Blood and Gold

by Joseph A. West

  The heat did not seem to affect Reeves and he rode erect and dry in the saddle, his careful black eyes probing the way ahead, restlessly studying every hill and timber-choked arroyo of that wild and beautiful country.

  On the morning of the second day, as the Wichita Mountains loomed in the distance, he pointed to the ruin of a sod cabin a short way off the trail, all that remained of the structure a couple of walls and a sagging doorway covered by a ragged canvas tacked to the top of the jamb.

  “Let’s stop over there for a spell and get ready,” Reeves said. “I reckon we’re real close.”

  Whoever had built this cabin, probably a sodbuster, had given up and moved on, or it had been destroyed by Indians. Whatever had happened, the sad ruin provided mute testimony to a vanished dream and now even the lingering shadows of the people who had once lived here were long gone from the place.

  I swung out of the saddle, eased the girth on the buckskin, then squatted beside Reeves in the meager shade of a tumbled wall.

  The lawman rolled a smoke and I did likewise, happy that my hands were not trembling.

  “Dusty, we’re going to ride right into Yates’ camp,” Reeves said. “Nothing fancy, just straight up and honest.” He turned and looked at me, his eyes boring into mine. “You fine with that?”

  I nodded. “I reckon.”

  Reeves nodded, drew deep on his cigarette and studied its glowing tip, his face thoughtful. “Now maybe Bully doesn’t have the sand I think he has and will just throw up his hands. If that happens, though I doubt it will, the rest should be easy. But if he doesn’t show the white flag, what happens next will be almighty sudden. I’ve seen Bully Yates work, and he’ll make fancy moves and be powerful fast.”

  He turned to me again. “It will be a close-in business, so go to your Colt. Don’t try to reload because you won’t have time. If there are men still standing after your short gun runs dry, only then go to your rifle. Don’t try head shots. Aim low for the belly. A bullet in the brisket will drop even the toughest hard case nine times out of ten. Don’t rush your fire, but even so, shoot just as quick as you can.” His eyes probed mine, like he was looking for an answer to a question he had yet to ask. “If you’re hit, don’t drop out of the fight. Hit or no, you must stand on your two feet and keep getting in your work.” Now he asked his question. “You understand what I’m telling you, boy?”

  My mouth was suddenly parched and I took a quick swallow of coffee. Even then, my voice when I could finally form words was a feeble croak. “I understand what you’re saying, Bass.” I touched the side of my head. “I got it all wrote down in here.”

  The lawman smiled. “You’ll do, Dusty.” He nodded, but only to himself. “Damn right.” He rose to his feet. “Now let’s go and get her done.”

  We smelled wood smoke while we were still a fair ways from Yates’ camp. Reeves, as was his habit when he embarked on any desperate venture, was humming softly to himself, a kind of tuneless, monotonous chant he made up as he went along.

  We rode through a brush-covered gully between two hills, our horses stepping carefully, and then into a narrow valley that doglegged off to our right. The slopes on either side of us were dotted here and there with post and shin oak and mesquite grew all over the flat.

  The sun was directly above us, mercilessly hot, and the cloudless canopy of the sky was the color of washed-out blue denim. The legs of our horses made a swishing sound as they walked through the long grass and off to my left a bird called, called again, and then fell silent. My saddle creaked and the buckskin’s bit jangled when he tossed his head at flies and I constantly wiped the sweaty palm of my right hand on my pants.

  Ahead of me, I saw Reeves slip the rawhide thong off the hammer of his Colt and I did the same. We reached the dogleg and swung north with the valley. The scent of smoke was stronger now, and I smelled bacon frying.

  The valley ended on the south bank of Sandy Creek, the shallow stream’s entire length lined with cottonwoods and willows, a few scrubby elms raising their thin branches to the sky.

  The wind was gusting, tossing the long grass, bringing with it the camp smells from somewhere off to our right.

  Reeves turned in the saddle. “Close up, Dusty. I want you on my left if the shooting starts.”

  I nodded and kneed my horse beside the lawman’s big sorrel. “I’ll do the talking,” Reeves said. “Bully Yates is a speechifying man, loves the sound of his own voice, so maybe I can sweet-talk him into surrendering.” His smile was thin. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”

  We rode right into their camp before the six outlaws were even aware of our presence.

  A tall man in a black-and-white cow-skin vest and black hat saw us first. His jaw and the armful of wood he was carrying dropped at the same time. “Bully!” he yelled. “We got comp’ny.”

  Bully Yates was a huge man, big in the chest, shoulders and belly, and a cruel white scar stood out like a livid mark of Cain on his unshaven left cheek. The outlaw carefully set the pan of bacon he was frying away from the coals of the fire and rose slowly to his feet. He carried two guns, unusual at that time, worn butt forward in the holsters, their ivory handles yellowed with time and use.

  The five other outlaws crowded close to Yates and I could detect no sign of friendliness in their faces or fear in their cold eyes either. They were all hard cases, well-armed, and like Reeves there didn’t seem to be any backup in them.

  “Morning, Bully,” Reeves said, sitting easy and relaxed in the saddle, his voice calm and conversational.

  “It’s gone morning,” Yates answered, his voice sullen.

  “Well, good afternoon then,” Reeves said, smiling, as pleasant as you please.

  “What do you want with us, Bass?” Yates asked, his eyes wary.

  Reeves nodded. “That’s the way, Bully. Get down to brass tacks right away and to hell with the pleasant ries. I always say that my ownself.” With his left hand he slapped the pocket of his coat. “You know me, Bully. I’m a duly sworn officer of the law and I’ve got me a warrant for your arrest on the charges of murder and robbery. And I’ve got five more just like it for you others. I plan to take all of you to Fort Smith, where you will get a fair trial and later be hanged at Judge Parker’s convenience.”

  “Big talk for a black man with a half-grown boy at his side. Hell, there’s six of us here.”

  Reeves waved a hand in my direction. “This boy is my deputy and he’s already killed seven men in the line of duty. It would grieve me sore if’n you turned out to be number eight, Bully.”

  “In a pig’s eye, he’s killed seven men. That boy ain’t hardly weaned yet.” Yates’ hard blue eyes found mine. “You ride on out of here now, boy. I got no quarrel with you.”

  I shook my head at him. “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Yates, I reckon I’ll stick.”

  The outlaw shrugged. “Your funeral, boy.”

  Reeves kneed his horse a couple of steps closer to Yates. “Come now, Bully. Give it to me straight. Will you not drop those guns and surrender?”

  “To hell with you!” Yates yelled. And his hands flashed to his Colts.

  Reeves had been right. What happened next was almighty sudden.

  I drew my Colt and fired at the man in the cow-skin vest, who was just then drawing a bead on me. My bullet hit him low in the chest and dead center and he screamed and dropped to his knees. I had no time to see what happened next because a bullet split the air inches from my ear and I caught the smoke and muzzle flash of a gun to my left. A tall redhead was thumbing back the hammer readying another shot, but I shot faster. My bullet hit the cylinder of the gun in his hand, bounced off and crashed into his chin. The man made a gurgling sound, rose up on his toes, then stretched his length on the ground.

  I turned quickly and saw Yates lying facedown, his blood staining the grass around him bright scarlet.

  Reeves was still shooting and one man went down to his gun, then another.

  There was only one outlaw still
standing. The man dropped his Colt and yelled: “No! Don’t shoot, Bass! I’m out of it.”

  “Then step away from the fight!” Reeves hollered. “Back there by the tree.” The outlaw quickly did as he was told, stark terror in his eyes, his mouth working.

  I looked around me. The battle had taken less than ten seconds, but in that short time me and Reeves had played hob. Four men were dead and another lay by the fire, gut-shot, groaning his pain, his bootheels convulsively digging into the ground.

  Gunsmoke drifted thick and gray like a mist among the surrounding trees and my ears were ringing from the concussion of the guns.

  I felt sick to my stomach and my head ached. But I had no time to dwell on my miseries because the buckskin suddenly collapsed under me. I kicked free of the stirrups as the horse fell, and I sprawled flat on my back on the grass.

  Reeves, bleeding where a bullet had burned across the thick muscle of his left shoulder, swung out of the saddle and gave me his hand. I grabbed it and he pulled me to my feet.

  “The buckskin took a bullet early in the fight,” he said. “I saw that. But he was game, stayed on his feet until the shooting was over.”

  The lawman slapped me on the back. “You did good, Dusty. When the chips were down you played the man’s part.”

  I looked over at the two men I’d shot. “Are they both dead?” I asked.

  Reeves nodded. “As dead as they’ll ever be. You drilled ’em all right.”

  The green bile rose up into my throat and I turned away and retched convulsively for what seemed like an eternity until I started to figure there must be no limit to the contents of my stomach.

  When I finally stopped and straightened up, I wiped a hand across my mouth and turned to Reeves. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It just came on me sudden like.”

  Reeves, his black eyes unreadable, just smiled, kind of slight and slow and said: “I’ve seen worse.” Now his eyes searched mine, carefully reading what he saw. “It ain’t easy to kill a man, boy. And them as say it is, aren’t men—they’re animals”—he nodded toward Yates, who was staring sightlessly at the blue sky—“like him.”

  The wounded man by the fire groaned and kicked his legs and Reeves stepped over to him. “How you feeling, boy?” he asked.

  The man raised his head, his face gray with pain and shock. “Bass Reeves,” he gritted through bloodstained teeth, “you’re a black son of a bitch.”

  Reeves kneeled and carefully set the frying pan back on the fire. He pulled his knife and one by one turned the bacon strips. Only then did he look at the wounded man. “You’re gut-shot and dying and your time is short, boy,” he said. “You ought not be cussin’ like that when you’re soon to meet your Maker.”

  “Damn you, Reeves,” the man said. He clutched at his stomach and when he brought his hands away again they were stained bright scarlet with blood. “I’m dying hard,” he whispered, “and I wish I’d never left Missouri.”

  “Do you have a ma, boy?” Reeves asked. “Some body I can tell how you met your end?”

  The outlaw, a freckled towhead who looked to be not much older than me, nodded. “I have a ma. She’s back in Missouri but I don’t want her to know I died like a dog. Best she never knows.”

  “Then so be it,” Reeves said. He glanced over his shoulder at the outlaw who had quit the fight. “You,” he yelled, anger edging his voice, “get the hell over here.”

  The man, fear camped out in his eyes, rushed over and stood beside the big lawman, his hands trembling. “Tend to this bacon,” Reeves said. “And mind you don’t burn it.”

  Immediately the outlaw dropped to one knee and shook the bacon in the pan, all the time looking at Reeves in horror, like he was a rattlesnake coiled to strike.

  Reeves rose to his feet and began to feed shells into his Colt. “Dusty, I told you I’d ride with you as far as the Texas border,” he said, reholstering his gun. “But that’s changed now.” He nodded to the outlaw who was frying bacon with a lot more careful attention than it warranted. “After we lay out the dead decent, I’m taking him back to Fort Smith.”

  “What about him?” I asked, pointing to the groaning young towhead.

  “He’ll be dead before nightfall,” Reeves said. “I’d count it a favor if you stay with him until then. Even an outlaw shouldn’t die alone.”

  I opened my mouth to object, then thought better of it. I’d now killed three men and their deaths lay heavy on me. Maybe if I stayed with the dying outlaw it might help even the score with my conscience, though I very much doubted it.

  All I’d ever wanted was to get back to Texas with Simon Prather’s thirty thousand dollars and then go to courting pretty Sally Coleman and give her the Dodge City straw bonnet.

  Now I’d lost the money and been in two desperate gunfights and it was getting so that I could scarce bring Sally’s face to mind, no matter how hard I tried.

  The dream of marrying Sally that I’d kept alive through the heat and dust of the drive up the trail, the longing for her all bunched up in my throat, was fading fast, lost behind a haze of gunsmoke and the death cries of men. It was a worrisome thing and it was nagging at me, giving me no peace.

  I vowed right there and then, as the wounded man by the fire groaned and cursed at his own dying, that when I recovered Simon’s money and got it back to the ranch I’d hang up my Colt and touch it no more.

  I did not want the name of gunfighter. I’d no wish to end up like the men around me, gunmen dead in a lonely place, unmourned, with only the uncaring wind and the trees to whisper of their passing.

  Nor did I want to kill ever again, though even as that realization dawned on me, I knew inevitably there must be more killing, more dying, before I got back my boss’ money and once more crossed the Red and saw the familiar barns and corrals of the SP Connected.

  Above me, a passing smear of thin cloud drew a brief veil across the sky and I heard a fish jump in the creek. Over by the cottonwoods, bees hummed among the wildflowers and at the fire the sizzling bacon in the pan spat and sputtered, filling the air with a down-homey smell that reminded me of cold Sunday mornings and Ma Prather in her gingham apron, round cheeks flushed, serving up hot buttermilk biscuits and coffee steaming from the old fire-blackened pot that stood day and night on the ranch house stove.

  Would I ever sit at her table again?

  It wasn’t difficult to fire the odds facing me and come up with the answer, especially now that Bass Reeves was heading back to Arkansas with his prisoner.

  It was Reeves’ voice that interrupted my thoughts and brought me back to the stark realities of the present.

  “Dusty, come over here and eat,” he said. “It could be a while before you get the chance again.”

  I had no appetite, but I stepped round my dead horse and joined him at the fire. Reeves had taken the frying pan from the nervous outlaw and was holding it just above the flames. There was a half a loaf of stale sourdough bread among Bully Yates’ supplies and this he cut into thick slices, laying each one on top of the bacon to absorb a goodly amount of fat. That done, he placed a few strips of bacon between two slices of bread and passed it to me.

  “Eat, boy,” he said. “It will settle your stomach.”

  Truth to tell, I had to force myself to bite into the sandwich, but I managed to chew it up some and gulped it down.

  Reeves made a sandwich for himself and as the outlaw who had fried the bacon watched it disappear down the lawman’s throat he asked: “What about me, Bass? You came on us so sudden, we hadn’t et.”

  “What’s your name?” Reeves asked the outlaw.

  “It’s Ellison, Jim Ellison,” the man said. He took off his hat, uncovering a mane of wavy black hair. “There are them as call me Curly, on account of this.”

  Reeves nodded. “Heard of you. Heard you killed a man down on the Brazos a spell back.”

  “In a fair fight,” Ellison said, bristling. “He was coming at me with his gun drawed.”

  “Maybe so,”
the lawman said. “But that’s not the way I heard it.”

  “Then you heard wrong,” Ellison said, jamming his hat back on his head.

  “Well, Jim,” said Reeves, nodding toward the frying pan, “There’s a bait o’ bacon left, so help yourself. But the bread is all gone.”

  “Here, take this,” I said, offering my sandwich to the outlaw. “I don’t have much of an appetite.”

  “Thought you looked a bit green around the gills, boy,” Ellison said, eagerly taking the bread and bacon from me. He carefully peeled away some bread from where I’d bitten and threw it on the fire, then, his mouth full, added: “But you showed me something with the Colt’s gun.” He nodded toward the men I’d killed. “Sam and Lew were no pilgrims but you done for them both as nice as you please.”

  “They were coming at me with their guns drawed,” I said.

  Chapter 6

  After Ellison had eaten, Reeves got a set of shackles from his saddlebags and roughly locked the outlaw’s hands behind his back.

  We had no way of burying the dead, having no shovels, so we laid them out as decent as we could, side by side, their arms crossed over their chests.

  Reeves had stripped the men of their gun belts and these he hung over the horn of his saddle.

  When he stepped beside me again, he looked down at the four dead men, then at me and asked: “Dusty, you got any words to say?”

  I shook my head at him. “Bass, I don’t have any words. When we buried a puncher on the trail, Mr. Prather always read from his Bible.”

  “Well, we don’t have one of those,” the lawman said. He turned to Ellison. “You, get on over here.”

  When the man stepped closer, Reeves said: “You got anything to say over your hurting dead?”

  Ellison shrugged. “We rode together but I never liked a one of them.” He shook his head. “I got nothing to say.”

  “So be it.” Reeves sighed. He raised his hat an inch off his head and said: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  Then he turned on his heel and went back to where his horse stood.