The Legend of Bass Reeves (13 page)

Bass had no such cap, and he must have known that the odds against him were absolutely staggering.

And yet he never shied away from an assignment.

Nobody ever sat down and interviewed Bass as they did with Hickok, Earp or Cody. Racial prejudice—another enormous obstacle for Bass—may have been at its worst during the years when he was a marshal, right after the
Civil War, when millions of African Americans were attempting to live free in a racist, bigoted nation.

So there is no documented explanation of why Bass Reeves would accept the offer from Parker.

But even if it’s not documented, there’s still a logical reason for Bass’s taking the job and the huge risk it entailed. Bass had lived in the Territory with the Creeks for just under a quarter of a century and was accepted by their families; was sheltered and hidden by them; loved and was loved by the very people who were now being victimized by these criminals.

Perhaps he thought he owed them some kind of help.

Whatever the reason, in the summer of 1875, Bass Reeves put on the badge.

1875–1909
True Grit

Bass lay beneath some brush and watched the cabin a half mile away in the approaching twilight. It was back in a cut in the Cherokee Hills.

It was starting to rain. He was grateful for the rain because he was disguised as a bum just looking for food, and the worse his clothes looked, the better. His good horse, a red stallion with a white blaze, was tied a mile and a half back in a stand of thick aspen where he wouldn’t be found. Bass was riding an old mule that he’d brought with him as part of his disguise.

The day before, he had crossed the dead line, a line eighty miles west of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Most deputy marshals didn’t cross it, and those who did were almost always killed.

For the past thirty miles, he’d been in extremely dangerous territory. He was glad to look like a bum who didn’t have anything worth stealing.

It gave Bass a deep thrill each time he crossed the dead line.

Like pulling a lion’s beard. Bass scratched his cheek. Three weeks earlier, on a short run that ended in a wild gun battle, he’d disguised himself as a woman. He’d had to shave off his handlebar mustache and had worn a big sunbonnet and a full-skirted gingham dress. He’d gone into the camp of a gang of horse thieves and killers, pretending to be an old lady who was a friend of a gang member’s mother. Bass had expected just three or four outlaws, but there were over a dozen. He still thought he might be able to pull it off and get the two men he was after by waiting until the others rode away. But one of the outlaws noticed that Bass “… is the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen, and she has a beard showing.” Somebody in the cabin wanted proof he was a woman, and when he pulled a gun instead and told the men they were under arrest and to “… surrender peaceful-like,” somebody yelled, “Hell, he ain’t nothing but an old lady,” and started firing. They shot holes in his dress, shot his bonnet brim off, cut his gun belt under his dress and shot a boot heel off before he gained control of the situation by killing two of them and wounding two others.

Bass smiled now, remembering the look on Judge Parker’s face when he’d come riding into Fort Smith with ten live prisoners tied together in tow and two dead draped over their horses. When the wounded men had complained about being tied together, he’d just said, “It’s
easier to carry you dead.” When they looked at the bodies of their companions, they quieted down.

Parker had called him “my bargain-basement deputy,” saying he “brings them in cheaper by the dozen.”

Now Bass narrowed his eyes. The door of the cabin opened and a man came out and relieved himself off to the side. It looked like Dozier, but at this distance he couldn’t be sure. He had been hunting Bob Dozier, who was wanted for horse thievery and for killing the drovers who had the horses, for almost three years now. Bass had come close to catching him, but the man was slippery. But Bass knew for certain this time that there were only three men in the cabin.

Everything was going well, he thought, glad of his disguise but sick of lying in the mud. Man wasn’t supposed to lie in mud. It wasn’t natural. He eased the Colt .38–40 into a more protected position under his clothes. Normally he carried two of them, with butts facing forward for a faster draw and more safety when riding in thick brush. That brush could snag on the hammer, cock the piece and discharge it down into the horse. This had happened to many a cowboy chasing wild cows.

Bass also had a Winchester lever-action rifle chambered for the same round, .38–40, so he usually had to carry only one kind of ammunition.

But he had left the rifle and his other pistol and gun belt with the stallion. No bum would have a weapon, and if this was going to work at all, he had to play the part well.

He felt a night chill coming on. It was summer, but the rain had soaked him and a faint breeze blew. He stood slowly and went back to the mule. He had an old saddle on
it, all part of this disguise, which he used fairly often. He also posed as a drover, a cowboy, a dirt farmer and an outlaw. Anything to get close enough. You had to get so close you could smell their breath.…

He mounted the mule and forced himself to slouch. Normally he sat straight up on the stallion—he was a master horseman—but an old drunken bum would hang over the mule like the old clothes he wore. He had even taken the heels off a pair of boots so he would walk in a shambling, drunken gait.

Half a mile to the cabin. It was dark enough now so that a lantern shone through an oiled-paper window. He knew they wouldn’t be able to see him coming in the rain with the dark hills in back of him. With the mule walking in mud, they probably wouldn’t even hear his hooves on the ground.

Bass rode up to the cabin door without being discovered. He sat for a moment, preparing. When there was time—there wasn’t always—he would compose himself and try to anticipate how things might go. There were three men, all potentially dangerous. He had a warrant for Dozier and a couple of John Doe warrants if he needed them. He would knock on the door, pretend to be begging for food, take it from there.

He stood down from the mule, adjusted his revolver under his coat so he could get it in a hurry. Then he knocked on the door. The talk inside stopped instantly and he heard stools or chairs scraping as people got up, footsteps, a moment’s hesitation; then the door opened a crack and a gun barrel poked out.

“Sorry, boss, don’t mean no trouble. Just looking for some work to make some food.” Bass moved back to
appear less threatening. “Mighty hungry, boss. Eat just about anything.”

The door opened wider and a face appeared. Not Dozier. White man, mid-twenties. Stood looking at Bass in the dim lantern light, then turned back into the room. “Hell, Bob. It’s just some old nigger begging for food. We could let him peel the pota—”

“Old nigger, hell—that’s Reeves!”

Bass knocked the barrel of the young man’s revolver up in the air and threw his shoulder against the door, jamming it in against the man, knocking him to the floor sprawling, the gun flying out of his hand. Bass drew his Colt as he came in.

But at the same time, there was the sound of a door slamming open on the other side of the house. Most hideouts had an escape door in the back, and Dozier had gone out as Bass came in.

Bass kicked the gun away from the man on the floor. A second man stood by a cookstove, holding a frying pan, his mouth open.

“Your gun,” Bass said, pointing at the man’s belt and holster. “Out now. Two fingers. Throw it over here. …Do it wrong and I’ll kill you. I ain’t got papers on either one of you, so don’t push the hand. Both of you leave your weapons and run outside and just keep running north, and I’ll let you go this time. Don’t come back or I’ll kill you. Do you believe me?”

“Are you Bass Reeves?” The man by the stove had thrown his gun away, onto the floor.

“Yes.”

“Then I believe you.”

“Get.”

“Horses?”

“No. On foot. Go now before I put one in you for luck.”

Both men jumped to the door and vanished in the rain and dark. Bass went to the back door. He thought Bob might make for the corral, just east of the house; he might try to get to a horse and ride. But Bass was wrong. There hadn’t been enough time, and Dozier had elected to stay and fight. As Bass came to the door, he hesitated, peered around the door frame and for his foolishness was rewarded by a splinter of wood chips in his eyes, as Dozier fired and missed his head by not more than three inches.

Bass went out the front door and then worked around the west end of the cabin. He stopped at the corner. The rain was coming hard, but he was sure he heard footsteps running away to the south. He jumped around the corner and ran after them.

Stupid, he thought. Chasing after him in the dark. But he kept going, and this time his luck held. He saw Dozier trying to run, ahead of him. The mud was ankle deep, and as slow as Dozier was going, Bass could barely keep up. The range was terrible for a handgun in the dark, a good forty yards, but he stopped and squeezed off a round.

Shot wide. To the right. But the sound of the shot made Dozier stop and turn, and he fired twice at Bass. Missed. Bass had kept moving and had closed the distance to thirty yards.

Bass stopped, aimed more carefully and fired again. Dozier jerked in a half spin to the right and then straightened up. His gun arm hung down, but he reached across with his left hand and took the gun from his useless right one, started to bring it up.

“Don’t, Bob.” Bass wasn’t twenty yards away. “Don’t do it.”

“I ain’t going to let that son of a bitch Parker jerk my neck for all them damn farmers to see me piss my pants.”

“You might get prison.” Bass knew better. Dozier had murdered two men in cold blood. Parker would hang him as soon as he was found guilty.

Dozier had the gun in his left hand and was awkwardly trying to cock the hammer, wobbling the Colt around.

“Don’t, Bob.”

Bass cocked his own Colt, aimed carefully at the center of Dozier’s body, and when the barrel of Dozier’s Colt started to come up to point at him, Bass squeezed the trigger.

In the flash from his revolver, he saw the big slug take Dozier high in the chest, but the man still stood. Bass thought, All right, double tap, and shot him again in the forehead. Dozier went over backward and Bass walked up to him. He automatically ejected the spent shells from his Colt, a habit he’d kept all these years after the Comanche had charged him and he had an unloaded rifle. He reached around for new cartridges from his belt before he remembered that he had left his gun belt with the stallion.

He looked down at the dead man. He’d been chasing Dozier for three years. He felt almost nothing and did not know why. There wasn’t much light, but he saw the hole in Dozier’s head and noted that it was a little high and thought, Oh yes, I always shoot high at night. Just a little. I’ll have to watch that.…

Then he started shaking, and he didn’t know if it was from the chill of the rain or from the killing.

Even when it was necessary—and he’d had no choice
at all with Dozier, and knew it in his heart—he did not like killing. It was such a waste.

Two drovers dead and their horses stolen.

Dozier lying faceup in the mud, rain pouring into his unblinking eyes. Some mother must have loved him, must have suckled him, must have fed him and changed his diapers….

Just a waste of everybody.

Some were quick.

Tom Story was that. Another killer and horse thief with a set of relay ranches—shacks in the woods—who had killed drovers and stolen horses and sold them down across the Red River for years before Bass went after him.

Bass did the usual preparation. Checked his guns. Had somebody read the warrants to him so he knew which one was Story’s. Rode his stallion wearing his good black hat with the flat brim turned up in the front so he could sight his rifle, wore his good riding suit, had his boots shined in Fort Smith before he left but took his mule and old clothes in case he needed to go in disguise.

Did it all right and proper, figured on being gone at least two weeks, and then came around a corner and met Tom Story driving a herd of stolen horses across the river at the Delaware Bend crossing. Came riding right up on him, out of some brush, the two of them mounted and not twenty yards distant.