The Legend of Bass Reeves (12 page)

They all stood in a row at the foot of the bed looking at him, smiling, standing straight.

Peter said, “This is uncle, named Paul.” He pointed to the old man. “And mother, Martha,” the old woman;“wife, Mary,” the younger woman; “son, Luke,” the young boy. Peter’s smile widened. “You know Betty.”

Bass nodded. “Betty Two Shoes. Later, Indian names for others.” He was already patterning his speech like Peter’s. “And yours. When I can think good.”

They all filed out, except for the old woman. Without showing any expression, she handed Bass a different jar and pointed so that he understood he had to relieve himself. He waited, and finally she laughed a low laugh and turned away, and he used the jar by twisting sideways on the bed. After emptying the jar outside, the old woman came back in and fired up the woodstove. She started frying what looked like boiled potatoes and beef.

When the smell of the food drifted over to the bed, Bass became so hungry he almost growled. She brought him a tin plate heaped with meat and potatoes, and two thick pieces of dark bread spread with bacon grease.

He tried to have manners, but Mammy would have thumped him if she’d seen him wolf down the food, barely chewing it. He ate so fast that the woman had hardly gone back to the stove before he was done and had wiped the plate with the last piece of bread.

“Thank you,” he said when she took the plate. “That was …” He couldn’t think of a word rich enough. “Good. Very good.”

She asked him something, then went to the stove, got a cup, and pointed at an old enamel coffeepot.

“Please.”

She brought him a cup and he took a sip. It was bitter, but it cut the grease of the food in a good way, so he drank the whole thing.

Then he thanked her again and lay back, closing his eyes, listening to the familiar sounds of somebody working in a kitchen. Homey sounds, gentle sounds.

He had just spent a long winter and most of a year in hard camps where he’d found a certain satisfaction, almost joy, in becoming part of nature so that he could see and hear and smell the world as it was meant to be. Now he was immensely surprised to find that he’d missed home terribly.

He had become a man—standing six feet two inches, pushing 190 pounds—but he found himself acting like a little boy, choking up when he heard the sounds of home.

Martha had her back to him, and he turned his face away to get control of his emotions. When he turned back, she was there, smiling, with another cup of coffee and another piece of the dark bread, this time covered with molasses.

“Thank you,” he said, sipping the hot coffee and eating the bread. “Thank you, Ma—” He had nearly said Mammy. “Martha.”

But she had turned away and seemed to be making a stew.

His dozing turned to deep sleep again.

The next morning he awakened to the sun and an urgent need to find an outhouse. He was alone. Moving very
slowly, he swung his legs ever so gently over the side of the bed and eased his feet down to the floor.

The pain in his thigh was sharp, but not as intense as the day before. Holding to the end of the bed, he stood on his one good leg. He was still naked, and he did not fool himself into thinking he could pull his pants on yet, so he wrapped the blanket around his body. Hopping along the wall, now and then touching his left foot to the floor, he made his way to the door, a simple plank hung on leather hinges. When he pushed it open, he was hit with a blast of sunlight. The heat felt good. He squinted at the brightness and saw a low barn in front of him, made of logs and mud, and a neatly built rail corral that held several horses and mules, his Roman nose and the little mule among them. They looked sleek and well watered.

He saw no people, but off to the left was the outhouse, so he skip-hopped over. If he’d had a cane or crutch, he’d have done all right.

The outhouse was equipped with a sack of corncobs, which was new to him, but he quickly figured out how the corncobs worked.

After hopping back to the house, he was exhausted and lay back down. He wasn’t sleepy. It was just that his leg needed rest. He was pleased when Peter came in. Bass’s clothes had been next to the bed on a bench, but he had noticed that his revolver and rifle were not there. Peter was carrying them and put them down next to the bed.

“You fought us.”

“What? I fought you? When?”

“You … riding with Betty. Come very fast. We see wolves and try to take Betty from you. Try to help. You …
crazy. Call us Comanche. Scream and fight. We take guns. Now all right to have guns. Here.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t remember any of it. Did I hurt anybody?”

Peter laughed. “Only self … swing so hard, fall from horse. We bring you here. I heat iron and close cut.”

“I remember that. I thought I was dreaming.…”

“You have dream songs. Sang about mother … called for her many times. Mammy, Mammy. Sang about fighting man … sounds like bad man. Sang about Comanches. Bad. Comanches bad … bad for all people. Sometimes Comanches even bad for Comanches.”

Bass thought of the Garnett girls. For a time both men sat in silence; then Peter moved the clothes over and sat down on the bench next to Bass’s bed. He clearly wanted to say something and was searching for a way to begin.

“Is something wrong?” Bass asked.

“You … sing in sleep. Fight song. Dream song. Is all right. But … you talk, too. Talk of slave … runaway slave. You … slave. You … run.”

Bass was silent. There was not much he could say. There was a price on his head. If they wanted the money, all they had to do was turn him in. He couldn’t run now.

Peter touched Bass gently on the shoulder. “We know of slaves. Uncle from South … march on Trail of Tears. Saw many slaves in South. Bad.”

Bass nodded, still not sure where this was going. “Yes. Bad to own another person.”

“You … kept Betty from wolves. Hurt self.”

“You don’t owe me anything for helping Betty.”

Peter shook his head, frowning. “Not owe. You … save
Betty. Betty … now sister. You … me … brothers … family now.” Peter cupped his hands as if he was holding a ball.“All one, all same.”

“Like I said, you don’t have to thank me. You saved me. If you hadn’t fixed my leg, I would have bled out.”

Peter shook his head. ”You, me, Betty, uncle, Mary, Martha. All one.”

“Thank you.”

“More.”Again Peter cupped his hands.“All in here. You want … go, you go. All right, good. You stay, stay. Live here. All together. If you want … we want.”

Bass stared at him, understanding, truly understanding, and knew then that it was what he wanted. A place, a place to be safe, to be with people he could know and care for, a place to be free.

“Please,” Peter said. “You stay … please. We want … please.” Peter held out his hand.

“I would like that,” Bass said, and he took Peter’s hand. “I would like that very much.”

SUMMER 1875
The Measure of a Man

Bass lived with the Creeks in the Indian Territory for twenty-two years, until 1863. He became fluent in their language. He probably took a common-law wife, although because of the lack of recordkeeping in the Territory, there’s no way to know for certain. He wandered now and again, always studying, always learning and always staying well within the Territory, because he was still a fugitive. There was no statute of limitations for an escaped slave. Because the Territory was wild and lawless, nobody would dare to come looking for him.

In 1861, the Civil War started, and in 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the United States.

Now a free man, Bass rode openly out of the Territory and settled into cattle ranching near Van Buren, Arkansas.
His mother was still alive—it is said she outlived him—and she may have come to live with him. He was a very successful stockman and farmer and a true family man. He married a young woman named Nellie, also from Texas, and they raised five boys and five girls. When Nellie died, he married Winnie Sumter and started a second family.

And if that was all we knew of Bass Reeves, it could easily be called an unbelievably full, rich and dramatic life: raised in slavery, escaped and survived the wild Indian Territory, then had two marriages, many children and a successful ranch.

But the legend of Bass Reeves didn’t start until he was fifty-one years old. In those days, when the average life span was about forty years, he would have been considered almost ancient, somebody who should sit on a porch and bounce his grandchildren on his knee and watch the world go by.

But in 1875, the lawlessness of the Indian Territory finally came to the attention of the government in Washington. Congress appointed a federal judge who was as tough as the territory he was sent to tame: Isaac Parker. Parker was given the nickname the Hanging Judge because he once hanged six men at once, to save time. He had sweeping powers over the law in the Indian Territory, and his first job was to appoint 200 deputy federal marshals to “clean up” the region.

By modern standards, it’s difficult to imagine how immense this problem would prove to be. Parker had to impose order on an area of between fifteen and twenty thousand square miles, with hundreds of thousands of nearperfect hideouts, where the only form of transportation was
the horse, and there was no telegraph, no mail service, not even carrier pigeons.

Parker was supposed to bring peace and harmony to this wild place with only a small army of deputy marshals.

And one of the first men he approached was a fifty-one-year-old rancher named Bass Reeves.

Parker knew that Bass had lived in the Territory and was fluent in several Indian languages. He knew that Bass was tough—otherwise, he’d have been dead. He knew that Bass was a successful rancher and hence probably honest, and he may have felt that Bass’s being an African American would help, because the people who lived in the Territory were largely Native Americans who no longer trusted the white man. Virtually all the gangs that terrorized the population of the Indian Territory were made up of white men.

The wonder is that Bass, or any of the deputies, accepted the job.

Certainly Bass didn’t need to prove anything to himself or to any other man. Nobody could doubt his courage or tenacity. And it’s not as if the law had been a particular friend to Bass, who for nearly a quarter of a century had lived in fear of being captured and sent back into slavery.

He certainly didn’t do it for the money. Marshals made less than a hundred dollars a month, plus three cents for every mile they traveled if they got the man out alive and if they kept and filed the mileage forms correctly—which, for Bass, who was illiterate, wasn’t easy. As with everything else, he did a good job of it. In the end, he collected some fairly large rewards. But he could easily have made money working his ranch and been a lot safer.

There is a legend about the Texas Rangers. In the West, salt was the only way to preserve meat. It was a vital commodity and had been free until an El Paso man “claimed” a salt bed near town. He tried to charge for it and caused salt riots. The good people of El Paso sent to the Rangers for help, and the Rangers sent one man. The saying was “One riot, one Ranger,” because they were so tough. Now, if this legendary incident happened at all (it’s not documented), it only happened once.

But Bass Reeves was forced to show up alone all the time. Parker, or one of his assistants, would give Bass a stack of warrants or subpoenas for half a dozen or more killers, rapists, molesters, thieves, man burners—the worst kinds of outlaws, and not just one or two, but whole gangs of them—and Bass was supposed to saddle his horse and collect his weapons. He carried as many as four revolvers, two rifles and a shotgun at times. He’d ride alone into what many men called the center of hell and bring the men out—alive, if possible, or, if necessary, draped dead over a horse.

He did this three thousand times.

During the Second World War, the bomber groups bombing Germany had a cap of twenty-five missions, because the Air Force realized that men needed to see an end to the danger to be able to risk their lives daily.