The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  Then Barton asked him outright if it was true he’d shot a Nigra man off a fence in Hillsboro just for looking mean at him as he rode by. Barton said he’d read it in a newspaper. No Clements would of been so rude as to ask Cousin Wesley such a thing, but all the Browns were mannerless that way and didn’t know any better. Me and Minerva both knew we’d disappointed Momma by marrying into that family, though she never said it. It’s some hard choices we all have to make in this life. Mary Ann had done better, marrying the only Denson boy to be had.

  Wesley didn’t seem to mind being asked, however, and he said what we Clements already knew to be so—that he never killed anybody but in self-defense. There were such stories told about him. That he’d snuck up and shot some gambler in Towash in the back of the head to get back some money he’d lost to him. That he shot just about every Nigra man, armed or not, who’d ever so much as looked cross-eyed at him. That he’d shot a fellow in a hotel for snoring too loud, for Pete’s sake! I always suspected Barton believed such terrible lies about him—though he wasn’t so stupid as to say so to me or mine—so it was good to hear Wesley tell him the truth of it from his own mouth. “It ain’t never wise to trust the word of a stranger nor a newspaper,” Wesley told him. I nodded at Mary Ann and hoped Barton saw me do it.

  Wesley said there were so many lawmen and bounty men looking for him that he was starting to feel like a duck on a hunting pond. “I think I’d best light out for a spell,” he said, “before somebody blows the feathers off me in the middle of the night.” He’d talked it over with his daddy and they’d agreed it’d be best if he laid low in Mexico until such time as the Democrats finally got control of the state and rid Texas of the State Police.

  There was a lot of loud talk then about Mexico. Jim Denson’s daddy had been with the Texans who fought under Zack Taylor in the Mexican War, and he’d given Jim a pretty picture of the country. “Daddy said it’s nice weather, and the food’s real good, and—” He gave a glance our way and lowered his voice, but the way they all laughed was enough to let us know he’d said something about Mexican girls. Mary Ann gave a tight-lipped look and shook her fist in front of her where Jim couldn’t see it.

  “That’s how my daddy seen it, anyway,” Jim said. “He said it’d be a fine place to live if it wasn’t so damn many Mexicans down there.”

  But Daddy and the boys didn’t have a good word to say about Mexico, even though none of them had ever set foot in it. All that mattered to them was what the Mexicans had done at the Alamo some thirty-five years before. “Going to live in Mexico’s like going to live with some sonbitch who killed your kin,” Daddy said.

  Manning told Wesley he ought to forget about going to Mexico and instead join up with him and my other brothers on the cattle drive they were getting ready to make to Kansas. Columbus Carol was bringing up two thousand head from San Antone, and he wanted my brothers to round up another herd of a thousand head or so in the Sandies, then take both herds up to the railhead at Abilene. “We’d be proud to have you throw in with us,” Manning told him. Everybody thought that was a fine idea and said so. Manning said that as far as the law was concerned, Wesley wouldn’t have a thing to worry about on the trail. Columbus Carol had said there was some sort of agreement between the big Texas drovers and the governor. “Columbus ain’t never come right out and said so,” Manning said, “but it’s a common suspicion that Ed Davis is getting a slice of every drover’s profits in exchange for keeping the police away from their trail crews.”

  A marshal might come around to a trail camp every once in a big while, Manning said, but they were most of them smart enough to halloo the camp from far enough away to give any cowboy on the dodge time to make himself scarce. “We give the badge a plate of beans and a cup of coffee, same as we would anybody else,” Manning said, “and then he goes his way and we go ours. He can say he’s done his job, and nobody in the trail crew is the worst off for it.”

  Wesley said he’d think on it, and in the meantime he’d be proud to help them with the roundup. That suit everybody just fine, and Daddy sent the jug around the table again. Pretty soon they were all singing “Sweet Betsy From Pike,” and adding a lot of verses of their own making that had me and Mary Ann blushing and laughing into our hands.

  Momma came out of the other room and told them to hush all that loud profanity or she’d drag every one of them by the collar down to the creek and throw them in. So they took their party out to the barn and kept at it till nearly midnight, when I reckon Daddy ran out of jugs. I bet there wasn’t one of them who didn’t have a sore head the next day.

  Me and my sisters wasted no time arranging a barn dance for the next Saturday night so Cousin Wesley could meet our neighbors. Of course, the neighbors we most wanted him to meet were the unmarried girls of age. We’d come to find out he didn’t have a sweetheart waiting for him anywhere, and we believed such a sorrowful condition was in bad need of rectifying. Since it was me and my sisters that arranged for that barn dance, you could say it was us that were responsible for him meeting Jane.

  Everybody will tell you that Jane Bowen was just the sweetest thing. Well, yes she was. She was pretty too, there’s no denying that, and had attracted the boys from the time she started blooming at about twelve. Her hair was the absolute envy of all the girls—it was long and soft and bright light brown. And if she was as vain about it as some believed, well, you couldn’t really fault her too much for feeling that way.

  She was a quiet girl, but not really what you’d call shy—not when it came to saying directly what was on her mind if somebody happened to ask her. And when she did speak up, she hardly ever said anything that didn’t have a point, and she most always got right to it. Directness of that sort can put people off, since most folks like to stroll around in a conversation for a bit before getting to the point—if there even is one. Jane just wasn’t one for small talk, which was a big reason some saw her as stuck on herself. I’m not saying I thought so, I’m just saying there were some who did.

  I did tend to agree with them who said she probably read more than was good for her. She read more books than anybody I ever knew. Books were hard to come by in the Sandies in those days, but her daddy, who was given to spoiling her, made it a point to bring her back a book or two from San Antone every time he went there on business. One time at school I heard this boy ask her what the book in her hand was about, and she said poetry, and the fella looked around at the rest of us with a smarty-pants grin and said, “You mean like ‘Roses are red, violets are blue’?” Jane nodded and smiled sweetly, then turned away and said—just loud enough for some of us to hear—“Even a jackass is smarter than you,” like she was finishing the poem.

  It’s no wonder so many of the boys were skittish of her. They’d be attracted by her prettiness—she never did lack for dance partners at parties—but then her learning and direct way of talking would buffalo them so bad they’d be afraid to open their mouths for fear of sounding like ignorant fools to her, and so they’d shy away. It was that way with her and one boy after another until she met Cousin Wesley.

  Wesley might of done some reckless things in his life, I won’t deny that, but nobody would ever call him an ignorant fool unless they’re a true one theirself. The fact is, as we quick came to find out, Wesley was an educated man—a lot more than most you’d ever meet. He’d read more than a few books himself, and he could speak just like his daddy the Reverend whenever he took the notion. I imagine that when he and Jane met at that barn dance they must of felt like two people from the same strange little country meeting in a place where nobody else could speak their true language.

  I was right there when Gipson introduced them, and you should’ve seen the way their eyes lit up on each other in the first two minutes. I hadn’t never believed in love at first sight till that moment. He kissed her hand like he’d done to ours, but even though her cheeks got rosy she kept cool as you please, like she’d had her hand kissed every day of her life. Mary Ann looked at me
and rolled her eyes. She wanted Wesley to meet a sweet girl as much as Minerva and I did, but she’d never been as easily abiding of Jane Bowen’s airs as we were.

  “May I have the honor of this dance, Miss Jane?” Wesley said to her, and she said, “It would be my pleasure, Mr. Hardin.”

  So off they went on the dance floor—and they didn’t sit down or separate from each other for more than a minute the whole rest of the evening. They danced like they’d been born to be partners. They square-danced and two-stepped and reeled—they danced every dance that Fiddler Thomason called. It was while they were Texas waltzing that they looked the most beautiful together—whirling round and round to the music of the fiddles and Elmer Quayle’s five-string and Toby Franks’s mouth harp. The barn was warm and close with all those people churning up such a dancing sweat, but him and Jane moved just as light and easy as a pair of birds, his open coat swirling and the skirt of her dress flaring full and sassy as they spun around the floor. I don’t believe I was ever so jealous of somebody and so happy for them at the same time.

  I happened to pass close by to where they were sitting and sipping punch during a short rest the band took to wet their whistles. He was talking earnest and she was looking at him like he hung the moon. I heard him tell her she had eyes “like the fairest stars in God’s wide heaven.”

  I’ve never forgot that. “The fairest stars in God’s wide heaven!” Declare, if any man ever said such a thing to me … well, never you mind.

  The next morning Wesley told Manning he’d been thinking it over and had decided not to go to Mexico after all but would join up on the Kansas drive with him. Nobody was a bit surprised by his sudden decision—nobody who saw the way him and Jane had wrapped their eyes around each other the night before. We had a barn dance every Saturday evening for the next few weeks till the herds were ready for the trail, and Wesley and Jane would dance all night like they were in a world of their own, spinning and spinning to the music, just swimming in each other’s arms.

  When Manning told him that Wes wanted to join the drive to Kansas, Columbus Carol was so pleased he nearly popped his buttons. He didn’t waste any time signing Wes on. He even made him boss of one of the two herds—the small one of twelve hundred head. Me and my brother Jim were in his crew. Manning was ramrodding the bigger herd, about twenty-five hundred head, and Gip and Joe were working with him.

  Only me and a hand named Billy Roy Dixon were younger than Wes, who was still well shy of being eighteen. You might think there’d be some hard feeling among the older hands about working for one so young and who didn’t have any experience on the trail—and who would get paid one hundred fifty dollars a month when the regular hands like us were getting thirty and found. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. The fact is, they were proud as banty roosters to have a man of Wes’s reputation for a ramrod, his young years be damned. “Wes Hardin, by God!” Big Ben Kelly said when he heard the news. “I’d like to see somebody just try and give this outfit trouble.” That’s how Columbus Carol felt about it. “That boy’s reputation,” he told Manning, “is gonna save me enough cows to cover his wages twenty times over.”

  Manning told him that if the reputation didn’t do the job, Wes himself surely would. The day before him and Wes had got into a shooting contest in the draw behind Daddy’s house and Wes had outshot him every which way. That’s saying something, because Manning was one of the best pistol hands you’d ever hope to see, and I’m talking about a time when that part of Texas had more pistoleros than a hound’s got fleas. The Sandies was crawling with Taylors and Sutton Regulators, and there wasn’t a man among them who wasn’t handy with a gun. But good as Manning was, he wasn’t no match for Wes. The whole family watched the contest, Jane Bowen too. She about broke her hands by clapping so hard every time Wes showed off with some extra-tricky shot. He’d look over and wink at her, and she’d smile and blush pretty as a sunrise.

  Word got around fast to the other outfits that Wes had signed on with us, and trail bosses and cowhands from the camps scattered all around us came over to make his acquaintance. A few of them, like Fred Duderstadt, became his friends for life. What they were all hoping, of course, was that he’d keep rustler and Indian trouble off their cattle while he was keeping it off our own. Wes himself was looking to make all the friends he could. Even though Columbus and Manning had said he didn’t have to fret about the State Police while he was on the trail, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to have plenty of friends in front and back of him, both, as we made our way to Kansas.

  He was likely thinking about Abilene too. The new marshal there was none other than James Butler Hickok—Wild Bill himself—who was sure to have papers on Wes. Columbus had told him not to worry about that either. He said he knew Bill real well and would square Wes with him as soon as we got to Abilene.

  “He’s a fine fella,” Columbus said. “He’ll give us room to let off steam, you bet. Hell, he’s a good-time rascal hisself. Likes his whiskey and cards and fillies as much as the next man! You ain’t got to worry none about Hickok.”

  Wes grinned and said he wasn’t a bit worried. “Fact is,” he said, “I’d like to have a look at them pearl-handled navies of his I’ve heard so much about.”

  The afternoon before we left for Kansas we all went to the ranch to have dinner and say good-bye to Daddy and Momma. Annie Tenelle, who was Gip’s bride-to-be, was there, and of course so was Jane.

  After a fine dinner of roast pork and yams, I took my dogs down to the creek to let them splash around and see what they might flush out of the reeds. As soon as we got there they spotted a rabbit and took off after it in the brush and that was the last I saw of them. So I just skipped rocks on the creek for a while before starting back to the house. Then I spotted Wes and Jane coming my way down the path, walking hand in hand. They hadn’t seen me, and I didn’t want to intrude on their privacy, so I slipped into the heavy bushes and stood real quiet to let them pass by unawares. As they ambled on by, I heard him talking low but couldn’t make out what he was saying. You should of seen her face. If there’s such a thing as a look of love, Jane Bowen sure had it then. They stopped on the path about ten feet beyond where I was and Wes pulled her gentle into his arms and kissed her. I can still see the way her hair shone in the late afternoon light coming through the trees. They stayed that way for a time, and I never moved a muscle nor took a deep breath. She whispered something and Wes chuckled low and tightened his hold on her and they kissed again. I don’t think I ought say any more about it. Except she surely did have pretty hair.

  We moved our two herds out in early March. Besides me and Jim, the hands in Wes’s crew were Alabama Bill Potter, Ollie Franks, Billy Roy Dunn, and Big Ben Kelly. Nameless Smith was the cook and Jeff Longtree was the wrangler. Except for Nameless we were a young and fairly inexperienced bunch. Only Nameless and Ollie and Big Ben had rode the trail before, and they seemed to get a good deal of pleasure from telling us about cowhands they’d seen killed by lightning and drowned in wild rivers and trampled to stewmeat in stampedes. Such tales were scarifying but made me proud to be a cowhand, if you know what I mean.

  In ’71 the whole of the Chisholm Trail was one long and mighty river of cattle steadily flowing north. There was so many outfits moving steers to Kansas that year, the herds ran one right behind the other as far as you could see in either direction, even from up on a rise. Our little herd of twelve hundred head stretched nearly a mile from lead steers to stragglers. Manning’s herd, just ahead of ours, was average size and twice as long. Hell, I’ve seen herds belonging to Shanghai Pierce that stretched five miles! It was thousands and thousands of longhorns on the trail. You never saw nothing like it.

  Nor heard nothing like it either. All them cows bawling and smacking horns, their joints cracking loud as wood. Horses snorting and blowing. Cowhands calling “Ho cattle, ho ho ho!” and cussing and hollering back and forth to each other. Wagons clattering and clanking and their tarps slapping against the frame rails.
But mostly it was the sound of cows squalling and whining and rumbling the ground under you the whole day long. They raised a great thick cloud of dust a mile wide from one end of the trail to the other. Even if you wore your bandanna over your face—which you damn sure had to do when you rode drag if you didn’t want to choke to death—that evening you’d still be spitting mud and digging dirt out of your nose and ears. The whole world smelled of cowshit.

  But damn, the nights were nice. The dust would settle and the stars would be so many and so bright and looking so close you thought you’d burn your fingers on them if you reached too high. At night the ground felt strange, it was so still. The cows were bedded down and resting easy, ripping long farts and groaning sad and low. You’d see the other outfits’ fires flickering like fallen stars all the way to the north and south ends of the world. You never got enough sleep, what with having to stand a guard shift every night—but hell, that didn’t matter. It was so peaceful and quiet while you were on watch, you felt like the world was all yours. If you had a good night pony he’d do most of the work, watching and pacing along your side of the herd and cutting back any restless steer that seemed of a mind to stray off. You didn’t have to do nothing but sit easy in the saddle and gaze up at the stars and sing soft to the cows. The night guard on the other side of the herd would be singing his own songs and pretty much in his own world too.

  Nothing I’ve ever done since has let me feel so free and happy as those five, six years when I was trail driving—and that first time was the one I remember best, which is only natural, I guess, since it was all new to me. I saw buffalo for the first time and more antelope and turkey and such than I’d ever see so many of again. We didn’t lose any hands or cows in the river crossings, and we didn’t have even one stampede—things that happened more than once in drives I made in later years. But that first drive surely had its share of excitement, and the main reason was Wes.