Sam Bass by Bryan Woolley Read Free Book Online

The Denton Mare’s lead rope was tied to his saddle horn. “Leaving?” I asked.
    â€œYeah,” Sam said. “Jenny and me is running out of suckers around here.”
    â€œWhere you headed?”
    â€œUp to Montague County to find somebody that ain’t heard of Jenny yet. Then up to Injun Territory. I hear them Injuns up there is mighty proud of their horseflesh.”
    â€œThat’s dangerous,” I said. “Indians don’t like to lose. And when they lose they don’t like to pay.”
    Sam smiled. “We’ll find a way.” He leaned down and shook my hand, then wheeled the buckskin and headed northwest at a fast trot. After all we had been to each other, that was it.
    Stories soon began drifting back to Denton. Jenny had won in Montague County and in Indian Territory as well. As I had predicted, the Indians hadn’t taken kindly to her victories, and Sam and his bunch had fled back south of the Red River. The following spring I heard he was in San Antonio, that Dick had been killed in a knife fight, that Underwood had split with Sam and joined a cattle drive to Kansas.
    Then I heard that Sam had gone into partnership with a saloonkeeper named Joel Collins. They were pretending that Collins owned The Denton Mare, and she was racing at South Texas tracks under his name. Meanwhile Sam was pretending to be a trainer and judge of racing stock and was roaming the southern part of the state checking other people’s horses. Whenever he found one that he knew Jenny could beat, he advised the owner to match it against the Collins mare and bet heavily. Of course, Jenny always won. If rumor can be trusted, Sam and Collins played that trick from San Antonio to the Rio Grande, and even in Mexico. Then I heard that Sam and Collins had bought a herd and headed north.
    But in the fall of ‘77 the horrible story came down the trails. A gang headed by Joel Collins had robbed a Union Pacific train in Nebraska. Collins was dead, the cowboys said, and Sam Bass was on the run.
    One night not long after that, I was in Ben’s shop, mending a coffee pot for a traveling preacher, and Sam stepped in and closed the door. I glanced up, but his side of the room was dark, and he had grown a mustache. I didn’t recognize him. “I’m closed,” I said. “Soon as I finish this job, I’ll be going home.”
    â€œStill lazy, ain’t you, Frank?”
    â€œSam!” I fairly sprang to him and embraced him, and he laughed. We made the nonsense noises that friends or brothers make when they meet after a long time and slapped backs and patted arms. I poked him in the belly with my thumb and touched something hard. He unbuttoned his shirt and whipped out a money belt and held it out like a fat, heavy snake.
    â€œMe and Joel got lucky,” he said. He laid his hat on my work bench beside the lamp. He opened the belt and tilted it into the hat, as if pouring grain into a trough. Coins glittered in the lamp light, clinked into the hat until it was full. “That’s what’s in them Black Hills.”
    â€œYour partner’s dead,” I said.
    â€œI heard.” His black eyes flickered in the dim light. “What the hell, Frank. We all go sometime.”
    â€œNot Collins’s way. They shot him down like a dog.”
    Sam scooped up a handful of the coins and dropped them into the hat one by one. “I’ve got five hundred of these,” he said. “Ten thousand dollars.”
    â€œYou oughtn’t have come here, Sam. Everybody in Denton knows you.”
    â€œHow many coffeepots would you have to fix to get ten thousand dollars, Frank?”
    â€œEvery one in the world, I guess. You better ride out of here.”
    He shook his head. “I got plans. Lay down them tools and come with us.”
    â€œWho’s ‘us’?”
    â€œMe and Underwood. He’s with me. I need you, too, Frank.” “Not me,