Black Gun, Silver Star - Art T. Burton

Bass Reeves was a former slave who became a successful and fairly famous deputy U.S. marshal during the late 1800s into the early 1900s. He operated predominantly in the Indian Territories that eventually became Oklahoma. He's not the only African-American deputy marshal that served in that part of the country, but it seems like he's the best known.

Based on Burton's book, Reeves spent a lot of time arresting people for selling liquor in the Territories where that was prohibited. Not that there weren't murders, assaults, horse thefts, but going by the records Burton turns up in federal archives and various newspapers of the time, bootlegging was a real problem.

The writing style is not the most engaging, as at times Burton feels almost like he's just reciting facts. On such and such a day, Reeves arrested this person for assault. On the next day, he arrested this other person for bootlegging. I'm not sure if that's just his style, or if it's a consequence of the scattered sources he has to work with (there are a surprising number of cases where Burton couldn't find anything about how they turned out.) Occasionally, he'll go on a tangent about someone else, say the primary bailiff for Judge Isaac Parker of the Fort Smith region that doesn't really seem to have any relation to Reeves.

At other times he can be an interesting writer, when he attempts to draw inferences about Reeves from the stories about him. The anecdotes about different ways he would outsmart or capture criminals, or the fact that Reeves would in some cases arrest white criminals the same as Native American or African-American ones, but in other situations, he'd bring a white deputy along with him.

it's also interesting to see, in the cases when there's more than one account of an event, how different they can be. Reeves was put on trial for killing his cook at one point while they were out on a trip. It seems like there was a dog involved, but in some cases the dog was Reeves, and the cook poured hot grease down its throat when it begged. In other cases, it was a random dog following them and Reeves objected to the cook feeding it. Some accounts don't mention a dog at all.

'When Webb looked away, Reeves made his move. He leaped to his feet, knocked Webb's gun away, wrapped his large left hand around Webb's throat, and drawing his own pistol with his right hand, he shoved it into Webb's face. Webb, with a giant of a man choking the life out of him and looking into the ignorant end of a Colt .45 as well, gurgled out a meek surrender.'