Forty Times a Killer

by William W. Johnstone

  But I withheld my gloomy misgivings. “Wes, that’s wonderful. Just wonderful.”

  “Damn right it is. Everybody believes a reverend, don’t they?” Wes carefully folded up the letter and put it in his pocket. “You get my Colt back?”

  I lied my way out of that question. “I sure did. Ranger Armstrong gave it to me and it looks as good as new.”

  “They hung Brown Bowen,” Wes said. “They say he died pretty well.”

  I nodded. “Heard that.”

  “There will be others like him when the reckoning comes.”

  I didn’t know the guard and he looked mean. I changed the subject. “I’m still working on the business proposal for the show.”

  “Yeah, good,” Wes said, with little enthusiasm. He looked me over. “You look like hell, even skinnier. That woman not taking care of you?”

  “She takes care of me just fine.”

  “How’s the leg?”

  “Bad as ever.”

  “All right, that’s enough. Move it, Hardin.” This from the guard.

  Then this from Wes, “Sure thing, boss.”

  After he was gone, I felt oddly depressed about two things. The first was that Wes didn’t remember that I was a reader, the second that he was losing the respect of his jailors.

  Later, I read in the newspaper that Wes had beaten an old trusty to within an inch of his life for being late with his dinner. This might explain the change in attitude of the guards.

  But his memory slip troubled me. It was the first indication I had that Wes’s mind was going. It would be a long, destructive process, spanning decades, but in the end it would contribute to his death.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  I Turn a New Page

  Alice found work as a kitchen maid while I stayed at home to write what I knew best—dime novel tales of the West, its heroes, bad men, and beautiful maidens in every stage of distress.

  After a few tries, I got the hang of the thing, and was soon selling on a regular basis.

  From this happy time in my life, I’m sure you recall that my best sale was for a book I wrote in less than a week. Hands Up! Or John Wesley Rides The Vengeance Trail.

  Sadly, the day the novel came out, Wes’s appeal being denied, he was transferred to the Huntsville Penitentiary in June of 1879 to east Texas to begin his quarter-century of confinement.

  I wrote him and gave him my address, Mr. & Mrs. William Bates, 27 Sunnycourt Crescent, Austin, Texas, and asked how he was faring in that dreadful prison.

  Several months later, Wes replied. He addressed the envelope to Little Bit, Esq. He said he’d already made two attempts at escape, and both were foiled. After the second one . . .

  They threw me into a cell and spread-eagled me on a concrete floor, then gave me forty lashes, less one, with a bullwhip. Little Bit, my back and sides were torn up something awful, but I was taken from there and thrown into a solitary cell. I was there for three days without food or water. After a week, I was tossed into yet another cell and now I have a high fever and I’m too weak to walk.

  My health is not good, but I’ll beat them in the end, Little Bit. They may kick me, flog me, and starve me, but I won’t let the scum win. I’ll keep on trying to escape until I am successful. In the meantime, I will bear my persecution with Christian fortitude.

  Wes’s letter depressed me and may have been the cause of my bad leg finally giving out on me two days after Christmas. Cancerous, it was amputated in my own bedroom. The surgeon used chloroform so I felt little at the time, but the stump pained me considerably and my drinking worsened.

  I experienced even greater pain when Alice, who’d been failing for some time, died of what a doctor said was, “consumption and a mighty hard life.” She passed away in the spring of 1881, not yet twenty years of age.

  I was lost. The happiness I’d known had been abruptly snatched away from me, and I turned more and more to the whiskey bottle for solace. Yet through it all I continued to write, thanks to the urging of my editor, Frank Starr, a fine man who never gave up on me. I was, I believe, the first drunken writer in Texas, though others have since followed my path.

  My novels sold very well, and, despite myself, I began to prosper.

  I was fitted with a fine artificial leg that helped me walk better than I ever had before, and I gradually reduced the amount of whiskey I drank. By 1884, the Little Bit of old was gone forever. My old leg brace, bowler hat and filthy army greatcoat I burned . . . and with them the name, Little Bit.

  I was a fairly rich man and I dressed the part, favoring three-piece ditto suits of somber shade and winged collars with an ascot tie and diamond stickpin.

  “Bill, you owe that man nothing,” Frank Starr said. “What did he ever do for you but turn you into a drunk and a fugitive?”

  We sat in my parlor while Cassie, my housemaid, served us afternoon tea, Frank being a temperate man.

  “I owe him a great deal. Wes helped me survive. What chance did a crippled little runt like me have in Texas after the war? Wes was my protector and my inspiration. I wanted to be like him.”

  “If you’d turned out like him, you’d be serving time in Huntsville right now.”

  “Maybe, but without John Wesley, I’d probably be dead.”

  Cassie poured the tea and I said, “Earl Grey. I hope you like it. I understand it’s a favorite of old Queen Vic. And please make a trial of the sponge cake.”

  After Frank declared the tea good and the cake better, I reached into my inside coat pocket and produced a letter and a newspaper clipping. I passed the clip to Frank, but he declined.

  “I left my spectacles on the train from New York,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to read it to me.”

  “It’s short. The newspaper is dated September 12, 1884, and it says, ‘The health of the notorious John Wesley Hardin is very bad and has taken a turn for the worse. He is not expected to survive much longer. He has served out five of his twenty-five year sentence.”

  “Well, I guess I’m sorry to hear that,” Frank said. “But what has it got to do with you?”

  I opened Wes’s letter. “This may explain why.”

  I read aloud, “‘The shotgun wounds I got from Phil Sublett and the pistol ball injury that Charlie Webb inflicted on me became first inflamed and then abscessed. Little Bit, they did not allow me in the prison hospital but confined me to my cell where I lay in great pain for eight months. When they thought I was recovered, they told me I must work in the rock quarry, but I spit in their eye. I was lashed and after two weeks on a bread and water diet, was sent to make quilts in the tailor shop.’”

  I looked at Frank and said, “And then this. ‘No one comes to visit anymore. Manny came a few times but not for the past couple years. Has the world forgotten me, Little Bit?’”

  Frank flicked the letter with his forefinger and smiled. “No, Mr. Hardin. The world’s moved on and you’ve been left behind.”

  “I’ve not left Wes behind,” I said. “I’m going to visit him.”

  “Bill, you just signed a contract for four more novels.”

  “And I’ll meet my deadlines. I’ll only be gone for a week at most.”

  Frank drew a deep breath. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Hardin has always been a baleful influence on you and I’d hate to see you go back to what you were.”

  “What was I?”

  “I can tell you what you were not. You were not a successful, respected author who makes enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life.”

  I smiled at that. “Trust me, Frank, I won’t stumble and fall.”

  “Then I’ll take you at your word,” Frank Starr said. “I don’t want to bury you in a pauper’s grave like I did Edgar Allan Poe.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  That Scoundrel Buffalo Bill

  A penitentiary is a wheel within a wheel and together they grind slowly . . . inexorably . . . a motion that’s unrelenting, unalterable and pitiless. The purpose of a penal i
nstitution is to crush a man between the turning wheels, pulverize his soul, his mind, his being, while keeping his useless carcass alive so that he can remain only healthy enough to suffer his just punishment in full measure.

  The man I met in Huntsville was no longer the John Wesley Hardin I knew.

  A man can’t be whipped, beaten, and starved into submission without it leaving a mark on him. Wes had served less than six years of his sentence, but already, he was broken by the wheels.

  We met in a Huntsville Penitentiary visiting room during a thunderstorm, my affluent appearance and the hired carriage at the gates allowing me immediate access. The room was furnished with a table and two wooden chairs. A barred window high in one rock wall glimmered with lightning and allowed inside the sullen roar of the thunder.

  Clanking iron shackles bound Wes hand and foot.

  The prison guard pushed him into a chair. “Ten minutes,” he said to me. “And make no physical contact with the prisoner.”

  The guard carried only a billy club. Judging by Wes’s bruises, he had made its acquaintance recently.

  I smiled at him, prepared for the usual polite how-are-you? exchange.

  But Wes grabbed my wrist. “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?” I asked.

  “A damned scoundrel by the name of Buffalo Bill Cody has started a Wild West show on the North Platte, up Nebraska way.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Wes.”

  “He stole my idea, and, by God, he’ll pay for it.” Wes leaned closer to me and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “As soon as I get out of here, and it could be any day now, you and me will ride up to the North Platte and shoot that thief.” He leaned back in his chair, his shackle chains chiming. “And then we’ll take over his show and get rich, just like we planned.”

  I didn’t like Wes’s eyes, the odd way he stared at me. In the flickering light of the thunderstorm, he seemed much older. The bright, inner glow of his golden youth was gone. He was a man old before his time.

  Every time I looked at him I died a little death.

  Out of nowhere, he said, “Did you hear about Jane?”

  “Yes I did. She was a fine woman and you have my deepest sympathy. Alice also passed away.”

  Wes ignored what I said. “Why are you all dressed up like a dude?” It was as though he saw me for the first time.

  I smiled. “Why, to meet you of course.”

  “Are you a spy?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You ain’t Little Bit.”

  “I was Little Bit.”

  “He wasn’t much.”

  “He was your friend.”

  “I don’t have any friends. Nobody comes to visit me.”

  “I’ve come,” I said.

  “Have you brought tobacco?”

  “No. But I’ll bring some next time.”

  “Get Passing Clouds Navy Cut. Accept no substitute.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  Then, as he’d so often done in the past, Wes surprised me. “Little Bit, I can’t take another twenty years of this hell.”

  He’d finally remembered who I was and I took that as a good sign.

  “Wes, I’ll do everything in my power to get you out of here,” I said.

  “Make it soon.”

  “It may take a little while. In the meantime, just don’t kick against the system any more or it will destroy you. Play their game, Wes. Toe the line.”

  “I don’t want to be whipped again.”

  “Then don’t try to escape again or refuse to work. I’ll see you’re freed. Trust me on that.”

  “Bear it with Christian fortitude,” Wes said.

  “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” I almost said And the years will fly by, but I bit my tongue.

  After my visit, Wes took my advice and became a model prisoner. He managed the library and led Sunday devotions for his fellow cons and, as far as I am aware, was never punished again. In addition, he studied law and by all accounts became very learned in all its twists and turns.

  Thank God, I didn’t know then that, despite all my efforts on his behalf, John Wesley would spend a total of fifteen years, eight months, and twelve days in Huntsville.

  Finally, at my urging and that of other prominent citizens, his lawyer W.S. Fly met with newly appointed Texas governor James B. Hogg. He was said to be, “All for the underdog when the underdog has a grievance.”

  I ask you, who was more sinned against than John Wesley?

  Fly met with Hogg and declared, “I can get a thousand men in Gonzales County who will sign an application demanding that John Wesley Hardin get a full pardon. I have faith in his integrity and manhood and believe it is not misplaced.”

  Petitions soon poured into the governor’s office from all over Texas, signed by judges, businessmen, politicians, and twenty-six sheriffs. In addition, a flood, nay, a deluge, a torrent, a cascade of letters came from private citizens.

  “Parole granted!” a delighted Hogg declared on February 7, 1894.

  John Wesley walked out of Huntsville, a free man, ten days later. He was forty years old.

  I had a carriage and pair waiting for him at the gates.

  When Wes was released, the frontier he had known no longer existed . . . except in isolated communities like the wild border town of El Paso. Even so close to the beginning of the twentieth century it still had more than its share of resident gunmen.

  Of course, the town would eventually attract Wes like a moth to a flame.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Beginning of the End

  “Gentlemen, I now declare to you that my future life will be one of peace and goodwill toward all men.”

  Thus, on July 21, 1894, did Wes address the District Court of Gonzales County after it allowed him to practice law in any of the state’s district and lower courts.

  W.S. Fly was so moved, he jumped up and in a loud, stentorian voice, addressed the court. “You have all read Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, Les Miserables. It paints in graphic terms the life of a man so like Mr. John Wesley Hardin, a man who tasted the bitterest dregs of life’s cup, but whose Christian manhood rose, godlike, above it all and left behind a path luminous with good deeds.”

  The audience cheered and no huzzahs were louder than my own.

  I didn’t realize it then, but it was the last time I’d ever feel proud of Wes and bask in the dazzling radiance of his glory.

  Restless as ever, Wes ran for sheriff of Gonzales County, lost by a mere eight votes, then closed up his law practice and relocated to Kerrville in the hill country around the Guadalupe River. Before he left, he sent me a letter explaining the move. He said that one of his kin, Jim Miller, needed help with a legal wrangle.

  But what really drew him west was a woman.

  Callie Lewis was a flighty fifteen-year-old who’d fallen in love with the Hardin legend. She apparently admired desperadoes and their deeds of derring-do and thought it would be a hoot to wed and bed one.

  What she didn’t realize was Wes was a man old beyond his years, his bullet-scarred body stiff and not easy to get going in the morning.

  But he wanted her. She was a flashing, vibrant, beautiful girl who reminded him of his own reckless youth, He hoped he could recapture all those lost Huntsville years if he made Callie his wife.

  And so vivacious Callie played Catherine Howard to John Wesley’s stooping, stumbling, aging Henry Vlll and the end result was just as tragic.

  The happy couple wed in London, Texas, on January 9, 1895, and parted forever early the next morning, a few hours after they’d exchanged their vows.

  Callie never said what caused the split, but to me it was obvious—the sickly, middle-aged man she married fell far short of the legend.

  To me later in the day, he tried to make light of what had happened. “She took one look at me, standing nekkid as a jaybird by the bed, and promptly fainted. Hell, every time I tried to wake her up, she took one look at me and fainted
again. Come morning, she threw on her duds and skedaddled out of there.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Wes,” I said, though I had no liking for Callie. She was air-headed as they come and not very intelligent.

  We were seated at a table in the Black Bull saloon. My artificial leg became intolerable if I stood at the bar for too long. I poured us both whiskey from the bottle we shared and glanced around me. The saloon was busy since evening was coming down, but no one paid us any heed.

  Once well-wishers would have crowded around Wes and slapped his back, told him what a fine fellow he was, and the saloon girls would have vied for his attention.

  But that night . . . nothing.

  I felt a pang of sadness, almost painful in its intensity, and a deep sense of loss. John Wesley you are a man of your time and that time is over.

  “Maybe it’s just as well,” Wes said.

  I was shocked. Had he read my mind? “What’s just as well?”

  “When I go after Bill Cody, Cassie would just slow me down.” Wes leaned across the table, his face within inches of mine. “I think she was in on it. That’s why she left me. She was scared I’d find out.”

  I frowned. “Wes, I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think Cassie even knew about the Wild West show.”

  “How the hell do you know that, Little Bit? You know nothing and you never did.”

  “Buffalo Bill is an important man,” I said, refusing to take offense. “You can’t gun him.”

  “Yeah I can, because I’m an important man myself. Watch this.”

  Wes turned in his chair and yelled, “Which one of you rubes will buy John Wesley Hardin a drink?”

  He got blank stares and no takers.

  I watched anger flare in him. “Take it easy, Wes.”

  He ignored me and rose to his feet, staggering a little. He yanked a blue Colt from his waistband and yelled, “Do I have to leave men dead on the floor to get a drink?”

  Standing there, half drunk, he did not look the heroic figure of old.

  He was what he was—a sickly, rapidly aging man whose day was past. The owlhoot trails he once rode were scarred by the slender shadows of telephone wires and the tracks of horseless carriages.