by Charles Ray
They made their way to the table and sat. Joseph filled a plate for Bass, and then served himself.
“You cooked enough food to feed a whole army,” Bass said.
“I figured you’d be hungry, and knowing you, you did not have time to enjoy your wife’s cooking while you were back there.”
Bass had long ceased to be amazed at how Joseph just seemed to ‘know’ things.
“You right ‘bout that. Didn’t even go home. But this is still a powerful lot of food.”
“Except for the gravy and the vegetables, what we don’t eat we can pack for the trail. I think fried steak and sourdough would be better than jerky and hard tack, don’t you?”
“I do indeed,” Bass said. “You know, I didn’t know Injun men cooked. I thought the squaws did all the cooking.”
Joseph finished chewing his steak and swallowed. He swung his arm in a sweeping gesture. “You see a woman here? If a man don’t have a wife, he must learn to cook, or he gets skinny.”
“Makes sense. How come you got no wife?”
“I am still looking for her.” Joseph cocked his head to one side. “I know she is out there, and one day I will find her.”
Bass looked confused. “Who you lookin’ for?”
Joseph had a half-sleepy expression on his face. “I do not know, but I will know her when I find her.”
Bass snorted and shoved another piece of steak into his mouth.
After supper, they cleaned the table, placing the leftover meat and bread in oil cloth and stuffing it inside muslin bags for their trip. With cups of coffee in hand, they went out onto Joseph’s front porch.
The sky was muted orange in the west and beginning to turn a purplish gray overhead. There was a nip in the air, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Joseph settled into his rocking chair, and Bass took the one next to him.
“So, my friend,” Joseph said. “How will we catch this man, Bob Dozier?”
“Well now, I been thinkin’ on that, and I think we gon’ have to get inside his mind, think like him. It’s the only way we gon’ catch up to him.”
“I understand.” Joseph nodded. “It is like the hunter who thinks like the deer when he is hunting. So, what do you think this man, Bod Dozier is thinking now?”
“I’m thinkin’, I done kilt me a Texas Ranger. The rangers gon’ be put out somethin’ fierce, and even though they ain’t got no jurisdiction here in Injun Territory, they likely to send a bunch up here to hunt me down.”
“Yes, I think the rangers will do that. The Texans have much fire in their guts and little sense in their heads.”
Bass chuckled. There was no love lost between the Texans and the residents to their north, red, black of white. One would be hard-pressed to find a resident of either who had anything nice to say about residents of the other.
“So, knowin’ them rangers gon’ be comin’ after me, where’d they be least likely to look?”
Comprehension dawned in Joseph’s eyes, and he smiled. “At the place where the crime took place. You think this Dozier went back to Burnside and not up north to the Cherokee Hills?”
“It’d for sure be the last place the Texans would look.”
“So, tomorrow we ride for Burnside.”
“First light,” said Bass.
Chapter 11.
Bass and Joseph had a light breakfast of grits, biscuits, gravy and coffee the next morning, and set out for Burnside shortly after sunup. They arrived in the town just before noon, and rode directly to the livery stable.
“Well, now, y’all back,” the livery station owner said. “Y’all must really like our little town.”
“We got business here,” Bass said.
The man grinned wryly, and rubbed his bald head, smearing it with the grime that covered his hand. “This here bizness don’t happen to be ‘bout that fella Dozier and the Texas Ranger he done kilt, do it?”
“Yeah, it does.” Bass frowned. “What do you know about it?”
“Just what I done heared from folk passin’ through. If you wants to know more ‘bout it, you ought to go talk to Mama Maybell. She live in a cabin down near where it happen. If anybody know what went on, she the one.”
Bass shared a look with Joseph. The latter nodded. They asked for and got directions to the woman’s place, and headed their horses in that direction.
The cabin, which was little more than a lean-to constructed of logs and rotting wood planks, with a sod roof, sat in a clearing about a hundred yards off the road. A fence made from twisted limbs and tree trunks sat to the side. It contained a dozen white chickens, mostly hens and chicks, with one strutting rooster that stood regally in a corner surveying his harem. An old woman, skin the color of mahogany, a face as wrinkled as a folded piece of parchment, and rheumy looking eyes, wearing a tattered one-piece gingham dress that draped over her bony frame, squatted next to the fence plucking a chicken.
She looked up as they approached, opening her mouth in a half-smile that showed only bluish gums stained brown with tobacco or snuff.
Bass touched a forefinger to his hat. Joseph nodded his head. For a few seconds, she kept yanking feathers from the chicken carcass. When all that was left was a plump, pink carcass, she dropped it into an iron pot that sat at her bony hips, rose and dusted off her dress.
“Well, hi-dee,” she said in a cracked, raspy voice. Then, she spit a globule of brown juice into the dirt at her bare feet, which were brown and gray from the dirt. “Don’t git too many visitors these days. What brings you two boys to Mama Maybelle’s?”
“Howdy, ma’am,” Bass said. “I’m Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal out of Fort Smith, and this here’s Joseph Lone Tree, my posse man.”
The old woman’s smile widened, showing a tongue coated in white and brown. “I knows who you is, Deputy, you too, Mr. Lone Tree. Why you here?”
Bass looked at the old woman, his right eyebrow arched up. He shared a look with Joseph, who shrugged. It wasn’t just the Indians, Bass thought, who seemed to be attuned with the spirit world. Maybe the livery stable man had been right. Maybe this old woman would be able to tell him everything he needed to know to find Dozier and his gang.
“Mind if we dismount? Been a long ride out from Burnside,” he said.
“Naw, don’t mind a’tall. ‘Course, I can’t offer you a chair, ‘cause I only got me one, a old rockin’ chair. So, long’s y’all don’t mind standin’ or squattin’, you welcome. Kin I offer you a drink. I got some corn squeezins’, made up fresh jest last week, or water from my well.”
“Water’d be just fine, ma’am,” Bass said. He looked at Joseph, who also nodded. “And, we don’t mind squattin’, or even standin’. We’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”
“Well, jest you make yourselves comfortable, and I’ll go fetch the water.”
He walked to the hut and entered as they dismounted. A few minutes later, she returned with a battered old copper kettle and two greasy looking glasses. Bass and Joseph shared worried looks, but knew they had no choice but to accept. To do otherwise would be rude. She handed each a glass and filled each to near the brim. They each took small sips, keeping their faces impassive as they swallowed.
“Now, what you want?” she asked as she sat the kettle on the ground.
Bass was taken aback. Most of the residents of the territory, especially those who lived alone, fell into two categories; the loners who talked to no one, and those so appreciative of company they never stopped talking. This old lady seemed to fall into a unique category, someone who welcomed strangers, going so far as to offer them water, but from the tone of her voice, not all that anxious to talk. He knew he would have to tread carefully.
“Ma’am, a few days back, a lawman from Texas was bushwhacked by a bunch of outlaws not far from here,” he said. “We was wonderin’ if you might know anything about that?”
She laughed, a cackling sound like hens early in the morning announcing that eggs were in the nest.
You talkin’ ‘bout t
hat dumb white boy what come up from Texas to tangle with that Bob Dozier fella.” A statement, not a question, he noted. “Yeah, I knows ‘bout that. They shot him dead ‘bout a mile down the road yonder. Rode past here after they done it, jest laughin’ up a storm ‘bout it, they was.”
Bass looked around. The road wasn’t visible from where they stood. He feared that the old woman had fooled him. She just wanted someone to talk to, and was making up a story. She must’ve sensed his skepticism, because she snorted and glared at him.
“Naw, I can’t see the road from here,” she said. “But, I’se down to the road pickin’ me some blackberries to make cobbler when they rid past. They was almost as close to me as you is now, so I done heared them as clear as day.”
“Did they say anything to you?”
“I said I done seen them, but they ain’t seed me, ‘cause I was bent over in them berry brambles, ‘n when I heared what they was talkin’ ‘bout, you better believe I stayed bent over. Not, mind you, they’d pay much ‘tention to a old black woman.”
He was beginning to reassess this old woman. Old she might be, but she was no fool, and her story rang true.
“So, they was headin’ back to Burnside?”
“Naw, up the road a ways, they turned west. Looked to me like they was plannin’ go around Burnside.”
“Any towns in that direction?”
“I wouldn’t ‘xactly call it a town, but, they’s a little settlement over west of Burnside. Don’t know what they calls it, but if you go back up the road, you’ll see wagon tracks cut west. You follow them, and you come to it.”
They put their glasses on the ground and stood.
“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Bass said. “We’ll be on our way now.”
“Y’all come on back any time. Mebbe next time you can stay for supper. I make good fried chicken and corn bread.”
Bass and Joseph didn’t talk as they rode away, but as he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the old woman gathering the kettle, glasses, and the pot containing the chicken and make her way to her hut, apparently having already cast them from her mind.
When they were out of sight up the road, Joseph broke the silence.
“Wonder why they didn’t go through Burnside,” he said. “That would be the quickest way to get to the Cherokee Hills.”
“I was wonderin’ the same thing myself, and I’m thinkin’ it might be because they wasn’t plannin’ on ridin’ north.”
“You still think they’re plannin’ on going south toward Texas?”
“Best way to hide. Nobody’s gon’ be lookin’ for you out in plain sight.”
Joseph’s face tightened in concentration. “You could be right. I hear this Dozier’s a slippery one. It would be like him to do something like that.”
The little unnamed settlement was a thirty-minute ride from the main road. It consisted of little more than ramshackle huts and tents on both sides of the wagon ruts. The residents, all white, didn’t look like outlaws, but more like poor dirt farmers taking advantage of a flat piece of unclaimed land in the territory upon which to scratch out a meager living. But, Bass remained vigilant, because he noted few women among the population, and no children. Beside him, he could sense the tension radiating off Joseph.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You think this is a town of outlaws?”
“No,” Joseph said. “Worse. These are settlers, probably from Arkansas or even Louisiana. They have no land where they come from, so they come here and stake out claims in our land. The tribal council, when they hear of them, report them to the government agents, and sometimes they get moved, but as soon as you move one bunch, another one pops up somewhere else. The white man, always hungry for land, especially Indian land, is beginning to move in here.”
“But, your people have a treaty with the government. They can’t take your land.”
Joseph grunted. “Treaties with the white men in Washington, that were supposed to be good as long as the sun shines and the water flows, are good until someone finds gold or some white people want more land for farming or cattle. When that happens, the treaties are forgotten, and they blow away with the wind.”
Bass had never before heard such a note of bitterness in his friend’s voice, not even during the war when the Union forces left, and the rebellious armies from the southern states tried to invade and conquer Indian territory. Where military conquest had failed, however, it appeared that a flood of white settlers was making headway. That, though, was not his responsibility. Despite the fact that his sympathies lay with the tribes, his job was to find fugitives and bring them to justice, and right now, he was determined that nothing was going to stop him from capturing the ‘king of thieves,’ Bob Dozier.
While not particularly unfriendly, the men they passed didn’t appear welcoming. He had to find a place where he could get some of them to talk.
As usual, it was easy to find. No matter how small the town, most settlements west of the Mississippi River had one thing in common, one of the first structures built was a saloon, and the saloon was a town’s center of social and cultural life. More importantly, the rotgut liquor served in most of these establishments tended to loosen men’s tongues.
The saloon in this town, like the town itself, had no sign with a name to identify it, but it would’ve been impossible to miss. The loud noise coming from the interior of the largest, and sturdiest constructed, building could be heard a hundred feet away, and the men exiting the bat-wing doors, stumbled and weaved their way along the uneven wooden sidewalk.
They dismounted in front of the building and tied their horses to the hitching rail.
“I wonder if it’s a good idea to leave our horses unattended,” Joseph said. “I have a feeling that anything not tied down around here might just up and walk off.”
Bass couldn’t disagree. He noticed more than one of the more sober-looking men on the sidewalk eyeing their animals. “Mebbe you ought to stay with the horses, and I’ll go inside and ask around,” he said.
“Okay. While I doubt a black man’s any more welcome, I think they will take to you better than they would to a Cherokee.”
When Bass pushed through the bat-wing doors, and entered the saloon, the level of conversation dropped to a murmur, and all heads swung in his direction. The looks he received as he crossed the floor, in the direction of the bar, behind which a young man with slicked-back brown hair, wearing a white apron over a white shirt with ruffled collar, had paused in serving drinks to the four men standing there, his hand holding a bottle of whiskey a few inches over a glass. His gray eyes were as round as saucers as he gaped at Bass.
Walking through the place, Bass could feel the stares, and felt as if he had a target painted on his back. He wondered how many of the dozen or so patrons of the place were armed with either sleeve guns or knives, but kept his expression passive, his eyes focused on the bartender.
He bellied up to an empty space at the bar and placed his hands flat on the slate surface.
The young man, still staring, recovered enough to finish pouring the drink he had just been about to start, and turned to Bass, his expression one of disbelief and astonishment. He gulped, opened his mouth, closed it, then moved over to stand in front of Bass.
“S-something I can do for you, stranger?”
Bass pulled his jacket aside, displaying his badge.
“I’m Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. I’m lookin’ for a man name of Bob Dozier. I was told that him and his gang might’ve passed through these parts a few days ago.”
The color drained from the bartender’s face. “I . . . I d-don’t know anybody by that name, Deputy.”
Bass knew the man was lying, but decided not to make an issue of it . . . just yet. He pulled the wrinkled wanted poster from his coat and laid it on the bar.
“This here’s a pretty passable picture of him,” he said. “You see a man in here look like this?”
Without even a glan
ce at the poster, he said, “Naw, ain’t seen him.”
One of the men standing at the bar pushed in, almost jostling Bass, and looked down at the poster. “Sure you have, Hank,” he said in a slightly slurred voice. “Him and two other hombres was in here a few days back. They set at a table right over yonder in the corner.”
The bartender glared at the interloper. “Shut your trap, Lester.” He turned back to Bass. “Look, Deputy, we get us a lot of people in here. I can’t be expected to remember every one of ‘em. I don’t recognize this man.”
This time, he did look down at the poster. Bass noticed the spasm of a muscle below his left eye. Whether he was lying because he was afraid, or lying because he was somehow in league with the outlaw, Bass didn’t know, and didn’t want to waste time trying to break his story. He turned to the newcomer, a rangy man of middle years, dressed in the well-worn gear of a ranch hand. He swayed and had to hang onto the bar, and the smell of bad breath and stale liquor emanated from him in noxious waves.
“You say you saw this man? Bass asked him.
“I sure’s hell did, big as life. I was settin’ at the table next to him and the two hard cases that was with him.”
The bartender cleared his throat, but the man ignored him, as did Bass.
“You know which way they went when they left?” he asked.
“Can’t say I know for sure, but I know where he said they was goin’.”
“And, where bout was that?”
“He said they had a cabin up to Cherokee Hills, and they was gonna go there and lay low for a while. Seems they had themselves a run in with a Texas Ranger, and the ranger got the worst end of the deal, so they was worried them Texans might come lookin’ for ‘em.”
A drunk the man might be, but his story rang true. The bartender’s expression, like he’d just swallowed a piece of meat that was off, confirmed it.
