The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  Bill cleared his throat and then said in a loud professional voice, so all the citizens could hear, “This one ain’t no self-defense, not when the dead man’s got no gun nor any other weapon on him.” I thought of the razor and gave him a look, but he stared me down quick. “You deputies,” he said, still in that loud politician’s voice, “you get the chance, you shoot him on sight.”

  He sent Mike and Steve to hunt for the fugitive who took the east trail, and told me and Tom to search for the one who went south. If we hadn’t picked up a trail by midmorning we were to turn back for home. We saddled up and rode out hard, thinking we might gain some ground on our quarry if he thought he was safely distant and had slowed down.

  Just after sunup me and Tom came across one of Jake Johnson’s cattle camps. The ramrod was a fella named Coran, who said they hadn’t seen any sign of Wes Hardin or Gip Clements, but invited us to have some biscuit and molasses and a cup of coffee. We were much obliged—and mighty hungry after riding all night. I was just started on my second biscuit when a voice directly behind us said, “Hands up, sonbitches, or I’ll turn you into dogmeat.” He’d got some clothes from somebody, and it was Steve’s shotgun he was holding on us.

  The bastard made us take off all our clothes. I mean every single damn stitch, right down to our bare feet. He had the saddles taken off our horses and thrown in the river, together with our guns and boots. Then he told us to mount up bareback—but he had to tell us twice because we couldn’t hardly hear him for all the laughing them cowhands were doing at the sight of our white buck-nekkid asses and our peters and balls all a-dangle in the bright sunshine. Hardin told us not to bother trying to circle around to another outfit to ask for clothes. He’d already sent the word out for none of the outfits to help us. “Only thing any Texas outfit’ll give you skinned rabbits is a bullet in the ass,” he said. We rode off with their laughter ringing in our red ears.

  As soon as we went over a distant rise and out of their sight, I reined up and told Tom I wasn’t going back to Abilene. We’d never be able to live down the shame, I told him. He said it was shameful all right, but there wasn’t anything to do but face the music. No, sir, I said, not me. The music we’d face would be humiliating laughter, and we’d hear it every time we stepped out in the public streets for the rest of our days in Abilene. Tom was hangdog as ever I’d seen, but he said there wasn’t no choice, not for him, he had to go back. I called him a fool for it, but he just shrugged and rode off.

  I angled off to the west before turning south, and rode for most of the day without seeing another living soul until I came on a team of buffalo wagons just before sunset. I smelled them before I caught sight of them. The wagons were heaped high with the stiff flat-cured hides they’d taken on the high plains. Naturally the skinners all had a good laugh at the sight of me. I was bright red with sunburn, and was already peeling where the blistered skin had bust open. Even my peter was burned. It was pure pain to put on the shirt and pants and moccasins they spared me, especially since the clothes were so stiff with dried blood and gore. I near choked on the stink of them, but I counted myself lucky to have something to wear, and I thanked the skinners kindly. Their generosity extended to a bundle of buffalo jerky, a canteen of water, and a rank old blanket to use for a saddle. Then they went their way and I went mine.

  Later on I heard tell that Tom Carson had met his humiliation like a man. And after they’d had their laughs and their fill of jokes at his expense, the town showed Tom even more respect than ever before, and I mean Wild Bill too. Damn.

  BLOOD, LETTINGS

  The El Paso Daily Herald,

  20 AUGUST 1895

  Mr. R. B. Stevens, the proprietor of the Acme Saloon, said:

  “I was on the street and someone told me there was likely to be trouble at my saloon between Wes Hardin and John Selman, Sr. I came down to the saloon and walked in. Selman was sitting outside the door. Hardin was standing just inside the door at the bar, shaking dice with Henry Brown. I walked on back into the reading room and sat down where I could see the bar. Soon Selman and Shackleford came in and took a drink. Then I understood Shackleford to say to Selman: ‘Come out, now; you are drinking, and I don’t want you to have any trouble.’ They went out together. I then supposed Selman had gone away and there would be no trouble. I leaned back against a post and was talking to Shorty Anderson, and could not see the front door, and do not know who came in. When Selman and Shackleford came in they took a drink at the inside of the bar. Hardin and Brown were standing at the end of the bar next the door. I did not see Selman when the shooting took place. When I went into the barroom Hardin was lying on the floor near the door and was dead. I walked to the door and looked out. Selman was standing in front with several others, Capt. Carr among them. When Capt. Carr came into the saloon I asked him to take charge of Hardin’s body and keep the crowd out. He said he could not move the body until the crowd viewed it. I saw Carr take two pistols off Hardin’s body. One was a white-handled pistol and the other a black-handled one. They were both .41 caliber Colts. The bullet that passed through Hardin’s head struck a mirror frame and glanced off and fell in front of the bar at the lower end. In the floor where Hardin fell are three bullet holes in triangular shape about a span across. They range straight through the floor.”

  The Life of John Wesley Hardin as Written by Himself

  “When I married Jane Bowen, we were expecting the police to come anytime.…”

  ——

  “Mob law had become supreme in Texas, as the hangings of my relatives and friends amply proved.”

  ——

  “Right there over my brother’s grave I swore to avenge my brother’s death and could I but tell you what I have done in that way without laying myself liable, you would think I have kept my pledge well. While I write this, I say from the deepest depths of my heart that my desire for revenge is not satisfied, and if I live another year … be the consequences what they may, I propose to take life.”

  ——

  “I took an oath … never to surrender at the muzzle of a gun. I have never done so, either, although I have been forced through main strength to give up several times.”

  ——

  “It was war to the knife with me.”

  If Wes really wanted to try and avoid trouble when he got back from Kansas that summer, the Sandies was probably the last place he ought to have come to. Then again, this was where his Clements kin all lived—and of course there was Jane Bowen, who he was in love with and wanted to marry.

  It was awful hard and bloody times. Ed Davis’s bullying police were getting thick as flies everywhere you looked. Davis called Gonzales and DeWitt counties the worst places in Texas for feuding and killings and outlaw carrying on, and I guess that was true enough. The Sutton-Taylor Feud was getting meaner all the time, and vigilantes and night riders roamed the countryside. It was common knowledge, however, that a lot of Sutton’s night riders were white-trash bastards who wore the State Police uniform by day.

  Wes lived at Manning Clements’s place out at Elm Creek and spent his days helping his cousins on their ranch. In the evenings he courted Jane. Things stayed quiet for about a month after him and the Clementses got back from Kansas. Then one day two State Policemen, a pair of big Nigra honkers, came into Smiley looking for him. Some lowlife had likely tipped them to him being in town. They asked after him from house to house and store to store, scaring the womenfolk and children like they always enjoyed doing. They finally come in my barbershop, where Wes was taking a shave. They had their hands on their guns and took a careful look at everybody in the shop. Wes had a faceful of lather, and the Nigras looked at him extra hard. “You gents ought to be careful with them pistolas,” Wes said to them real pleasantlike. “You don’t want to shoot somebody by accident.” The Nigra sergeant was a fellow named Green Parramore, and we all knew him for the bullying bastard he was. He said they’d been told John Wesley Hardin was in town and they were looking for him. Wes wiped a tow
el across his face with his left hand, keeping his right under the barber sheet, and asked Parramore if he’d know Hardin on sight. The Nigra said no, but he figured somebody with a use for a share of the reward would point him out if he was around. “I believe you right,” Wes said. “Hell, I’ll point him out to you for a share of the reward.” The two Nigras quick looked around all wary. “He here?” Parramore asked. “Right there,” Wes tells him with a big smile.

  Parramores eyes went big as snowballs and he started to pull his pistol, but Wes fired from under the sheet and hit him over the eye and sent the back of his head splattering through the window. The other one was already running out the door as Wes fired at him and tore a chunk off his uniform jacket. Wes ran out after him with the sheet still around his neck and lather clinging to his chin, but that nigger was scooting like a scalded dog. If Wes had stopped running and took aim he’d of dropped him sure, but he kept firing on the run and so missed him every time. Folks were whooping and diving for cover every which way. The Nigra ran into an alley and hopped over a fence and disappeared into the woods north of town. He was mighty damn lucky, that one.

  Well now, you can bet the town buzzed for days with the story of that shooting. Then came the rumor that a posse of a dozen hard-case vigilantes was on its way over from San Antonio to arrest Wes or kill him, whichever it took for them to get the reward. We didn’t see nothing of Wes nor the Clements boys for the next two days and most of us figured they’d all rode off to hide somewhere. But didn’t no vigilante bunch come around, either.

  Next Saturday morning, who shows up in my shop but Manning Clements—smiling from ear to ear with a story to tell. A couple of days earlier, he’d got word the San Antone posse was only a few miles from Elm Creek and coming fast. He went straight to Wes and advised him to head for the hill country and hide out for a time.

  But Wes wouldn’t have any of that. He told Manning the day he’d run from a fight was the day he’d start wearing a dress and take up knitting. He wouldn’t even let Manning and his brothers join with him. It was his fight, he said, and he’d be the one to fight it. He armed himself with four revolvers and rode off to meet the posse. Manning tried to do like Wes wanted and stay out of it, but after about ten minutes he said the hell with it and rounded up Jim and Gip and they headed out after him to help out.

  They were just about to Salty Creek when they heard shooting. They spurred their horses up over the near rise and saw eight or nine riders hightailing it north with Wes riding hard after them, firing with two pistols at once. Two vigilantes were already stretched on the ground, and then a third went tumbling off his mount. Wes chased the others right on over the next rise and out of sight. “It was some cheerful sight,” Manning said, “all them brave possemen running scared from one Sandies bad-ass.”

  The Clements boys started out after him, but before they reached the next rise, here came Wes loping on back, grinning big and waving at them. The last of the three men he’d shot was trying to get to his knees, and as Wes trotted by him, he shot him in the head and hollered, “One to grow on!”

  One of the fellas listening to Manning’s story, a drummer passing through, muttered something about how it didn’t seem too awful “sporting” of West to shoot that third fella in the head thataway. Manning jumped out of the barber chair and grabbed him by the collar in both fists. “That son of a bitch and all the rest of them rode all the way down here to kill Wes!” he shouted in the fella’s face, which turned about white as a sheet. “All of them against just one of him! So what the hell you mean sporting, you stupid shitbucket?” A bunch of us managed to calm Manning down just enough to let loose of the fella, and I mean that stranger cleared out quick.

  The tale of Wes’s fight against the San Antonio posse spread through the Sandies like fire in dry grass. It made all the newspapers. Some editorials called him a hero for standing up to the damned State Police and the cowardly vigilantes who supported them—but others referred to him as a bloody desperado who ought to be shot down like a dog or strung up from the highest oak in Texas.

  We then got word that a mob of about fifty Nigra police and some of their white-trash amigos were threatening to come to Smiley and burn the town down for being a friend to Wes Hardin. When Wes heard about it, he went to the telegraph office and sent a wire to State Police headquarters saying, “Come on down. Won’t one of you be going back.” When they still hadn’t showed themselves a week later, we knew they weren’t ever coming. Fact is, we never did see too much of the State Police in Gonzales after Wes sent them that telegram.

  Wes then left the Sandies for a time. Some said he’d gone up to Hill County to visit with his daddy and momma, and some said he’d gone to San Antone to start a horse business. I don’t know. The Clementses must of known, of course, but they never said, and I don’t blame them. You never knew who might be whispering into the ears of the State Police. He didn’t show up around here again till shortly after Christmas, when Gip Clements got married to Annie Tenelle. Matter of fact, it was at Gip and Annie’s wedding dance that Wes and Jane announced their engagement.

  The wedding bells rang for them in Riddleville on a cool sunny day in March. They moved into a small house out on Fred Duderstadt’s ranch. Wes talked about rounding up a herd and making another drive to Kansas along with my Lucas and the Clements brothers, but then they heard the Kansas beef market was still too low to make a drive worthwhile. So the Clementses decided to work a small herd of steers over to the coast for shipment to Mobile, and Wes decided he would try the horse business for a while. My Lucas and his brother John threw in with him. They’d heard it was a good market for horses just across the river in Sabine Parish.

  While Lucas and John got to work building a corral on the Duderstadt place, Wes rode down to the King ranch and made a deal for horseflesh. It was expected he’d be gone about twelve days or so, but he’d only been gone barely more than a week when Lucas went out to the corral one morning and found Wes’s horse Old Bob in there, white-caked all over and too played out to even lift its head. Wes had bought that fine horse from my brother-in-law John, and now it was ruined for fair.

  When Wes showed up later in the day and Lucas asked him what had happened to Old Bob, he grinned a little shamefaced and said he’d made a straight-through ride from just south of the Nueces to Gonzales County. That’s over a hundred miles, and Wes said he’d rode it in a little over six hours. It’s no wonder the poor animal was foundered. I never could abide mistreatment of a horse, and I asked Lucas whatever had possessed Wesley Hardin to do such a thing to Old Bob. He said Wes told him he’d all of a sudden got so lonely for his bride he couldn’t stand it and just wanted to get home to her as quick as he could. When he told me this, Lucas shrugged and studied his right hand like he always did when he wasn’t sure if a thing made sense or not.

  But of course it did. There’s lots of things somebody might do they wouldn’t normally except they’re neck-deep in love. Wes had rode that horse near to death for the love of Jane. I pitied the poor horse, but it made all the sense in the world.

  You could see how awful much he loved her just by how he beamed on her all evening at the party Manning Clements threw for them at his house toward the end of May. We were celebrating Jane’s announcement that they were expecting their first child late next winter.

  They soon had the herd all ready, and Lucas and John agreed to drive it to Hemphill, and because Daddy Harper was sheriff of Sabine County, Wes thought it was as safe a town as any for them to meet up in and take care of business. He went on ahead of the herd to visit for a spell with some of his kinfolk in Livingston. As I recall, he bought himself a racer in Polk County and took that horse with him to Hemphill. Lucas said that animal won Wes just barrels of money.

  After Lucas and John showed up with the herd and the horses got sold, the two of them decided to stay in Hemphill and visit with their daddy awhile. But Wes wanted to get back to Jane and said so long. The thing is, he didn’t head back directly
. He started back by way of his old stomping grounds in Trinity County so he could call on more kinfolk he hadn’t seen for a time. It turned out to be a real bad idea, though, because it was in Trinity he got himself shot-gunned.

  I wish I’d used my head sooner and not cleaned up the blood before I realized how good it would of been for business to leave it be. I should of let it dry and marked off the spot with some paint or a rope. Even so, my trade about doubled for the next few months with gawkers come to see where it happened. At least I was smart enough to pick the buckshot out of the doorjamb before they did. I sold each shot for as much as two dollars apiece, and when I ran out I just broke open some shells in the back room and sold that as the real thing. Damn fools never knew the difference.

  He came in with his cousin Barnett Jones and a few other friends of theirs. Barnett lived over near Livingston and had been in my saloon many a time. I knew him real well. I was right proud when he introduced me to Wes. I had a nice ten-pin alley in the back room, and the two of them went back there to roll a few games. I had Freddie spell me at the front bar so I could go back there and watch.

  After winning about four, five games in a row, Barnett said he wouldn’t play him anymore. “I’m just stealing it from you, the way you play,” he told Wes. “I’ll play for fun, but no more betting. Daddy’d skin me alive if he found out I’d took such advantage of kin.” But Wes insisted they keep playing for money. “A man’s supposed to give a fella a chance to win his money back, god-damnit.” And so on. You know how it is with a fella who’s losing bad.