The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  “Ah, hell,” Morgan said. “You got time for one drink. Barkeep! Set up my friend Hardin here with a drink!” Wes gave me a look of exasperation and stepped away from the bar.

  “Hey, Hardin!” Morgan said, snatching hold of Wes’s sleeve. “I just bought you a drink!”

  Wes shook off his hand. “Suck it down yourself, rumpot.” He was in no mood to humor some pushy drunk. But as he started for the door, Morgan grabbed him by the shoulder, saying, “You goddamn puffed-up—”

  Wes drove an elbow hard into Morgan’s belly—just whooshing the air out of him—then shoved him against the bar. “Damn you!” he said. “I don’t need more troubles with the law over some shitheel like you, but you want to prove something, then do it!” He stood ready for whatever Morgan might try—but the deputy stood fast and red-eyed, holding his belly with both hands, still gasping for breath. “You ever see me coming,” Wes said, “you best quick turn around and go the other way, you understand?” The deputy gave a jerky nod. “Good,” Wes said. “Understanding’s what the world needs more of.”

  But what the world’s got way plenty of is stupidity. We’d just got outside and stepped down off the sidewalk when the saloon door bangs open behind us and Morgan hollers, “You son of a—!”

  Wes whirled and fanned two shots and hit him over the right eye and in the front teeth. Morgan did a spastic little two-step and squeezed off a round into the sidewalk and pitched face-first into the street.

  Wes gave him a kick to make sure he was dead, then holstered his Colt and let out a long breath. He looked around at the crowd of big-eyed spectators and said, “You are all witnesses. I wanted no row but he gave me no choice. Tell the sheriff how it was.”

  We mounted up and rode on out. The crowd closing around the dead man was dark-eyed and silent. The only sound as we left town was from our horses’ hooves.

  In the spring of 1873 Wes met with Jack Helm and Jim Cox to clarify his neutrality in the Sutton-Taylor feud. Because he didn’t trust Helm any farther than he could kick him, Wes took my big brother George and Manning Clements with him to the meeting. It was wise that he did, as Helm and Cox were accompanied by eight Sutton Party pistoleros who glowered at George and Manning the whole time they waited outside for the meeting to be over. Bill Sutton was not present. Helm told Wes he’d been taken ill and could not ride. I doubt that. More likely, he was simply too afraid to show up. You can always count on a treacherous man to suspect treachery in everyone else.

  The only reason Wes went to meet with them was to hear Helm’s deal for clearing him of all the State Police warrants against him. Helm had a number of powerful friends in Austin and could have done it. What he wanted was for Wes to side with the Regulators and help them rid the Sandies of the Taylors and everyone in league with them. He promised Wes that no charges would ever be filed against him for anything he did in the service of the Sutton Party.

  Wes admitted to us later on that he’d been sorely tempted to accept the offer. The idea of no longer being a wanted man made his head swim. “I can just imagine how nice it’d be to walk down any street in Texas with my wife at my side and my baby in my arms and not have to worry about some lawman sticking a shotgun in my face around the next corner. Or to have supper with my family in a restaurant without thinking some stranger after the price on my head might shoot me in the back while I’m chewing on my beefsteak. Or to sleep with both eyes shut and without a pistol in my hand. I can just imagine how nice it’d feel to be free as all that.”

  But then Jim Cox produced a list of names and said the Sutton Party intended to rid the Sandies of everybody on it. The Clementses were on the list. So was my brother George. Even I, not yet sixteen, was on it. Wes knew every man on the list and remarked that all of them were neutral. Jim Cox said there wasn’t any such thing as neutral, not anymore. “Who ain’t for us,” he said, “is against us.” Helm said that any friends Wes had on the list would be welcome to ride with the Regulators.

  Wes told him he had friends who had taken no sides between the Sutton and Taylor Parties and would prefer to keep it that way. Jim Cox went to the door, glared out at George and Manning, and spat a streak of tobacco juice. “Like them?” he growled. I’d seen Jim Cox: he was a huge brute who was said to have beaten at least two men to death with his fists.

  “Sorry,” Wes told them, “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t accept.” If anyone ever suggests to you that John Wesley Hardin lacked loyalty, you tell that ignorant individual to go to hell. Keep in mind that none of us knew just how soon the Davis police would be out of business. All Wes knew was that if he said yes to Helm, his troubles with the State Police would be at an end and his life would be eased considerably. But he also knew the Clementses would never side with the Suttons, nor would my brother George, and he was not one to abandon kin or friend, not for any reason.

  He told Helm we would all stay out of the feud so long as we were let alone in our part of the Sandies. Jim Cox scowled at him and snorted. Jack Helm shrugged and smiled and said, “All right, son, if that’s how you want it.” But he hoped Wes would give a little more consideration to how much safer life would be for him and his family if all state warrants against him were dismissed. “You’re squared with me, son,” he said, “but I’m only the county sheriff. I can’t speak for the State Police.” Wes said Helm’s smile was oily enough to lubricate a train.

  Two weeks later the Texas legislature overturned the Police Act—and then overrode Governor Ed Davis’s veto of the repeal. No Fourth of July celebration I’ve ever seen can compare to the jubilation that greeted the end of the State Police. A kind of proud Texas lunacy prevailed—a wild exultation over the end of what one newspaper called “an infernal engine of oppression.” Firecrackers and gunfire banged all day and night. Bonfires blazed as high as the trees. Dance bands fiddled and twanged. Whiskey rivers flowed in the packed saloons and rebel yells echoed in the streets. On that glorious day my big brother George bought me my first drink of whiskey in a saloon. Wes Hardin bought me my second.

  Of course, not everyone was pleased by the Repeal Act. Some feared the demise of the Davis police would permit lawlessness to flourish more openly than ever. They had fair reason to think so. In many towns the repeal prompted mobs of scoundrels to storm the jails and release the prisoners. In even more towns the “arms laws” against wearing guns were widely ignored. One newspaper quoted a former State Police official as saying, “The repeal is cause for greatest rejoicing among Ku Klucks, murderers, and thieves.” Of course that was true. But criminals had not been the only ones to suffer under the State Police: too many honest citizens had been victims of its depredations as well. It was little wonder the news of its death inspired such wide revelry.

  Jack Helm must have reasoned that without the threat of the State Police hanging over him, Wes had no further call to consider joining the Sutton Party—and might even be inclined to side with the Taylors. I can think of no other reason to explain Helm’s sudden hostilities against Wes and the Clementses except that he must have intended to kill or arrest them before they allied themselves with the Taylors. Whatever his motive, it was the foolish move of a suspicious man—and it drew Wes into the feud as nothing else would have….

  A couple of days after we got the news of the repeal, we were out popping the brush for longhorns, rounding up a herd for Manning and Huck Clements to take to Kansas. Their brothers Gip and Jim already had a herd on the trail. George and I had been supping at Wes’s house and sleeping on his porch most nights rather than go all the way back home. That afternoon, when we got back to Wes’s, we found Jane in tears, clutching little Molly tightly to her bosom. Fred Duderstadt was with them, brandishing a shotgun. His clothes were torn and sopping wet and his face and hands were gashed and bloody.

  Jack Helm and Jim Cox and some forty Sutton men had come galloping up in the middle of the day. They surrounded the house and demanded in the name of the law that Wes Hardin come out with his hands up. Jane went out with
the baby in her arms to tell them Wes wasn’t at home and to protest their trespass. The black terrier Wes had recently brought home for Molly to play with kept barking at the intruders and Jack Helm shot it dead. Jim Cox dismounted and grabbed Jane roughly by the arm, then pushed her and the child ahead of him as he barged into the house with pistol in hand. He fired into closets and trunks before opening them to see if Wes had been hiding inside. Jane was nearly hysterical and the baby shrieked in terror.

  Fred Duderstadt had been out working his field when the Suttons rode in, and he ran to the Hardin house to try to protect Jane and the baby. But he was unarmed—luckily, or they surely would have shot him. The Sutton men beat him down with their coiled lariats, then threw a lasso over him and horse-dragged him around the house for laughs. Then picked him up and dropped him down the well.

  They smashed up most of the furniture in the house for sheer devilment. Some wanted to set the place afire, but Jack Helm stopped them, saying there was no need of that. He told Jane to inform Wes that he had a warrant for his arrest for the murder of J. B. Morgan, deputy sheriff of Cuero. Wes could either clear out of the Sandies immediately, Helm told her, or he could swing from a tree when they caught him, the choice was his.

  As soon as the Suttons rode off, Jane got a rope from the barn, tied it off on the well’s windlass brace, and lowered it to Fred so he could haul himself out. The Suttons had taken all the guns they’d found in the house, but they’d not discovered the shotgun Wes kept hidden under the back porch steps. Fred put fresh loads in the chambers and kept watch at the front window in case any of them returned. Jane kept trying to soothe the baby but she could not stop crying herself.

  Wes held her close and gently stroked her hair. He spoke softly to her and told her everything was all right now, not to cry anymore. But his eyes looked crazed and his hands were trembling. “Listen, darling,” he said in a strained voice, “I have to go out for a little while.” She clutched him tighter and cried, “No! There’s too many!” He tenderly rocked her in his arms. “Hey, girl,” he said, “I ain’t crazy. I’m not going after no army of Regulators by myself. I’m going to see Manning is all. I promise.”

  He asked me and Fred to stay and watch over Jane and Molly, and then he and George galloped off to Manning’s ranch. They found him in a cursing rage. The Sutton men had been there too, searching for the Clements brothers and frightening the women with demands to know the names of all members of the Taylor Party. Manning wanted to take the fight straight to the Suttons right then, but Wes prevailed on him to use his head. We need more men, he told Manning, good men. So Manning said all right, let’s talk to the Taylors.

  Wes came home and retrieved Jane and the baby. He took them back to Mannings where they’d be in the company of the Clements women and children—and guarded day and night by Manning’s armed cowhands. In the meantime, Huck Clements was on his way to Jim Taylor with a message: Wes wanted to meet with him that night at the Mustang Mot.

  It was a perfect place to meet. The trees gave us cover as well as concealing shadow, and the wide tract of surrounding prairie, especially under the bright quarter moon, would make easy targets of anybody who tried to ride up on us. I remember our ride out there as clearly as if it happened last night. The air was rich with the smells of the bottomland along the creek. Nighthawks were swooping into the high grass. A soft breeze carried one lonely cloud across the moon. When we got to the mot—Wes and Manning and Huck, George and I—the Taylors were already there. Jim, his little brother Billy, and his cousin Scrap.

  The Taylors were good people. They were possessed of quick, familiar wit and fierce Confederate spirit. They asked no quarter in a fight and never gave it. Jim had been leader of the Taylor clan since his daddy Pitkin’s murder. George and Manning had agreed that Wes should do the talking for our side.

  “I wanted to stay out of this fight,” Wes told the Taylors. “But those sonbitches laid hand to my wife. They frightened my child. They tore up my house and bulldozed my friend. I didn’t tread on them, but they surely did on me, and I aim to see they pay for it—Cox, Helm, Bill Sutton, the lot of them. But they got an army on their side, so we need one too. It’s nothing but good sense for us to side with you against those sorry bastards.”

  Jim Taylor said they were damn proud to have us with them, and he swore the Taylor Party would henceforth protect all Hardin, Clements, Tenelle, and Duderstadt families and properties against intrusions by Sutton forces. The only condition Jim imposed was that he be the one to kill Bill Sutton and Jack Helm. “I made my ma a promise about Old Bill I intend to keep,” he said. “And I owe Jack Helm for killing my sisters’ husbands.” Wes said all right, but he claimed the same privilege for himself with regard to Jim Cox. “He was the one dared to touch my wife and made my daughter cry in fear.” Jim Taylor nodded somberly and said, “He ought be yours, all right.” They shook hands and the alliance was sealed.

  Three weeks later a small party of us ambushed Jim Cox and eight of his pistoleros one night on the river road near the county line. They were returning from a dance at a Sutton ranch just north of Cuero, and since we’d been lying low for three weeks, their guard was down. We set ourselves in the trees on the high ground flanking both sides of the road where it curved toward the Guadalupe Bridge. Bill Watkins and I were the two youngest, and Wes said our job was to shoot all the horses. “It’s up to you boys,” he said, “to make sure not one of them Suttons leaves here on anything but a pair of wings.”

  We had a clear full moon to shoot by, and we were armed with repeaters. We waited till they all came into view around the wide bend in the road and got to within forty feet of us. Jim Cox was in the lead and Wes’s first shot took off the top of his head. In the next instant our volley cut through them like a scythe of fire. I’d been excited and eager for the shooting to start, but the sudden screaming of so many dying men and animals drew a rush of hot vomit up to my throat. It surprised hell out of me, but I swallowed it down and kept shooting like everyone else. Our crossfire allowed for no escape. They fired wildly into the trees and ran into each other. They tried to worm themselves into the ground and out of the firestorm. They tried to hide behind blades of grass. I kept shooting at the horses, even after they’d all gone down. I wanted to stop their hellish screaming. I’d had no idea.

  When none of the Sutton men was returning fire anymore, we finally eased off. It seemed like we’d been shooting for hours but it was probably no more than a minute. One of the horses was still kicking and bellowing and I had to shoot it twice more before it stopped. Manning and Jim took careful aim and put another round in each of the fallen Suttons just in case anybody was playing possum. Then we came out from behind our cover and went down to them. The air was full of the itchy scent of powder and the sharp metal smell of fresh blood.

  There were nine dead horses and we counted eight dead men—and then we found the last one, halfway between the road and the river, crawling for the water. He was wounded badly, and he begged us not to kill him. Manning said, “Sorry, bubba, way too late for that.” And dispatched him.

  Not long afterward we got a report that Jack Helm was secretly on his way to Wilson County, just west of us, to try to recruit some old State Police pals of his into the Regulators. Wes and Jim figured he’d have some men with him but probably not many, as he wouldn’t expect a Taylor ambush in territory so friendly to Suttons. They decided to see if they could hunt him down. George and I went with them. Manning and Huck stayed back to keep rounding up a herd and to ramrod the guards watching over our homes. According to our spies, a couple of Helm’s old State Police pals lived in Floresville, so that’s where we headed.

  Shortly after we crossed into Wilson County, Wes’s horse threw a shoe, so we detoured about a mile over to a town called Albuquerque, where there was a blacksmith’s. It was a little two-dog town with one street and about eight buildings. The only people on the street were a knot of men sitting on their heels in the shade of an oak by the black
smith shop, and a handful of boys about to drop a mean-looking black tomcat into a burlap sack already holding another cat. “I got five dollars says that black comes up winners,” Wes said to Jim. A redhead boy was clutching the cat by its scruff and back paws, and it hissed at us as we went by. “What’s the other one like?” Jim asked the boys. “One-eyed calico,” a boy said. “Won the most sack fights of any of them.” Jim grinned at Wes and said, “You got a bet.”

  George and I reined up and dismounted to watch the sack fight while Wes took his horse into the blacksmith shop a little farther down the street. “Y’all tell me how it turns out,” Jim said to us, and went to join the men in the shade of the oak.

  Two boys held the sack up between them and a third dropped the black inside—then they quickly tied it off and hung it on a low tree limb. You’ve never heard shrieking till you’ve heard a sack fight between two big toms. George and I were so caught up in watching that howling sack tossing and twitching on the tree limb that neither of us paid any attention to the horsemen who rode into town behind us.

  A minute later a shotgun blasted and we spun around and saw Wes standing in the doorway of the blacksmith shop with both barrels of the scattergun smoking. Jack Helm was sitting in the middle of the street with the whole front of his shirt bright red with blood and a coil of shiny blue intestine bulging out of his torn belly. His pistol lay a few feet from him. The three men who’d ridden in with him were reining in their spooked horses, and Jim Taylor was covering them with a pair of pistols, yelling something I couldn’t make out through the caterwauling still going on alongside me. The Sutton men dismounted and put their hands up high. Wes grabbed up their horses’ reins and swung up into a saddle.

  Just then, Jack Helm got up on his feet and went at Jim Taylor with a skinning knife.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was trying to hold his guts in with his free hand as he staggered toward Jim, but they were slipping through his grip and hanging wetly against his thighs. His face was pale as pig fat. Jim shot him in the chest twice and Helm dropped to his knees and his guts rushed out into the dust. He threw the knife at Jim as awkwardly as a girl. Jim shot him again and Helm fell forward on his intestines. Then Jim went and stood over him and shot him three times in the head. I’d never before seen a man so thoroughly killed.