by Charles Ray
“It was, your honor.”
“Then, I thank you for your service.” He turned his steely gaze upon the defendants. “Ordinarily,” he said. “I would take a few days to determine sentencing, but in this case, I have already decided.” He paused and cleared his throat. Everyone leaned forward on their seats, their eyes upon him as he frowned at Sam and Belle. “While what you’ve done is serious, I’m taking into account that this is your first conviction, so I am sentencing each of you to one year in the Federal House of Corrections in Detroit, Michigan, and I hope that upon completion of your sentences you will decide to become decent citizens.”
Belle and Sam shared incredulous looks, while the prosecutor and the defense lawyer each looked stunned, albeit for different reasons. The courtroom was silent for several heartbeats, except for the ticking of the clock on the wall near the entrance.
Finally, Parker banged his gavel and broke the silence. “This court is adjourned,” he said.
He stood, and in a flurry of his black robe, departed the courtroom. Deputies moved to take charge of the prisoners, who would be moved back to the detention center where they would be prepared for their move from Arkansas to Detroit. Bass and Marshal Fagan, after looking around and ascertaining that there would be no disorder, left the courtroom and walked downstairs to Fagan’s office.
Once inside the office, Fagan immediately pulled a stack of warrants from his desk.
“I reckon you’ll be wanting to head back to the territory right away,” he said.
Bass’s head bobbed up and down. “Reckon I will, Marshal, reckon I will.”
CHAPTER 14
Responding to a petition from the defense attorney, Judge Parker delayed Belle’s transfer to the prison in Detroit by a month to allow her to make arrangements for the custody and care of her children while she served her sentence.
In the meantime, Bass went back into the territory to arrest a group of fugitives, including a band of five cattle rustlers who’d been operating out of a hideout near Durant, across the Red River into northeast Texas, where they conducted nighttime raids on small ranches and farms.
He had just returned, and was signing the captured men over to the jailer, when a guard at the detention center informed him that Belle Starr had asked to speak with him as soon as possible.
He found her, sitting on the edge of the wooden bunk, in a cell in the far corner of the holding area. Time in prison had taken its toll. Her brown hair hung lank around her face. Her once vibrant eyes were dull, and her complexion was sallow. In addition, subsisting on jail food had added pounds to her frame, giving her a dowdy appearance, and her clothing, usually immaculate, was wrinkled, making her look like a cleaning woman just completing a long work shift.
When Bass appeared at her cell door, she looked up at him with a haunted look in her eyes. To Bass, she had the look of a thoroughly beaten woman.
“Bass, thank you for coming,” she said. “I was afraid that, under the circumstances, you might not.”
“Now, why would I do that, Miz Belle? This don’t change the fact that you and me are friends.”
Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “What did I do to deserve a friend like you, Bass?”
“It ain’t what you done, so much as what you are. You always been nice to me, not treatin’ me no different than any other person. Oh, and I surely do like the way you plays the piano.”
She smiled, and stood. Walking to the bars, she grasped them and placed her forehead against the cold metal.
“There’s something I want you to know,” she said. “We didn’t steal those horses . . . or at least, I didn’t.”
“I never believed you did. But, I don’t understand why you didn’t speak up at the trial, tell them that you didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.”
She shook her head. “It’s complicated, Bass. See, I did know the horses were probably stolen. I was sitting right there when Joseph Crow told us.” Bass started to speak, but she held her hand up to stop him. “No, I know what you’re going to say, and I know that Sam said he’d wait on the sale, but I should’ve known better. Sam saw all that money, and couldn’t resist, and I should have known that. So, in that sense, I guess I’m as guilty as he is, because I didn’t stop him.”
“You shouldn’t be goin’ to jail for not doin’ something. If you didn’t break the law, you’re innocent.”
He placed a large dark hand on her fingers gripping the bars. She smiled. “I’m not exactly innocent, Bass. Oh, I never stole a horse, or robbed a bank, but I’ve done a few bad things, so I guess I have to pay for them.”
“You gon’ be okay in prison?”
“I can survive,” she said. “They let me take care of my children, and I’ll be able to take some clothes and personal things. It’s only a year. I’ll make it.”
“If there’s anything you need, anything I can do, you just let me know.”
She reached through the bars and patted his hand. “Just stay my friend, Bass Reeves. That’s all I can ask. Now, the marshals will be taking me to the train station in a while. It’d probably be better for both of us if you weren’t here, so I’ll say goodbye. You take care of yourself, Bass Reeves.”
“You, too, Belle Starr,” he said.
She turned away and went back to the cot. She sat and began packing her belongings.
Bass turned and began the long walk down the corridor to the freedom outside the dank cells. He never looked back.
THE SHAMAN’S CURSE
The Adventures of Bass Reeves
Deputy U.S. Marshal
Volume Three
CHARLES RAY
Chapter 1
“You sure we goin’ the right way, Bass?”
Bass Reeves, sweat coating his brown brow, stopped and removed his black hat, and wiped some of the sweat away, or tried to wipe it away, at least. He turned to look at the red-haired, posse man, William O’Malley, who was also drenched in sweat, as he struggled to get past a bramble bush. Bass smiled. O’Malley was like a lost cow in the brush, stumbling over tree roots, and getting tangled up in the vines that covered the hard, red clay of the hillside, but he was one of the best posse men in Fort Smith, and his Irish sense of humor kept Bass company on the month-long journeys into Indian Territory in search of wanted fugitives. If only he could teach him some trail savvy.
“Now, Bill,” he said. “How many times I got to tell you, we on the right trail. It’s as plain as day to me.”
To him, the signs were as clear as if they’d been painted with black paint. A broken twig here, disturbed dirt there. The Carson gang had come through this way, for sure.
“I don’t know how you can see anything in all this mess,” O’Malley said. “All I can see is vines and trees.”
“Oh, hush up, O’Malley,” James Floyd said. “If, the deputy says he knows the way, he knows it.”
Floyd, like O’Malley, a man in his early thirties, but slightly pudgy to O’Malley’s lankiness, and a mop of dirty brown hair that constantly fell across his face, was Bass’s other posse man for this trip. He was also, unlike O’Malley, not given to saying much, and when he did say something it was usually sarcastic. But was just as competent, and Bass knew he could depend on both of them in a bad situation, which was more than could be said for a lot of the posse men, many of whom took the jobs just for the money.
Bass put a finger to his lips.
“Now, both of you best be quiet. We gettin’ close, and I don’t want to warn them we comin’.”
O’Malley’s expression tightened, and his hand dropped to the Colt .45 Peacemaker he wore at his hip. Unlike Bass, who wore two, with the butts forward to allow him to cross draw, O’Malley’s single revolver had the butt back. Floyd, whose expression always seemed tight, gripped his Spencer carbine a bit tighter. Both men looked around nervously.
Satisfied that they were alert, Bass turned and resumed tracking.
He looked down as he encountered another pile of horse dung. It was stil
l shiny, not more than an hour old, he reckoned. Oh, they were mighty close. He could feel it in his bones. The three murdering Carson brothers were almost close enough to smell. He chuckled at that thought. The almost overpowering stench of the mounds of fresh horse droppings made smelling anything else well nigh impossible.
They pushed through the thick growth for another thirty minutes before Bass smelled the odor of wood smoke. He raised a hand for his two posse men to halt, then turned and put his finger to his lips again. The two men, breathing hard from their exertions, nodded.
Bass eased forward, moving silently through the tangled foliage, just like he’d been taught by the Indians he’d lived among in the territory during the war. He soon came to a break in the brush, and looked out into a large, roughly oval clearing.
In the middle of the clearing about twenty yards away, three men, ranging in age from nineteen to twenty-eight, dressed in nankeen trousers, cotton shirts, with brushed leather vests, with battered brown Stetsons on their heads, sat around the fire, drinking coffee from tin cups. Bass knelt behind a bush and watched them for a few minutes, to give his posse men time to catch up to him.
“How we gonna take ‘em, Bass?” O’Malley asked in a whisper.
“I say we just shoot ‘em,” Floyd said.
Bass frowned and waggled a finger at Floyd. “Now, you know good and well that I don’t shoot a man less’n I has to. I’m gon’ try and get ‘em to surrender peaceable like.”
O’Malley grinned. “You gonna do another one of your make-believe things?”
“Yeah, somethin’ like that.”
“So, what you want us to do?”
“Just stay here in the brush, and keep an eye out. If it looks like they don’t want to come peaceable, . . . well, you know what to do.”
Floyd caressed his carbine. “I sho nuff do,” he said.
Bass rolled his eyes, but said nothing. Floyd was always ready to use his weapon but was disciplined enough that he didn’t fire unless Bass had authorized it, or someone fired at him first. Of course, that was expected of him. O’Malley, on the other hand, like Bass, preferred to take fugitives in alive. For Bass, in addition to being the right thing to do, taking outlaws in without gunplay greatly increased the odds of your not being shot.
“Okay,” he said. “Just don’t shoot less’n you has to.”
With that last bit of admonition delivered, he slipped sideways through the bushes until he was twenty feet or so south of the outlaws’ camp site. He squatted down behind a bush, and watched the three men as they drank and talked, and ran through his mind how he planned to take them in. Even though he was known throughout the territory, by outlaws and law-abiding citizens alike, when he chose to, he could become just another itinerant laborer, roaming the dusty roads looking for part time work, or something to steal, depending upon the particular attitude of the person observing him. Looking at the relaxed way the three brothers sat around the fire, he figured that the itinerant would probably lull them long enough into a false sense of security that he’d be able to take them without calling upon his two posse men for assistance.
He took his badge off and stuffed it into his coat pocket. Then, he reached down and scooped up a hand full of dirt, and smeared it over his hat and jacket, and for good measure, rubbed some on his forehead and cheeks. He adjusted his coat to cover his two Colt Peacemakers, stood, and began shambling toward the fire. Only someone who knew him well would have recognized the ordinarily dapper Bass Reeves beneath the dust and grime.
The three men were so engrossed in their coffee drinking, he was almost close enough to touch them before they noticed him.
The first to see him, was the youngest, a towheaded youngster who hadn’t even begun sprouting enough hair on his ruddy cheeks to shave He almost fell over on his backside when he looked up and saw a tall, muscular black man staring down at him.
“Wha-, who, hey,” he said, scrambling to remain upright. “Where in blazes did you come from?”
The other two, reacting to their younger brother’s clumsy actions, turned their heads, and upon seeing Bass standing there, dropped their cups and reached for their sidearms. Before their hands touched the butts, though, Bass put his hands in the air, and looked down at them with a loose grin on his face.
“Ain’t no need for that, fellas,” he said. “I ain’t meanin’ y’all no harm. I’se just makin’ my way through the brush, and I smelt that fine coffee you drinkin’ there, so I thought mebbe I’d mosey over this way and see if y’all mind sharin’ a bit of it with a wanderin’ stranger.”
They didn’t draw their weapons, but kept their hands resting on them. The younger Carson, just sat, mouth agape, staring at Bass.
“Who are you?” the older of the brothers asked.
“Name’s Buck, Buck . . . Johnson. I’m ‘riginally from over to Arkansas way, but I had to hightail it out in a mite of a hurry.”
The three men relaxed a bit. The older one, though, continued to regard Bass through narrow slits. “I’m Jacob Carson, and these is my brothers, Timothy, the ugly one, and Hadley, there, the youngest and clumsiest one. What’d you do, rob somebody or kill somebody?”
“Well now, I reckon I kinda done both. I snuck in my neighbor’s house while he’s out, and I robbed him of his wife’s affection, which I reckon musta kilt any feelin’ he had for her. ‘Course, first thing he wanted to do when he found out was to kill me.”
Jacob Carson’s eyes widened, and he smiled. The other two chuckled. “Now, don’t that beat all. I heard you black bucks, and it’s funny, ‘cause your name’s Buck, was pretty randy. Guess that’s the truth. Where you bound?”
“I’se thinkin’ mebbe I’d mosey over to Fort Sill. I here they’s allus hirin’ people there to work for the army.”
“Why’n hell you want to do that? You can make a lot more money doin’ what we do, and you ain’t got nobody bossin’ you around.”
“Now, makin’ money and not havin’ somebody tellin’ me what to do sounds good. But, just what is it you fellas do?”
The youngest of the three sat upright and thumped his chest with his fist. “You name it, fella, and we do it. Me ‘n my brothers, we done stole horses and cows, robbed a couple of stage coaches, and we even robbed a bank down in some backwater town in Louisiana.”
“Shut up, Hadley,” the older brother said. “You talk to much. You know we don’t go sharin’ our business with strangers.”
“Aw, shoot, Jacob, who he gon’ tell it to.”
“Yeah, Jacob, give the kid a break,” the middle brother said. “Even if he did tell somebody, who’s gon’ believe a colored man?”
While the three argued, their attention drifted away from Bass. He took that opportunity to reach under his coat and pull out his revolvers. When they turned, their eyes went wide.
“What the—”
“Just take it easy, fellas,” Bass said. “Don’t even think about goin’ for them side arms you wearin’, ‘cause I can plug the three of you ‘fore you can clear the holsters.”
Jacob Carson shook his head. “Who the hell are you, boy?”
“I’m Bass Reeves, deputy marshal out of Fort Smith, and I got me a warrant for the arrest of the three of you for robbery.”
“Aw, dang. I heard of you, that big colored man everybody in the territory’s talkin’ about. Guess you got us, deputy,” Jacob Carson said.
Bass put one revolver under his arm, and pulled three sets of cuffs from his coat pocket. He tossed them to Jacob Carson. “You fellas all take your side arms out, real slow like, and drop ‘em on the ground. You handcuff the other two, then turn with your back to me, and your hands behind your back. No funny business now. Not only can I shoot you fellas, but I got me two posse men up in the woods yonder, and I reckon they done already drawed a bead on you. Now, I’d ruther take you back to Arkansas alive, but that’s up to you.”
“Don’t worry, deputy, we ain’t gon’ give you no trouble.”
O’Malley and F
loyd only smiled when Bass marched up the slope into the woods behind three meek and manacled fugitives.
Chapter 2
Bass, his two posse men, who took turns driving the prisoner wagon, and a cook, Elijah Washington, along with the Carson brothers and five other prisoners, were five miles southwest of the settlement of Wewoka, with one warrant left to serve. This one, though, had everyone but Bass on edge. An old Creek shaman, or medicine man, Yah-ko-te, had broken with his tribal council and gone off to live alone. No one knew why, and, had he been content to just live alone in the wild, no one would have cared. But, in order to support himself, he’d taken to thieving, and had stolen the occasional head of beef from Indian-owned farms in the Wewoka area. His mistake, whether deliberate or not, no one knew, was to steal a young calf from a white farmer who had settled in the area. This brought him under the jurisdiction of the federal authorities, and since the tribal police were deathly afraid of the old man, who was alleged to have strong powers over people, they were more than happy to leave it to the U.S. marshals to bring him in.
“You know, Bass,” O’Malley said. “Ain’t nobody gonna be upset with you if we don’t bring this old cuss in.”
Bass looked at him sternly. “I’d be upset with me if we didn’t. He done broke the law, and he got to be taken in, and that’s that.”
“But, they say he got some kinda magic, and that he can put the evil eye on you.”
Floyd snorted. “He try to put a curse on me, I’ll just put a .44 caliber slug twixt his eyes.”
“Now, listen up. We here to take him in peaceable. I ain’t heard nothin’ ‘bout him totin’ a gun or nothin’. We don’t shoot a man just ‘cause he talk some kinda juju.”
“B-but, what if it’s true what they say about him? What if he can put a curse on you?” O’Malley’s eyes were round.
“Why, I reckon we just cuss him back.” Bass turned and spit on the ground. “Now, I hear he holed up in a cave ‘bout a mile from here, so let’s go get him.”
