The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  When he gave up teaching to join his crazy cousin Simp Dixon in the cattle trade, he went to live out at Jim Newman’s cow camp and only came to Pisga now and then. Once in a while I’d see him in town, usually in the company of Simp and other rough characters like Frank Polk. Whenever he saw me, he’d say hello and smile sweetly, but that was all. He never whispered in my ear anymore to meet him out by the lake late at night. I heard that him and his friends were taking their pleasures with the painted cats in Jennie Ann’s sporting house. For a while I pined for him so hard I thought my heart would fall to pieces—but I swore I’d never pine for a man again and I never have.

  I got out of Pisga with a fella named Pierson who came to town one day with his two girls in a blazing-red covered wagon and gave me a wink while he hawked patent medicine to the crowd. Charlie Leamus, one of the boys I’d fooled with, told me Pierson was really a whoreman and would be peddling the girls in the wagon after dark, out at Jackson’s Hollow, a mile or so out of town. That night I snuck out of the house and walked on out there and hid in the bushes until the last of the men who’d been standing in line had gone in the wagon and done his business and left. Then I went up to Pierson as he was tying everything down tight and had a talk with him. And when they rolled away from Pisga before sunup, I went too.

  I worked my way north with them and then went on my own when Pierson cheated me once too often. I ended up in a house in Abilene, Kansas, the wildest town I ever worked. The first gunfight I ever saw was right in the middle of Texas Street—two drunk cowboys who missed each other six shots each from twenty feet apart. They busted windows and killed a horse and hit a dog, but missed each other every time—and then while one was busy reloading cap and ball, the other pulled out an extra pistol and walked up to him and shot him square in the face from about two feet away.

  I saw a dozen fistfights a night. I saw two men cut each other up with knives till they both fell down from the loss of blood and died with faces white as powder. I saw a madam named Stella Raye shoot a man in the ear with a derringer for cutting a nipple off one of her girls. The girl wasn’t too bright and had laughed at the hardass because he was too drunk to get it up. Funny thing is, after that she got to be one of the most popular girls in the house. Everybody wanted to fuck the girl with only one nipple. Oh, hell, the things I saw back then, the things I learned.

  But the thing I’ll always remember best about Abilene is the time Wild Bill came up to the rooms and right there with him was none other than Johnny, who I’d thought I’d never in my life see again. Ain’t life a damn wonder!

  Simp Dixon had been cowboying for me off and on for a couple of years when he came into the Tall Hat Saloon one day with this young lean honker at his side and they bellied up next to me at the bar. This was in the spring of ’69. He laid that damn Sharps of his on the bar and said, “Hey, Jim, this here’s my cousin Wes Hardin. Wants to be a cowhand. Reckon we can make him one?”

  I was running a cow camp for Luke Matthews a few miles west of Pisga in those days. Luke was a big drover out of San Antonio. Every year, toward the end of spring, he’d start driving cattle north along the Chisholm, a new herd every few weeks, bringing them up by way of our camp. It was my job to have more cows ready to add to every herd he sent by. Early in the spring, when there was still frost in the mornings, I’d already have a crew out popping the brush for wild cows and mavericks. We’d bring them back to camp, burn them with Luke’s Bar-M, cut them, and herd them up in the grassland near the trail, ready to join the next big herd.

  I always hired Simp on because he always asked for the job and I wasn’t about to tell him no. The man was crazy. He’d killed a dozen or so Yankee soldiers by then and carried their scalps strung on his saddle horn. Made me queasy just to look at them. I touched a scalp at a tent show one time and had the night sweats for two days after. Anytime Simp was in my camp—hell, anytime he was near me—I was always half expecting a battalion of bluebellies to come charging out of nowhere with their guns blazing, shooting at us all and sorting out their mistakes later. And now here he was with his cousin Wes, who I’d heard was wanted by the Yankee army too.

  We had a few drinks and talked things over. It so happened I was short a man, and Wes did seem serious to learn the trade, so I said I’d try him on. And that’s how I came to know Wes Hardin, and how he came to be a cowboy.

  He made a damn good one. Took to it like a frog to a pond. He could ride as good as any white man I ever saw who wasn’t a bronc buster by trade—and I know about bronc busters because we’d sometimes break horses for Luke’s remudas. Whenever Luke sent word that he was going to be needing extra mounts, I’d buy some wild ponies from a mustanger I knew and hire Terry Threefingers out of Hillsboro to saddle-break them. Luke paid well for those horses, and I always turned a nice profit on them. Terry was the only one I paid to break the ponies, but there were always a few wildhairs in the crew who wanted to try their hand at it too, just for the fun of it.

  You have to be a lot tough and at least a little loco to try to bust a mustang, and Wes was both. The first one he tried to bust throwed him every which way—including smack into the corral rails and even all the way over them. Christ Almighty, that boy took a thumping. He got knocked cold on one try and Terry Threefingers had to souse him with a bucket of water to bring him around. The rest of the boys gathered at the corral and ribbed him plenty about how he ought to quit bronc busting and become an acrobat in the circus since he liked to spend so much time flipping through the air. Wes took all their joshing real good. Every time he get throwed, he’d get up grinning, shake his joints back into place, hitch up his pants, tug down his hat, and mount right back up again. That bronc was as mean as they come and throwed him at least a dozen times before Wes finally broke the ornery jughead. The next morning Wes was walking stiff-legged and rode with his face all pinched up, he was so sore—which naturally made the boys josh him some more. They said the cayuse musta finally got so bored with throwing him, it decided being saddle-broke might be a more interesting life. The truth is, they admired the hell out of him for sticking with that horse the way he had. Wes Hardin had sand, no question about it.

  I had him working roundups with Big Len Richards and Joe O. And there was plenty to round up out there too. For years after the War there were more longhorns wandering loose all over Texas than you could shake a branding iron at. Most of them were mavericks, but lots of them were just strays—cows that once upon a time belonged to ranchers who went off to fight the Yankees and either never came back or came back long after their ranches had gone to hell and their herds had scattered all over the countryside. It was only a matter of time before some of them strays started getting rounded up by fellas who couldn’t stand the temptation of seeing so many of them running around loose. Besides, it didn’t take a whole lot of artwork with a branding iron to change a brand. I ain’t saying we ever did that sort of thing at my camp, mind you—only that you couldn’t help but hear of it being done here and there and yonder, every now and then, by somebody or other.

  Anyhow, Wes already knew a good bit about roping by the time he came to work for me. He had real quick fingers, which you have to have to be any good with a lariat. You got to be able to size the loop—make it bigger or smaller—with just your throwing hand, while your other hand’s paying out rope and working the reins. And you got to be able to do this while you’re riding at full gallop. You got to be able to do it as natural as you spit and breathe. You watch a roper’s hands real close sometime when he’s working and you’ll see just how fast and smooth his fingers move. Quick and sure as a banjo picker’s.

  After his first few days at the camp, he was roping longhorns like he’d been doing it all his life. Big Len showed him how to lasso a calf with a heel catch so you could drag it behind your horse right up to the fire to get cut and branded. Joe O showed him how two riders could team up to bring down a big steer with what we call a head-and-heel catch, and inside a week he was even making ove
r-and-under catches, which some cowhands never get the hang of even after years of trying.

  Wes learned everything real good and real quick. I showed him how to cut the balls off a calf as slick as peeling a potato and how to heat an iron just right so it leaves a good clear brand but doesn’t burn too deep and set the hide on fire. I taught him the proper way to saw a pair of horns, which you sometimes had to do to cows with horns so long they couldn’t help but stab other cows when they got bunched up tight. I showed him how to use an ax for the job when the horns were too hard for the saw. There wasn’t anything about cattle that boy didn’t want to know. He even had me show him how to doctor a cow for screwworms and lumpy jaw and other such troubles. He said he figured to have his own herds someday and ought to know how to take care of them. He had a head on his shoulders.

  It wasn’t all work, of course. Every now and then we’d go into town to see a horse race and wet our snouts and try our luck at the card tables. If there’s a man alive who don’t like horse racing I never met him. To see a couple of fast horses come galloping hard between two long lines of spectators all jumping up and down and yelling their lungs out as the horses go rumbling past, kicking up clods of dirt, huffing and big-eyed and showing their teeth, the big muscles stretched in their necks and their riders hunched down low and whipping at them with the reins and shouting in their ear—well, hell, if that don’t make your heart hop faster I’d say you were ready for burial. It’s something about a horse race that gets my blood jumping long before the animals even get to the starting line. Wes was the same way. He was always talking about buying himself a racer someday soon.

  He’d surely be able to afford one, the way he raked in the winnings at the gaming tables. That boy was the luckiest gambler I ever saw. And I don’t mean at just one particular kind of game. He won at everything—poker, dice, faro, chuckaluck, seven-up, you name it. If the house offered it, he played it—and he’d win at it a good deal more than he’d lose. I’ve always been a fair hand at poker, if I say so myself, but even after sitting in on many a hand with Wes I never did learn to read his game. In stud and draw both, he played fast and loose. I couldn’t believe some of the reckless hands I saw him play. He’d see a whopping big raise to stay in a hand, and then call for four cards. He’d raise you twenty dollars on a pair of treys. I never knew anybody so ready to draw to an inside straight—or to fill so many.

  I won’t ever forget the night he filled two of them on Frank Polk. Simp had introduced them earlier that same day and they’d taken a shine to each other, partly because they were both wanted by the Yankee army, just like Simp. I liked Frank all right, and had hired him on, but he was near as crazy as Simp in a lot of ways, another fella you had to tread lightly with. He was a big-chested, black-bearded rascal who’d shot and wounded two soldiers in a fight in Dallas a few weeks earlier and was naturally claiming self-defense. But the word on Frank was that he’d also pulled a few robberies here and there in North Texas and had killed a store clerk in one of them. The word was, the clerk had been unarmed. But that was just the word, which is wrong about as often as it’s not.

  Anyhow, on this particular night I’m talking about, me and Frank and Wes and Terry Threefingers and Joel Knapp were in the Tall Hat playing stud and drinking straight whiskey—all except Terry, who was drinking Grizzly Milk, a mix of whiskey and milk and sugar, because his stomach had been ailing him lately. None of the pots was big enough to talk about till an hour into the game when suddenly we were looking at one of about two hundred dollars. Wes drew to a straight and got it to take the hand, and Frank cussed and beat his fist on the table. He was about half drunk by then and had been losing heavy, and he was steamed because he’d been holding kings up over tens and had thought sure the hand was his. Wes smiled at him and said, “Tough one to lose, Frank. But hell, ain’t they all?”

  Except that he was fairly red-eyed himself, you never would of known Wes had put down at least as much whiskey as Frank had. Wes could drink. I don’t remember whiskey ever tangling his tongue or making him do the hard-wind walk.

  Frank wouldn’t even look at him, he was so steamed. He growled at me, “Your deal, Newman—so deal the damn things.”

  Half an hour later Wes did it again. He filled a straight flush to beat Frank’s full house of aces over jacks and took in nearly three hundred dollars.

  “Goddamnit!” Frank yells. He shoves his chair back from the table with a loud scrape and puts his hand on the butt of his gun. Looking hard at Wes, he says, “I have never seen such goddamn luck of the draw in all my whole life.” His face and voice were just full of accusation.

  Things got quiet downright quick. Wes kept his eyes on Frank and his right hand was out of sight under the table as he pulled in the pot with his left. “Well, Frank,” he says, “I hope you keep on seeing it for as long as I’m sitting here.”

  When you’re at the table at a time like that, you want to get away from it as quick and as far as you can, but you’re afraid any move you make might set things off like a spark to powder, so you sit still as a stone and hope for the best. All around us the barflies were scooting for cover. I’d seen Wes shoot those Colts of his a few times by then and I knew he was a deadeye, but I hadn’t seen him fast-draw. I’d heard he was quick as a snake. Frank was a damn good shot too, but only fair on the draw—but he had a nerve of flint and wasn’t afraid of the devil himself. The thing is, whenever a pair of fellas got into it with only three feet of space between them, they almost always both got hit for sure and usually both got killed.

  Just then I see past Wes to where Simp’s coming in the back door from taking a piss outside, his rifle in the crook of his arm. I can see he catches wise to what’s happening at the table, and as he heads toward us he cocks the hammer on the Sharps. Wes and Frank are locked up in a staring match and don’t see him coming. When he gets within two feet of the table, Simp gives me a wink and fires a round into the floor.

  Sweet Christ almighty! You ever hear a Sharps go off indoors? There we all were, wound up tight as cheap clocks, and BOOM!

  Frank jumps straight up out of his chair like he’s been stung in the ass and his pistol goes twirling out of his hand like he’s doing some kind of trick and it comes down on the table and goes off—BLAM!—and he falls back into his chair and crashes over backward and lays there on the floor, stock-still.

  I never saw Wes move—but there he was, turned half around in his chair with his cocked Colt in his hand and square in Simp’s chest.

  For a second nobody moved—then Wes hollers: “You stupid dumb jackleg asshole! You looking to get shot?”

  “Say now, cousin,” Simp says, grinning like the damn crazy man he was. “Mite jumpy, ain’t you?” He looks at Frank laying on the floor and says, “You don’t reckon he’s done killed hisself with his own gun?” And he laughs.

  That’s for damn sure what I thought happened. But then I notice a thin cloud of dust floating down on the table, so I look up and see where the ball of Frank’s pistol went through the ceiling and shook the dust loose. Now everybody else is looking up there too. Then Frank lets out a low groan and stirs some, then sits up and rubs the back of his head and looks all around like he ain’t real sure if he’s dead or alive. Simp points at him and says, “Lookit here, boys, it’s Lazarus come back from the dead.”

  Not a one of us could keep from laughing, not even Frank, he was so damn glad to find out he wasn’t dead. He’d just lost his balance, was all, and knocked himself silly when he landed on the back of his head. But for years afterward, those who’d been there—and a whole lot who hadn’t—would tell the story of the time they saw Frank Polk beat himself to the draw and shoot himself down.

  Not too long after that, Frank got drunk and careless in a Corsicana saloon and was taken prisoner by a Yank posse. Wes had been taking his pleasure at Mary LaBelle’s sporting house at the time and said he didn’t learn about Frank’s capture till the next day. I was sorry to hear about it myself, but I won’t deny i
t was a relief to have one less worry at my cow camp.

  I served up more than a few glasses to Frank Polk in the Empress Emporium, I did. First met the rascal when he came to Corsicana on the run for shooting some soldiers—in Dallas, I think that was. And there was a rumor about him shooting some shopkeeper. But hell, there was always rumors about Frank and all fellas like him. Sure, he had a temper when he was in his cups—but don’t most other fellas as well? A bit quick with his mitts sometimes—and not afraid to fill his hand, as they used to say, when that was what was called for. But mostly he liked a good laugh and a hand of cards and a sweet time with the ladies. Just a regular fella, he was.

  It was Frank who introduced me to the Hardin lad. They came in the Empress one afternoon when I’m back of the bar, see. They’d just brought over a herd of steers from Pisga, so they had gold in their pockets and were looking for a bit of fun before heading back. So I set out a bottle of the good stuff and hand over the dice cup, and they while away a few hours sipping that good whiskey and rolling the dice. Some friends join them by and by, and they’re all drinking and rolling and swapping whoppers loud enough for everyone in the place to get some pleasure out of all the lying.