The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  He said he had a tip that Hardin was in Florida. I said I’d heard that rumor like everybody else, but Florida was a long way off and a damn big place to go searching just on account of hearsay. But John thought it was more than a rumor. He said that a year ago the Pinkertons had got a tip he was in Jacksonville and sent two men down to check it out. Three months later their rotted remains were found in a riverside warehouse. They’d both been shot. “Anybody might of killed them,” John said, “but I got a feeling it was our man.” He had a hunch Hardin was still in Florida, though he likely wouldn’t have stayed in Jacksonville. I put good store in John’s hunches, and even more in my own—and my hunch was he was right.

  Family, I told him—family was the way to find him. A man on the dodge might never get in touch with his friends or his partners, but if he had family or other close kin, that’s who he’d contact if he contacted anybody at all. And Hardin had plenty of kin.

  John had naturally thought of that. Hardin’s wife and child were said to be with him, wherever he was, but for weeks now John had had a man watching Hardin’s mother’s house up in North Texas, near Paris, where the family had moved after leaving Comanche. Preacher Hardin had died just a few months before, but there’d been no sign of Wes Hardin at the funeral. John’s man in Paris was bribing the postmaster to keep close track of the Hardins’ mail, but nothing had come from or been sent to Florida, and all the senders and recipients could be accounted for. None of them was Wes or Jane Hardin using a false name. John had other men spying on Hardin’s East Texas kinfolk, but they hadn’t turned up anything either. I said I didn’t think they ever would, not through Hardin’s people. But what, I asked him, about hers?

  We went down to the Sandies and snooped around on the sly. We learned that Neal Bowen, Jane’s father, had a country store for sale in Coon Hollow, and we came up with a plan. I’ll be the first to admit we were damn lucky in the way it worked out—but like the man said, I’d rather be lucky than good. While John laid low in Cuero, I went to Neal Bowen and introduced myself as Hal Croves from Austin and said I was looking to buy a store. We hit it off pretty well, and he naturally invited me to live in his house for as long as it took me to inventory the store and study his ledgers and make up my mind to buy the place or not.

  It didn’t take long to learn his mail routine. He’d stop in at the post office in the mornings, read his letters at home before dinner, then store them in a trunk in the parlor. I checked in that trunk every day whenever I had the chance. There were bundles of correspondence in there, and it took me a week of peeking through them before I’d had a look at them all. There was nothing in there from Wes or Jane Hardin, nothing that even hinted at their whereabouts.

  And then, just when I’d stretched the sham of taking inventory and examining books about as far as I could, Bowen received a letter from his son Brown, who’d written it from an Alabama backwater called Polland. Brown was still wanted in Texas for a murder he’d committed years earlier, but he didn’t interest me at all except as a possible lead to his brother-in-law. His letter was mostly about some property he owned in the Sandies that he wanted his daddy to sell for him. He hadn’t been faring well and was in need of money. It was a self-pitying letter, and I read it with a growing irritation until I reached its last lines. “My sister has just born a baby girl,” he wrote, “and they have called her Callie. She joins me in sending our love.”

  Except for some things I’d done with naked women, I’d never felt such a nice rush up my backbone. I saw the future in a flash: we’d slip into the burg nice and quiet, and if we didn’t spot him right off we’d stake out their house and wait our chance and it would damn sure come and by God we’d have our man!

  But first I had to take my leave of Neal Bowen without arousing his suspicions. John and I had arranged a ploy. I sent a telegram to “Bill Alworth” at the Duchess Hotel in Cuero, saying, “Bill, I like the store.” The next morning here comes John into Bowen’s store with his Ranger badge pinned on his coat and throws down on me with a shotgun and says I’m under arrest. You could’ve knocked Bowen over with a feather when John tells him my name ain’t Croves, it’s Harris Cobb and I’m wanted for horse theft in Travis County. He put the cuffs on me and got me mounted up and we trotted out of Coon Hollow with him cussing me good and loud and saying he’d blow me out of the saddle if I tried anything smart. Bowen and a bunch of other citizens watched us go with their eyes bugging in their heads.

  We galloped straight to Cuero and took the next train to Austin. John took me with him when he reported to General Steele and told him what we’d found out. The general was impressed and congratulated me on my detective work, then went off to Governor Hubbard’s office and came back in an hour with the arrest warrant. That night we were on a train for Alabama. We played cards and sipped at a flask of rye as the dark countryside flashed past the coach window. Every once in a while we’d look each other in the eye and just grin and grin.

  Rather than get off the train in Polland and risk tipping him off that we were there, we went on to the last Alabama stop, eight miles farther east at Whiting. The place wasn’t anything more than a tiny station house, a water tank, and a few small houses set at the edge of the piny woods. The midday air was hot and heavy and smelled of wood pulp. We went in the depot to ask the stationmaster where we might rent ourselves some mounts and found a handful of men gathered around a short, hard-looking fellow with a fresh blue goose egg on his cheek. He was telling the story of the fight where he got the bruise.

  He’d got into it with a bigmouthed peckerwood and had beat the rascal like a rug. We were a circle of grins around him as he acted out the whole fracas for us, punching and kicking the air and enjoying hell out of it all over again. “About the time I’ve got him looking like stomped-on sin,” he said, “the sonbitch turns tail and runs off till he sees I ain’t about to chase him for the pleasure of whupping him some more. So he stands over there across the tracks and hollers, ‘Just you wait till my brother-in-law gets back, Shipley! He’s John Wesley Hardin is who he is and he’ll shoot you dead as soon as spit!’” Everybody roared at that. Me and John just looked at each other, and I guess my eyebrows were up as high as his. You see what I mean about how our luck ran on this thing. “Sorry son of a bitch,” Shipley said. “Can you beat that? I hollered back, ‘Yeah!—and my brother-in-law’s Jesse James!’ I tell you, that fucking Bowen’s crazier’n my Aunt Reba, and that woman talks to the trees.”

  “Pardon me, sir,” John says to him, and shows him his Ranger badge. “I wonder if we might have a private word?”

  * * *

  When Shipley found out Swain really was Hardin, he got all excited and said he’d be glad to help us any way he could. “Hell, I like the fella fine as Swain,” he said, “except he’s the luckiest man with a hand of cards I ever saw. Takes me a week to win back from the sailors what he wins off me in one night. But hey, if that bastard Bowen really could sic him on me, well, I don’t need that. Besides, ain’t I heard something about a reward?”

  I nearly laughed out loud at the look on John’s face. He and I had agreed that I was in for half the reward—two thousand dollars—and that if he cut in anybody else, the cut would come out of his half. He took Shipley aside and they dickered for awhile. I never did find out how much he gave him. For all I know, John shared out his whole half of the reward to everybody who helped us. But he never was after the money; he wanted the glory of bringing in Wes Hardin. For me, two thousand dollars was glory enough.

  Whatever John paid Shipley, he was worth it. He was a mother lode of information. He knew for a fact that Hardin was in Pensacola just then. He’d gone to buy supplies for a timber camp he was operating upriver in Alabama. “He just sent the goods through today,” Shipley said, “and he’s bought a ticket for tomorrow’s train to Polland.”

  He ordered a special engine and car for us and we rolled into Pensacola late that afternoon. A cool salt breeze was coming off the bay from under a high purple
line of thunderheads. Our arrest warrant was for Alabama, but if we could take him in Florida we would, and damn the legalities. We’d leave that worry to General Steele.

  We determined to take him when he boarded for Alabama. As much as he hated to do it, John decided we’d best get the local law to back us up, just in case the thing got mean. He went to the Escambia County sheriff, Will Hutchinson, and brought him in on the play, him and his deputy, Ace Purdue—and of course cut them in for some portion of the reward.

  We stayed in the sheriff’s office all morning and afternoon, planning our moves. Hutchinson insisted on putting riflemen on the rooftop of the hotel adjacent to the depot. “We’re talking about a desperate killer,” the sheriff said. “I’ve read all about him, you bet. A few rifles on the roof will make a damn big difference if it comes to a shootout.” John argued against the riflemen but finally had to give in if he wanted the sheriff’s help. But he told Hutchinson that if any of his men opened fire for any reason except Hardin running out of the car with a gun in his hand, he’d hold him personally responsible. “Remember,” he told him, “this reward’s for his capture. If he’s killed, there’ll be no reward for anybody—and that would make Detective Duncan very angry.” I did my best to look menacing. “Don’t you boys worry none,” Hutchinson said. “It’s my cousin Nolan who’ll be in command of the shooters. I’ve used them boys before and they always done just fine. They can follow orders, you bet.”

  If any of them had taken a look up at the hotel roof, they would have spotted the shooters for sure. Those stupid peckerwoods kept peeking over the top of the wall to see what was going on, instead of keeping their heads down like they’d been told to do. But Hardin and his friends were joking and laughing and not paying much attention around them. Hardin had been living in that region for over a year by then without a bit of trouble from the law. He’d gotten to feeling safe there. That was our big advantage.

  There were maybe eight or nine other passengers boarding for Alabama. Hardin was accompanied by three fellas who worked with him at the timber mill. Shipley said the youngster named Mann was tough as he looked and would be quick to fight if he had the chance. The other two—Shep Hardie and Neal Campbell—had never been known to even carry a gun.

  John and Hutchinson stood over by the baggage car, smoking cigars and chatting like a pair of old pals. I was standing with Shipley and Purdue near the ticket agent’s window. As Hardin and his party headed for the smoking car, he looked our way and Shipley and Purdue smiled and raised a hand to him. “What say, John,” Purdue said. He’d sat in on plenty of poker games with him at Shipley’s. Hardin smiled at him and Shipley and said, “Hey, gents,” and gave me a quick look-over and a nod, and I nodded back. They went aboard and we watched them through the big coach windows as they made their way to the rear of the car. Jim Mann took a seat on the window, facing front, and Hardin sat beside him, on the aisle. The other two sat in the facing seat. I looked over at John. He tossed his cigar under the baggage car and tugged down his hat. It was the signal to make our move.

  John and the sheriff went up on the platform at the rear of the smoking car and stood ready while Shipley and Purdue and I entered the car from the front. Shipley and Purdue were a few feet ahead of me. I kept looking out the windows and waving as we moved down the car, like I was bidding good-bye to somebody out on the station platform. “Say, Swain,” Shipley said, “you going to give me and Ace a chance to win some of our money back tonight?” Hardin laughed and said, “Sorry, boys. Got to tend to business for a while. I’ll be back next month with another fat poke you can try and take off me.”

  John and Hutchinson came in through the rear door with their pistols in their hands. The two sitting with their backs to me, Campbell and Hardie, looked up at them. “Hey, Will—” one of them started to say, just as Hardin turned to look.

  “Texas, by God!” Hardin yelled. He made a grab under his coat for his gun but John lunged forward and cracked him hard on the head with his pistol as Shipley and Purdue dove on him and grabbed his hand away from his coat and they all went tumbling to the floor in a struggling, cussing heap.

  As Jim Mann jumped up and pulled his pistol, I shot him twice in the chest. He fired a wild shot into the back of the car and fell against the open window—and the riflemen on the roof opened up on him like a firing squad. Blood flew off his head and neck and he fell through the window and onto the platform as the rifles kept firing and firing. I dove for cover beside Campbell and Hardie, who’d already hit the floor. A storm of bullets whacked into the side of the car, thunked into the coach seats, twanged off the steel wheels. “Cease fire! Cease fire!” Hutchinson was screaming. “Cease fire goddamnit!”

  The rifle fire eased off and finally quit altogether, but Hardin was still making a fight of it. He was on his back and Shipley and Purdue had pinned his arms out at his sides, but John and Hutchinson were having a hell of a time trying to get hold of his kicking legs. A kick caught Hutchinson flush on the mouth and knocked him back on his ass. I dove in and grabbed one of Hardin’s legs and managed to pin it down as John sat on the other one. He jabbed the muzzle of his pistol under Hardin’s jaw and said, “Surrender, you son of a bitch, or I’ll blow your damn head off!”

  “Shoot, God damn you! Shoot!” Hardin said. He was breathing like a bellows and blood was running out of his hair where John had hit him. “You bastard!” Hutchinson shouted, wiping at his bloody mouth. He pushed between me and John and managed to whack Hardin in the face with his pistol before John shoved him away. “This man’s my prisoner!” John shouted. “Anybody mistreats him, it’ll be me!”

  The whack in the face set the blood pouring from Hardin’s nose and took a good bit of the starch out of him. We hauled him up and sat him down and John cuffed his hands behind him and around the seat’s armrest. “Get this thing moving!” John yelled. “Now!”

  Shipley ran out on the platform and signaled for the engineer to start the train rolling. As the car jolted and began to move, I yanked Campbell and Hardie off the floor and shoved them into a seat. They had their hands as high as their arms could stretch and looked scared shitless. “I don’t know what Swain’s done,” Hardie said, “but me and Neal ain’t done nothing, we swear!” I told them to shut up and patted them down to be sure they were unarmed.

  Purdue sat on a seat arrest and held his pistol inches from Hardin’s head. I looked out the window as the depot fell behind us and saw the shooters on the hotel roof staring down at the bloody corpse of young Jim Mann as a crowd began closing around it like a pack of scavengers.

  As soon as we were clear of Pensacola we all busted out laughing and yeehawing and clapping each other on the back. “We done it!” Hutchinson hollered, grinning like a keyboard through his swollen purple lips. “We damn sure done it!” Even John couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

  Hardin had regained his senses, though his nose was still leaking blood and swollen like a fat strawberry. He kept insisting he was innocent. “Listen,” he said, “you boys got the wrong man. My name is John Swain and I run a timber camp on the Styx River. You can ask anybody.” John and I laughed. I sat down beside him with a grin I could feel all the way to each ear and said, “You’re John Wesley Goddamn Hardin is who you are, and you’re under arrest for the murder of Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb of Brown County, Texas. We’re taking you home, Wes.”

  We stopped at Whiting so all the frightened passengers could get off the train. We released Hardie and Campbell, since we had no charges on them, and John got off a telegram to General Steele in Texas, telling him we’d made the arrest but weren’t in the clear yet. Hardin had plenty of friends between us and Mobile, and we figured they’d probably form up fast and try and rescue him. So what we did was highball right through Polland, his Alabama stomping ground—speeding right past all the surprised people on the depot platform who’d been waiting for the train—and straight on to Mobile.

  We took him off the train in Mobile and clapped him in a cel
l while John sent a telegram to Texas requesting the proper extradition papers. The Mobile sheriff posted six deputies with shotguns all around the jail. A train to Florida came through an hour later, and Shipley and Hutchinson and Purdue got on it after receiving many reassurances from John that he’d be in touch with them about their shares of the reward.

  When we got back to the jail we found out he’d talked the sheriff into bringing him the best lawyer in town, some fella named Watts, who’d listened to his story and gone straight to a judge with a writ of habeas corpus. Another ten minutes and he would’ve been long gone—and legally. John had to talk fast and furious to get the Mobile judge to give us till that evening to get the proper papers. “Boys,” the judge said, “you know good and well that what you done ain’t exactly legal. But if this man is John Wesley Hardin, I’ll be damned if I’m going to be known as the stupid son of a bitch who turned him loose on a technicality. I’m giving you till midnight to get the Texas requisition papers in front of me.” Twenty minutes before Hardin would’ve been released on the habeas writ, the papers came from Governor Hubbard’s office, and the way was clear for us to take him back to Texas all legal and aboveboard.

  By then the whole town knew who we’d locked up in their jail, and the street out front was mobbed with people wanting to see him. What’s more, they’d all heard we meant to take him out on the early-morning train to New Orleans, and the depot was jammed with even more people waiting to catch a glimpse of the notorious Texas mankiller. “I ain’t about to take him out through that crowd,” John told the Mobile sheriff. “He’s got too damn many friends around here who could be hiding among all those people, just waiting for the chance to throw down on us.”

  So we snuck him out the back door of the jail in the middle of the night, escorted by two deputies, and took him by wagon up to Montgomery and boarded a train for Decatur.