Zeke and Ned

Praise for
Zeke and Ned

“Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana have written a novel as unruly and exuberant and headlong as a colt that hasn't yet learned to reckon with its own legs.”

—Susan Dodd,
The Washington Post Book World

“[Zeke and Ned]
captivates the reader as it moves through vivid, dramatic, and violent episodes. Dickensian (will we ultimately say McMurtryesque?) characters fill the novel and provide an abundance of comic, tragic, vicious, pathetic, and colorful accents.”

—Phil Montgomery,
The Dallas Morning News

“The storytelling is pure McMurtry, fast-paced, witty, and filled with offbeat characters, crisp dialogue, and dramatic reversals of fate.”

—Gene Lyons,
Entertainment Weekly

“Zeke and Ned
has the tone of a yarn spun over a campfire with plenty of whiskey on hand and nobody in a rush to get anyplace. . . . An enjoyable, richly entertaining reading experience . . . As the wagon bounces along . . . you simply enjoy the ride.”

—Joyce Maynard,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Captain Call and Gus McCrae
of Lonesome Dove
must now make room for Zeke Proctor and Ned Christie of the Cherokee Nation. With Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry has created another cyclorama in words of his own richly colored West.”

—Dee Brown, author of
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

“A
grand-scale tragedy . . . recounted with a conversational authenticity and understated humor that is a McMurtry trademark . . . The authors know how to sustain a drama played out over a plate of corn and vinegar cobbler, and they do it well.”

—Joyce Maynard,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Tender, well-written . . . A colorful and often poignant dramatization of historical events and figures. If this isn't the way things happened and the people actually were, it's the way they should have been. . . . Perhaps one of McMurtry's best novels.”

—Clay Reynolds,
Houston Chronicle

“The novel's pleasure is in the details: the fleshy present, the interiority that turns textbook footnotes into characters.”

—Laurie Stone,
The Village Voice

“The women . . . [make] this novel a heartbreaker.”

—Susan Dodd,
The Washington Post Book World

“McMurtry [is] perhaps a legend himself in the Wild West genre as king of the Lonesome Dove series. . . . This is a gritty, dust-filled . . . entertaining history lesson.”

—Billie Rae Bates,
The Detroit News

B
Y
L
ARRY
M
C
M
URTRY

The Colonel and Little Missie

Loop Group

Folly and Glory

By Sorrow's River

The Wandering Hill

Sin Killer

Paradise

Boone's Lick

Roads: Driving America's Greatest Highways

Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West 1950 to the Present

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen

Duane's Depressed

Crazy Horse
Comanche Moon
Dead Man's Walk
The Late Child
Streets of Laredo
The Evening Star

Buffalo Girls

Some Can Whistle

Anything for Billy

Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood

Texasville

Lonesome Dove

The Desert Rose

Cadillac Jack

Somebody's Darling

Terms of Endearment

All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

Moving On

The Last Picture Show

In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas

Leaving Cheyenne

Horseman, Pass By

B
Y
L
ARRY
M
C
M
URTRY AND
D
IANA
O
SSANA

Pretty Boy Floyd

Zeke and Ned

Larry McMurtry
and
Diana Ossana

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
P
APERBACKS
N
EW
Y
ORK
L
ONDON
T
ORONTO
S
YDNEY

SIMON
&
SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
P
APERBACKS
and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

Designed by Colin Joh
Map by Anita Karl and James Kemp

Manufactured in the United States of America

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
McMurtry, Larry.
Zeke and Ned : a novel / by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.
p. cm.
1. Proctor, Ezekiel, 1831-1907—Fiction. 2. Frontier and pioneer life—Ozark
Mountains Region—Fiction. 3. Indians of North America—Ozark Mountains
Region—Fiction. 4. Christie, Ned, 1852-1892—Fiction. 5. Cherokee
Indians—Fiction. I. Ossana, Diana. II. Title.
PS3563A319Z45     1997
813.'54—dc20     96-44906

eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2816-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-684-81152-9
ISBN-10:   0-684-81152-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-3017-9 (Pbk.)
ISBN-10:    0-7432-3017-5 (Pbk.)

For Violet Nadine, Uldine LaVern, and Marian Yvonne . . . the Anyan girls

When the Pilgrim fathers reached the shores of America, they fell on their knees. Then they fell on the Indians.

—Anonymous,
QUOTED BY
H. L. M
ENCKEN

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one: they promised to take our land, and they took it.

—Red Cloud,
C
HIEF
, O
GLALA
S
IOUX

B
OOK
O
NE
 
ZEKE'S FOLLY

If folly were grief, every house would weep.

—George Herbert

Cherokee Nation,
Going Snake District
Indian Territory

“Z
EKE'S PROBABLY GOT THE ONLY DOG IN THE WORLD THAT CAN WALK
sideways,” Ned remarked to Tuxie Miller as they sat astride their horses, watching the cautious Zeke Proctor and his short, fat, black dog, Pete, sidestepping along in front of the dry goods store.

Zeke's preference was to walk sideways, with a wall at his back, when in Tahlequah or any other place where his enemies might gather in strength. Pete, his constant companion, was as mean as a coon, but fatter than all but the fattest coons.

“It's too muddy here, let's go on home,” Tuxie said, though he did not expect to get his way, or even to get an answer. Ned Christie liked town life; whenever he got a little ahead on his farming, he was bound for Tahlequah.

“I guess my dog could walk sideways if she practiced,” Tuxie added. He had a blue bitch named Thistle who was, in his view, at least as smart as any dog Zeke Proctor had ever owned.

About the time Zeke and Pete slithered around a corner, Tuxie happened to notice Bill Pigeon's horse. The horse, a gaunt sorrel, was tied in front of Old Mandy Springston's house.

“There's Bill Pigeon's horse, he don't like me,” Tuxie said. “That's another reason for getting on home.”

“I didn't know Bill Pigeon's horse didn't like you,” Ned replied. “I guess that's news to me.”

Ned knew perfectly well it was Bill Pigeon, not his horse, that did not like Tuxie Miller, but it amused him to befuddle his friend by taking every word his friend uttered literally. It was a useful tactic, particularly if Tuxie was drunk or otherwise out of his head. The slightest criticism of how he put things would cause Tuxie to give up on human language entirely—he had been known to maintain a noble, slightly offended silence for upwards of a week. If addressed persistently, Tuxie might caw like a crow, or snuff like an angry armadillo; sometimes, at night, he would frighten the household with a perfect imitation of a rattlesnake's rattle—but he would not speak a syllable of Cherokee, much less English.

On this occasion, however, he chose to ignore Ned's remark. It was a drizzly June morning, and the wide main street of Tahlequah had an abandoned wagon sitting in it, bogged to its hubs in the thick, gummy mud.