The Legend of Bass Reeves by Gary Paulsen Page A

a camp by his master to fetch somesupplies. He would wait until close to dark, and as soon as he got his goods he would vanish into the darkness and nobody would be able to follow him.
    It was a simple plan, and to his surprise it worked perfectly.
    He waited until the sun was below the hills. He left most of his money with the horse and mule and took four five-dollar gold pieces—he had learned the denominations while playing poker—and shuffled down onto the trail in what Mammy had once told him was the “darky shuffle,” which made whites ignore you. There was no traffic on the trail and he made his way easily, thinking of what he would buy.
    It wasn’t much of a store, just a shack with some crude shelves filled with sacks and small boxes. He went inside into darkness. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that the proprietor was an Indian wearing a white man’s suit, and the second thing he noticed was that, sitting on a barrel in the back corner to the right, another Indian dressed in white men’s clothing held a large-bore, double-barrel shotgun aimed dead into the middle of Bass’s stomach.
    Neither Indian said anything. They sat watching Bass become more and more unnerved.
    “I need … I need to get some things for Master.” He went to the counter and put the twenty dollars in four small five-dollar gold pieces on the rough wood. “Tell me when I spend that.”
    Neither Indian said anything or moved while Bass went from sack to barrel and back to sack again. There was no candy, which was just as well. He’d been thinking about it all winter and would probably have bought too much and drawn attention.
    They sat there and let Bass get a seven-pound slab of bacon. He found some smaller cloth sacks on a shelf and used them to hold twenty pounds of cornmeal, rock sugar and salt. He spied a box of percussion caps that worked for both the rifle and revolver. He felt naked without his firearms, especially when he watched the barrel of that shotgun follow him around. He picked out a cooking pot with a lid, a one-pound tin of black powder and a small block of lead. Both the revolver and the rifle were .36-caliber and he had a small mold and ladle to melt lead.
    Each time he put another item on the board counter, he would look at the Indian in the suit and the man would say nothing, so he kept going. Two blankets, a short length of canvas, a twenty-foot length of soft rope, a box of lucifer stick matches, a packet of needles and a roll of heavy thread, and a coarse steel hoof rasp. While there were no boots or shoes, there were knee-high moccasins. He took two pairs down that looked big enough and put them on the counter, and the Indian finally said:
    “That’s enough.”
    He nodded, put everything into the tow sack he had brought and staggered out the door.
    Outside it was near dark and there was still nobody moving on the trail, although there were some children playing near a hut. He walked a short distance out of the settlement, and when he was sure nobody was following him, turned off the trail and headed into the brush toward his horse, mule and gear.
    He was lugging a fair load and it was hard dark. It would have been nearly impossible to find the animals, but they smelled him. The Roman nose whickered to him and he followed the sound.
    There was no moon, but at least there were no clouds. He decided against a fire but he could see stars, and he put one blanket on the ground and another on top and rolled them up and slept under the tied horses, luxuriating in the feel of the soft wool, a dead sleep all night.
    The next morning he saddled the Roman nose and made a blanket-roll packsaddle, which he put on the mule, to carry what he’d bought. He headed northwest, almost directly away from the trail.
    He rode slowly but steadily until he was at least five miles from the trail and had seen no other tracks. There he found a narrow, shallow canyon that went back a mile, with water and good grass coming green, and he