In any case, Zeke Proctor became the Cherokee senator from Going Snake District in 1877 and was elected sheriff in 1894. Perhaps his greatest service, ironically, began in the fall of 1891, when he was appointed a deputy U.S. marshal, riding with, among others, the tough, indefatigable Heck Bruner. Marshaling must have agreed with Proctor, who knew every trail and hideout in Indian Territory; he renewed his marshal’s contract in February 1895.

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Zeke Proctor, 76, died at home in February 1907, not of hot lead or cold steel, but of pneumonia. He still lies in the Proctor family plot in the Johnson cemetery, five miles west of Siloam Springs. His monument is the tallest in the cemetery, and that is as it should be. Respectable in his old age, Proctor had never entirely forsaken the old ways. His last words, his granddaughter said, were, ‘Feed the boys good.’ He meant the outlaw Wickliffe brothers, then lying low in Zeke’s barn.

But before Zeke died, and long years after the rains had washed away the clotted blood outside the Whitmire schoolhouse, White Sut Beck and Zeke Proctor finally met. One version of the story says they met by accident; another says the meeting was arranged by mutual friends. Even the year of the meeting is not certain: It may have been in the late ’80s, or as late as 1903. In any case, they met in the land office at Tahlequah, and after all the years stood face to face at last, two old and mortal enemies.

Finally, White Sut Beck spoke. To Proctor he said: ‘We’re too old to fight. But I’m game and I know you are too. I’ll walk away if you will.’ And then, without more, the two tough, proud old men turned and left the land office by different ways. The feud was over, without formality, without fanfare, without speeches. Nobody had backed down; nobody had won; nobody had lost.

Which was how it should have ended.

This article was written by Robert Barr Smith and originally appeared in the June 2004 issue of Wild West. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Wild West magazine today!

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