by Charles Ray
Dozier’s expression shifted. He got a harder glint in his eye, and anyone looking real close would’ve seen a muscle in his jaw tighten.
“Big colored deputy, you say? By any chance he tell you this deputy’s name?”
“Uh, yeah. He said his name’s Boss Reeves, or somethin’ like that.”
Now, the tightness of the jaw muscle was more pronounced, and there was a little tic of the muscle under his left eye. He reached into his pocket and fished out a gold coin.
“Thanks, old timer. I appreciate you delivering the message. Go buy yourself a drink.”
He tossed the coin, and with surprising dexterity, the old man snatched it out of the air with one hand, bowed, and shuffled off in the direction of the bar.
“What’s up, boss?” Williams asked.
Dozier glared at him. “Weren’t you listening, you moron? That damn colored deputy marshal, Bass Reeves is in the territory, and he’s lookin’ special for me.”
“You ain’t scairt of no nigger, is you, boss?”
“I ain’t scared of nobody, and don’t you dare forget it. But, this one’s different from the others. I hear he’s like a bloodhound. Once he gets on your scent, he never lets up. I didn’t last this long by takin’ chances when I didn’t have to. We’ll light out of here first light tomorrow, and lay low up in Cherokee Hills for a while, until I figure out what to do about this Bass Reeves.”
“You plannin’ on mebbe bushwhackin’ him?”
“That might not be so easy with this one. He spent a lot of time runnin’ with the Injuns here in the territory, so he ain’t an easy one to sneak up on. I reckon one of these days me and him are gonna cross paths, and only one of us is gonna walk away from that meetin’, but now ain’t the time. I gotta have me a plan.”
Chapter 4.
Bass and his entourage, an empty wagon with a guard, and a cook wagon and cook, arrived outside the small Cherokee town at the southern end of the Cherokee Hills two days after his departure from Fort Smith. He could never remember the name, and the mostly Cherokee residents hadn’t bothered putting up a sign. He’d once asked why, and been told that everyone who lived there knew the name, and if you didn’t live there you didn’t need to know it.
Not the most prosperous looking, but also not poverty-stricken, like the other Cherokee towns in the portion of Indian Territory given to the Cherokee clans, it was a mixture of architecture, not all that different from any other towns, except for the occasional small grouping of wigwams where some family or small group of families had decided to live in traditional dwellings rather than what many called, ‘the white man’s lodges.’
Joseph Lone Tree, a Cherokee, three years younger than Bass; lighter by eighty pounds and shorter by eight inches, sat on the porch of his wood frame cabin, in a rocking chair, puffing contentedly at his pipe, an ornately curved briar he’d brought off a trader in Fort Sill the last time he’d traveled with his friend in pursuit of felons in the western part of the territory, land that had originally been set aside for the Indians, but in typical white man fashion had later been taken away from them. The blue-white smoke curled up around his head, and the sweetish aroma of the burning tobacco caressed his long straight nose.
This was how Bass found him, along about noon on a Tuesday. Bass had the guard and cook stop their wagons on the trail just outside Joseph’s property line, and then rode his horse, the big white stallion, his favorite, to the edge of Joseph’s porch. He sat there, slightly hunched and relaxed, until his friend looked up and, with a nod of his head, acknowledged his presence.
“Hello, Bass Reeves,” Joseph said. “I did not expect to see you back here so soon.”
“Hello, Joseph Lone Tree,” Bass said. “They’s a bad man, a man who done killed his wife and her mother, and who done come here to the territory. I come to take him back to the white man’s court.”
Joseph motioned to the empty straight back chair sitting next to the rocking chair. Bass sat and crossed his legs, looking out across the yard.
“So, you come to ask me to go out with you to find this man,” Joseph said after resuming his seat in the rocking chair and picking up his pipe.
“I’d be much obliged.” Bass didn’t make eye contact with him, but continued to look at the yard.
Anyone looking at them would’ve thought the two men were strangers, the way they talked, in low, formal tones, while avoiding eye contact. But, they would’ve been wrong. Bass and Joseph had met shortly after Bass’s flight from Texas during the war. Set upon by a group of three white men whose plan was to capture him and return him to Texas and slavery, Bass would’ve been a goner had not Joseph, out hunting, not come upon them and, seeing the lone black man in the clutches of three whites, set up a ruckus and sent three arrows flying in their vicinity, fooling them into thinking they were being attacked by a band of Indians. The three men abandoned their plans for Bass and fled the area. Fortunately for Bass, Joseph knew a little English, so they were able to converse after a fashion. Bass told his story, or at least what of his story he wanted anyone else to know, and Joseph took him home with him and introduced him to his family. Over the course of the war, the two men became friends, on more than one occasion, saving each other’s hides, especially when Joseph and his family went against the faction of the Cherokee Nation that sided with the rebels against the Union. They’d, over the years, developed a peculiar way of dealing with each other, a ritual that they often followed, that appeared to outsiders to imply a stiff formality between them, but which masked the brotherly feelings each had for the other.
This formality never lasted for long, though, as both men had something of a playful streak. They delighted in watching the expressions on the faces of onlookers watching the way they started out all stiff and formal, and then slowly changed to shenanigans.
“Tell me, Bass,” Joseph said. “Why did they not send other deputy? You were just here three weeks ago. Don’t you ever get tired of chasing after the white man’s outlaws? Wouldn’t you rather be spending time with your family?”
“I do, and I would, but I gets more tired of watching the bad things some people do to other folks. ‘Sides, the bounties I collect help pay for fixin’ up my farm and buyin’ nice gee gaws for Nellie and the chillun.”
Joseph took a long draw on his pipe. If it had been any other friend, he would’ve offered it, but he knew Bass didn’t smoke, so he took an extra puff on his behalf. “I reckon the three dollars a day I get paid for going along with you ain’t too bad. You want to go right away?”
“No, I was thinkin’ on letting my cook and guard set up camp ‘cross the road yonder and rest the night, and lightin’ out first thing tomorrow. You got anything keepin’ you from goin’ with us?”
“No. I only have a few acres, and with what you pay me, I can pay a cousin to look after the place, and still have enough left. I can leave tomorrow if that is what you wish. But, tell me, my brother, why is it that I feel that it is not just this white man who killed his wife and her mother that brings you back to the Cherokee Nation?”
For the first time, Bass smiled and made eye contact.
“I can’t hide nothin’ from you, can I?”
“I know you too well. And, I also think I know what else has brought you here. You look for the one called Bob Dozier.”
Bass nodded. He’d long past given up trying to figure out how Joseph just seemed to know things, putting it down to the Indian just being wiser than any other people. “Yeah, I heard tell he was somewhere in Cherokee land. Now, they’s a lot of bad men here, but this Dozier fella, he’s the worst of the lot. Ain’t a crime I can think of he ain’t committed, including killin’. I done swore I’se gon’ get him, and I think this be the time.”
“I, too, have heard of him. Most people here are afraid to say his name aloud.”
“Ain’t right, one man bein’ able to cause that much fear.” Bass tugged at the ends of his bushy mustache. “I aim to put a stop to it once and for all.”
“He won’t go easy, Bass. You know that.”
“Easy, hard, it’s all the same to me. He’s goin’, either in his saddle, or slung across it.”
Now, it was Joseph’s turn to nod. “Well, you can count me in. I cannot let my brother go against this bad man alone. Will you sleep here tonight?”
“I ‘preciates the offer, but I think I ought to bunk down with my crew over there.”
“Okay, but you can tell them to come on and set up camp over near the barn. I will pack and join you in the camp, so we do not have to delay come morning.”
Bass smiled and slapped his knees. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go catch us some outlaws.”
Chapter 5 .
They left Joseph Lone Tree’s farm the next morning just as the sun was beginning to climb up over the horizon, riding all morning, until they reached the town of Checotah, where Bass decided they’d stop and eat. The place they chose, a little café at the eastern edge of town called ‘Susie’s Café,’ wasn’t crowded, and to Bass’s surprise, Darcy Pickens, a land swindler, and one of the warrants in his possession, was one of four customers. Bass let the man finish his lunch before going to his table and arresting him, and then made him wait, chained to the leg of the table, while the four of them finished theirs. He then had him bundled into the guard wagon and they set off northwest toward Okmulgee, where he had word that Caleb Hunt, the wife-murderer, might be holed up.
Pickens spent the first two miles whining and complaining about the unfairness of him being chained like an animal until the guard, a beefy man named Lewis Johnson, threatened to hit him over the head with the butt of his shotgun, and Bass gave him a long lecture on the evils of cheating people and the need for him to repent in silence. It wasn’t a sure thing which impressed him more, the threat of harm from Johnson or the desire to avoid another sermon from Bass, but Pickens snapped his mouth shut and not another peep was heard from him.
The miles went by after that with only the sound of the creaking wheels and boards of the wagons and the thumping of the hooves, accompanied now and then by the soft whinny of the horses, and off in the distance, the call of birds, to keep them company. Many a group of horsemen, riding a long distance, when riding at an easy pace, spent the time in conversation, back and forth between the horsemen or between those mounted and those on the wagons, but not so those groups led by Bass Reeves and Joseph Lone Tree. These two men rode in silence, and those who rode with them soon learned that it was silence they appreciated, so they too kept their counsel to themselves. So, even though for different reasons, the guard and the cook rode in silence as did their prisoner, devoting their attention to the trail ahead or the scenery passing to either side.
The closer they came to Okmulgee, the more the terrain changed, less the rolling hills, lush forests, and deep valleys of the east, and beginning to flatten out; less green and more of a brown-colored earth, where it lay bare to the constant wind that blew south from the great plains to the north. Already, the central and western parts of the territory-had more white settlers, fewer Indians, and hardly any black settlers at all.
Not that the land was completely flat. There was the occasional hill, not the flat-topped mesas of Colorado or the Dakotas, more rounded, with gently sloping sides, but, unlike the hills to the east toward Arkansas, bare, red rock instead of being covered with trees and other vegetation. In some places, several of these hills occurred together, and among and between them were valleys, again, not the lush valleys of the east, but jagged scars in the earth, with walls dotted with gray rock and gray-green, sickly looking brush, and floors littered with rocks and boulders in sizes ranging from an apple to the size of a small cabin, some with jagged edges, but most worn smooth by the wind and water. Of water, the land had some; the Cimaron River to the north and the Canadian River in the south, narrow rivers that flowed west to east mostly, with a few sluggish, muddy streams feeding into them. There were a few lakes, but mostly small and shallow and far to the north, nothing like the broad, deep, fish-filled lakes of the east in the Cherokee Nation.
South of Okmulgee, they came upon an Indian settlement, a small scattering of wooden huts arranged in a rough circle around a larger long house, after the fashion of the tribes of the eastern states who had been forcibly settled in the territory during the time when Andrew Jackson, the old Indian-hater, was president.
“That don’t look like Cherokee,” Bass said, uttering his first words since his remonstration of their prisoner at the start of their journey.
“Not Cherokee,” Joseph responded, also breaking his silence. “This is village of Seminoles. They come from Florida back in 1845 after many years of making war with the white man.”
“Yeah, I remember them. Didn’t meet many of ‘em when I lived here in the territory.”
“They pretty much keep to themselves. Not unfriendly, just different from Cherokee and other tribes.”
“I hear they had lots of black men with ‘em when they come up from Florida.”
“Yes, just like Cherokee, they have black man as slaves, but more who were warriors. I’ve heard stories that the black men of the Seminoles are even more feared by the white man than the Injun,” Joseph said. “Many of them, though, do not like life here in the land of the Cherokee, so they pack their families and move south to Mexico before the white man’s war.”
Bass eyed the structures they were approaching warily. He could see small groups of people, men, women and children, gathered alongside the trail, silently watching them approach. He’d never had trouble with any of the people of the territory, not when he lived in it, or later when he scouted for the marshals, and not since he’d become a deputy himself, but he’d also not had much contact with the Seminoles, other than a few he’d run across during the war against the southern rebels.
“They friendly?” he asked.
“They are not unfriendly,” Joseph said, not really answering his question.
As they entered the village, and now Bass could see that it held thirty houses, and well over a hundred residents, four men, swarthy of skin, with long black hair tied in a single tail at the back of their head and held out of their eyes by a bandana, stepped out in the road, in front of the milling crowd of older people, women, and curious, staring children, but not directly in front of the procession. They wore white man’s clothing, much like all the other residents of the territory, because, while game was plenty in the east, it was less so in the center and west, not sufficient enough to provide clothing and shelter. The Cherokee, on the other hand, had adapted to white man’s ways long before being banished to the territory from their homes in the east, so they wore white man’s clothing out of choice.
Joseph eased his horse a few inches in front of Bass, stopping six feet from the four men. Bass stopped his horse a heartbeat after Joseph’s. The two wagons, which had been trailing them about ten feet, rolled a bit before coming to creaking halts, but, they too stopped.
Joseph tapped his chest with his fist and then held his open hand at shoulder level, and said something in a low voice that Bass could not make out. The larger of the four men repeated Joseph’s gesture, and after a quick glance at Bass and the wagons behind him, spoke, not in an Indian language, but in English, and loud enough for Bass to hear.
“Is this the black man who lived among you of the Cherokee, and who now works for the white man’s law?”
If Joseph was surprised, he didn’t show it, neither with gesture, nor expression, nor speech.
“Yes, this is Bass Reeves,” he said in a level voice. “How do you know of him?”
“Even small children know of him, the man who reaches the sky, but who rides small in the saddle, and who can speak the language of the people. The bad white men who pass through here fear him.”
“These are men who have broken the white man’s law,” Joseph said. “They come to our land, and they break our law, but our treaty with the white man will not allow us to punish them, only our own. This
man, Bass Reeves, brings the white man’s law here to make them pay for the bad things they do.”
“This, we have also heard. He comes for the bad white man who has come here?”
Upon hearing this, Bass momentarily forgot the courtesies that he’d learned, and blurted out, “You got a white outlaw in this area?” Then, realizing his mistake, he sat back and looked down at the ground.
The man speaking with Joseph, acknowledged Bass’s discourtesy with only a small lifting of the eyebrows, and then forgave him by directing his next words directly at Bass. “Yes, white man came here maybe ten suns ago. He stays to himself, and does not break our laws or bother us, but I have seen him, and he has darkness in his spirit.”
Bass asked for a description, and got one that matched Caleb Hunt down to the mole on his left cheek.
“Yeah,” he said. “He’s one of the outlaws I’m lookin’ for. He done kilt his wife and her ma. Hacked ‘em to death with a axe and set ‘em on fire.”
If the Seminoles were surprised, disgusted, or offended by this, they didn’t show it. They continued to regard Bass and Joseph with impassive expressions.
“Yes, I knew he had blackness in his spirit when I first saw him. You will kill him?”
“Not less’n I have to. My job’s to take him back for the court to decide what to do with him.”
“And, if he does not wish to go back with you?”
“Ain’t his choice. If he give up peaceable like, he go back without bruises, if he fight, he gon’ get some bruises, and if he draw down on me, he gon’ get dead.”
The Seminole seemed to consider this. Then, he nodded. “You will find this man in a valley yonder.” He pointed north. “It is a small valley, without many trees, and there is a cave at the end. The man hides in the cave by day, and comes out at night to get food and water.”
Bass had seen some of the tribes, especially those in the western part of the territory who had been in contact with tribes farther west and to the south, use hand signals or sign language to talk. Such was not common to the Cherokee and other eastern tribes, and he knew only a few words that he thought might be Seminole, so he merely inclined his head in a respectful gesture.
