He Always Got His Man! Bad News for Outlaws by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Jim Webb's luck was running muddy when Bass Reeves rode into town. Webb had stayed one jump ahead of the lawman for two years. He wasn't about to be caught now.

The desperado jumped out the window of Baywater's Store. He made a break for his horse, but Marshal Reeves cut him off. Webb knew he would hang this time. He couldn't outrun a horse.

He turned and let loose with his rifle.

Bass Reeves was a giant of a man with nerves of steel, and although Webb's first shot clipped the horn of his saddle, one button flew off his shirt, and he had bullet holes in the brim of his tall hat, Webb had fired his last shot. Bass Reeves took him down. And with a strange twist to the story, he mortally wounded Webb was so impressed with Reeve's bravery that he gave him his gun before he died..
 
A former slave whose master took him around to fairs and profited from his skill as a marksman at many a contest, Bass Reeves finally ran away to take refuge in the West. By the time the Civil War freed the slaves, Bass Reeves stood out in any crowd. He was head and shoulders taller than anyone he met, and strong enough to wrestle a steer out of a mud hole all by himself, and his strength and gun prowess prompted Colonel Isaac Parker to appoint him as a deputy marshal in the Oklahoma Territory, the most lawless part of the land.

The Indian Territory was home to the worst outlaws in the country, and Bass Reeves was the first black deputy U.S. marshal in the West. A hot hand with a revolver or a rifle, he brought in over 2000 bad guys to serve sentences for their crimes, and except for Jim Webb, he often managed to use disguises and subterfuge, not bullets, to bring in his man.

But the biggest thing about Bass Reeves was his dedication to duty.

Bass Reeves almost always got his man and he never took a bribe as many "lawmen" did. When he captured an outlaw, he also preached and read the Bible to them while he took them back to face the law. Although he could shoot a wing off a fly, he mostly tried not to use his gun, and, in addition to Jim Webb, in his long career, he shot only thirteen other desperadoes.

Word spread that Bass was a square shooter but a hard man. Outlaws learned that when Bass Reeves had your warrant, you were as good as got unless you hightailed out of the territory. Even the infamous "Bandit Queen" Belle Starr turned herself in to Bass for the first and only time.

And when the Indian Territory became the state of Oklahoma, Bass Reeves kept the peace as a police officer for the city of Muscogee for the rest of his life.

Better than the horse-opera heroes of movie and television fame, this is a true story with a real western hero, for which Vaunda Micheaux Nelson's Bad News for Outlaws:The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal (CarolRhoda Books, 2020) received a much deserved Coretta Scott King Award along with her illustrator R. Gregory Christian, This better-than-fiction book also boasts a full appendix with a glossary ("Western Words"), a timeline, a bibliography, interviews of sources and an author's note that describes how original research is done.  Says School Library Journal, "the text is full of colorful turns of phrase that will engage readers who "don't cotton" to nonfiction books."