Free The Outlaw Josey Wales by Forrest Carter Page A

agree to that. It sounds fair and right to me.”
    “Fair’n fair and right as rain,” Josey said with satisfaction. “Now me being a public citizen and sich as that,” Josey continued, “I reckin I’ll take along my part of the propitty, not havin’ time to wait around fer the court to divide it all up.”
    “I think you should have all the horses,” Zukie said generously. “They … that is, they really belong to you.”
    “I ain’t a hawg,” Josey said. “We got to think of the other public citizens. One hoss will do me fine. You git thet loop of rope hangin’ yonder, and ye come on out, and we’ll ketch up my propitty.”
    Zukie scurried out the door ahead of Josey and trotted to the corral. They caught up the big black. Josey rigged a halter and mounted the roan. From his saddle he looked down at Zukie, who nervously shifted his feet.
    “Reckin ye can live, mister,” and his voice was cold, “but a woman is a woman. I got friends in the Nations, and word gittin’ to me of thet woman bein’ mistreated would strike me unkindly.”
    Zukie bobbed his head, “I pledge to you, Mr. Wales … I give my solemn word, she will not be … again. I will…”
    “I’ll be seein’ ye,” and with that, Josey sank spurs to the roan and was off in a whirl of dust, leading the black behind him. The Indian woman watched him from where she crouched behind the lean-to.
    As Josey topped the first rise he found Lone waiting with rifle trained on the trading post. Lone’s eyes glistened as he looked at the black.
    “A feller would have to sleep with thet hoss to keep his grandma from stealing him,” he said admiringly.
    “Yeah,” Josey grinned. “Got him cheap too. But if we ain’t movin’ on in a minute, the Army’s most like to git ’em. A patrol is due any minute from Fort Gibson.”
    They worked fast, switching Lone’s gear from the gray gelding to the black. The gelding moved off immediately, cropping grass.
    “He’ll be all right in a week… maybe he’ll run free the rest of his life,” Lone said wistfully.
    “Let’s move out,” Josey said, and he swung the big roan down the hill, followed by Lone on the black. They were magnificently mounted now; the roan scarcely a hand higher than the strong black horse. Fording the Canadian, they moved toward the Seminole and the Choctaw Nations.
    Less than an hour later, Zukie Limmer was pouring out his story to the Army patrol from Fort Gibson, and in three hours dispatches were alerting the state of Texas. Added to the dispatches were these words:
    SHOOT ON SIGHT. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISARM, REPEAT: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISARM. FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD: DEAD.
    The tale of the pistol spin fled southward, keeping pace with the dispatches. The story grew with each telling through the campfires of the drovers coming up the trail … and spread to the settlements. Violent Texas knew and talked of Josey Wales long before he was to reach her borders … the bloody ex-lieutenant of Bloody Bill; the pistol fighter with the lightning hands and stone nerves who mastered the macabre art of death from the barrels of Colt .44’s.

Chapter 10
    They rode far into the night. Josey left the trail heading to Lone and followed his lead. The Cherokee was a crafty trailsman, and with the threat of pursuit he brought all his craft into practice.
    Once, for a mile, they rode down the middle of a shallow creek and brought their horses to the bank when Lone found loose shale rock that carried no print. For a distance of ten miles they boldly traveled the well-marked Shawnee Trail, mixing their tracks with the tracks of the trail. Each time they paused to rest the horses Lone drove a stick in the ground… grasping it with his teeth, he “listened,” feeling for the vibrations of horses. Each time as he remounted he shook his head in puzzlement, “Very light sound … maybe one horse … but it’s stayin’ with us… we ain’t shakin’ it off.”
    Josey frowned, “I don’t