The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  When we got out on the trail, Stokes told him if he tried to escape we’d fill him so full of lead it’d take the three of us to lift his carcass back onto the mule. Stokes nodded at Smolley and said, “That breed’ll skin you alive for the pure pleasure of it if I so much as give him the wink to do it.”

  That was the truth. Smolley was about the meanest I ever met of the bad lot of bullies and thieves to be found in the State Police. A good many of them was mean-ass Nigras. I never thought I’d see the day when a Nigra’d be wearing a badge, but there they were. That’s how fast and strange the world was changing. All the fellers on the force were hard cases, naturally, and ain’t no question some of them were on the run from the law their ownselfs. But most were like me—ex-soldiers down on their luck who’d joined up because it was the only choice other than being a robber and it seemed wiser to be among the sons of bitches who put people in jail than be among them who got put in jail. Just the same, I don’t recall a single time I got the full sixty dollars pay I had coming to me every month. They was always deducting money from our pay for one damn thing or another, so it’s no wonder so many on the force was prone to helping theirselves out with their badge. There was a good bit of “confiscation” from the men we arrested—money, horses, guns, whatever might be of personal use or could be sold off easy. I never did such confiscations myself. I could of been a robber, but I never was no bully nor no thief.

  Jim Smolley was the worst of both. They said he’d been one of Sherman’s bummers in the march across Georgia, and before that had rode with a band of Comancheros. He was part white, part Mex, and a big part Nigra, which he looked more than anything else. Stokes was near as much a bully as Smolley and an even bigger thief, and he often picked me to work with the two of them—I think because he figured I was so young and new to the force I wouldn’t never make any trouble for him about the way he did things. I hate to admit it, but he was right. I never could bring myself to snitch on them, even though I saw them shoot more than one prisoner for no more reason than back-sassing or. cussing them, then write in their report that the prisoner had tried to escape. Like I said, there was plenty other State Policemen just like them. But I want it known that not all of us used our badge for a license to steal and commit meanness. Some of us were on the force because it was steady pay for legal work at a time when such was hard to come by. No other reason why.

  Anyhow, when Stokes said we’d shoot him dead if he tried to run, Hardin said yessir, yessir, he understood, and we didn’t have to worry none about him being so foolish as trying to escape. He was a completely innocent man and all he wanted was the chance to prove it in court. “I ain’t worried,” he said, “because I trust in the Lord and in the justice of our courts. As soon as you fellas get me in front of a judge is how soon I’ll be a free man again, or my name ain’t Frank Josephson.”

  The Sabine was swollen bad and running fast under a thick haze. It was a hard crossing. Stokes threw a lariat over Hardin’s mule and gave his end of the rope a few turns around his saddle horn, then nudged his horse into the river and led Hardin across. Me and Smolley went directly behind them—Smolley with his gun in his hand, ready to shoot Hardin if he somehow got loose and tried to swim away. We made it all right, but soaked as we were the cold wind really cut into us. As soon as we reached higher ground we made camp and got a big fire going to warm the chill out of our bones and dry our clothes and boots. We took turns guarding Hardin through the night. On my shift he didn’t do nothing but sleep like a baby.

  When we got to the Trinity it was way up over its banks and booming even harder than the Sabine had been. We followed it south a few miles to where there was a ferry. The ferryman said it was too rough to cross, but Stokes persuaded him that things would be a lot rougher if he didn’t take us over. It was a wild crossing that had us hanging tight to the rail and nearly pitched Stokes’s horse in the river. Smolley held a shotgun on Hardin the whole time. I don’t know if Hardin was more scared of falling in the river and drowning or of Smolley accidentally pulling the trigger from all the tossing about.

  It was mighty wet going for a while after that, and it stayed cold as the dickens. The bottoms were a foot under icy water, and the sloughs nothing but frosty mud. Hardin kept asking us to untie him from the mule. He was scared he’d drown for sure if the animal lost its footing and fell down in the water. Stokes told him to shut up or Smolley would pull him off the mule and drown him himself.

  We were on higher land by nightfall and made camp. Stokes was in a short temper. He cuffed Hardin a good one for not moving fast enough when he ordered him to round up some firewood. There was a town called Fairfield a few miles off and Stokes said he was going there to get fodder for the animals. I happened to know there was a saloon and a couple of whores there, so I guess I knew what he was really going for.

  After Stokes left, Smolley followed Hardin around while he searched out wood with his hands still cuffed. Smolley kept taking out his pistol and cocking it and pointing it at him. Kept saying what a pleasure it’d be to blow his brains out. He must of drawed that pistol and said that to him upward of a dozen times. I didn’t much care for it, but I knew better than to butt into Smolley’s fun, so I busied myself cleaning my pistol on a blanket.

  Hardin looked about to cry from being so scared. He said, “Please be careful with that gun, Sergeant. I ain’t no badman, sir, believe me. I just want to get to a courtroom and prove it.” Smolley’d uncock the pistol and twirl it a few times, then cock it again and aim at him and say “Pow!”—and laugh to see him cringe.

  While he built a fireguard of rocks and set the wood in it, Hardin kept glancing scared over his shoulder at Smolley. He put a match to the kindling, then knelt over it with his back to us to shield it against the breeze. He struck a half-dozen matches trying to get it going. All of a sudden he started sobbing hard and rocking back and forth in that big coat. Smolley gave a big horse laugh and started over to him—to give him a good kick, prob’ly. He said, “What’s the matter, boy? You want your momma?”

  Hardin spun around on his knees with a big pistol in his hands and shot Smolley in the face. Smolley staggered back and his legs gave out and he fell on his ass and sat there with his arms hanging limp at his sides. He had a hole under his left eye and looked awful surprised. Hardin scooted over to him and snatched away his gun.

  I never moved. I just sat there with my pistol in pieces in front of me and felt my guts go soft when Hardin aimed the pistol at me and cocked it.

  “Hands on your head, boy!” I did it quick.

  Smolley was watching him with his mouth open, like maybe he was trying to think of something to say. Hardin grinned down at him and put the pistol in his face. “Hit me now, nigger,” he said. And he shot him in the eye.

  He worked the key out of Smolley’s pocket and undid the cuffs, then came over and put them on me and told me to get my hands back on my head. He kicked the pieces of my gun into the bushes, then searched all through Smolley’s saddlebags—looking for his own guns, I reckoned—and cussed when he didn’t find them. Stokes had took them with him. While he saddled Smolley’s horse, I sat there with my cuffed hands on my head and didn’t say a word. I kept expecting him to put a ball in me any second.

  When he was mounted and ready to ride, he reined the snorting pony around me in tight prancing circles. “Listen here,” he said, “I am John Wesley Hardin, and whatever reason you got for being a State Police, it ain’t a good one.” Well, I figured I was dead for sure—but then he said, “I’m obliged to you for not letting on about the gun, and whyever you did that, it’s a damn good reason. But you’re a State Police and I ain’t shot you dead, so we’re even.” He tossed me the cuffs key and told me to take them off and fling them way into the brush. Then he said, “I ever see you again and you still wearing that badge, I’ll do you like that nigger, you hear?” And he touched spurs to the horse and rode off into the dark.

  I knew right off why he made me throw away the cuffs.
Without them on me, there wasn’t much chance Stokes would believe my story of how Hardin made his escape and killed Smolley but not me. He’d be sure to lay the blame on me for losing his prisoner—prob’ly even claim I’d helped him escape. That’s the moment my career in the State Police come to an end. In another minute I was saddled up and out of there my ownself, riding hard for Louisiana.

  Funny, ain’t it? Wes Hardin, by damn! Thinking I’d left that pistola on him a-purpose!

  I and my youngest boy, Robert, who was fourteen that winter, came across them in the woods about ten miles north of Belton. All three were wearing badges. State Police. Two were as dead as the whitetail buck we were toting on a shoulder pole. One’s head was half gone, and I knew a shotgun had to’ve done it. The other dead one was all shot up in the chest and crotch both. It was powerful cold and their blood had frosted purple. The third one was still alive, but he was bad gut-shot and I knew he wouldn’t make it. I sent Robert for the sheriff in Belton while I waited with the dying one. It wasn’t nothing but a death watch.

  He said his name was Ben Parkerson, and it took him three hard hours to die. He begged for water so bad I took my canteen out from under my coat and let him have a small taste. I was wanting to do the charitable thing, but I should’ve known better. As soon as the water reached his gut he hollered like a burnt baby. When he wasn’t wailing from the pain, he was talking a blue streak, the way some do when they’re hurt bad and breathing their last. It was mostly a lot of rambling at first, but then he seemed to get a better grip on his hurting, and he told me what happened.

  They’d gotten word Wes Hardin was in Bell County, and they’d been hunting him for two days. Then, in the middle of last night, Parkerson had been woke by a shotgun blast. He saw Davis, who was supposed to be on guard, laid out on the ground with his head wide open. Then he heard two pistol shots and felt a fire in his belly. Next thing he knew, he was looking at Hardin standing in the light of the campfire pointing his pistols at Lankford. Lankford had his hands up and was begging Hardin not to kill him. “Je-sus!” Hardin said. “Just smell of yourself, you sorry sonbitch. You been looking all over hell’s half acre for me, and now you found me you shit your pants. Ain’t you ashamed?”

  “He shot him down like a damn dog,” Parkerson said. “He shot him over and over. The bushes lit up with every shot. He just fired and fired till the hammers were snapping on empty.” He started crying again, and pretty soon he was tossing and rolling his eyes with the pain and praying out loud to the Lord Jesus. Most of everything he said after that didn’t make much sense until near the end, when he settled down some again. He was crying real soft and talking to somebody named Lucy when he died. That was in January of the year 1871.

  LEGENDS OF ABILENE

  The El Paso Daily Herald,

  20 AUGUST 1895

  Mr. E. L. Shackleford testified as follows:

  “My name is E. L. Shackleford; am in the general brokerage business. When I came down the street this evening I had understood from some parties that Mr. Hardin had made some threats against Mr. Selman, who had formerly been in my employ and was a friend of mine. I came over to the Acme Saloon, where I met Mr. Selman. At the time I met Mr. Selman he was in the saloon with several others and was drinking with them. I told him I had understood there was occasion for him to have trouble, and having heard of the character of the man with whom he would have trouble, I advised him as a friend not to get under the influence of liquor. We walked out on the sidewalk and came back into the saloon, I being some distance ahead of Selman, walking toward the back of the saloon. Then I heard shots fired. I can’t say who fired the shots, as I did not see it. I did not turn around, but left immediately. The room was full of powder smoke, and I could not have seen anything anyhow.”

  (Signed) E. L. Shackleford

  The Life of John Wesley Hardin as Written by Himself

  “In those days my life was constantly in danger from secret or hired assassins, and I was always on the lookout.”

  ——

  “We stopped next at Newton and took that town in good style. The policemen tried to hold us down, but they all resigned—I reckon. We certainly shut up that town.”

  ——

  “I have seen many fast towns, but I think Abilene beat them all.”

  ——

  “Wild Bill was a brave, handsome fellow, but somewhat overbearing. He had fine sense and was a splendid judge of human nature.”

  We’re Clements women, me and my sisters Mary Ann and Minerva, Clements born and raised. And we’ll die Clements, no matter our names changed when we married, two of us into the Browns and one into the Densons. It’s a proud family we come from. None of us, man nor woman, ever took a step back from anybody—and I mean Huck too, our adopted little brother. We called him Maverick because he strayed onto the ranch one day when he wasn’t but about eight years old. He’d been orphaned by the cholera and been wandering on his own for months. Daddy was so impressed with his natural grit, he took him in and raised him like one of our own. All our brothers—Manning, Jim, Joe, Gipson, and Huck—had hard bark, as people used to say about the kind of man who stood his ground and could take care of himself and his own. It’s how Daddy raised them up to be. There wasn’t a boy in the Sandies—which is what that whole region around Gonzales County was called—to ever talk vulgar or make bold with me or my sisters, not with brothers like ours to protect the family honor. I’m telling all this so you’ll properly appreciate the admiration we had for Cousin Wesley. We Clements were a lot more used to getting admiration than giving it, but we’d heard all about Wesley before we ever made his acquaintance, and none of us ever felt nothing but proud for being kin to him.

  You can imagine how pleased we all were when he showed up at the family ranch over by Elm Creek one late winter morning and introduced himself to Daddy and Momma. The boys were all out at their cow camp south of Smiley getting things ready for a roundup, so Daddy took Wesley out there to meet them. He sent Huck to give the news to me and my husband Barton Brown. Soon as I heard, I went off in the buckboard to tell my sisters and their husbands, and then me and Mary Ann and Minerva went directly to the family ranch to help Momma prepare a big welcome supper.

  By the time they came in from the camp that evening, you’d of thought they’d known each other all their lives, they were joking so free and easy with Wesley and he with them. They come clomping into the house laughing and trying to raise knuckle knots on each other’s arms and boxing with open hands and knocking into the furniture, causing such a ruckus that Momma had to yell at them to quit before she took a hickory switch to all their behinds and she didn’t care how big they all were. Jim and Joe jumped to attention and saluted and said, “Yessir, Miz General, sir!” Momma tried to look fierce at them but it was all she could do to keep a straight face. “John Wesley,” she said, “I know your momma didn’t raise her boys to sass and mock her like these disrespectful no-counts of mine.”

  When Daddy introduced him to me and my sisters, Wesley said he was honored—and he kissed each of us on the hand! You should’ve heard the boys whoop at that, but Wesley didn’t seem to mind their joshing one bit. Well, my heart just fluttered like a bird on a string! Mary Ann turned red as a radish, and Minerva didn’t hardly know where to look, she was so flustered. But they were as tickled as I was, I could tell. Listen, if I hadn’t been already married, I’d of set my sights on him for myself, cousin and all. He was so good-looking! He had a good strong face with the sweetest smile. But best of all was his eyes. They were warm and bluish-gray and really looked at you. Most men are either too shy or too scared to meet a pretty woman in the eyes for more than a second without getting nervous, but not Wesley. He looked a girl in the eyes as easy as offering her his arm.

  It was a real fine supper we had in his honor that evening. Barton and Ferd and Jim—our husbands—were there too, naturally, and had brought all the children, and the house was chock-full of laughter and loud talk, good smells and b
abies crying and the clatter of dishware. I thought the tables might split from the weight of all the dishes set on it. There was fried pork and possum stew and sweet corn, yams and snap beans, mashed turnips, red gravy, corn bread and molasses—just everything.

  He’d learned a good deal about his Clements kin from his daddy the Reverend, and he wanted to be caught up on what Clementses had got married lately and what babies had been born and who’d passed on and been buried. He’d come to us direct from visiting his family up in Mount Calm, and he said all the Hardins was in good health and spirits. His daddy was busy as ever with his good works, teaching and preaching all over Hill and Limestone counties. His momma and sister Elizabeth and little brother Jefferson Davis were doing just fine, and his big brother Joseph had married a Mount Calm girl and was fixing to move to Comanche to open his own law office.

  It wasn’t till we moved the children to another part of the house and cleared off the table and left it to the men that he talked about his troubles with the law. Daddy brought out a jug and passed it around for them all to fill their cups. Matches flared and pipes and cigars got lit, and the room got misty with good-smelling smoke. While Momma and Minerva tended to the children, me and Mary Ann washed the pots and dishes in the open dog-run, trying not to make too much clatter so we could listen in on the men’s talk.

  Wesley told about having to shoot three State Policemen in self-defense up in Bell County just a couple of weeks earlier—and before them, a bounty man who’d tried to back-shoot him outside a saloon in Fairfield. “I didn’t kill the bounty man,” he said, “I just shot him where his pleasure hangs. “ That got a good laugh at the table. “Leastways he won’t be siring any more sons of bitches into this world,’ Daddy said. Me and Mary Ann grinned at each other with our faces turned away from the men.