The Legend of Bass Reeves (14 page)

Two seconds of surprise on both parts.

Tom jerked first. “Fill your hand, damn you!” he yelled, and he fired wide to the right while Bass was drawing his
left Colt with his right hand, easing the hammer back as he pulled it from the holster, raising it while Story shot a second time and cut the right rein so close to Bass’s fingers, he felt a breeze from the bullet.

Bass had his weapon up by this time and he aimed, squeezed and hit Story about a foot above the belt buckle. Story bent forward as if he’d been kicked in the stomach by a mule, and it was finished—except that he still held that gun, so Bass cocked and fired again, taking him in the temple. Then it was truly over.

Story’s horse wheeled and carried the body some twenty yards before it fell off. Bass reloaded and thought, One day out, one day back.

I didn’t even get to the dead line.

Some were hard.

Horses were vital to people’s welfare back then. There were no cars, and trains did not come to that many towns, so horses were for riding, working, pulling, hauling— every kind of work. Stealing horses then was like stealing cars now. They were in huge demand, there were never enough of them, and there was always a ready market.

Jim Webb, a horse thief and a cold-blooded killer who actually carved notches in the wooden handle of his Colt for every man he killed—eleven—was very nearly fatal for Bass.

Bass tracked, hunted and hounded Webb for more than two years. Like Dozier and many other thieves, Webb had a series of relay stations. Relay ranches were very much like chop shops are for cars now. A stolen car is
taken into a chop shop and either has its appearance radically altered and is resold or is cut up for parts. A stolen horse was taken to a relay ranch, where its brand was altered and allowed to heal, and then it was moved through a series of relays until it was far enough from its home not to be recognized. Then it was sold. One horse might be worth forty dollars—a full month’s pay for a hardworking man. Horse thieves ran a big, lucrative business.

Webb stole horses up into Kansas, over into Arkansas, relayed them through the Indian Territory, then down south across the Red River into Texas, where they were sold to the military or to ranchers and farmers.

If a man had a horse, or a ranch had a dozen of them, and Webb wanted them, he simply frightened the owners enough to let him ride off with the stock, and if that didn’t work, he murdered them. He was absolutely without mercy, and Bass was determined to get him.

Webb knew that Bass was after him, and he kept changing relay stations and methods, always staying one jump ahead, until finally Bass decided to forgo all other warrants until he got this one man.

Following rumors, hints, guesses and hunches, he worked across the dead line in late 1894 and came to a stream of prints from at least twenty horses. He was riding the stallion. This time, for disguise, he brought two geldings, both longlegged and tough, excellent long-distance runners. Webb was known for running long with spare mounts to get away, and Bass was planning to stay with him. But at the moment things weren’t going right. Bass had cornered a notorious small-time thief named Charley One-Finger—he’d been born with only one finger on his
left hand—near Shepherd’s Crossing. Bass threatened him with a John Doe warrant,“just for being a bad influence,” if Charley didn’t tell him where Webb was hiding. Charley lived in fear of coming up before Isaac Parker, and in his terror told Bass that Webb was going to run a big herd of stolen horses down into Texas soon. “Maybe he’s doing it right now. Maybe you better go look.”

Now Bass studied the prints. This was an older set of tracks, a cold trail. The edges of the hoofprints looked weathered and had been blown round. There had been no rain and no wind for at least three days, so the tracks were at least that old. Probably more like a week.

Could be Webb, Bass thought, and then shook his head. Wishful thinking. Could be anybody. Still, somebody with a herd of more than twenty horses heading southeast was more than likely up to no good.

So he brought the stallion and the two geldings around on the trail and started to follow it. It was a beautiful day for a ride, even if he had crossed the dead line and had to watch every ridge and stand of trees for potential danger. The sun was coming up to noon and the warmth felt good on his shoulders, eased a small ache that was starting to visit him on a cold morning. He’d ridden thousands of miles on hundreds of horses and been thrown by a few, and he supposed the new ache was a memory pain from getting thrown on his head and neck more times than he wanted to count.

He was seventy.

In his work and life, in his thoughts, in his dreams at night, he was still in his twenties, but seventy summers had passed and here he was, the stallion under him, his Winchester scabbarded under his right leg, two Colts at
his waist, a double-barreled shotgun hanging by a leather loop from his saddle horn, a pocket full of corn dodgers (he still liked them for trail food) and a full canteen of water. Still riding, still hunting.

“What the …”

The stallion had stopped and fidgeted as if there was a mare in season nearby. Bass studied the ground and saw that another group of horses had come into the older trail from the north. Ten or twelve, it was hard to tell unless he got down and memorized the different tracks so he could identify and count them.

No matter the count, the tracks were dead fresh. One must be a mare the stallion could still smell. The soil, where hooves had cut the earth and thrown it up, was still damp-looking. And the sun was baking straight down.

Not days, just hours, ahead of him. Maybe three hours.

It was Webb.

He didn’t know why he felt so certain. God knew over the past two years he’d been close before, but never close at the right time. Either he only had the mule and couldn’t get into a long chase, or he was escorting prisoners back to Fort Smith. There was always something.

But this time it felt right. This time, this time …

He heeled the stallion into a faster pace, an easy trot. They would be walking the horses, and if they were three hours ahead, that couldn’t be more than ten or twelve miles. If he trotted, he’d be doing six to their three or four. In five hours he’d be up with them.

He had no plan as to how to handle Webb and the herd. With hoofprints this numerous, he couldn’t tell how many riders Webb had with him. Three could handle a herd this size, but there could be many more.

Ideally he would catch up to them without being seen, wait his chance to get the drop on Webb. He had no illusions about Webb’s surrendering if there was the slightest chance he could fight his way free. Webb would run if he could, but if he couldn’t run, he’d try to kill Bass.

In any case, it was taken out of Bass’s hands when he was still two miles from the herd.

He knew they were close. The stallion had a mileeating trot, and the two geldings had no trouble keeping up. Bass stopped to study the trail, felt a pile of fresh manure with the back of his hand. Still warm. He remounted and hadn’t gone another half mile when he saw something ahead.

As he got closer, he saw it was an old boot top, cut off and sewed into a long pouch. This was the way many rustlers and thieves carried spare cartridges. He leaned down and picked it up without dismounting and saw it had fifty or sixty .44–40 cartridges inside, no good to him with his .38–40 handguns and rifle, but he dropped it into his saddlebag and had just faced front when a man came loping around the bend ahead of him, looking for his lost ammunition.

The man was so surprised, he didn’t stop his horse for another thirty or forty yards. He was still more than a hundred yards away, but Bass pulled his rifle.

The man hauled on his horse so hard, it almost went over backward. He wheeled and dug in his spurs. Bass could hear his horse grunt in pain even from a hundred yards away. The man wasn’t Webb, but Bass spurred the stallion into a run to keep up. Running loose, the stallion could have caught the man easily, but pulling the two
geldings slowed him a bit. Bass didn’t want to let the geldings go, thinking he would need them if a chase developed.

He didn’t try to catch the rider, but held pace with him as they rounded the bend and he saw the herd of horses about a mile and a half distant. There were two riders. The man running in front of him yelled, and when the two riders still didn’t see him, the man pulled his pistol and shot in the air.

They both wheeled. The rider on the left just sat looking, but the one on the right spurred his horse and started north up a gully that led to the top of a flat plain that had no visible end. He was pulling two horses running bare in back of him, as Bass was, and Bass nodded.

Webb. That would be Webb.

It would be a chase. For a second, Bass was surprised that Webb headed onto a flat prairie to run north, where there would be no place to hide, but then he realized it was the right move. Webb had no choice. If he tried to run around the herd and head west or south, it would take too long and Bass might come within range for a shot. Bass was accurate—no one would let him compete in turkey shoots because he always won—and everybody in the Territory knew it. Especially criminals.

Webb was moving faster than Bass was, but Bass made no attempt to increase the stallion’s speed. The big stud was the best horse Bass had ever owned, but he had been ridden all morning and Webb had probably been changing his mounts from the herd he was pushing. Still, the stal-lion’s long legs would keep them in sight.

There would be plenty of time to close the gap. The
way Webb was running, he’d blow the first horse out in half an hour, just when the stallion would start to slow. Then they’d both be into their remounts, and if Webb kept up the pace, the remounts would last no more than a half hour each. That made the chase, at the most, another hour and a half.

Twenty-two miles. Maybe. Not more than twenty-five or twenty-seven. Bass took a quick look back as the stallion barreled up the gully and onto the flats, the geldings scrambling to keep up. The other two men were running south, and the damn fools were taking the horse herd with them, which would slow them down too much to get away if Bass came back after them. In any event, they weren’t coming after him to help Webb—loyalty was a scarce commodity with the gangs. Knowing this had saved his life hundreds of times. If gangs had ever worked together, he’d have been dead by now.

The stallion tripped on a soft gopher mound and Bass held his head up, felt him through his legs to see if he was weaving, getting tired, but he was still moving well. It was just a momentary stumble. Still slightly slower than Webb, but the speed was evening out.

What was twenty, thirty miles ahead? Bass had wandered up there when he was a fugitive two or three times. He hadn’t liked to get too far north because some of the tribes up there were as hostile as the Comanches.

All the way up into Kansas, if his memory was accurate, were rolling, shallow hills—undulations in the prairie. Which was good. He needed the hills if the chase got long, to close the distance, assuming all the horses were about equal.

The stallion had seen Webb’s horses ahead of him now and knew they were in a chase. He had done this many times. Bass let him pick his own speed and was gratified to see he was gaining just a little.

Bass checked his gear for the third or fourth time, pulled his canteen up and took a sip, rolling easy with the stallion, looked back to make sure the geldings were moving well.

Twenty minutes passed, and he was only a mile back now. But the stallion was pulling longer breaths, and Bass knew he would have to change mounts soon. Ten, fifteen more minutes, and he would be starting to drop back if Webb held the same speed.

Fifteen minutes, and the stallion told Bass it was time by starting a slight weave. He was getting tired. Bass didn’t want to blow the horse out, so when the weave became pronounced, he pulled the big animal to a stop, unfastening the cinch as he dismounted. He drew the blanket out from beneath the loosened saddle, slapped it on the first gelding, then threw the saddle, rifle scabbard and bags over on the blanket, tightened the cinch, pulled the bridle off the stallion, buckled it on the gelding. He was remounted and moving inside a minute and a half. The stallion followed willingly, glad to have Bass’s weight off his back.

As soon as Bass had stopped, Webb had stopped too and changed mounts. He was slightly faster and gained a bit, but Bass wasn’t worried yet. As long as he held his own through the second horse, it didn’t matter if Webb was under the impression that he’d moved further away from Bass. Bass would make his move on the third horse. The
plan was based on a thorough knowledge of horses and how they ran. Like people, horses used more energy and did more damage to their muscles and joints running downhill than they did uphill—even a shallow downslope would jar their shoulders and back and quickly cause powerful fatigue.

Years ago, an old and peaceable Comanche had come to visit the Creek family and told Bass how he was able to outrun Texas Rangers, even when the Rangers had better mounts.