In all the annals of frontier history, there was no lawman as skilled or tireless in meting out justice then former runaway slave, Bass Reeves. Having lived with the Five Civilized Tribes during the Civil War years, Reeves was taught tracking and hunting by the natives of this rugged land. After marrying and starting a horse ranch, he soon realized raising a large family (he would have ten children) was expensive. Thus when offered to pin on the U.S. Deputy Marshal’s badge, Reeves accepted for two practical reasons; his own respect for the law and the fact that Marshal’s got to keep whatever bounty was posted on the outlaws they hunted.
In the course of his thirty year career as a U.S. Deputy Marshal working for Judge Isaac Parker out of Fort Smith, Reeves captured well over three thousand felons. An expert tracker and marksmen, Reeves was involved in 14 gun battles and never wounded once. As he was illiterate, when given a writ, Reeves would have the Marshal describe the actual outlaw physically so that he never once brought in the wrong man. More than anything it was Reeves devotion to the law that made him a force to be reckoned with as he saw it as the great equalizer. All men, regardless of race or creed, were equal under the law; a philosophy nurtured in him by Judge Parker.
Although fictions, the stories in this collection were inspired by Reeves actual deeds while policing the Oklahoma badlands. In this volume, writers R.A. Jones, Terry Alexander and Mel Odom put the legendary Marshal to the test in three brand new adventures. From facing an old deadly foe, hunting a killer in Indian country and going after a preacher who believes himself to be God’s own avenging angel. This is the Wild West at the wildest, challenging the one man who could not be beaten, Marshal Bass Reeves. Read with stirring excitement by Stuart Gauffi.
Table of Contents:
A Pound of Flesh
by R.A. Jones
Death in the Nations
by Terry Alexander
Glass Devil
by Mel Odom