Zeke Proctor had nothing against Aunt Polly Beck Hildebrand. They were related, in fact, and Zeke didn’t want to kill her at all. Fact was, Zeke was after her man, Jim Kesterson, and Polly just got in the way of one of Zeke’s bullets. Kesterson made it to cover, but Polly was beyond help.

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No doubt Zeke, or Ezekial, saw the whole thing as an accident, but the Beck family felt otherwise. Family loyalties ran very deep in the Cherokee Nation. It followed that if you killed somebody from another family, you could usually count on smelling powder smoke yourself before much time passed. So it was with Zeke Proctor. His lack of murderous intent didn’t mollify a whole passel of tough, straight-shooting Becks. The Beck family was determined to see Zeke dead. Either the duly appointed authorities would kill him legally or the family would handle it themselves.

Zeke Proctor killed Polly Beck in 1872 at the so-called Hildebrand Mill, in what is now Adair County, Okla., on Flint Creek, just a little west of Siloam Springs, Ark. There had been some sort of mill on the site since about 1845, when Thomas Beck bought a share in it, and it was a first-class operation for its time. The millstones had come all the way from France to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), and then by oxcart to Flint Creek. In those days the Cherokee Nation was split into political subdivisions called districts, and the mill lay in Going Snake District. The area was named for a much-respected full-blood chief who had come up the Trail of Tears from Georgia back in the 1830s. He was called Eenah-tah-tah-oo, which means ‘a snake crawling along.’ That mellifluous name lost quite a lot in translation, which could come no closer than ‘Going Snake.’

Polly was the widow of Steve Hildebrand (sometimes seen as Hilderbrand), who had owned a share in the mill. After Steve was killed in the Civil War, Polly ran the mill with Kesterson, who was either her fourth husband or her lover, depending on which account you read. The reason for Zeke’s anger at Jim Kesterson is lost in the mists of time. One story says Kesterson was married to Zeke’s sister, Susan, and had left her and her children destitute (and in fact Kesterson had once been married to Susan Proctor). In this tale, Zeke moved his sister and her children in with another sister, then rode up to the mill to avenge Kesterson’s neglect of his family. In another version, Kesterson had started the whole thing by accusing Zeke of stealing stock. Still another story says Zeke may have gone to the mill in his capacity as deputy sheriff — which office he actually held at one time or another. His mission was to direct Polly to control her farm animals, which had been straying into other people’s fields.

Most of the old-timers at least agree that the Kesterson-Proctor fight had something to do with stock. Some Proctors espoused the abandoned wife story. And another pioneer thought Polly ‘was the cause of Proctor being put out as sheriff of the Going Snake District just before this happened and he was angry at her.’ One variation on the tale says Zeke prepared for his meeting with Kesterson by tanking up on frontier neck oil. He then galloped off to the mill and found Polly and Kesterson outside. Shouting ‘I’m going to kill me a white man!’ Zeke dismounted and went for his revolvers.

Whatever the actual reason for Proctor’s visit, both men got angry enough to go for their guns. Proctor was quicker on the draw than Kesterson, but Polly Beck Hildebrand threw herself between the two antagonists and stopped a bullet in the chest. Kesterson ran for his life as Proctor drilled two more slugs through his coat, and the fat was in the fire. Although one story says Proctor hid out for months after the shooting, it seems most likely that he immediately turned himself in to Going Snake Sheriff Jack Wright.

The shooting occurred on about February 13, 1872, and the political maneuvering began almost immediately. If the Becks were numerous and influential, so were the Proctors. Both families had taken leading parts in Cherokee government. The two families had been close once, too, but the Civil War had changed some of that friendship. The Becks had supported the Confederacy by and large, while some Proctors, Zeke included, had fought for the Union. Zeke, men said, had fought in many battles, but had only received one minor wound.

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