The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  Pretty soon he was getting out of bed by himself and getting dressed with only a little help from me. After breakfast he’d take a chair outside and sit propped against the front wall and whittle and sing softly till Dave and the boys got back from working the cotton patch, then he’d join them at the pump to wash up for dinner. One day I was at the stove listening to them all laughing and joshing each other out at the pump when suddenly they fell quiet. I looked out the window just as the first shots cut loose.

  Wes was headed for the house, running hunched over as two policemen came riding hard out of the sweet gum grove a hundred yards away, shooting their repeating rifles as they came. I couldn’t see Dave or the boys, but I heard the horses nickering loud in the corral around back. A bullet ripped splinters off the edge of the window and whanged into a skillet of corn bread on the table and knocked it to the floor. Ten feet from the house Wes got a leg shot out from under him. He hit the ground hard but kept rolling right up to the door. I stepped out and grabbed him by the shirt collar with both hands and yanked with all my might as he scrabbled to all fours. A round passed through my hair and clanked on the stove. Wes tumbled in on top of me, then pulled me with him away from the open door.

  The policemen reined up in front of the house and kept firing through the door and windows as fast as they could work the levers. Wes shouted, “Shotgun!” I was already running to get it from his bedside. I heard the slam of the rear door, and when I got back, Dave and the boys were hunkered down beside Wes. “Horse,” Dave yelled at him, “in back!” He had his pistol in his hand but I knew he hadn’t fired it at another living man since he’d been in the War. His face was pale and tight as a bare skull, and for the first time since the shooting started I felt scared. I shoved the gun and a handful of loads across the floor to Wes, then threw myself over the twins and held them down on the floor while bullets kept whizzing in and biting into the walls and blowing open the canned goods on the shelves and ricocheting off the stove and pans.

  Wes scrabbled up next to the window, stood up with his back to the wall, and cocked both hammers. The new wound was low on his thigh and bleeding steady but not hard. It looked like the bullet had ripped clean through the muscle without hitting bone. But the wound in his side had opened again and was bleeding free all the way down to his boot.

  The policemen were laughing like they were at a turkey shoot as they fired and fired into the house. A bullet ricocheted through the room and Dave yelped and grabbed his backside. Wes gave him a glance, then looked at me and winked. Winked!

  Then—all in a heartbeat—he spun into the window and fired both barrels and jumped clear again as a bullet buzzed in and whacked the wall. A horse started screaming and the police let off shooting. One of them yelled, “Mike, help me! Help me, god-damnit!” I heard a horse galloping away.

  Wes reloaded faster than I thought could be done, then leaned into the window and fired one barrel and the one policeman quit his hollering. The horse was still bellowing like blue blazes. Wes braced the shotgun against the window, aimed higher and more careful, and fired the other barrel. “Damnit!” he said.

  He lowered the gun and stood staring out the window. Blood was running off his boot and spreading on the wood floor. All I could hear was the dying horse. The cabin was full of dust the bullets had knocked loose.

  He turned to look at us and asked if everybody was all right. I was—the boys too—and I got off them. Dave stood up and felt of his backside, but the spent round had only stung him and not even torn his pants. “Reckon you’ll live?” Wes asked him. I couldn’t believe he was grinning! He saw my look and quit, then hobbled on outside.

  Wes’s shotgun blasted and the horse finally stopped its horrible screaming. It was suddenly so unbelievably quiet. We went out and saw the dead animal laying within twenty feet of the house. A few feet over from it was the policeman, his belly blowed open and part of his head gone.

  It was the first shot-dead man the twins had ever seen, and they ran over to him and studied him and nudged each other and pointed to this and that. Their wide-eyed excitement twisted my heart in an awful way I’d never felt before. Dave saw my face and quick called the boys back away from the body. Wes must’ve read my face too. He looked at me kind of sheepish. I can’t explain how I was feeling. I wanted to tell him I didn’t hold him to blame for my home getting shot up and my family being put in such terrible danger. But I just couldn’t.

  We knew the policeman who got away would bring a lot more of them back real soon. Dave hitched a mule to the dead horse and dragged it into the bushes well back of the cabin, then did the same with the dead man. I did what I could for Wes’s wounds. He said he didn’t mean to bring all this trouble down on our family and he was awful sorry about it. “At least nobody got hurt except me,” Wes told Dave, “if we don’t count that slap you got on the ass from the ricochet.” That got a smile from Dave. He said he was proud to be able to say he’d fought next to him against the damn State Police. Men are such jackasses sometimes. It hadn’t crossed his mind yet how hard the State Police could be with them they saw as friends of fugitives.

  By that evening the boys and I were in the wagon and bumping our way on the old trace toward my sister Millie’s farm some twelve miles away. Dave told me to stay put there until he came to take us home. Him and Wes had rode off in the other direction, toward Till Watson’s place, which was set even deeper in the forest than ours was.

  “You’ll be safe there,” Dave had told Wes. “Till lives alone and he’ll be proud to take you, seeing how you hate the State Police almost as much as he does.”

  Six days later Dave got back to Millie’s and told us Wes had surrendered to Sheriff Dick Reagan of Cherokee County and was under arrest in Rusk.

  Hardin made his terms real plain to Sheriff Dick. First off, he wanted protection from mobs. It’s the one thing he was scared of—being taken by a mob—and nobody could blame him for that. A mob is a murdering thing with no more mind to it than a hay barn afire: once it gets out of hand there’s nothing to be done but watch it burn till all that’s left is the smoking ashes. And he wanted a doctor of course. And to be kept someplace other than a jail until he was mended good enough to travel. And Dick’s word that he wouldn’t stand trial anywhere but Gonzales. And he wanted half the reward Dick Reagan would get paid for him.

  I was Dick Reagan’s chief deputy at the time. It was Dave Harrel who brought Hardin’s offer to us in Rusk. Harrel said Hardin wouldn’t make the offer to the Angelina County sheriff because, as everybody damn well knew, he was a natural-born son of a bitch who was a toady for the State Police. “That Angelina shithead would agree to the deal,” Dave said, “then for sure turn him over to the State Police to get shot or be given over to a mob to get lynched.”

  Dick wanted to know what made Hardin think he wouldn’t do the same himself. Harrel said Wes had heard from people he trusted that Dick Reagan was a smart and honest lawman with no love for the State Police. “Kind of him to think so well of me,” Dick said, “but I wonder if I ain’t due more than just half the reward, considering all he wants.”

  Half the reward was a far sight more than no reward at all, Harrel said. “Five hundred dollars ain’t nothing to sneeze at. And you get the glory of being the man who captured John Wesley Hardin. A heroic accomplishment like that could do a man with political ambitions a lot of good if he made proper use of it.” Dick had to grin at the truth of that. “Just one thing,” he told Harrel, “it’s a state warrant, so I’ll have to take him to Austin first when he’s strong enough. But the warrant’s for a killing in Gonzales County, so he can be sure of going there for trial.” And so they had a deal.

  Sheriff Dick owned a hotel in Rusk, and that’s where we put him. The news of John Wesley Hardin’s arrest had carried ahead of us on the wind, the way such news always does, and naturally damn near everybody in town turned out to have a look at him. You’d of thought he was a one-man sideshow, the way they gawked at him when we put him on
a litter and carried him inside and up the stairs. I do believe some expected him to have horns, tail, and hooves—and they seemed downright disappointed that he didn’t. I heard one sprout say, “Shoot, he don’t look so dang different than us.”

  A flock of folk followed us upstairs, bold as you please, and right into the room where we laid him on the bed. Gawkers were packed in the hallway. Dick had gone to check things at the jail, and since he hadn’t said not to let nobody talk to him, I let them go ahead and do it. They asked him how many men he’d killed and who was the toughest man he ever met. (Which he answered, by the way, by saying, “I’ve killed only as many as necessary to defend my own life,” and “I’d have to say Simp Dixon, although Wild Bill Hickok is nobody’s little sister, for damn sure.”) One peckerwood made so bold as to ask if he’d ever shot a woman. “No, sir,” Hardin said, “I never have. But that don’t mean I ain’t known a few who wouldn’t of been a whole lot better for it if somebody had shot them every now and then.” I’ll admit I laughed right along with everybody else at that one.

  All that attention seemed to pump vigor into him. His face took on good color and his eyes brightened up and he was talkative as a jay. He probably would of answered their questions all day long if Doc Jimson hadn’t finally showed up and chased everybody out.

  He laid up in Sheriff Dick’s hotel for near three weeks, mending fast under Dr. Jimson’s care and Mrs. Reagan’s looking-after. Dick complained that his wife was feeding Hardin better than she was him, but she’d just tell him to hush, that Hardin was a bad-injured boy in need of nourishment to get his strength back. Mrs. Reagan had a reputation for being nobody’s fool, so it was amazing to see the way Hardin could charm her into smiling and giggling every time she brought his meals to the room. He appreciated all her good cooking too. Took seconds at every meal and cleaned his plate every time. He looked to be putting on a couple of pounds a day. He wasn’t but skin and bones when we brought him in, but he’d beefed up plenty by the time Dick and me moved him to Austin.

  We turned him over to Sheriff Barnhart Zimpelman, who was surprised to see we hadn’t put any more restraints on him than one set of handcuffs. “No need to,” Dick told him. “He gave his word he wouldn’t try to escape.”

  Zimpelman assured Hardin he’d be transferred to Gonzales in just a few days, and he told Dick he could claim the reward money over at State Police headquarters. Dick gave Hardin a wink and went on over to collect it. Later that afternoon he went back to the jail and gave Hardin his half. Next morning Dick and me headed back to Cherokee County and I didn’t lay eyes on Hardin again, but I naturally heard lots more about him.

  He was in the river jail in Austin for about a week before a half-dozen State Policemen transferred him to the Gonzales lockup to await trial for killing a state lawman named Parramore. All the way from Austin to Cherokee County, as Dick and me made our way back home, we heard a good deal of saloon talk that Wes Hardin wouldn’t make it to Gonzales alive. The betting was that the police would shoot him dead somewhere along the way and claim he tried to make a run for it.

  But they didn’t. Maybe because public opinion had got so bad about the State Police way of doing things and there’d been so much holler in the newspapers lately to punish State Policemen who shot prisoners in their custody. Or maybe because those lawmen figured that if they murdered him on the trail, his kin and close friends wouldn’t rest until they’d evened the score with every policeman on the detail. Or maybe just because the detail was under the command of Captain Frank Williams, who was said to be one of the few honest men in the Davis police. Whatever the reason, it’s a fact they delivered him alive to the Gonzales County jail.

  Oh, he was a smart pup, that Hardin! Surrendering to Dick had been just plain foxy. He’d been bad wounded and had half the lawmen in Texas hunting for him. He needed doctoring and nourishment and time to heal up without fear of the law sneaking up on him. He got all that when he surrendered to Dick—and he got half of his own reward. And he got transferred to a jail he knew he’d be able to practically walk right out of. Like I say—smart.

  And I’m glad he was. Let me tell you, I got to know Wes Hardin fairly well in the time we’d had him in Rusk, and I say he was a pretty good old boy who wasn’t guilty of a thing except defending himself and refusing to be dogwhipped by a bunch of damn Yankees or Davis’s crooked police.

  They had him shackled to his horse and chained hand and foot, and two of them held shotguns at his back as they made their way through the crowd toward the Gonzales jailhouse. The people were cheering Wes and yelling for him to don’t worry, they’d have him out of that jail quick enough. They cussed that party of policemen up and down for the low bastards they were—them and all State Policemen—and that son of a bitch Governor Davis too. Wes wasn’t nothing but a hero to them. I know how they felt. He’d killed the worst Nigra police bully in the county and scared the rest of the black sons of bitches so bad they’d pretty much let Gonzales alone ever since.

  Captain Williams signed him over to Sheriff W. E. Jones while Pancho the blacksmith cut the irons off him in the cell. “We might just as well hand him over to all his friends outside as leave him in this jail,” Williams said. W.E. tried to look offended by that remark. “We do our duty here, Captain,” W.E. said, “with the same devotion as you state boys. I’m a loyal Davis appointee myself, I’ll have you know.”

  Part of that was true: W.E. was a Davis appointee, all right, but he always did have a somewhat lenient attitude about loyalty—and sometimes he’d lean to one side of it and sometimes he’d lean to its other, depending on which side would get him the most votes come election time. He wasn’t nothing but a natural-born politician.

  The police detail no sooner left town than Manning Clements showed up. Him and W.E. had a quiet chat in the corner of the office, then came back to Wes’s cell where I was on guard. W.E. took me aside and said he wanted me to be sure to respect the prisoners privacy during his personal visits. He gave me a big wink and a slap on the shoulder and then went off to home to have supper. I dragged my chair well away from the cell so Wes and Manning could talk in private, and I didn’t do a thing to interfere with their visit, not even when Manning passed Wes a long hacksaw blade and both of them grinned over at me.

  Every few days the district State Police patrol would come by to check on the prisoners we were holding for them until they got official orders to take them someplace else. The day after Wes was brought in they stopped by. The patrol leader was a nasty little runt of a redhead sergeant named Ward Wilcox, and he tried his best to rile Wes good. “I’m gonna be right in the front row and laughing like hell when they drop you through the door, “ he told him. “I’m gonna slap my leg laughing at the sight of your tongue sticking way out and your face turning all black and your eyes popping out of your head. Your legs’ll kick every which way and you’re gonna shit your pants! I’m gonna laugh and laugh at you, you lowlife son of a bitch.”

  Wes leaned against the wall with his arms folded and smiled at him, but I could see the muscle working under his jaw, and his eyes were as hard-looking as the bars in front of him. He never said anything back until just as Wilcox was starting to leave, and then he said, “You best start sleeping with one eye open, you short pile of shit.” I think it was the way he said it as much as what he said that scorched Wilcox’s ass.

  “What?” Wilcox said. “What did you say to me, you shit-eating son of a whore?” But Wes didn’t say another word. He just leaned on the wall and smiled at him. Wilcox cussed him for a solid minute straight, with the veins bulging in his neck and face nearly purple. You could see he wasn’t just mad, he was scared. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another man so scared by a threat. It’s a terrible thing to be that afraid, and the proof of it came two days later when the patrol returned to town and found out Wes had broken jail.

  Wilcox went white as milk when W.E. gave him the news. He accused W.E. of conspiring in the prisoner’s escape, but of course W.E.
could defend himself just fine against any such notion. He even wrote a letter to the State Police headquarters in Austin explaining how on the late night of October 10, a number of persons unknown had tied several lassos to the window bars of the prisoner’s cell and then used the force of their horses to rip the bars right out of the wall.

  The bars surely did get pulled out of the wall—but it only took Manning Clements one small tug with both hands to do it because Wes had already just about sawed through them. His pals had made a real fine show of jailbreaking: hooting and howling and shooting up a storm—but only up in the air so as not to take any chance of hitting somebody by accident. They took the sawed-out section of window bars with them, but anybody looking close at the cell window the next morning might of been amazed to see just how smooth all the bars had broke off—so smooth a man with a saw couldn’t have done it better. Nobody but us saw that, though, because W.E. had his brother-in-law Lyle, a mason by trade, out to the jail just after sunup to put a new set of bars in the window.

  Anyhow, W.E. was in the clear about the jailbreak, but Sergeant Ward Wilcox of the State Police was never the same again. The sorry bastard was terrified John Wesley Hardin would try to even the score for the tormenting things he’d said to him. The story goes that he couldn’t sleep at home, he was so worried about Wes bushwhacking him in his bed in the dead of night. His wife and two young sons volunteered to stay awake and keep watch so he could sleep, but he didn’t trust them not to doze off after he did. He started spending his nights in the police bunkhouse, but he’d have bad dreams about Wes sneaking up on him and he’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night. After a few nights of being woke up that way, the other policemen kicked him out. The lack of sleep on top of his fear made him so jumpy he started flinching and throwing up his carbine at every sudden sound. One night he was passing by an alleyway and heard a noise in the shadows and quick fired four rounds into a tethered horse before he knew what he was shooting at. The police didn’t want him shooting his own men, so they fired him.