The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  The other one was a good bit younger than Bill, tall and good-looking. Myself, I always preferred the sort of handsome that’s got some wear on it, like Bill’s. At first I figured this one for a gambler, dressed as he was in a black suit and long string tie. But then I looked square into those gray eyes and I knew exactly what he was. My blood suddenly sang it to me. Then it struck me who he was—hell, we’d only been hearing about him for days. Just then Wanda May said, “Johnny? John Wesley?”

  He looked at her close for a minute, then jumped up all bright-eyed and said “Hannie Willingham! Be God damned!” He grabbed her up and swung her around, the two of them laughing like kids. Bill and me looked at each other. I silently said, “Hannie Willingham?” and we busted out laughing too.

  “Hellfire,” Wes said, hugging Wanda to him while she kissed him all over his neck and face, “I knew this sweet thing back when I was learning to cowboy in Navarro County.” Bill smiled in that lazy way of his and poured us all a drink. “Damn world’s getting smaller all the time, ain’t it, Little Arkansas?” I said I didn’t know Wes was from Arkansas, and him and Bill laughed like that was the best joke they’d heard all day.

  Bill didn’t waste any time warming things up. He never did. He caught hold of the hem of my shimmy and tugged me over beside his chair. “What you got on that evil mind, you bad ole injun fighter?” I said, running my hand through his long yellow hair. Wes and Wanda sat on the edge of the big bed, sipping their whiskey and nuzzling some, but also watching as Bill took out his pistola and rubbed the barrel up along the inside of my leg. He slid it real slow all the way up under my shimmy, and when the tip of it touched my bare cunny, I grabbed a fistful of his hair and held on tight. He grinned up at me like the devil himself and stroked me gently with that iron thing till my legs got all trembly and I was breathing through my mouth and cussing him low. He’d never done that to me before—and there he was, doing it front of Wes and Wanda May. He kept at it till I thought I was going to faint from the pure pleasure of it. He suddenly pressed the pistol up hard against me and cocked the gun—and I let a moan and fell on him like I’d been hit behind the knees.

  He sat me on his lap and held the gun up so everybody could see the barrel shining with my wetness. “Mag-gie!” Wanda May said. She was grinning big and her eyes were all lit up. “Whoooo!” Wes said. “Somebody’s having herself a good time.” And do you know I believe I blushed? Me, Maggie St. John, the belle of the Abilene whores, blushing like a schoolgirl. I couldn’t help but laugh with them. “Well, somebody else looks to be enjoying the company too,” I said, and gave a pointed look at the front of Wes’s pants. It looked like he had an ear of corn stuck in there.

  Next thing you know, we were all of us bare-assed and in that big ole bed—and Lord, what a time! It started out Bill on me and Wes on Wanda, the both of them humping like broncos but fighting like hell to keep from being the first to shoot off, and me and Wanda doing everything we knew how with our hands and hips and whatnot to make our man come first. All that contesting got so wild the bed gave way and hit the floor like it was going to bring the whole house down. Wanda claimed she’d got Wes off before I had Bill, which I knew to be a lie and which Wes said was absolutely not a fact. While we were arguing about it Violet swung open the door with a look on her face like she expected to find dead bodies on the floor. A bunch of grinning galoots were staring in over her shoulders. Bill flung a pillow at her and hollered, “Shut the goddamn door, woman! This ain’t no sideshow!” For months afterward me and Wanda could make each other burst out laughing just by imitating that look on Violet’s face.

  We sat on the broken bed and passed the bottle around, and I noticed Wes’s heavy manhood showing signs of life as he admired my titties—they were something to admire in those days, if I say so myself. Wanda slid over by Bill and took hold of his long skinny thing and said to it, “Pardon me, sir, but haven’t we met someplace before?” And that got us going again—this time me on Wes, Wanda on Bill. It started out another contest, but we all got too involved in what we were doing to give a damn who shot when.

  We went at it all afternoon, now and then stopping to rest a little, take a drink, have a smoke. At one point, Wanda ran her finger along one of Bill’s scars and asked him if he could remember where he’d got it. It was bright pink and thick as a curtain cord and ran from his left collarbone to under his right arm. “The McCanles scrimmage,” Bill said. He was scars from neck to knees, and could tell you how he got every one. The long ones were from cuts and the tight puckered ones were from bullets. All Wes had was a tiny pale one on his lip where he’d been punched once and a little pinched one on his arm where a Yankee soldier had winged him. “Unless you die young, Little Arkansas,” Bill said, “you’ll look like this one day. Probably worse, since you got more of them looking to kill you than I do. With me they get a reputation. With you they get a reputation and a reward.”

  Bill used me to show Wes some humping positions he’d learned from a Pawnee medicine man back when he was scouting for the army. Damn if some of those ways weren’t new to me. A couple felt pretty nice, but most were so god-awful awkward only an injun would’ve been fool enough to do it that way. Then me and Bill watched Wanda slide down under Wes and pleasure him with her special “tongue and titty trick.” Then they watched me treat Bill to a trip around the world. Then me and Wanda teamed up on Wes while Bill recovered some of his sap—and then we doubled up on him too. All afternoon it was nothing but wet nakednesss wherever you turned or put out your hand.

  By the time the room was in shadows we were one whipped bunch. The room was just reeking of sex. The whiskey was all gone and the boys were complaining in that boastful way men do that their peckers were so sore they’d likely fall off. Bill gave me a few last kisses on the tits and belly while he got dressed, but Wanda started fooling around with Wes again before he could get his pants on. “Sweet Jesus, girl,” he said, “have pity on a poor wore-out cowhand.” But damn if all her licking and handling didn’t get that big raw thing up on its feet again. So he crawled up on her and gave Bill a grin that wasn’t nothing but a banty rooster challenge. Bill shook his head in a sorrowful way and said, “Hell no! I guess I’m too old anymore, Arkansas. You win.” Hell, he wasn’t beat, he was just getting bored. He couldn’t wait to get to the card table and a fresh bottle, that’s all. I knew him. After he gave me a good-bye kiss on the nose and went on out, I sat at the foot of the bed and watched Wes and Wanda hump each other sweet and slow.

  I’ve had a thousand wild times with men—ten thousand!—but that’s the one sticks in my mind the clearest, even after all these years. Wes and Wild Bill. God damn me, but I loved those fucking killers.

  A few days after Wes got himself squared with Hickok for shooting the mouth off some bad actor from Kansas, I joined him for a breakfast of oysters and eggs in the American House, him and Johnny Coran and Jim Rodgers. We were laughing and going on about the good times we’d been having ourselves in Abilene and about Johnny being so black-assed because somebody’d stole his Mexican head. He’d bought it from a fella in a Missouri guerrilla shirt who’d stopped by our cow camp for a cup of coffee. The fella claimed it came off a Mex who tried to steal his packhorse over in the Red Hills. He’d taken the head to Wichita, thinking there might be a reward out for the horse thief, but the sheriff there said no, he didn’t have a paper on anybody that looked like that Mex. The Missouri fella didn’t much know what to do with the head after that. He said he wouldn’t of felt right to just throw it away, so he’d had it hanging on his saddle horn for nearly a week before Johnny bought it off him for ten dollars. It was still in pretty fair shape, all things considered, only just starting to go rank. It had a hole under its greasy hair in back where the .44 caliber slug had gone in, and a good portion of the forehead was missing where it had come out, but when you put a hat on it you could hardly see the damage. Johnny’d brought the head into town that night and it had naturally drawn a good deal of attention. At fi
rst Johnny wouldn’t let anybody else handle it, but after he got drunk enough to get sociable he let the boys have some fun with it, putting a cigar in its mouth and a whore’s pink garter for a headband, such as that. But he was mad as a sunstruck dog when he woke up in some whorehouse next morning and found out somebody’d stole it. “I find the thieving son of a bitch who took it,” he said, “I’ll be taking two heads back.” He’d spent all day asking after it in the saloons and whorehouses but never did find out what happened to it.

  Anyhow, we’d just ordered up another pot of coffee when who should show up at the table but Manning and Gip Clements, Wes’s cousins. They’d just rode in off the trail and had been hunting for him all over town. They looked tired, both of them dark around the eyes and carrying a layer of dust. Wes was damn happy to see them. He introduced them all around and started to tell about how he’d got the drop on Hickok with the old road agent’s spin when Manning interrupted to say Wild Bill was exactly who he had on his mind. He said him and Gip had run into some hard trouble out on the trail and were wondering if Hickok might try to do something about it.

  What happened was this. Manning and Gip had taken over a herd for Doc Burnett after his first ramrod had got himself too badly cut up in a fight to stay on the job. But they had trouble right from the start from a couple of trail hands named Dolph and Joe Shadden. Johnny said he knew the Shadden brothers. “Never had no trouble with them myself, but I know for a fact they can both of them be mean as snakes.” I’d heard of them too, though never nothing good.

  The trouble started when the Shaddens refused to take their turn on night guard anymore. They thought the youngsters making their first drive ought to do all the nighthawking since they were low men on the totem pole. Manning told them they could either take their turn on night guard like everybody else or they could quit. They said fine, they’d quit, but they wanted the full pay they’d signed on for back in San Antonio. In a pig’s ass, Manning said. He’d pay them for working as much of the drive as they had—they were at the Red River at the time—and not a damned nickel more. So the Shaddens stayed on and night hawked like everybody else, but as the drive moved through the Nations they never let up trying to cause trouble in one way or another. They kept trying to turn the rest of the outfit against the Clementses and stirred up a deal of discontent. They complained about everything. They were slow to follow orders and always cussing Manning under their breath. They tried to pick fights with the few hands who favored the Clementses. The tension just got worse and worse. Manning and Gip took turns sleeping so they could watch over each other in the night.

  Things came to a head one drizzly evening after they’d crossed into Kansas. Manning rode out to help a night guard round up a couple of steers that had wandered off from the herd, and when he got back to camp he found Dolph slapping and shoving on Little Eddie Moorhouse, the youngest hand in the outfit. Gip was trying to get between them, but Joe Shadden kept grabbing him away and telling him to mind his own goddamn business. Manning ran up and shouldered Joe off Gip just as Dolph knocked Little Eddie down into the cookfire. Little Eddie screamed and rolled out of the flames, and some of the hands rushed up and started tearing his smoking shirt off him. Joe pulled his boot knife and swiped at Manning and nicked him on the collarbone. Gip and Dolph pulled pistols and Gip shot Joe in the arm just as Dolph blew a hole through Gip’s floppy rain slicker. Before Dolph could fire again, Manning shot him through the heart. And then, while Joe was struggling to pull his pistol with his bad arm, Manning shot him square in the brainpan.

  Manning turned the herd over to one of the other hands, and him and Gip got the hell away from there. They about rode their horses to death getting to Abilene. They’d sent a telegram to Doc Burnett in Fort Worth telling him what happened. “There’s some in the outfit who’ll tell the truth about it,” Manning said, “but there’s as many who’ll lie and say I shot them in cold blood.” He figured the news had likely reached Wichita by morning and already been telegraphed to Abilene.

  “Hickok’s sure to have papers on me,” Manning said. “If I’d been thinking clear, I wouldn’t of come here. I probably ought to head east right now and make my way back home by way of Arkansas.”

  Hell no, Wes said, there wasn’t any need to do that. He had an understanding with Hickok. He’d see to it Manning got squared with him.

  “You can square me with Wild Bill Hickok?” Manning said.

  “Hey, cousin, me and Bill’re the best of friends,” Wes said with a sly smile. “But now listen, you boys give your gunbelts to Johnny here and he’ll hold them for you out at his camp. I can square you with Bill, but if he sees you packing iron in town he might not bother asking questions before he pulls the law on you.”

  “What the hell?” Manning said. “You’re packing.”

  Wes stood up and put on his hat. “Yes indeed,” he said, and gave Manning a wink, “but I’m special.” He truly enjoyed being the fair-haired boy with Hickok. “You all stay put till I get back.”

  The Clements boys ordered oysters and eggs and the biggest steaks in the house, then tore into it all like they hadn’t eaten in a week. Pretty soon Wes was back, smiling bigger than before. He’d spotted Hickok in the Alamo, he said, but didn’t want to disturb him at his poker, so he’d gone to see Columbus Carol in the Bull’s Head and explained the situation to him. Carol promised he’d talk to Wild Bill and square Manning with him.

  “See, cousin?” Wes said, punching Manning on the arm. “Everything’s all took care of.”

  After eating, we all had a so-long drink together in the Applejack, then Johnny and Jim and me went back to our Cottonwood camp to wait for the rise in beef prices we’d been told would happen in the next few days.

  Next morning, Manning showed up to get his guns from Johnny. He was packing a Colt he’d got from Wes before leaving town. He sat down for a cup of coffee and told us it had been a hell of a night in Abilene, though he hadn’t seen much of it because Hickok had arrested him after all. He’d spent several hours in the hoosegow, passing the time with a medicine salesman accused of poisoning six citizens who’d drunk some of his special elixirs, and with a beat-up cowboy who’d rode his horse into a saloon and up on a faro table—which had made everybody laugh except the faro players, who pulled him off his cayuse and punched him bloody before one of Hickok’s deputies showed up and hauled him off to jail. Anyhow, Wes had finally finagled Manning out of jail some way or other and then quick hustled him out of town.

  We all wanted to hear more details, of course, and we tried to impose on him to stay with us till the next day, but he said he was itchy to get back to Texas. “I reckon Wes’ll be along sooner or later,” he said, “and he can tell you the story a lot fuller than I can. “ So we gave him provisions and wished him well, and off he went.

  And early next morning here comes Wes on the fly—riding in his damn nightclothes, I ain’t lying—and with the law hot on his tail.

  When the wire arrived from Wichita ordering the arrest of Manning Clements for the murder of two trail hands in South Kansas, it so happened that Clements was in town—him and his brother Gip—and had been for at least a couple of days. Bill got steamed when he read the telegram. “I guess the whole town’s heard about this,” he said, “knowing Bloomers.” Bloomers was the telegrapher—and a flannel-mouth gossip. He was faster than the Chronicle when it came to spreading news.

  Tom said he’d just seen Clements eating supper with Hardin at the American House, and he knew for a fact that Gip Clements was playing cards in the Applejack. Tom was one for keeping track of things. Bill let out a heavy sigh and cussed under his breath. We all knew what was eating on him: Hardin hadn’t held to their bargain. If he’d come to Bill and asked to square his cousin, they likely would’ve worked something out so that Bill could keep from arresting Clements without looking bad. But now the whole town for damn sure knew we had a paper on Clements, and Bill had to arrest him or look like he lacked the grit. “Goddamn Texas trash,�
�� he muttered. The more he thought on it, the more it hacked him. He told Tom to keep an eye on Gip Clements in the Applejack, then took me with him over to the American House. At the front door of the place, he told me, “Either one even looks like he’s moving for a gun, give him both goddamn barrels.” I mean, he was hacked.

  Hardin was smiling till he caught the look on Bill’s face. He glanced at me standing by with the shotgun and asked Bill if I was on my way to a duck hunt. Bill just glared at him and said, “It’s buckshot loads, hoss.” Then he asks the other one, “Are you Manning Clements?” Clements nodded. “I have a paper on you,” Bill said. “You’re under arrest.”

  Hardin got agitated, of course, but didn’t seem too inclined to do anything about it, not with my shotgun pointed at him from the hip. I wish he had. If he’d so much as dropped his hand off the table I’d of blown him in half—and if I’d done that, I’d be remembered a lot different, you bet.

  “Didn’t Columbus see you about squaring Manning?” he asked Bill.

  “Sonbitch’s been in the Alamo since yesterday morning,” Bill said, “too damn drunk to lift his head off the table. If you wanted this fella posted, why didn’t you see me yourself?”

  The conversations in the dining room had dropped to nervous whispers. A lot of big-eyed faces were turned our way. They hadn’t expected such an entertainment over their supper beefsteak. The restaurant manager was standing by the rear door, looking scared and fairly worthless. Hardin asked Bill if they might talk in private. Bill told me to keep my eye on Clements, then the two of them went into a back room. While they were gone Clements told me he was unarmed and wouldn’t try to escape, so why didn’t I sit down and take it easy, have some coffee, try the apple pie. He wasn’t a bad fella, you ask me.