Sam Bass Read Online Free Page A

tried harder to make something of himself than Sam did. As I’ve already said, he was a hard worker, and at that time there wasn’t a cheating bone in his body. He returned from every freighting trip with all the goods and money he was supposed to bring back, and sometimes more. Once he returned so much of the expense money I had given him that I asked if he had fed the horses during the trip. He just said, “Don’t worry till you see their ribs.”
    I didn’t worry. I would have trusted him with anything, especially my horses. People around town took to calling him “Honest Eph.” I don’t know why, unless they just thought “Honest Eph” sounded better than “Honest Sam.” Anyway, he earned the name. And I couldn’t have felt closer to him if he had been my brother or son. I even invited him to sit with me and Mrs. Egan at night when we read the Bible to each other. “Are you reading the Old Testament or the New Testament? “he would ask. When we were reading the Old Testament, he would join us sometimes, but he wouldn’t when we were reading the New. He didn’t care about Jesus and Paul, but he loved some of the stories in the Old Testament, especially those about Samson and those about David before he became king, when he was a bandit.
    One night I read the story about Pharaoh’s dream and Joseph’s interpretation of it as a sign that Egypt would have seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. “And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand,” I read, “and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck.”
    â€œDid what Joseph said come true?” Sam asked.
    â€œYes,” I said, and I went on to read about the famine that hit Egypt, and how Joseph’s preparations had saved the people and brought his brothers out of the land of the Hebrews to buy corn from him.
    Sam was astonished. “Is there really people that tell you what dreams mean?”
    â€œThings happened in Bible days that don’t happen now,” I said. “It was a special time, and God was closer to people than He is now.”
    â€œI was thinking of my horse dream,” he said. “I ain’t no Pharaoh, but I’d give a penny to know what it means.”
    â€œI don’t think dreams mean anything,” I said. “Not anymore.”
    â€œWhy does it come to me all the time if it don’t mean nothing?”
    â€œYou’ve just got horses on the brain,” I said.
    No one could doubt that he did have horses on the brain. His whole life was horses. My freight animals were entirely under his supervision, and he had begun spending more and more of his idle time at the racetrack at the edge of town. Army was responsible for that, I regret to say. Army shared Sam’s love of horseflesh. They also shared a love of gambling. Army loved the races and had known most of the sporting men around Denton for years. He introduced them to Sam, and after a while the races became a regular part of their Sunday afternoons. Sometimes Frank Jackson or Henry Underwood would go with them.
    By the standards of my native Kentucky, the Denton races were pitiful. The track was just a quarter-mile stretch of harrowed prairie with a row of primitive chutes at one end and a finish line at the other. The performers were usually just cowboys and cow ponies racing for a new hat or a new suit of clothes or a bottle of whiskey. A few townspeople who owned good horses but didn’t know how to ride them would hire the young darkies who hung around the track to climb into the saddle in their stead. A few of the niggers were excellent riders and fulfilled all their worldly needs in that way, never turning a hand at honest labor.
    Those races were taken very seriously by many, though, especially those who bet habitually and heavily. And since those chosen to judge them often were