The Legend of Bass Reeves (8 page)

Bass felt sorry for them, especially the little ones. If they had to go north, they would have to travel where those Comanches had ridden.

That just couldn’t be good, unless the Comanches didn’t attack other Indians. He remembered burying the Garnetts, and the story of Mr. Garnett when he came back from fighting the Mexicans and found out what had happened. The man had taken a pistol and shot himself up through the mouth. The shot hadn’t killed him, but came out his eye and damaged his brain so even when it all healed he looked deformed and couldn’t do anything but sit and drool.

Now Bass wheeled the Roman nose away from the Indians; the horse had begun to fidget with the smell of fresh blood. Bass thought he’d rope and drag a cow out of the brush and head home.

He was getting good with the lariat, and he had become a truly excellent rider. The more he rode, the more familiar he became with the horse and its moods. One day, smoke appeared a mile or two away over a rise he couldn’t
see from the saddle, so without thinking he stood up on the horse while it was walking and studied the smoke. He had been worried about Comanches, though he had seen no more since the raiding party, and didn’t realize what he was doing until he was standing on the horse’s back as relaxed as if he had been on the ground.

He had ridden barefoot, as he did everything else, until Flowers made him a pair of leather moccasins and a pair of short chaps to keep the brush from tearing him to pieces.

Bass kept his gun with him all the time. He’d tied a leather thong around the grip and the barrel, which he used to tie the gun up under his right leg, muzzle to the rear. Flowers saw this one day and made a scabbard out of softened rawhide so Bass could carry the weapon in front of his right leg.

At first, gathering cattle, he would leave the horse behind, then find and tangle a cow on foot, and go back the next day with a horse to rope it and bring it home. By now the herd was much larger; there were many units of five fives.

But it was slow and dangerous; it was just a matter of time until one of the cattle hooked him. So he worked out a better plan.

He carried a length of rope with a piece of wood across the saddle. The cows weren’t afraid of the horse and let him get quite close. Then he’d make a loop, drop it over the cow’s horns, throw the log off to the side and run while the cow took off.

He’d come back the next morning, when the cow was tangled in some brush and thirsted out, and rope it and drag it home. Once it was in the herd, usually it would stay
around, as long as it had grass and water, and he’d go for another one.

At times he’d have two and even three cows tangled and waiting. Now he’d become a top hand.

While the mister sat and drank, Bass had saved the ranch for him and the mister knew it.

It ate at him.

Now that Bass had started to understand money and knew that the cows were worth up to five dollars apiece, he knew what five dollars was and what it could buy. This made being a slave working for nothing all the worse. There were a lot of five-dollar cows standing out in the prairie around the homestead, and he had brought them all in.

“Ain’t nothing we can do about it,” Mammy said one night when he was complaining. “White men have the law.”

“Then the law is wrong and it should be made right.”

“We can talk on it all you want. But it won’t change.”

He was chewing on all this as he dragged in the last cow of the day. The mister came down to the corral and said: “Poker tonight, after you eat.”

Bass didn’t want to play, but said, “Yes sir,” and finished putting the saddle away and brushing down the Roman nose.

“You suckin’ on something sour?” Mammy asked after they had eaten in the quarters. “You look powerful down.”

“I’m all right. I’m just tired and the mister wants to play cards.”

“Well, let him win some of that money back, and come get some rest. I’ll make some Chinee tea and we’ll have a late piece of pie.”

There would be days, and weeks, and even months when Bass wished he had done exactly that; had just let the mister win.

But he went up to the main house to play in a mood. The mister was playing worse than ever, and Bass won. Even when he tried to lose he won.

First the mister was frustrated at his luck. He couldn’t blame Bass because the mister dealt.

Bass had a big pile of money in front of him, and the mister went back to a cupboard to get more money from his tin box. There wasn’t any.

“You’ve got it all, dammit,” he said. “How could that be—a darky boy winning all my money? Hell, you can’t even read!”

“I’m just lucky,” Bass said. “It don’t make no mind. Just take it back.”

This made the mister even angrier. He took a long pull on the gallon jug on the table, stared at Bass for a full minute and said softly, coldly, “We’ll play for you.”

Bass didn’t understand what he meant, but his voice was chilling. Nothing good could come from this. Bass tried to smile and looked down and said, “Mister, it’s all right. We just havin’ fun with cards here. Ain’t no reason to make it serious.”

“I’m dead serious.”The voice was cold, flat. “We’ll play for you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I own you. You’re worth more than that pile of money in front of you. You play with the money and I’ll put you up as stakes. We’ll play five hands, winner take all.”

“If you win, you get the money. But what happens if I win?”

“You get you.”

“I already got me, don’t I?”

“No. I own you. If you win, you own yourself. You’re free.”

And there it was. Freedom.

“You’d do that—set me free?”

“If you win, yes. I keep the money but you go free. But if you lose, I get the money and I still own you.” He took another swig.

“What about Mammy?”

“All right. If you win, she can get her freedom too. But you won’t win. Now let’s play cards. Unless you want to argue all night.”

Mammy, Bass thought. Me and Mammy. Free. We would own our own selves. We could go anywhere, be anything we wanted, live how we wanted. We would own our own selves.

“Deal,” Bass said, knowing he could win, would win.

He won the first hand.

Then he lost one. The mister had waked up.

But Bass won the third. There it is, he thought. We play five hands. The man who wins three wins the game. I just got to win one more hand, just one more hand, just one more hand.

Then he saw it. The reason he could never win, never be free. The mister had scooped the cards off the table and he had taken them below the edge of the table and left two cards in his lap. Bass had seen the whole thing. The mister was cheating.

Had it been for money, he would have said nothing, done nothing. But this … this was for himself. To own himself.

He stood up. “I saw you drop cards in your lap.” He reached across the table and picked up the cards. Two aces. The mister would have used them in the next hand and won, and then cheated again, and won again. Bass could see it all slipping away. His heart fell. “You’re cheating me.”

The mister went crazy with anger.

“Why, you little bastard! You think I cheated you? I’ll take a whip to your black hide and show you what manners are! You little whelp.” He swung at Bass, caught him a clubbing blow on the side of the head. Without thinking, Bass reacted and hit back, hit back with all the force of one hundred eighty pounds, all the frustration of seventeen years of slavery, all the anger and disappointment of being close to freedom and knowing he would never get it, and the blow drove the mister back from the table and up against a bench by the stove.

Where his revolver lay. He grabbed at the pistol, tried to jerk it free of the holster. Bass knew: I will die. Except there was the jug, the big whiskey jug, and he grabbed it just as the mister cocked the pistol to bring it up to fire. Bass slammed him on the side of the head with the jug so hard, it sounded like he’d broken a melon. There was a loud crack as the mister’s finger jerked the trigger, and Bass felt the ball brush past his cheek. Then the mister dropped like dirt on the floor. He didn’t move and Bass thought, Oh God, oh God our Father who are up in heaven.

But the mister didn’t get up. Bass went to look and thought he could see breathing but wasn’t sure and stood there, stood there in shaking agony not knowing what to do, and then the door blew open and Mammy cried, “Oh my Lord, what have you done? I heard the shot. Did you
shoot him? Oh my Lord, my Lord … I thought he had killed my boy, my baby.”

“He tried to shoot me. I hit him with the jug and he missed me.”

She kneeled over the mister, put her face close to his. “He ain’t dead. Not yet. But he’s hurt bad and might die still come morning light. Lot of men with hurt heads die in the first morning light. This is bad, this is so bad.”

“He let me play cards for us, Mammy. He said if I won he’d give us our freedom. Then he cheated and I caught him.”

She had stood and was watching Bass, studying his eyes closely, sadly. Then she took his face in her hands. “You got to go, my baby. You got to go now.”

“No, Mammy. He’ll get over this when he comes to.”

“No. He won’t. You didn’t just hurt his head, you hurt his pride. You got to go. Right now. This night, this minute. If he lives he’ll be mean mad. He’ll whip you and then sell you. Sell you down the river, because nobody wants a slave that fights him. You got to go right now. Go north.”

“I can’t go without you. He’ll be mean on you like he’d be mean on me.”

“No he won’t. With you gone, me and Flowers is all he’ll have to take care of him. He’ll yell some, but that’s all.… But he’ll whip you and sell you sure. You got to go, now.”

She was pushing him out the door into the dark, pushing with one hand, holding him with the other.

“Saddle that damn Roman nose you like so well and I’ll get you some food. Here, take the money.” It was scattered all over the floor and she stooped and began gathering it. “You won it, take it. And take his pistol, too. But for God’s
sake, hurry. If he wakes up, we’ll have to kill him sure to keep him off you. Go!”

And without knowing, without really wanting or meaning to, Bass was out the door and running to the barn. He caught the Roman nose, tied him to the rail, found his saddle in the dark and was looking for the saddle blanket when Mammy came with his sleeping blanket in a roll and the little shooter and the mister’s own saddle bags. “There’s a knife in the roll, and a shirt.”

Next to her in the lantern light was Flowers. He handed Bass a beautiful braided horsehair lariat, then touched Bass on the shoulder and said, “You be careful of people you see, and stay off of ridgelines, and don’t get the morning light in back of you, and if they set dogs on you, you got to stop and shoot them.”

He turned and walked away.

“He talked.” Bass was stunned.

“I guess he finally had something to say. Now, ride. Follow the Drinking Gourd north and don’t stop until you hear a man call you Mister…. Go, my boy, go now or I won’t be able to stand it! Oh Lord, my baby …”

Bass swung up. Mammy opened the corral gate, and as he rode out, the bay and mules followed him before Mammy could close it. He tried to stop and say goodbye, but she waved the lantern at him. The light unsettled the horses and they moved away before he could tell her how much he loved her, how much he missed her already, how scared he was, how far the place called North seemed to be, how dark it was outside and inside his heart.

He had time only to yell, “Bye, Mammy,” and then he was gone into the night, tears streaming down his cheeks.

He cut down in back of the barn to the willows and
mesquite along the bottom, the mules and the bay staying with him, then turned to the right, heading downstream to the Comanche trail.

Then he would head north, north to what the mister had called the Territory.

No mister or master now. Not ever again, because he was like those eagle feathers in the dream. Wild now, wild like the Comanches. They could kill him, but they’d never own him again.

No man would own him.

He was running free, and nothing would make him turn back from that.

Back from freedom.

1840–1863
The Indian Territory