By the end of his illustrious career, deputy U.S. marshal Bass Reeves may well have been the preeminent gunfighter of the Old West. He killed 14 outlaws, brought hundreds more to justice, and served the law for 32 years. Yet his extraordinary life isn’t mentioned in the same breath as figures such as Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett, Seth Bullock and Wild Bill Hickok. We explore the life of Bass Reeves from captive slave to legendary lawman, through the antebellum South to the fierce battlefields of the Western Theater of the Civil War and the hostile plains of the Indian Territory.