by Charles Ray
They searched for two days, checking every dry wash, box canyon, and hidden pasture, asking at farms, ranches, small settlements, and growing towns, but kept coming up dry. A few times, people told them that they’d seen a bunch of men driving a herd of cattle, but each time, when Bass questioned them, the stories fell apart. Either the number of drovers didn’t match the number he knew were in the Dawkins gang, or they included Mexican and colored cowboys, and he knew that everyone in the Dawkins gang was white.
Each time they hit a dry hole, Stern’s grumbling about wanting to go home got louder. Bass shut his mind to the muttering and kept looking. He was determined that every member, every live member depending upon whether or not they decided to shoot it out, would be in a prisoner wagon when he returned to Fort Smith from this trip.
In the evening of the second day, as they were looking for a suitable place to camp for the night, they met a lone rider, slumped in the saddle, heading east.
“Howdy, stranger,” Bass said. “Wherebouts you bound?”
A middle-aged man with stringy brown hair that hung loosely beneath his Stetson, and a scraggly mustache, he eyed Bass with a guarded, but not unfriendly look.
“I’m on my way to Muskogee,” he said. “Old rancher over that way needs a new foreman, and he offered me the job. I’se down to my last dime, and sweepin’ saloons in Lawton, so I figgered, why not.”
“Muskogee is a nice little town. Say, you didn’t happen to pass a gang of men drivin’ a herd of cows, did you?”
“Matter of fact, I did. Yestiddy, when I’se lookin’ for a place to camp for the night, I run into this buncha cowpokes, ‘bout five or six of ‘em, with a herd. They’s camped ‘bout fifty mile east of here. Right unfriendly bunch they was, too. Didn’t like me campin’ near ‘em and wouldn’t even share their coffee with a stranger.”
“Now, that’s downright mean. We was just about to stop and make camp ourselves,” Bass said. “You welcome to bunk down with us, and we’d be happy to share our food and coffee.”
“Now, that’s the kind of hospitality a man expects on the trail. Don’t mind iffen I do.”
They found a clearing in a stand of pines just off the road with a shallow, but clear spring not far away, and set up camp. The prisoners were chained to the wheels of the wagons, and Steadman was assigned the first guard shift. Jackson got a fire started, and very soon had hot cups of coffee in everyone’s hand—except for the prisoners, who were forced to wait until the food was ready to get anything other than water to drink.
Over coffee, the rider, Deke Johnson, added details to his encounter with the cattle herders, some of which Bass discounted as the natural tendency of lonely men to embroider tales with each telling, but other details rang true, so he added them to his store of knowledge about the Dawkins gang.
He learned, for instance, that Clint Dawkins doted on his younger brother, Billy, who he was grooming to be leader of the gang when he himself got too old to handle the rigors of the job. He also learned that both Dawkins appeared to be stone hard men, who would kill at the drop of a hat, and not feel a second of remorse over it, but that mainly they didn’t seem too smart. They had what Johnson called ‘book larnin’, but not much else,’ and could do sums and spell and such, but had no real understanding of or sympathy with other people.
They talked on into the night, until Bass finally called an end to the story-telling and ordered everyone except Stern, who was by now doing his stint of guard duty, to get some rest, for they had a long ride come the morning.
CHAPTER 5
They were up before the sun the next day. Jackson stoked the fire and fixed a meal of hot trail biscuits, beans, fried strips of beef, and coffee. After everyone had eaten, prisoners included, they parted company with Johnson, who again, in his laconic cowboy way, thanked them for their hospitality, and invited them to drop by and see him in Muskogee the next time they were riding through the area.
Eight miles west of their camp site, they came upon a small settlement, not yet a town, but clearly becoming one, consisting of a general store and saloon, the only two fully-finished wood frame buildings, and several tents and partially finished buildings, housing a barber shop, a hardware and notions store, another saloon, and sundry other merchants. The place looked like it had a population of around three hundred people, mostly, it appeared, farmers who worked as sharecroppers on Chickasaw tribal lands around the settlement.
They stopped at a tent which sat in front of a wood rail fence with a crudely lettered sign announcing that it was a combination livery stable-blacksmith shop. The proprietor, a muscular half-breed who looked part black, part Indian, with his kinky hair off his face by a red bandanna, came out of the tent when they arrived. When he saw Bass he smiled, displaying a mouth with more gaps than teeth.
“Hi y’all,” he said. “What kin I do fer you today?”
“Howdy, yourself,” Bass said. “We’s just passin’ through, but if would be nice if we could water our horses.”
The man pointed at a rough wood water trough at the corner of the fence.
“Help yourself. Water’s free. You want me to check your horses’ feet? Make sure they ain’t got a loose shoe, or a rock stuck between shoe and hoof?”
“Naw, we already done that. I would like to ask you a few questions, though, if you don’t mind.”
“Shoot, I ain’t got no customers right now, so I reckon you kin jest ask away, mister.”
“We’s lookin’ fer a bunch of outlaws, the Dawkins gang. I heard they might’ve passed through this way. You seen anything?”
“Well now, I sho nuff did. Say, ain’t you that fella, Bass Reeves?” Bass nodded. “I done heard a lot about you. First colored man to be a deputy marshal, and all. Ain’t never thought I’d lay eyes on you, though.”
“Heck,” Bass said. “I wasn’t the first, I don’t reckon. Marshal Fagan, he done hired 200 new deputies, and a whole bunch of ‘em was colored. I was just part of the batch.”
“Whatever. You still famous in these here parts. Now, this here Dawkins bunch; don’t know iffen it was them, but a buncha fellas did come through with a small herd ‘bout two days back. They stopped here ‘cause one of they horses done throwed a shoe, so they had me put on a new one.”
“They say where they was headin’?”
“Naw, they didn’t talk much, kinda unfriendly, really. But, with them cattle they was drivin’ I’d say they was bound for Fort Sill.”
Bass described Clint Dawkins from the description Marshal Fagan had read to him from the wanted poster. The blacksmith smiled.
“You got the boss of that outfit right enough. A mean lookin’ cuss, too. Eyes like a snake. I swear I don’t think I ever saw him blink.”
“I appreciate the information,” Bass said. He took two bits from his pocket and tossed it to the man who deftly caught it.
“Ain’t no need to pay me, mister, I ain’t done nothin to earn this.”
Bass smiled. “Naw, you earned it, my friend.” He touched a finger to the brim of his Stetson. “You have yourself a good day now. Come on, boys, we got us some ridin’ to do.”
CHAPTER 6
Less than two miles west of the settlement, they picked up a trail that both Bass and Henry were sure had to have been made by the Dawkins gang. Cattle, grass eating animals, do two things that irritate most cow herders, and they do them while moving, they pass a lot of foul-smelling gas, and they excrete that part of the grass that their multiple stomachs doesn’t digest. The gas dissipates, but the manure picks up dust as it hardens and turns into flat, lumpy rocks that lose a lot of their foulness when they dry and make a fairly decent bit of kindling out on the plains where trees are scarce. The presence of dozens of these cow patties strung out along a half-mile stretch of level ground could only have been left by a herd on the move. The presence of shod-hoof marks mixed in among the cattle tracks was even more convincing.
Bass and Henry squatted near a pile of drying manure.
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p; “From the way it’s dried out,” Henry said. “I’d say it was left here less than three days ago.”
“That means they ain’t far ahead,” Bass said.
Henry looked up at the sky. The sun was a bit past its high point, but not quite at mid-afternoon.
“I’d say before dark if we push it.”
“Maybe we ought to leave Jake, Alvin and Harvey with the prisoners, and you and me ride on ahead.”
“You sure just the two of us can take on the whole Dawkins gang?”
Henry had known Bass to take some long chances, and in truth, the man seemed to be blessed by the Great Spirit, having escaped certain death on many occasions, and despite the number of times outlaws had taken shots at him, including one time his saddle’s horn had been shot off while he was sitting in it, he’d never been hit. But, against vicious outlaws like the Dawkins gang, could his luck run out? Henry thought about it for a few seconds, and then made up his mind. Stern and Steadman were good men, but the two of them wouldn’t change the odds all that much.
“On second thought,” he said. “I reckon we probably can. We should find a good place to camp and get them set up.”
CHAPTER 7
There was no suitable camping spot nearby, and Bass didn’t want them setting up too near any settlement, to prevent danger to civilians, or cause them to have to contend with people coming to gawk at the chained-up criminals, so the prisoner and cook wagons stayed with Bass and Hank for ten miles.
They came to a suitable-looking area, a slight bowl in the earth through which a stream flowed, with a few stands of evergreens and hardwoods, and sufficient grass for the animals. The only problem was that it was already occupied.
They saw a covered wagon, tilted to one side, two oxen, and three people near the stream. White smoke from a fire drifted lazily upwards.
“This looks like a good place,” Henry said.
“Yeah,” Bass said. “But, I don’t like that there’s people already here.”
“Maybe they’ll be leaving come morning.”
“Let’s go ask.” He turned and shouted back at Steadman, who drove the lead prisoner wagon. “Y’all slow down and give us time to find out who them people are down there. Then, we’ll wave you on down.”
Instead of slowing down, Steadman brought his wagon to a halt, stopping the two behind him.
“Well, you can’t get much slower than that,” Henry said.
Bass shrugged. “Suppose so. Come on, let’s see what we got down there.”
What they had was a young man in his late twenties, his very pregnant wife, who looked to be still in her teens, and a toddler, just starting to walk on his own, two oxen looking like they were ready for the meat wagon, and a wagon with a broken left rear wheel.
The toddler looked fascinated, but the adults had frightened expressions on their faces as Bass and Henry approached. The young man’s hand hovered over an old shotgun propped against the left front wheel.
“No need for that, young fella,” Bass said. He flipped up the collar of his jacket so that his badge was visible. “I’m Deputy US Marshal Bass Reeves, and this is Henry Lone Tree, my posse man. We’re on our way west of here to arrest some wanted men.”
The young man visibly relaxed, but still stared at Bass.
Í didn’t know there was any colored lawmen out this way,” he said.
“Yeah, quite a few. Judge Parker over in Fort Smith done hired us, mainly to bring law to the Injun Territory. Where you folks from, and where you headin’?”
“We be the Lanes, George and Clara, and the little twig here is Albert. We hail from Gallatin, Tennessee, and are on our way to homestead in Oregon.”
“That’s a mighty long way to go for a single wagon,” Bass said. “And, mighty dangerous to boot.”
“We were gonna turn north at Fort Sill and go up to Kansas City and join a wagon train, but as you can see we had a bit of a problem.”
“How’d your wheel get broke?”
“Things were going just fine until this bunch of men with a herd of cattle overtook us yesterday. The oxen got spooked by so many other bovines and started shying. Well, that got that herd to acting up, and they stampeded and one of ‘em stumbled into our wheel and broke it.”
“Didn’t the cowpokes herding the cattle offer to help you fix it?”
George Lane snorted. “Help us? By Jove, no. In fact, the leader of the bunch, a real mean man, blamed us for spooking his cattle. They just rounded them up and rode away, leaving us here to fend for ourselves.”
Bass recognized Clint Dawkins’ handiwork. The man left a trail of misery everywhere he went. No sense, though, in letting these naïve youngsters know how close they were to death, because Dawkins had been known to shoot a man down for stepping in front of him on the sidewalk outside a saloon.
“Henry, you pretty good with stuff like this,” Bass said. “Whyn’t you take a look at these folks’ wheel and see if we can fix it.”
Henry nodded and slid from his horse. The younger Lane walked up to him as he squatted to inspect the broken wheel and ran a pudgy hand over his face. Henry smiled, showing a mouthful of bright white teeth, which caused the youngster to double over giggling.
“Your friend’s pretty good with children,” Lane said. Little Albert doesn’t usually cotton to strangers, but he seems fascinated by him. He’s an Indian, right?”
Bass grunted assent. “Yeah, he’s from one of the tribes that live here in the Territory since the government took they land back east.” He wanted to say, so that white folks could farm it, but there was no sense blaming these youngsters for what some bewhiskered old men in Washington did in the name of progress. “He ain’t got no kids himself, ‘cause he can’t find a squaw who’ll put up with him. Me, now, I got me nine, no, ten young’uns back home in Arkansas.”
“You must miss them,” Clara Lane spoke for the first time.
“Somethin’ awful, but this here job of bringin’ law to this lawless land, like Judge Parker wants done, means I got to spend time out here away from ‘em. It feel powerful good to git home, though.”
“I’m looking forward to making a new home for our family,” she said, rubbing her stomach.
“I don’t think that young’un gon’ wait ‘til you gets to Oregon from the looks of things.”
The young man scratched his head. “I think you’re right. We might have to stop in Kansas City until after it’s born.”
“More like you gon’ have to stay a spell in Fort Sill,” Bass said. “I don’t watched my wife with child ten times, and I can tell you, this wife of yours ain’t but a month away at most, and that’s less time than it’ll take you to get up to Kansas City in a wagon pulled by oxen.”
“There are places to stay at Fort Sill? I’m no soldier.”
“Aw, just outside the fort is Lawton. Ain’t much to look at, but it’s a growin’ town, and it’s got some cheap hotels and rooming houses that’ll put you up. Got some good doctors, too.”
Lane looked to be thinking over Bass’s suggestion. Henry stood, brushed off his pants, and patted the little boy on the head. “It’s cracked plumb through,” he said. “But, with some rawhide, I can patch it back together good enough to get you to Fort Sill. You get there, though, you will need to buy a new wheel.”
George Lane looked like he wanted to cry.
“I don’t know how to thank you gentlemen,” he said. “I’d just about given up and dreaded we might die out here.”
“T’aint no need to thank us,” Bass said. “Out here on the frontier folks look out for each other. That cattle drover you run into is the exception, ‘cause most people out here know that the only way to survive is to help you neighbor, so when you in need he’ll help you.”
Watching Henry wrap the splintered wheel back together with some of the rawhide he kept in his saddle bags, Bass wondered if this family would survive the rigors of a wagon train ride from Kansas to Oregon, through some wild country, when they couldn’t even cope wi
th being broken down on the road here in Indian Territory. Instead of making a decent camp, they’d just started a fire and sat down near their wagon waiting for someone else to come along and solve their problem. If winter caught them on the Kansas plains, a snowstorm in the mountains of Colorado, or even a dust storm here in the Territory, they would surely perish. If not for the two children, one barely walking, and one not yet born, he would just ignore it, and go on about his business, but when it came to children, Bass had a heart as big as the wide-open plains.
“You know, you folks might want to think about settling down near Fort Sill for a spell,” he said. “Least ways until the young’uns is old enough to take a long wagon train ride.”
“But, what would I do,” Lane said. “I’m, or rather, I was, a clerk for my father’s lumber mill back home. I know a bit about farming and raising stock, but not much else. How would we make a living in a place like Fort Sill?”
Bass wanted to scream. If he couldn’t make it in a populated area, with soldiers just a stone’s throw away, how did he think he was going to make it on a homestead, miles away from his nearest neighbor, and likely no law less than a week’s ride away? If this had been one of his sons, he’d be administering a severe tongue lashing, but this was a stranger, and one in distress at that, so he decided to be polite.
“Man what can keep books can always find work ‘round a army post,” he said. “In town, too, for that matter. I reckon you apply yourself, by the time this new young’un is ready for the trip, you’ll done piled yourself up a nice little nest egg.”
“Hm, you might be right. What do you think, Clara?”
“Well, I was worrying about such a long trip in my condition, or with a suckling. I think we should take the deputy’s advice.”