Blood and Gold

I felt a sudden pang of fear. The SP Connected was southwest of the Red, and if what Reeves was telling me was correct, the ranch was right in the Apaches’ path. Ma was there with the cook and a couple of stove-up old hands, good enough men, but too few and too stiff to stand off a Mescalero war party.

I sat up and when my head stopped swimming I asked: “Where are the soldiers?”

Reeves shrugged. “The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry with their Navaho and Apache scouts are out after them. Buffalo soldiers”—he said this last without noticeable pride—“but they won’t catch Victorio. He’s way too smart for horse sod’jers.”

“Ma Prather and the SP Connected are in west Texas,” I said, giving voice to my fears.

“Then she’s in a hell of a fix, ain’t she, boy?” Bass Reeves said.

Chapter 4

Only when Reeves stood did I realize how big he was. He was well over six feet and I guessed he weighed about two hundred pounds. He was big in the chest and shoulders with muscular arms and long, powerful legs and he had the Western rider’s narrow waist and hips. His knuckles were large and knotted, scarred all over from dozens of rough-and-tumble fistfights, and his nose had been broke more than once.

I was told later that Bass Reeves could whip any two men in a bare-knuckle fight, and by the time I met him, he’d already killed twelve outlaws in the line of duty, either with his .38.40 Colt or his same caliber Winchester.

Now he looked down at me and asked: “Hungry, boy?”

To my surprise I found I was. I nodded and said: “I could eat.”

Reeves nodded toward my sack of supplies. “What you got in your poke?”

“Bacon,” I said. “And some corn bread.”

The big lawman nodded. “I got me a slab of salt pork and a few three-day-old sourdough biscuits, so we’ll have ourselves a feast.” He smiled. “Good for you, boy. Build up your strength.”

After we’d eaten I did feel better, though I was still very weak and my head was pounding.

Reeves said he’d ride with me as far as the Red, but that was where his jurisdiction ended and he would go no farther.

“Maybe we’ll catch up with Lafe Wingo and the others by then,” he said. “Maybe not. But we’ll give it our best shot.”

At first light we saddled up and headed south.

It was raining again.

Reeves’ big red stud was a sight to see. Montana-bred, he went more than eighteen hands and had a right pretty white blaze. The horse’s powerful legs with their four white stockings stepped high, his long, rangy stride eating up distance. But the buckskin was game and kept right along with him.

I was still very weak and dizzy and couldn’t wear my hat because of the fat bandage on my head. But after the rain soaked that bandage through, I tossed it away, replacing it with my hat, even though the tight leather band threatened to punish me for days to come.

Bass Reeves was a personable man and I enjoyed his company. In the past, I had ridden with a number of black punchers and they did their work well. They were uncomplaining, even riding the drag, and I never had any problem with them.

There was a stillness in the big lawman—a kind of serenity, I guess—and when he reached for a thing his hand did not tremble. He pointed out things of interest along the trail that I’d never paid no mind to before. Maybe he was trying to keep my spirits up, because right then I was mighty glum, worrying about Simon Prather’s money and how I’d get it back.

Reeves showed me the deep holes of the little burrowing owls, the only owls that eat fruits and seeds as part of their diet, mainly gathered from the tesajilla and prickly pear cactus. He pointed out where rutting elk had rubbed their antlers against trees, stripping the velvet as they prepared for combat. He said to listen close because their challenging bugles could echo for miles through the gulches between the bluffs and mesas.

Reeves could put a name to just about every bird and plant we saw and he told me about a cave to the east of us where millions of bats roosted during the day, then took off in a spiraling funnel cloud that filled the sky at nightfall.

“I reckon it takes maybe thirty minutes for all them bats to leave their cave,” he said. “Dusty, pretty soon the sky is full of them, filled with flapping black dots as far as a man can see. Some college feller told me one time the bats eat ten tons of insects every night, and that’s how come the sodbusters love them so much.”

Bass Reeves taught me a lot of things during those days we rode together.

When I happened to let it drop that I was no great shakes with the rifle, he showed me how to hold the sights of my Winchester real still on the target, told me when to inhale and when to hold my breath and how to get a clean break on the trigger so I didn’t jerk the gun.