nearby,” Jewel said. She seldom quarreled with him about his drinking. But this was a serious situation—if he had to face the white law and possibly submit to arrest, she wanted him to be dignified and sober, as a Cherokee senator should be.

Ned smiled at her. Mostly, he was tolerant of Jewel's efforts to keep him on the straight and narrow. Trying to keep men on the straight and narrow was a woman's task. But he was facing an army up on that hill. On this night, particularly, he wanted his liquor—it would put
the lightning in him, if a fight came. Ned rarely thought of death, though he had seen a good deal of it. But he knew now that death lay around them. The men on the hill had lit no fires and had swung no lanterns. He had not seen even the flicker of a cigar. What that meant to him was that they were disciplined killers—or their leader was, at least. The whiskey he was sipping would not make him lax, it would make him ready.

Now and then, from the meadow, the Millers' colt whinnied. It was confused, like Lyle, who whimpered intermittently until he finally fell asleep again. Liza was too afraid to sleep by herself. She crept into Jewel and Ned's bedroom, and made a pallet by their bed. It vexed Jewel a little; Liza knew Ned liked his privacy. He only wanted his wife in the bedroom.

But on this night, Ned was so preoccupied with his watching that he hardly noticed Liza. The more he thought about the smoke to the west, the more convinced he was that the Millers had been burned out. He did not want someone sneaking off the hill and firing their house; they would be caught cold if they were driven out of their shelter. The possemen would kill him for sure, and the women would suffer hard handling.

In the deepest hour of the night, Ned thought he heard movement on the hill. He could not identify the sound, but he was certain the possemen were stirring. The night birds had grown silent. He would usually hear foxes up on the Mountain, but no foxes yipped this night. Jewel and Liza had fallen into nervous sleep behind him. In the deep, silent darkness, Ned came close to losing his fighting spirit. Though he considered himself a decent fighter, he was not so self-impressed as to suppose himself a match for nine men—not if the men were led by an experienced leader, as these men were—a leader who could keep them sitting all night without even tobacco smoke to help them ward off the flies and mosquitoes.

He wondered, for a time, about surrender. It might give the women a better chance. But he did not wonder long. If death was to be his lot, he wanted it to be a fighting death. He was not going to let the white men handcuff him, put a hood over his head, and drop him through a hole in the floor, so he could die at the end of a rope.

He bent all his energy to staying alert. Once the women were asleep, he began to rove through the house, upstairs and down, checking all the windows. It was a large house, a better house than
most brides were brought to by men his age. The matter of the preacher crossed his mind; he knew he had been neglectful in that regard. Now a violent situation had caught them, one they might not survive. Jewel and he were still not married, not by a preacher with a Bible in his hand. It was a lapse on his part, one he intended to make up to Jewel if only they got out of the present scrape alive.

Back up on the second floor, he heard the sounds from the hill. They were faint, but he knew what they were: horses were being saddled; stirrups creaked; men were mounting. The darkness was just beginning to grey, but it was still more dark than grey. Ned strained his eyes, but could not see the men who were making the sounds.

He felt the same disquiet he had felt in the courtroom, when he had gone striding for his guns. Something was about to break out upon them, from up on the hill. He quickly shook Jewel and Liza awake, and rushed them downstairs. There was a small root cellar behind the kitchen, under a little porch where buckets and ropes and every sort of thing got stacked. Ned grabbed up Lyle, and got the two women and the boy into the root cellar. Lyle Miller started to whimper again, but Ned shook him gently and shushed him.

“You got to be quiet now, all of you,” he said firmly. “Stay in the root cellar and don't come out till I tell you.”

Ned had scarcely gotten back from hiding the women and the boy, when a voice called out from the hill. Ned could not see the speaker in the darkness; no doubt the man was still protected by foliage. But he knew it belonged to the tall man in the long, dusty coat.

“Come out and surrender, Christie—we're offering you one chance!” the man yelled.
“You
come—or else
we'll
come!”

Ned felt fight rise up in him, at the man's insulting tone. On impulse, he fired one quick shot at the sound. It was a thing he had practiced when he was a boy. If he heard a squirrel chatter, or a wild turkey gobble, he would flash a shot at the sound. Often as not, a branch or a cluster of leaves would deflect the shot, but not always. Usually, he walked home with a squirrel, a partridge, or a mallard. Once, in the rain, he had even killed a young deer on the run, by merely shooting at the sound.

Immediately after the shot, there was silence up on the hill. The silence stretched on and on. Ned put a new shell in his rifle. He wanted a full magazine, in case the men came on. He had shot, and now the battle was joined. At least the possemen knew he would not
be carted off to Fort Smith in order to be hung at the end of their hang rope.

“My God—he's hit Tail!” someone said, from the hill.

It gave Ned a jerk of satisfaction. His old skill had not left him, and the hard leader in the long coat had an answer to his insult.

Ned had only a moment to enjoy the sense that he had dealt the first blow. A second later, rifle fire poured down on him from the hill. He stretched belly-down on the floor and crawled behind the bed. Soon, all the window glass shattered. Though the house was of solid log, now and then a bullet ricocheted off a windowsill, and into the room. The rifle fire was continuous. Ned saw a mounted man start down the hill, and promptly shot him out of his saddle. It was not a fatal shot; Ned saw the man crawl away.

The firing was so thick that Ned felt cautious about even raising his head. He crept to a west window, and shot another posseman—the fellow had been standing by a bush, in plain sight. It was grey now, the darkness receding, and Ned could see a good deal better what he was shooting at. The fellow who had been standing by the bush did not crawl away, and Ned considered that he had one less opponent. He had hit three, counting their leader, but could only be certain that he had eliminated one killer. The rider he had only hit in the shoulder; he had no way of knowing how seriously he had injured the tall man named Tail.

Ned started up to his crawl space. It meant leaving one side of the house unprotected, but it was the safest place to shoot from and provided the best view of the hill. He could see anything that moved.

Before he could get to it, he heard the sound of hooves. The whole posse was charging now. He thought he saw seven riders, which did not accord with his count, but he had no time to check. He stood by the nearest window, and fired. He knocked off two riders before the posse made it to the house. One man jumped off his horse and ran in the door. Ned had reached the stairs by then, and he shot the man before he had both feet in the door.

Horses and men were all around the house when, suddenly, Lyle Miller appeared.

“Ned, I'm scairt!” the boy cried.

“You ought to have stayed put, Lyle!” Ned said. He shot another posseman through the window, but Lyle's appearance had rattled him—he only hit the man in the leg. The man clung to his horse, and
disappeared. There was so much dust from the horses that Ned could not see clearly. He grabbed the boy, and carried him back to the second floor.

Before he got to the crawl space, he smelled fire. One of the posse-men must be expert at firing structures, to get a fire going so quickly and in the middle of all the shooting, Ned thought.

Ned did not know if he could squeeze into the crawl space with Lyle. He felt a powerful duty to his friend Tuxie to protect his son, and so stuffed Lyle in first. Then he heard something behind him— turned—and shot a man who had followed him upstairs. The man had a gash across his forehead, raggedly sewn up. The man fell backward down the staircase—dead, Ned felt sure.

“You get in there and you stay put, Lyle,” Ned ordered. “You can't be popping out, with all this shooting going on.”

Smoke was already curling up the stairs by this time. Ned did not immediately fear the house flaming up—it would take half a day for the stout logs to burn through—but he did fear smoke. He hastily ripped off a piece of quilt to make rags to cover his nose. He handed one to Lyle, though he knew it would take a while before the smoke penetrated to the crawl space. He thought of the women in the root cellar, Jewel and Liza, but did not feel he could risk going back down the stairs. It might be filled with possemen already, and one of them might surprise him and end the battle. Besides, the smoke would rise. The women would be safe enough in the root cellar, unless the floor collapsed, and that was not likely to happen for hours. Surviving the battle was the task he had to accomplish. He thought he had accounted for half of the posse—if not killing them, then disabling them sufficiently to keep them from wandering around in a smoky house looking for him.

Before scooting into the crawl space, Ned turned for a moment to look out a window. He knew the riders were still milling around outside. He heard the nervous horses whinnying; horses never liked fire. He thought he might be able to shoot down on the men, perhaps killing or disabling one or two more. If he could, maybe they would give it up and leave. It seemed there was at least a chance of that, since he had hit the leader early. Then it flashed to him that he had seen the leader, Tail, in the charge. Though well to the rear, he had been the seventh man.

Or so Ned thought; it was hard to be certain of what exactly he
had
seen, in the few seconds the men were racing down on him. His worry now was that he had only dealt Tail a small wound, when he shot at the sound of his voice. It was a troubling thought, dashing his hopes that without their leader to force them on, they might not have the stomach to continue such a deadly fight.

Just as Ned edged to the window, something struck his face, right by his nose. It spun him around, causing him to drop to his knees. He was looking directly down at the floor, but could not see it—in fact, he could not see anything. His vision had gone. The world was black, with just a distant spot of light, at the center of the blackness.

Oh Lord! Blind, he thought—blind, finished! He had a Colt .44 in each hand, the guns his father had given him, but he could not see to fire them. The moment at the window had been incautious. Now he was hit, and he was blind. Any one of the possemen could finish him, if one happened to be bold enough to come up the stairs.

Ned stayed on his hands and knees for a moment, in a black world, no vision at all. He felt a weight in his head between his nose and his eyes; he knew it must be a bullet, and wondered why he was not dead. He wanted to sneeze out the weight, but could not.

He began to cough from the smoke. He still had the rag in one hand and quickly put his face in it to stifle the coughs. He did not want to give his position away. He could smell that the smoke was billowing thicker, which was both good and bad. It would hide him, discouraging the possemen from climbing the stairs—but it would also choke him and finally kill him, if he did not move to get out of it.

Ned had whirled when the bullet struck. He had to reach out with one hand and touch the bed to know which way he faced. His upper teeth ached; he wondered if the bullet could have struck his teeth and gone up his nose, but he knew he had no leisure to worry about the wound. He was blind, but he was still alive—he had to get to his crawl space before the smoke choked him, or a posseman found him. He tucked one pistol inside his shirt and kept the other in his hand, as he inched across the floor. Though blind and wounded, he took care to move quietly. If the possemen heard him, they might shoot him through the floor. As he crawled, he wondered who had shot him. He had only shown himself at the window for a second, and yet had been shot in the face. It must be that the posse had a sharpshooter with them.