Free Zeke and Ned by Larry McMurtry Page B

with bloat up the hill half a mile,” Tuxie said. “I’ve got to poke a knife in her and see if I can let out the bloat. She’s our milk cow, the younguns depend on her.”
    Dale’s pique was subsiding a little. Zeke had no colour in his face; he looked tired, and sad. Dale remembered that Zeke had been a good friend to her father when her father was dying. Zeke had ridden twenty-five miles on a sleety day to get some medicines from an old healing woman. The medicines had not saved her father, but Zeke hadshown himself to be a loyal friend by making that ride. Though it annoyed her when people could not always be good, the fact was, sometimes they just could not.
    Zeke Proctor was no more all of a piece than most men. There was good in him, as well as bad. The older men got, it seemed to Dale, the more prone they were to making bad mistakes, particularly if they did not have a strong wife to show them the Christian way.
    Ned Christie was a fine man and a good neighbour, willing to pitch in and help when there was work to do. Dale had set her cap for Ned, but then she took the cap off when she discovered how headstrong he was. Since she knew herself to be no less headstrong, Dale chose Tuxie when she decided to marry. Tuxie she could bend; life with Ned would have been one head butt after another.
    â€œIf you men are fearful of a scrap, you better eat first,” she said, looking up at them and moderating her tone. “We got corn cakes.”
    Tuxie was relieved. Dale had remembered her manners, and just in time, too. It would have been an embarrassment if she had sent his friends away hungry. Dale mostly did remember her manners; it was just that she would have her say first. Zeke had little appetite, but Ned ate his share, and most of Zeke’s.
    â€œI don’t know why he would marry a woman like that,” Zeke remarked, as they rode on toward Tahlequah. “I’d just as soon marry a badger.”
    Ned just chuckled. He liked Dale.

13
    J UDGE B. H. S IXKILLER WAS ANNOYED THAT Z EKE HAD LET TWENTY-FOUR hours elapse before presenting himself in Tahlequah.
    In twenty-four hours or less, one of the Becks could have ridden to Fort Smith and called for the white law. If that had occurred, there would be a squabble, at the very least, and the Judge was too old to enjoy squabbles. B. H. Sixkiller had curly white eyebrows, and had been much admired by the women in his day—four of them had married him, but they were all dead now, and the rheumatism in his joints pained him so badly on wet days that he had not applied himself to finding a new wife. When he got a little respite from his duties as a judge, he usually went fishing.
    Zeke Proctor looked plenty repentant when he told his story, butthe Judge was stern with him anyway. Crimes resulting from marital irregularities were a particular annoyance to him. He had gotten along fine with all four of his wives, and as a result deplored concubinage and other loose arrangements. Women’s shapes might differ, but their natures did not—not in the Judge’s view. Now Zeke had sown discord in the community, merely because he wanted a woman different from the one he had.
    â€œZeke, you’re a damned reprobate!” the Judge said. “Your trial will be in two weeks. Take him off to jail, Charley!”
    Sheriff Charley Bobtail’s heart sank when he heard the order.
    â€œYou mean I have to keep him for the whole two weeks?” he asked. As sheriff of the Going Snake District, his responsibilities were large and wide ranging. In respect to the jail, he had to function not only as sheriff, but as jailer, janitor, and cook. He did not look forward to having Zeke Proctor as a prisoner for two long weeks.
    The Judge was writing up the Affidavit of Trial. If he got it posted soon enough, so that everybody knew Zeke would be held accountable for the killing, maybe the white law would leave them alone. Speed was of the