“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.