by Charles Ray
Nevertheless, he was still sober enough to tell his story when Bass asked him what had happened.
“I was no more ‘n five miles west of town when they ambushed me,” he said. “Put them shootin’ irons in my face and threatened to fill me fulla lead, they did.”
“How many of them was there?” Bass asked.
“Jest two, but they done got the drop on me. Snuck up from behind, you know. Wasn’t nothin’ I could do, ‘cause all I had was my old shotgun, and it was in the boot. First time I done ever lost a mail delivery.”
The old man looked sad when he said that. Bass felt a little sympathy for him. Folks around the area who depended on the U.S. Post Office to deliver news from faraway places would be disappointed, and a goodly number would blame him when that letter from a cousin back east didn’t arrive, or a farm wife didn’t get the latest mail order catalog.
“What’d they take?”
“Not much. All I was haulin’ was letters ‘n some parcels of old clothes for the Injun school. I reckon my shotgun was the most valuable thing in that wagon.”
“Can you tell me what they looked like?”
“Hell fire, I can do better ‘n that. I can tell you their names. It was them good-for-nothin’ Barker boys from over to Anadarko. Even with them bandanas over their ugly faces I knowed who they was.”
“How do you know it was the Barker brothers?”
“I passed ‘em on the way outa town. They musta doubled back and followed me. When I first seen ‘em they didn’t have the bandanas on, and I recognized ‘em from the wanted poster. I didn’t say nothin’ ‘cause I’s plannin’ to tell the sheriff soon’s I got my mail delivered. I hear there’s a big reward for ‘em.”
Bass removed the warrants from his jacket, retrieved the wanted poster for the Barkers and held it up in front of the man.
“These the men that robbed you?”
Wilson blinked and peered at the paper, seeming at first to have trouble focusing, then he bobbed his head up and down.
“Yup, that’s them all right.”
“How can you be sure? You said the men that robbed you wore bandanas over their face.”
“They wore bandanas when they was robbin’ me, but they wasn’t when they passed me just as I was leavin’ town. I saw ‘em clear as day then.”
Bass nodded. “But, how can you be sure the men you passed was the same ones that robbed you?”
“That ain’t hard. They was wearin’ the same clothes and ridin’ the same horses. Look, deputy, I might be old, but I ain’t blind ‘n I ain’t crazy. It was the Barkers what robbed me, no doubt about it. You gonna go after ‘em?”
Bass waved the wanted poster.
“That I am, mister, that I am.”
CHAPTER 6
Clint Barker sat on the side of the road, his feet in the ditch, his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. His older brother, Chet, stood behind him, looking in dismay at the letters and brown-wrapped packages strewn across the road.
“I thought for sure there’d be somethin’ valuable in them bags,” Chet said.
“I done told you this was a bad idea,” Clint said, looking up with a sullen expression on his face.
“You didn’t do no such thing.”
“Well, mebbe I didn’t say it right out like that, but I still think we’d of done better robbin’ a bank.”
Hell fire, dummy, too late to think of that now. We gonna have to high tail it outta here ‘fore they start lookin’ for us.”
“How they gonna know to look for us?”
“They gonna know ‘cause that wagon driver is gonna tell ‘em we done robbed him is how.”
“But, we was wearin’ bandanas. How they gonna know it was us?”
Chet shook his head and looked down in disgust.
“We rode right past him jest ‘fore we turned ‘round and robbed him, fool.”
Clint looked perplexed.
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I reckon you right. We better go home. But, Chet, ma’s gonna be hoppin’ mad if we come home empty handed again.”
“We ain’t completely empty handed.” Chet’s voice lacked conviction. “We got these two horses, they might fetch a few dollars, and we got the shotgun.”
“Ain’t nobody gonna buy that old thing. ‘Sides, we ain’t got no shells for it ‘cept’n the ones in the chambers.”
“Hell, we can sell it to somebody. They can buy they own damn shells.”
Clint shrugged in resignation and shoved himself upright. After dusting off his trousers he looked at his brother.
“Guess you right. Well, we might’s well go home and take our medicine.”
They unhitched the team from the wagon and shoved it into the ditch. Chet mounted, with the shotgun cradled across his lap and the rein of one of the horses in his left hand. Clint grabbed the other horse and mounted his own.
With their shoulders slumped, they began to ride toward the west.
CHAPTER 7
They found the abandoned mail wagon two hours after setting out. Bass had the prisoners unshackled but under guard, retrieve the scattered mail and packages and put everything back into the wagon.
“What are we gonna do with the wagon, Bass?” the posse man Jack West asked.
“Don’t reckon it’s goin’ anywhere. We’ll just leave it here and pick it up on the way back.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Henry asked. “Somebody might steal stuff from it.”
Bass laughed. “If there was anything worth stealin’ you can bet the Barker brothers done already took it. Naw, I think it’ll be okay.”
Henry and West nodded at that. Of course, as usual, Bass was right.
“Now,” Bass said. “Let’s get on the trail of these varmints.”
From where they found the wagon, the tracks of the four horses were easy to follow; two horses carrying riders from the depth of the tracks, and two not; but, after five miles, when they arrived at an area of the road that was heavily traveled, it became almost impossible to distinguish their tracks from the hundreds of others that crossed and overlay them.
Finally, they had to rely on Bass’s feeling that the brothers would, after their unsuccessful mail robbery, likely go home to regroup and plan their next crime spree.
“What if they ain’t there when we git there?” West asked.
“Then, we wait for ‘em,” Bass replied. “One way or t’other, we gon’ git these two.”
The minutes turned into hours, and soon darkness fell forcing them to stop for the night. Bass was frustrated but tried not to show it to the others. After supper he sat by the fire gazing into the flickering flames and listening to the crack and pop of the burning wood, wondering if he wasn’t just wasting everyone’s time. A little voice in the back of his mind kept whispering for him to forget the wild goose chase they were on, admit defeat, and go on back to Fort Smith. After all, he’d served all but one of his warrants, and he wouldn’t be the first deputy to be unable to serve every warrant he’d been given. He shook his head. No, he mentally chided himself. Bass Reeves never gives up, and we will not go back to Arkansas until the Barker brothers are in chains.
As if agreeing with him, in the distance an owl hooted, followed by a sharp squeak, almost a scream, that was cut off suddenly. He smiled. I’m like that old owl, he thought. I sneak up in the dark and grab that little rat ‘fore he even know I’m there. The Barkers were the rat, and Bass was determined to get them in his talons.
When he woke up the next morning, just before the sun made an appearance in the east, he didn’t remember crawling into his bedroll and going to sleep. But, he was rested, and while he slept his mind was working, for when he opened his eyes he knew just how he was going to get the Barkers.
CHAPTER 8
Fifty miles from home, in the tiny settlement of Milo, one of the few in the territory with more white than Indian inhabitants, luck turned for the Barker brothers.
They stopped at the livery stable, a lean-to adjac
ent to a wood-rail corral in which four mangy looking horses stood, their tails swatting flies the only movement, and began negotiating with the owner, an old man with leathery, sun-darkened skin and no front teeth, trying to get him to buy the two mail horses.
“I kin give you five dollars a piece for ‘em,” he said, brown tobacco juice leaking from his mouth and dribbling over the gray stubble on his chin as he spoke.
“Five dollars,” Chet said. “Hell, old man, you can’t even buy a saddle for that much. These is top quality horses, worth at least fifty dollars.”
The old man walked around the horses, rubbing their flanks and peeling back their lips to check their teeth.
“Well now, I reckon they ain’t too bad, ‘n I’d be willin’ to go as high as fifteen dollars each . . . if they wasn’t stole.”
Chet glared down at him. “You callin’ me a horse thief, old man?” His hand hovered near the butt of his sidearm.
The man held his hands up, backing away. “Naw, son, I ain’t a doin’ thet. But, I see the brand on these animals. That there’s the brand the post office puts on its horses. Mebbe whoever you got ‘em from done stole ‘em.”
Chet took a deep breath. Damn, he thought, I plumb forgot about the brand. Robbing a mail wagon was turning out to be even more trouble than he’d thought. “Yeah, we bought ‘em for twenty-five dollars each from a fella down near the Red River. He swore to us they was his, ‘n we never looked at the brand.”
The old man cocked a head and looked at Chet through narrowed slits.
“First time you done bought horses?”
Unsure how to answer, Chet just bobbed his head up and down.
“Figgered,” the old man said. “Experienced horse traders allus checks the brand first. Lots of stolen horses ‘round these parts. You can’t be too careful ‘bout what you buy and who you buy it from.”
Chet looked at his younger brother who was busy inspecting the dirt under his fingernails. No help there. He blew a gust air from his nose and mouth. “Well, damn, that is one big problem. Couldn’t you at least give us twenty-five dollars for each of ‘em, what we paid for ‘em.”
The old man smiled, an open-mouth smile that, with his missing front teeth looked more like a grimace.
“I tell you what, son, I like you,” he said. “I’ll give you fifteen dollar each.”
Chet frowned and balled up his fists. His face was red under the coating of dust it had picked up from the ride. “Aw, come on gramps, whyn’t you jest give us twenty-five each? I know you can get more ‘n that for ‘em. You got the look of a wily horse trader about you.”
“Well now, young fella, I do appreciate that.” The old man rubbed his hands together. “Tell you what, for that, I’ll raise my price. I’ll give you forty-five dollars, but that’s my final offer.”
“What you think we oughta do, little brother?”
Clint stopped looking at his grimy fingernails and looked, first at his brother, and then at the livery station owner. After studying the man like a cat sizing up a bird with a broken wing, he turned back to his brother.
“Well, the way I see it, big brother,” he said. “The man done give us his final offer, so I reckon the only thing we can do is tell him what our final offer is.”
Chet looked confused. “What you mean by that?”
Clint drew his .45 and pointed it at the old man. “We take his horses and whatever cash he got layin’ around, and ‘cause I kinda like him, we don’t put a slug in that ugly face of his.”
The vacant grin on the old man’s face evaporated, replaced by naked fear as he looked up into Clint’s cold eyes. He raised his trembling hands.
“P-please,” he said. “Don’t shoot me, and don’t take the horses. They don’t belong to me; I’m boardin’ ‘em for old man Johnson who hadda go down to Dallas to see ‘bout his sick sister. Look, I’ll give you fifty dollar for them two nags . . . naw, I’ll sweeten it, how ‘bout I give you sixty dollar? You be makin’ a ten-dollar profit.”
Clint grinned and looked at Chet.
“Mebbe we oughta take that,” Chet said.
“Naw, big brother. This old man done tried to skin us. ‘Sides, the way he keep movin’ the price around, I reckon he must have a bit of cash layin’ ‘round . . . right old man? Naw, I like my deal better. But, don’t you worry, old man, I ain’t gon shoot you, long’s you show us where you keep your money.”
The old man looked from one brother to the other, his cracked lips slack and his eyes wide, as if trying to decide which one was the most dangerous. Finally, he shrugged.
“Okay, the cash box’s inside the shop under the counter. You promise you won’t k-kill me.”
“Depends on how much you got in that there cash box, old timer,” Clint said. “Chet, you git the horses ‘n I’ll go fetch the money.”
Surprised, and at the same time, impressed, Chet only nodded his acceptance of his younger brother’s orders.
“Okay,” he said. “Mean time, old man, don’t try nothin’ funny, ‘n you won’t git hurt.”
A few minutes later, Clint emerged from the shack waving a wad of bank notes in his hand, just as Chet had finished attaching reins to the sad looking horses and leading them out of the corral.
“Hey, Che-, er, big brother, there must be two hundred dollars here.” He stuffed the money inside his shirt. “Ma’s gon’ be plumb tickled when she sees this.”
Chet nodded. “I reckon she will.” He removed his revolved and pointed it at the old man.
“Y-you said you wasn’t gonna k-kill me,” the quavering old man cried.
“Ain’t gon’ kill you. Jest gon’ tie you up inside that there shack so you can’t give the alarm ‘til we’s a good long way from here.”
They used some of the rope the man kept hanging in loops on the wall to truss him up, then they pushed him down on his side behind the rickety wooden counter and left.
He lay still as he heard the clatter of hooves as they rode away, and then lay still for another hour, making sure they were good and gone, before he began shouting for help.
CHAPTER 9
Once they reached a more heavily traveled section of the road, neither Bass nor Henry, despite their skill as trackers, could discern the Barkers’ trail from the many hoof prints in the clay surface.
Henry sat astride his palomino, scratching at one of the braids he’d taken to wearing, ‘To remind myself that even though I’m working for the white man’s law, I’m still Cherokee,’ he said, when Bass mentioned it to him.
“I can’t make hide or hair of these tracks, Bass,” he said. “There must tracks from over a hundred horses on this road. What do we do now?”
Bass removed his Stetson and ran a hand through his short, wiry hair, which was beginning to show gray at the temples.
“Reckon we’ll jest have to go to their house and wait for ‘em,” he said.
“Do we know where it is?”
“Naw, but I figure somebody in Anadarko can tell us.”
There was a bit of grumbling from the prisoners, complaining that the wagon was already crowded, and he was planning on adding more and making them spend more time cooped up like chickens. Bass just gave them a stern look and reminded them that if they hadn’t decided to break the law they wouldn’t be in the wagon in the first place, and the extra time would give them a chance to think over the error of their ways.
And, with that, they hunched their shoulders and aimed their horses southwest toward the town of Anadarko, located north of Fort Sill, a hundred-mile ride that Bass figured would take them three days.
As the first day neared an end, they approached the town of Titusville, a middling-sized town surrounded by cattle ranches and farms, that were, by the standards of the territory, prosperous. It had the usual collection of saloons, that with the approaching dusk were already nosy with cowboys and farmers drinking away the dust of a hard day’s work, a blacksmith shop and livery stable at the east side of town that was filled with horses, and an ass
ortment of other buildings, mostly wood frame with a few adobe structures.
At the far end of town, fronted by a raised plank sidewalk, was a building that stood out from the others. Instead of wood or adobe, it was made of white stone, and had a green tile roof. Two-stories high, it had a verandah encircling the second floor. It also stood out in that, while there was activity apparent inside the other buildings, there was a group of men outside this one, and they seemed agitated.
Ever curious, Bass had the wagons stopped, and he and Henry rode forward to see what the commotion was about.
As they got closer, he could see that the crowd of fifteen men was mostly Indians, with just a few whites, and all carried rifles. They were also highly agitated. Bass adjusted his jacket so that his badge was visible.
They approached warily, but someone in the crowd recognized the tall, dark man on the big white horse.
“It’s Deputy Reeves,” someone shouted.
“All right, he’ll fix this,” another voice said.
Before Bass could ask what they were talking about a shot rang out and a geyser of dirt erupted near the crowd. Men scattered away from in front of the bank building, some ducking behind the water troughs that sat at the edge of the sidewalk to either side of the building, others into the alleys to either side. Bass and Henry stopped.
“What the Sam hell is goin’ on?” Bass asked.
“Maybe these men were tryin’ to rob the bank, and the folks inside are shooting to scare them off,” Henry replied.
“They don’ look like no bank robbers to me.”
“Me neither, but you got a better idea/”
Bass didn’t. He rode to the nearest alley and dismounted. Two men stood with their backs against the bank’s stone wall, their expressions a mixture of fright and anger. Some of the fright eased when Bass approached them.
“What’s goin’ on here?” he asked.
The man nearest Bass, who looked to him to be Choctaw, said, “Two men robbin’ the bank. We was goin’ in to arrest ‘em when they shot at us.”
