The Legend of Bass Reeves (15 page)

“As soon as they can’t see you, get off and run downhill. Then, before they see you again, get on and ride. They think you ride all the time. They ride the whole time. You only ride uphill and flat. Pretty soon their horses stop. Your horse keeps running.”

Bass had used the method many times to catch fugitives. He even had a pair of flat-heeled boots for better running. Most of the men wore high heels to keep their feet from slipping through the stirrups, which could mean getting dragged to death. Bass had told nobody of his method, not even other deputies, for fear that it would be used by the outlaws. So far none of them seemed to know about it.

An hour passed, and Bass’s gelding ran easy. The stallion knew what would happen and stayed grazing where Bass had left him. They were almost exactly even in speed. Webb would gain a little, then Bass would gain it back.

At the end of the second half hour, the gelding started blowing and made a slight weave. Bass quickly stopped him, hoping Webb would do the same. Again, Webb was a little faster changing the saddle than Bass. But soon they were both moving again, still about a mile apart, both horses running easily the first fifteen minutes.

Bass took his feet out of the stirrups and shook his legs to loosen them. As the gelding started down a shallow slope, they dropped out of Webb’s sight, and Bass quickly dismounted and ran easily down to the bottom, not fast but steady, perhaps only two hundred yards. Then he remounted, and as he came up the rise, he saw that Webb had gained almost a hundred yards.

Webb saw it as well, and his reaction pleased Bass. Webb probably thought Bass’s horse was blown, and he pushed his mount harder, trying to gain enough to get out of sight—but at great expense.

Meantime, whenever Webb was out of sight, moving down, Bass got off and ran. His horse actually seemed to find energy and stamina and soon Bass started to close in on Webb dramatically. Webb whipped his horse harder.

Three quarters of a mile, then half a mile separated them, and Webb knew he’d been duped. His horse was weaving and staggering.

It was all over.

Webb stopped his horse, turned him, pulled his rifle from the scabbard, wrapped his reins on the saddle horn and spurred his horse straight at Bass, firing as he came.

It was a brave, stupid thing to do, Bass thought, pulling his own rifle from the scabbard. Webb should have got off and found cover, fought it out. Bass heard Webb’s bullets going past, but they were wild. One came close enough to make the telltale crack in his ear, which meant it was only inches away. That was close enough. When they were four hundred yards apart, Bass pulled the gelding to a stop, stepped down in back of him and, aiming over the horse’s back, squeezed the trigger. He watched the bullet take Webb off his horse backward.

Webb lay still. His horse moved off fifteen or twenty yards and then stood, sucking air.

Bass remounted, used his knees to steer the gelding up to where Webb lay, aiming his rifle at him the whole way. He had learned long ago never to trust a downed man, and Webb was still moving, his legs shoving his feet into the dirt.

Bass stopped fifteen yards away. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah.” Webb’s voice was muffled and he fought to turn over on his side. He propped up on one elbow, then sat up. “You gut-shot me.”

Bass saw the deep red blood staining the front of Webb’s shirt. He saw Webb’s rifle ten yards off to the side where it had flown when he went down, and saw that his sidearm holster was empty as well, the Colt knocked clear when he hit the dirt. Webb might still have a hideout gun, but he would have to move fast to get it and Webb, Bass knew, was done moving fast.

Webb squinted up at Bass. He had dirt in his hair, in his eyes, all over his face. The evening sun seemed to give him a ghostly pallor. “How’d you catch me?”

“I ran downhill, rode up. My horse rested on the downhills, yours kept working. Learned it from a Comanche.”

“Damn Comanches …”Webb trailed off, grunting. The shock of the wound had kept the pain away for a few moments; now it came. “God … this hurts. How long do you think I’ve got?”

Bass knew what the dark blood meant. Webb’s liver had been hit. Gut-shot men with whole livers could live days, the pain so harsh it almost destroyed their minds. With the liver hit, it wouldn’t be an hour. Webb would
bleed out inside. But Bass said nothing. Webb would learn soon enough.

“You’re tough, Reeves.”Webb grunted the words slowly and painfully. “I want you … to have my scabbard … rifle. Take ’em.”

Bass nodded. “Is there anybody to tell? You got kin?”

Webb tried to laugh but only winced. “None that want to claim me.”

He fell silent, eyes closed, leaning precariously on one elbow. Bass thought he was dying, but then his eyes opened and he smiled. “Would you tell the truth … to a dying man?”

“I might.”

“They say you shot Billy Leach … for throwing … hot bacon grease … on your dog.… That he fell in the fire … you let him burn?”

Bass sighed, remembering. He had been in disguise, pretending to be a horse thief, sitting with a gang cooking bacon. He had his hound with him, a dog he was very fond of and that he’d had a long time, and Billy had thrown hot bacon grease on the dog’s head just to hear it scream. Later, the court let Bass go, saying he was cleaning his rifle and that it went off by mistake.

“I liked that dog.”

“Did you … shoot him?”

“Right in the neck.”

“He burned?”

“Only his arm hit the fire.”

“But you let it burn?”

“He didn’t feel it.”

“Reeves, you’re …”

Bass never found out what Webb was going to say. Webb closed his eyes and fell back.

He died just as the sun dropped below the edge of the horizon. Bass sat next to him for a while, wishing there was some wood to make a fire, wishing he was home, thinking of this, thinking of that, and then nothing.

Sighing, he stood and fetched Webb’s horse and draped the body across the saddle, tying it in place, using a rein for a lead rope.

Then he mounted his gelding, turned around and started off. He’d have to walk Webb’s horse until it could regain some strength. Twenty, twenty-five miles just to get back to where the run started. Then another hundred back to Fort Smith at a slow walk.

A long way home.

Some arrests were very hard.

It took him ten days to get back to Fort Smith with Webb, and Bass needed to rest. He’d thought of it all the way back—just go sit at the ranch for a few days, maybe a week.

But when he entered Fort Smith, it did not seem the same place as when he had left. Men who would normally have stopped to pass the time moved across the street to get away from him.

Racial prejudice was always a problem for Bass, especially when he became the most successful deputy and was put in charge of white men who did not want to work under an African American. There had been a few incidents—minor problems, really—but his reputation was huge and so was he, six foot two when most men were five foot three or four.

He was aware of racial slurs. Today he thought that men were upset because he was the one who’d finally got Webb. But then he reconsidered—other deputies seemed to be afraid of him, for some reason. They would nod, give a tight little smile and move away quickly.

It made no sense. Most of them had always been sociable, and now there wasn’t even the usual curiosity as to how he’d tracked and captured Webb.

At last he could stand it no more, and he cornered one of the senior deputies, a man named Leo Bennet. “What’s wrong with everybody? They seem scared of me.”

“They are,” Bennet said, nodding. “I’m a little worried myself.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let’s walk a little,” Bennet said. They were in front of the courthouse. “Away from other folks. I’ve got some bad news for you, Bass. Real bad. The worst there is.”

They moved across the street to an empty spot. “What’s happened is …” Bennet sighed. “I’d give almost anything not to have this conversation.”

“What is it?”

“Your son Bennie. He murdered his wife and ran. He’s out in the Territory, and Parker sent down a warrant on him. He had to. It’s just sitting in there on the warrant bench. There wasn’t a marshal or deputy here would touch it. They’re all afraid of what you’d do to them if they had to … you know, shoot him.”

Bass seemed to sag. “Bennie? My boy?”

After a moment, he took a breath, straightened. “It’s certain he did it?”

Bennet hesitated, then nodded. “No doubt at all. He caught her with another man. After he did it, he yelled to
witnesses that he had shot her for being unfaithful and that he would never come back alive.”

“Damn fool kid …” Bass shook his head to clear it. He remembered his son as a small boy, smiling up at his father as they worked on the ranch side by side. That boy, now a cold-blooded killer. Bass felt the bile rise in his throat and sucked air through his teeth to fight the nausea.

“I’m sorry, Bass. Sorry as I can be. But we have to go after him. You know the rules.”

Bass looked down the long street toward the gallows at the end. “I’ll go get him.”

Bennet shook his head. “God, Bass. You can’t. What if he … what if it goes bad?”

“Then I’ll do what has to be done. …I have to be the one who gets him. It’s the only way he has a chance. With somebody else, he’s sure to fight, and they will have to put him down. It has to be me. I can talk to him. I’ll change horses and head out this afternoon.… Tell the other men even if they see him to not, you know …”

Bennet nodded. “Don’t worry. They’re too scared of you to come close to him.”

“When did he … when did he leave?”

“Three days ago.”

“Don’t tell my wife. Leave that to me. When I get back, I’ll …”

Bass walked away without finishing his sentence. He took two horses from his string at the livery barn, changed his saddle from the stallion—which, along with the geldings, needed at least a week of grain and good food to get weight back on—and after filling his canteen and stopping at the dry-goods store for coffee, bacon, cornmeal
and jerky, he left Fort Smith. He hadn’t been in town four hours. He had taken a big mare—a good distance horse and reliable when she wasn’t in season—and he set out at a fast pace.

There was an urgency neither he nor Bennet had mentioned but that both men knew. Bennie was Bass Reeves’s son. There were enough hard men in the Territory who hated Bass enough to take delight in killing his son, or capturing him for ransom.

Bass rode straight and hard all the rest of that day and through the night. As he rode, he steeled himself to put images of Bennie as a boy out of his mind. Bass had a sudden vivid mental image of Bennie when he was three years old. He was naked and standing in the yard holding on to the fur on the back of an old yard dog. Wherever the dog went, Bennie would run alongside, hanging on to the fur. It was just the cutest thing, Bass thought; Nellie would laugh and laugh, watching the little boy running in the dust naked, determined, his little hand gripping the fur as if he would never let go, never let go.…

God, he thought. Don’t. Don’t do this to me. Please. He tried not to picture his son at his wedding, his pretty dark-eyed bride, Tess. Bass allowed himself only once to wonder how his son, his boy, had wound up a killer. A killer … out here.

Bass turned his attention to the job that lay ahead and told himself that he was going after a criminal just like any other. Nothing more. It was his son, but it was still a chase, and he was still Bass Reeves. He rode, dry-eyed, the rest of the night.

He got to the store at Miller’s Crossing. Fat old Ben
Grist owned the store—if a shack that sold hardly anything but whiskey could be called a store—and he was usually drunk enough to be talkative. If not, he could be urged to talk. And Bass was in a mood where urging wouldn’t be a problem for him.

Grist was ready. “The kid come through here two, no, three days ago,” he said through a beard fouled with food and whiskey and tobacco spit. “On a sorrel gelding, had run him until he looked like he was covered in lye soap. Never saw a horse so lathered up.”

“Which way did he go?”

“Started west, but I come out and watched, and as soon as he was down the trail a mite, he turned and moved north. Up into that break country. You’ll never find him up there. No, sir, you won’t get that one. He got clean away.”

Bass ignored him, moved outside and remounted and headed north. It was rough country up north but old man Grist had been wrong. The break country was all bad gullies and sharp little rocky canyons—so rough it left only a limited number of places you could take a horse. If Bennie had gone in there, Bass would find him. Bass had lived in the breaks for months when he was a fugitive and knew every nook and cranny.

It was just a matter of time now, time and patience. He worked up into the breaks with care, saving his horse.

As he rode, he thought back to the witch dog long ago. “Things will change.” Of course, Bass’s whole life had been full of change. But this mission … yes, things had changed in the most terrible way.

On the fourth day, he found him.