The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  We laid up just outside Fort Worth for a day. Fort Worth’s always been the sort of town to encourage a fella to have a high time, and that’s just what we did. When we pushed off again next day, Alabama Bill was sporting two black eyes and Ollie Franks had a big bite mark on his arm and Billy Roy was missing a front tooth. All of us was a good bit red in the eyes, but nobody’d got put in jail, and we were all feeling finely refreshed.

  We were just shy of the Red River when as bad a hailstorm as ever I saw came pouring down on us. Some of the stones were big as chicken eggs and hit hard as rocks. There weren’t no trees to take shelter under, so we had to use our folded-up blankets to protect our heads. Everybody was yelping like dogs from getting hit on the arms and legs. The hailstones spooked the remuda bad, and horses scattered every which way. Once the storm passed we spent a couple of hours helping Jeff Longtree round them up. It was a wonder we only lost two of them jugheads. It was an even bigger wonder that only a couple of dozen cows broke away from the herd and we got them all back with not too much trouble. If the whole herd had stampeded, we’d of been hunting cows all over North Texas for a week. The worst casualties among the hands were Alabama Bill, who got a knuckle broke, and Wes, who had a knot like a walnut raised on his cheekbone. “Son,” Nameless Smith told him, “you don’t never want to look up in a hailstorm.”

  It was a lucky thing we crossed the Red when we did. Three days after we went through it, the river all of a sudden flooded so bad and ran so hard the steers couldn’t cross it. They said sixty thousand head piled up on the Texas side before the water eased up enough so they could push them through again.

  North of the Red was the Indian Nations, and back then it was a whole different country, believe me—especially to a young fella like myself who’d never before set foot outside of Texas and had heard hundreds of hair-raising tales about wild Indians. One reason the outfits traveled so close together in them days was so they could help each other out in case of Indian trouble. The only Indians most of us had ever seen was the sort to be falling-down drunk in town alleyways, and they weren’t no more interesting than a mangy dog. The ones in the Nations was supposed to be peaceable, but everybody knew there was some bucks among them still prone to mischief. There were plenty of stories of how they sometimes spooked a whole herd into stampeding just so they could steal a couple of head. Now some of the redskins were demanding a tax on any cattle passing through their territory. Ten cents a head in some places, two bits in others, it depended on which Indians was doing the dealing. Some trail bosses paid the tax and some didn’t. Some who didn’t pay would anyway let the Indians have a beef, just to avoid trouble.

  Naturally we all told each other we weren’t no more scared of a featherhead than we were of a feathered hen. Everybody did plenty of loud talking around the chuck wagon of what they’d do to any damn Indian who showed his red-devil face to them. Wes said he’d sooner eat a plate of horse apples than pay an Indian so much as a penny of tax or give him a beef. “Damn redskins want cows, let them go out and round up their own,” he said. I did my share of lip-flapping—but the truth is, I was almost as scared that we’d run into Indians as I was afraid we wouldn’t, if that makes any sense.

  Two days later Billy Roy, who was riding swing, started hollering and waving to the rest of us just as we halted the herd to eat dinner. What he’d found a little ways off the trail was a grave mound. It didn’t look too fresh but wasn’t that old either. A wood cross made of wagon boards was stuck in it, and in pencil somebody’d writ on the cross piece, “here lies Bulshit bob—kilt by injuns.”

  Well, the talk about Indians got really hot then. All through dinner we spit and growled about murdering redskins and how the only good Indian was a dead one. “I hope to hell they try to steal from us,” Alabama Bill said. “I’ll send the lot of them to the happy hunting ground before they can say ‘How.’” Jim said, “I’ll show them how.”

  That night at supper, though, the talk was generally quieter. Billy Roy wondered out loud if Bullshit Bob had a family somewhere, maybe still waiting for him, missing him, not knowing he wasn’t never coming back. Most of the boys sat up around the chuck fire later than usual that evening, staring into the flames and not saying much. I don’t believe I was the only one who had trouble sleeping that night, or who felt skittish all through my guard shift.

  Speaking of skittish, something else I won’t forget about that drive is the damn wolves. Along the Chisholm south of the Red, the bounty shooters had about wiped them out. I don’t recall seeing even one the whole way up through Texas. But soon as we got in the Nations we heard their howling all around us. You hardly ever saw one except way off at a distance, but at night their yodeling sounded like it was coming right out of the nearest shadows. It got on your nerves so bad you were sure you could see their yellow eyes watching you out of the dark. The howls didn’t seem to bother the cows near as much as the horses, and Jeff Longtree had a hell of a time keeping the remuda from bolting. The worst night was when we butchered a steer for supper. We normally wouldn’t kill a cow on the trail because it was way more than the outfit could eat and it would mostly go to waste. But this one steer had been ornery from the time we left the Sandies. It kept breaking from the herd, making the swing rider have to run it down time after time. It was mean-tempered besides—always roughing up the cows around it and trying to stick a horn in them. Wes finally had enough, and soon as we made night camp he shot it and had Nameless butcher it. We gorged on beef that evening and to hell with the waste. But Lord Almighty, you should of heard the wolves! They smelled that blood on the air and raised a howling to stand your hair on end. That whole long night sounded like one big crazy house under the moon. If I live to be a hundred I don’t never want to hear nothing like that again.

  We had our first run-in with an Indian near the South Canadian River. Or Wes did, I mean. While we were bedding down the herd he rode off over the near rise to see what he might shoot for Nameless’s supper pot. A few minutes later we heard the crack of his pistol and my brother Jim said to me, “Sounds like we got fresh meat for supper.” Not two minutes later we heard a second shot, and I said, “Sounds like we got plenty of it!”

  Then here comes Wes riding hell-for-leather over the rise. He’s got a big turkey in one hand and his Colt in the other, and he’s yelling, “I got one! I got one!”

  “I got an injun!” he hollers when he reins up beside us and tosses the turkey over to Alabama Bill, who near falls off his horse catching it. He was breathless and big-eyed with excitement. “Sonbitch tried to bushwhack me with an arrow but I was too fast for him and now he’s deader’n that gobbler. Come see, come see!” He told Alabama Bill to tell Nameless and Jeff Longtree to grab up their rifles and keep a sharp lookout on the herd, then the rest of us went galloping off behind him to see the Indian.

  I don’t know what exactly I expected him to look like. All painted up in the face, I guess, with pointy teeth maybe, and feathers all in his hair and so forth. You know—fearsome. But he was a sore disappointment. He was laying beside a bush with a hole in his forehead and flies flocking in his open mouth and ants already in his eyes. There wasn’t a bit of paint on him nor a feather on his head. He wasn’t any taller than me and looked a good bit punier, like he’d been eating poorly for some while. Wes got off his horse and rolled the Indian over with his foot. There was a hole in back of his head big enough to house a squirrel—and the flies quick swarmed over the thick red mess on the ground where his head had lain.

  Wes said he never saw the Indian till after he shot the turkey and got off his horse to retrieve it. Then he felt somebody watching him. He pulled his pistol as he spun around and spotted the Indian crouching in the brush. “He was just starting to draw back his arrow,” Wes said. “If I hadn’t been quick, I’d be laying here now, with feathers sticking out one ear and an arrowhead poking out the other.”

  Billy Roy wanted to take an arrow for a souvenir, but Wes said no, it’d be bad luck. He s
aid we best hurry up and bury the body. Ben said he didn’t know why white men ought bother burying a heathen redskin anyway. Because, Wes said, if other Indians found this one with a ball in his brainpan they might get riled enough to stampede the herd. “Besides,” my brother Jim said—and I caught the quick wink he gave Wes—“some of them might slip into camp at night looking to take a scalp or two in revenge.” The thought of being scalped in his sleep made Ben go a little waxy in the cheeks, and he didn’t argue when Wes sent him back to the wagon for a spade and ax. Then me and Billy Roy dug a good deep grave with the flies buzzing all about us while Wes and the others kept a close watch for more Indians. I was thankful it was too dark to see good by the time we finished digging and rolled him into the hole, but I still ain’t forgot the feeling of dropping that first spadeful of dirt down on him.

  Maybe we kept the killing a secret from the Indians, I don’t know, but it sure didn’t stay no secret on the trail. All next day the news traveled up and down from one outfit to another, and we had lots of visitors come by to congratulate Wes. One was Red Larson, ramrod of the herd right behind ours, which belonged to Peas Butler. Since the start of the drive, Red and Wes had got to be fast friends.

  “I hear there’s one more good Indian in the world because of you,” Red said with a grin. They talked for a while over coffee, and he told Wes he was having trouble with the herd behind his, a big Mexican outfit that kept crowding him. Red was already short-handed and had lost a few steers crossing the Red River. If he got in a fight with the Mexes and lost even more cows, Mr. Butler might not be of a mind to hire him on again.

  “Tell you what,” Wes said, “when we get to the North Canadian I’ll pull my herd over and you run yours ahead of me.” It’s just what Red hoped he’d say, and when we got to the North Canadian it’s just what we did. For some reason, though, the Mexes had got slowed down the day before and were well off behind us, so we didn’t have any trouble with them, not right away.

  What we did have trouble with was more Indians. Three more times while we were in the Nations we were approached by redskins wanting a tax on the herd or a beef from it. The ones in the first two bunches looked even worse off than the one Wes had plugged near the South Canadian. They was bony, hangdog-looking critters, most of them with big sores on their arms and legs, and we run them off by firing our guns in the air and spurring our horses at them like we meant business. But the third time was different. They showed up one morning as we were closing in on the Kansas border, about a dozen of them, most carrying bows and arrows, a couple with lances. There wasn’t a bony one in the bunch. Their leader was a big honker with a white stripe across his nose and two feathers dangling from his hair. He sat straight on his horse and had a Bowie knife on his hip big enough to chop saplings with. His eyes looked like fireholes.

  He signified through hand-talk that he wanted to cut a steer from the herd, but Wes rode up to him and yelled, “Hell, no!” One of the other braves started nudging his pony into the herd, and Wes pulled his Colt and said, “Get your red ass out from my cows, you heathen sonbitch,” and waved him out of there with the gun. Now their leader started jabbering real fast in injun lingo and made it plain with his hand-talk that he meant to have a steer or know the reason why. Wes waved his pistol like he was saying no with his finger. “Hell no, I said!”

  Well, that big redskin slides off his pony, yanks out that Bowie, and walks over to a fat steer. Wes stood up in his stirrups and hollered, “You kill that cow, I’ll kill you!” The other heathens were all talking at once and shaking their lances and such. I drew my pistol and heard the boys levering rifles and cocking pistols all around me.

  And be damn if that injun didn’t slip that knife under that steer, look over at Wes with a grin, and shove the blade way up into its heart. The animal was still dropping when blam! Wes shot the injun through the eye and sprayed his brains out the back of his head.

  The shot stirred up the cows and our horses spooked and pulled this way and that—and for a long terrible second I just knew we were about to be killed by either injuns or a stampede. But the cows didn’t bolt, and the rest of them redskins didn’t do a thing but look all big-eyed at each other and jabber all at once. I guess none of them ever expected to see big Mr. Two Feathers get his head blowed apart like that. Next thing we knew they were hightailing away from us. It wasn’t till they rode off that I realized how dry my mouth was and how hard my heart was pounding. That was as close as I ever came to being in an Indian fight, and it was close enough for me.

  Wes was still plenty hacked, however. He got off his horse and dragged the injun over to the dead steer and used a piece of lariat to tie him sitting up between the horns. “Let them redskins see what happens when they try stealing from us,” he said.

  The news ran like wildfire all along the trail. Hands from outfits ahead of us rode all the way back to the spot just to have a look at the dead Indian. Of course everybody that come along after us seen it. Even a couple of the Mexicans from the outfit behind us came over that night. They had droopy mustaches and wore big hats, silver-studded chaps and mean-looking spurs. Their herd had been gaining ground on us all day. One of the visiting Mexes had been riding point and had seen the whole business with the Indian. “Our jefe, Hosea,” he said, “he think you should have cut the head. Scare the Indios more if you cut the head.” Wes thanked them for the advice, but said what he’d really appreciate was if they’d give our herd more room than they’d given Red Larson’s. “Ah, the red-hair man,” the Mex said. He shrugged and gave Wes a big grin. “You tell your boss I said give us room,” Wes said. “Sure, I tell him,” the Mex said. “Hosea, he don’t like to go too slow, you know. But I tell him.”

  We no sooner crossed into Kansas, though, than they closed up tight behind us. Wes didn’t say nothing but you could see he was chafed. One morning the Mexes moved right up on our heels. Our drag riders suddenly had Mexican cows all around them, and some of our stragglers were mixing with the Mexican animals. We had to stop both herds to cut each other’s steers out of the tangle.

  The Mexican boss Hosea came riding up looking like he’d just swallowed a pound of chili peppers. He was tall for a Mex and wore a flat-top hat, and the ends of his mustache hung down to his chin. He didn’t talk American too good, but it was clear enough he was blaming the whole thing on us for moving so slow. “I’ll move my herd as I see fit,” Wes told him. The chili-belly blabbered at him in Mexican, then spat down between them and rode back to his own outfit. “Greasy sonbitch,” Wes said. You could about see the smoke coming out his ears, he was so mad.

  The next day Manning and Gip showed up in camp and clapped Wes on the back for what he’d done to the big redskin. Then Manning told him a drover named Doc Burnett had asked him to take over another herd about fifteen miles back down the trail. The herd’s ramrod had got into a fight with some bad actor and they’d cut each other up good. Looked like they’d both live, but they were laid up in wagons and would be left off in Caldwell to heal. In the meantime Burnett needed a new trail boss for the outfit, somebody he could depend on and who had sufficient sand to ramrod that troublesome crew. He’d offered Manning six hundred dollars to take the herd the rest of the way to Abilene, and guaranteed he’d still get his full wages from Columbus. “It’s too good to pass up,” Manning said. He was taking Gip along to back him in case there was any more trouble with the hands. When Wes told him about his problems with the Mexes, Manning said, “You let a Mex take an inch and next thing you know he’s wanting five yards. So don’t give the greaser that inch, and don’t take his guff if things come to a head.” Then him and Gip headed off south.

  * * *

  Things did come to a head, just two days later, out on the Newton Prairie. By then everybody up and down the trail knew there was bad blood between Wes and the Mexican boss, and expectations of a fight were running high. I was riding swing when I suddenly heard a lot of loud hollering and cussing, in both American and Mexican, coming from the
rear of the herd. I reined back some till I could see through the dust good enough to make out what was going on. The lead Mex steers had closed up around our drag again, and Alabama Bill and Big Ben Kelly were arguing with Hosea and another Mex about it.

  Wes came galloping back, cussing a blue streak. “I told you keep them cows away from my herd, you greaser sonbitch!” He pulled his pistol—he’d been wearing just one on the trail—and put it square in Hosea’s face. And that damn Mexican was either the bravest son of a bitch you ever saw or pure-dee crazy, because what he did was go for his own gun.

  Some fellas I’ve told this story to say they don’t believe what happened next. Hell, I don’t blame them. I saw it and I couldn’t believe it. Wes pulled his trigger and the gun didn’t fire. We later come to find out there was too much play between the cylinder and the breech to pop the cap. But here’s the hard-to-believe part: Hosea’s gun wouldn’t fire either. There they were on their horses, no more’n two feet apart, cocking and snapping their pistols in each other’s face over and over and neither one’s would shoot. If I’ve ever seen a more unbelievable thing in my life, I sure don’t recall what it was.

  Hosea let out a kind of choked-up scream and flung his gun at Wes’s head and just missed—and Wes threw his pistol and hit Hosea on the arm—and next thing you know they’re locked up and rolling around on the ground, and us and the Mexicans are in a big circle around them on our horses and cheering our lungs out. And all the while the Mexican cattle’s still moving, going right around the group of us like we were a sandbar in a river.