The Legend of Bass Reeves by Gary Paulsen

than he would have if he’d been moving where it was better traveled. He managed to kill deer whenever he needed to, and twice in the first year he took buffalo, which stood like cows to be slaughtered. As the first winter began, he also killed some wild longhorns for meat.
    The country was rough, broken with stony gullies and little bluffs. When it grew too cold to travel, he picked a short canyon with a rocky back wall and made a crude shelter with downed wood and sod pieces he cut from the dirt with his knife. He left room at the top for smoke to get out and covered the roof with deer hides, used two stiff buffalo hides for a bed, and wintered there, rationing the cornmeal and eating deer and buffalo half raw. He missed Mammy and even Flowers and would have felt sorry for himself except for the knowledge that bad as it was,fugitive that he was, cold as he sometimes got, hungry as he sometimes became …
    He was free.
    Whenever he began to well up with self-pity, he said out loud, “No man owns me or will ever own me again.” Sometimes he thought about that witch dog talking to him years ago. “Things will change.”
    He was living a new life now.
    The winter passed without much snow and without his seeing a single other soul. This wasn’t strange to him, because he knew that in the wilderness no one traveled much in the winter.
    He passed his time tending to the horse and the mule and found them good company; they listened to him make plans for hunting and keeping warm, and the sound of their breathing comforted him throughout the long, dark nights. He spent hours remembering his life back at the mister’s ranch with Mammy and Flowers, although he avoided thinking about what might have happened to the mister. He spoke to Mammy as if she could hear him and found it easy and pleasant to imagine her responses. All in all, he was not as lonely as he might have been in his solitary condition.
    By spring, the horse and mule looked poorly, all winter having eaten only dry grass they managed to scuff up. But when the grass came green, they seemed to eat twenty-four hours a day, and by the time Bass was ready to leave, they looked healthy enough to ride.
    That winter he had made a mental list of things he needed if he could find some kind of a store, and if he dared to head in to buy things: needles and heavy thread, canvas and wool to make clothes. A pair of boots wouldbe wonderful. He’d run off barefoot, and had made a pair of exceptionally crude moccasins out of deer hide and rawhide lacing, which were only slightly better than nothing. In the middle of winter there were times he thought he would lose his toes or feet, and the only thing that saved him was the firewood he found in thick stands of low brush and cottonwood around his camp.
    That first spring he worked his way east and slightly north until he started to run into more heavily traveled trails. Most of them seemed to head toward the east and he followed them, until at last he came up on a rise and saw below him, about a mile ahead, what passed for a settlement.
    Five small huts arranged in a row along one side of the trail.
    He moved back off the rise, tied the mule and horse and watched the settlement for two and a half days. There was a fairly steady stream of travelers going by—some on horse, many on foot—and mostly Indians, although he saw a few who might be white men. It was hard to tell at that distance, though he was fairly certain he had seen some black people too.
    They’d stop at the center hut. Bass moved closer and saw that they came out carrying sacks and bundles.
    “A store of some kind,” he murmured. Just thinking about it made his stomach rumble.
    He watched another day and decided he would have to be very careful and try not to attract any attention. He would move the horse and mule back into the brush and leave them. Then he’d take the tow sack Mammy had sent with him and go down on foot, pretending to be a servant or slave sent from