The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  Once we had him on the train out of Montgomery, he finally admitted who he really was. But he never whined nor pleaded nor blamed anybody else for his troubles. He said he’d shot Webb in self-defense and would be able to prove it in a fair trial. The way he told the story, I thought he might come clear, but John said you never could tell what might happen in a courtroom. “I seen men I damn well knew were guilty walk out free as birds,” he said, “and I seen men I knew were innocent end up in the rock quarries or swinging from a rope.”

  At least a man stood a better chance in a courtroom than with a mob, Wes said, and there was no arguing with that. He told us he was impressed with how smooth we’d pulled off his capture, and wanted to know how we’d tracked him down. When I told him, he said, “That stupid no-count sonbitch”—referring to Brown Bowen. “It’s God’s own wonder how him and Jane could of come from the same seed source.”

  We had to spend the night in Decatur before catching the morning train to Memphis. In exchange for his promise not to try to escape, we allowed him to write a letter to his wife and send her some money. We would have let him write her anyway, even without his promise, which neither John nor I took to heart. Any man will naturally promise not to try to escape if he thinks it might get you to let your guard down. I’d make that promise. What man with any sense wouldn’t? And if the guard got careless and let me get the jump on him, I damn sure would. And if it was a rope he might be taking me back to, and there was no way to escape but to kill him, well then … you do what you have to do to keep alive. There’s no plainer truth on earth.

  Anyhow, we cuffed his hands in front of him to let him write the letter and, later, to eat his supper, which we ordered brought up to the hotel room. But I never took my eyes off him for a second while he was cuffed in front—which proved to be wise, because when John handed him his supper plate and turned to say something to me, I saw Wes’s eyes cut to the revolver in John’s hip holster, not six inches in front of his face. I grabbed John and yanked him away from Wes so hard he fell over a chair and banged his head on the bedstead and cussed me out good. I stood there with my gun drawn on Wes and said to John, “You best take a bit more care with this young rascal.” Wes just looked at me all innocent and said, “Good Lord, Jack, you don’t think …? Hey, I gave my ” But his eyes couldn’t hide how ready he’d been to snatch John’s gun. Another half a second and John and I would’ve ended up in our own blood on the floor, I don’t doubt that one bit.word!

  After that, John was a good deal more cautious with him, and Wes never got such a chance again the rest of the trip. From then on, whenever we brought his cuffs around in front to let him eat, I’d sit across from him with my pistol cocked and pointed at his head. “God damn, Jack,” he once said with a grin, “you sure know how to take the taste out of a meal. You still don’t trust me not to try to get away?” And I said, “Sure I do, Wes—as much as you trust me not to blow your head off if you try.” He smiled and said, “Me and you, Jack, we understand all about trust, don’t we?”

  The news of his arrest preceded us to Memphis, Little Rock, Texarkana—all the stops on our way to Austin—and every station on our route was chock-full of people wanting to have a look at him. We had a private car and naturally kept the doors locked and the windows open only at the tops. We had our shotguns ready at every stop. Most of the spectators cheered and waved at him and held up signs saying, “Free Wes Hardin!” and “We Love You Wes!” and “Hardin is Innocent!”

  But not everybody felt that way. At the Little Rock depot, a rough fight broke out between a group of young men with a banner saying “Hardin Is a Hero” and a group with a big placard saying “Hang the Mankiller.”

  People gave goods to the conductor to pass on to him—baskets of food (we ate like kings on that trip), bottles of whiskey, good luck pieces ranging from rabbit’s feet to old coins to arrowheads, and envelopes of money, most with just a few dollars in them, but one with fifty dollars and a note saying, “Sorry it aint more, your a good man and god bless.”

  I tell you, it was an amazing thing to behold, all those people rooting for him—all those pretty girls calling his name! “Damn, boy,” I said to him as we stared out the window at the mess of pretty things blowing him kisses at the Dallas depot. “I believe a man might smother to death under all that affection.” He grinned and said, “Maybe so—but what a damn fine way to go, don’t you think, Jack?” His face lit up every time he saw such crowds cheering for him. “Lookit them all,” he said. “You really think all them people can be wrong about me?”

  There was a telegram for us in Waco, warning that the crowd waiting at the Austin station was too large to control. When Wes heard that he went a little pale and said, “You boys swore you wouldn’t let no mob get me.” John said it might be a mob wanting to hang him or one wanting to set him free, but either way he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  He stopped the train a few miles outside of Austin and we rented a hack from a livery for the rest of the ride in. All of us were nervous now for different reasons. “Wes,” John said, “if you try to break, I swear I’ll kill you.” I didn’t say anything, but I had a picture of my two thousand dollars flying off in the wind if Wes got away. Wes just shook his head and said, “I ain’t gonna try a thing, John—you just keep the mob off me.”

  We’d made the mistake of not holding the train back till we got into town, and it got there ahead of us—and so the crowd naturally found out real quick from the crew that we were coming in by hack. Just as we turned the corner toward the jail, we saw the horde rushing at us from the other end of the street.

  John and I each grabbed Wes under an arm and ran him in through the jail-house door just barely ahead of the clamoring crowd. A deputy bolted the door behind us and the sheriff was quick about posting armed guards at every window. He’d already asked the governor for help to guard Hardin against mob action or a jailbreak attempt, and the governor had promised to reinforce the Austin police with State Rangers.

  For the whole time Wes was in Austin, the crowds milled outside the jail day and night—some people wanting to lend support, some wanting to see him hang, most wanting just to have a look at him so they could tell their grandchildren they’d seen John Wesley Hardin with their own two eyes.

  Austin had the strongest jail in Texas—solid rock outer walls, floors and interior walls of sheet iron, and a double set of steel bars as thick as my wrist around each cell. He didn’t lack for visitors. When he wasn’t giving an interview to one reporter or another, he was conferring with one or more of his lawyers. He’d retained two of the best criminal attorneys in Texas to defend him. I met an uncle of his named Bob Hardin, and a cousin named Barnett Jones. Together with Wes’s mother, they’d pooled their money to pay the lawyers.

  For our part, John did all the talking to the newspaper boys who wanted the story of how we’d come to capture the most famous desperado in Texas. We’d become heroes of a sort ourselves, but nothing on the scale that Wes was. Lord, the good-looking girls in the crowd outside that jail! They sent him cakes and cookies and flowers and locks of their hair. They sent him love notes. Some sent him bits of their underclothes in boxes wrapped in fancy ribbon. When I went to see him to say so long, he was wearing a fresh red rose in his lapel and held up a lacy strip of white cotton for me to see. “The gal that sent this said in a note that it was from the shimmy she wears every night to dream about me.” He tossed it to me through the bars. It was scented with perfume to make you faint. “You best take it. I wouldn’t want my wife to ever find it among my laundry.” The guard let him out into the runaround so he could reach through the second set of bars and shake my hand. “You’re a damn good detective, Jack,” he told me. Best praise I ever got.

  Ten months later I got into a drunk argument with Sally McGuire about who-knows-what and that high-strung bitch shot me. In the balls. Took one of them clean off. I nearly bled to death on the floor of that damn whorehouse before the sawbones got to me and saved
my life. But I was left a one-walnut man. A few weeks later I got a note from Austin saying, “Jack, I hear your children will only be three feet high. Coulda been worse—you could be squatting to piss. Take care. JWH.”

  The Daily Democratic Statesman

  (AUSTIN), 29 AUGUST 1877

  JOHN WESLEY HARDIN

  ——

  THE PRISONER INTERVIEWED IN JAIL

  ——

  A reporter of the STATESMAN called on … Hardin in the Travis County jail, where he is confined in one of the lower cages near the entrance. He was found in a quiet but pleasant humor, and showed but little objection to being interviewed and making himself agreeable … in his own words:

  … I am a prisoner and must stand trial. All I want is to be allowed to appeal to the law of the land, and I hope the officers of the law will protect me for this end. My relatives and friends have met death at the hands of mobs and I want protection, while helpless, against anything of a similar nature. I am satisfied that there are those who would, if opportunity permits, not allow the law to take its course with me. I want to stand trial. I am sick and tired of fleeing from it and would go away if I could. I must see the end of it, and all I ask is that a mob not be permitted to

  MURDER ME,

  for I believe I can show that I did not have anything to do with the killing of Webb. Had my friends not killed him I might have done so, but it would have been in self-defense.

  HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE

  Hardin is only 25 years old, and has quite a youthful appearance. He is of light complexion, wears a modest mustache and imperial, is 5 feet 10 inches high and weighs 155 pounds. He is mild-featured and mild-mannered, with a mild blue eye, and talks pleasantly enough. He says he has no fear of the law, and that he is ready for execution if condemned, but he claims to be innocent, and he is charged with much that he never thought of. He wants the authorities to protect him against mobs, for it is mob violence alone that he fears.

  The Daily Democratic Statesman

  (AUSTIN), 29 AUGUST 1877

  CASTING OUT OF DEVILS—HOW TEXAS DOES IT

  Murderers and thieves have suffered fearfully of late in Texas. Two notorious scoundrels, Ringgold and Gladden, are imprisoned or dead. King Fisher is incarcerated or has been released on bail remaining under the surveillance of the state troops. Scott Cooley was arrested and died in a spasm of rage and chagrin. Bill Longley sweats and sweats in the Giddings jail. Ham White, the famous stage coach robber, makes cigars for life in the West Virginia penitentiary. Jim Taylor, of the Taylor gang of desperadoes, was killed when resisting arrest at San Sabas last Thursday. His pal Hoy was killed under like circumstances the day before. Both fell before the guns of the state troops. Bill Taylor, brother of Jim, breathes hard and is nervous to the last degree, with three of the Sutton gang here in the Travis County jail…. Wesley Hardin, the most reckless murderer ever known in Texas, is committed to our jail. He has killed, so the story goes, twenty-five or thirty white men, besides Mexicans and Negroes.

  … Between Bell and Coryell counties there is a tree of death. Beneath one great, sturdy, bended branch there have been suspended, a prey to eagles and carrion birds, like the sons of Rizpeh, seven admirable devils thus “cast out” of Texas. In Lee County, within a few months, twelve or fourteen scoundrels have been remorselessly hanged by the people and danced on nothing into eternity…. But the facts we state show that the end of desperadoism and lawlessness has come, and all the terrible facts recited tell the bloody-handed, cowardly villains who still wear pistols and knives girt about their bodies that this of Texas is no longer a healthful atmosphere. They should migrate. The people are surfeited with devilish deeds, juries are now doing their duty, and sure and swift justice is meted out. The frontier of Texas is no longer a proper place of refuge for continental knavery. Mexico must be its receptacle, and fortunate for Texas will be the day when the use of the pistol and the knife is more rigorously punished here than in Massachusetts.

  In all my days as a Ranger we never put a prisoner under heavier guard than we did Hardin when we transferred him to Comanche for trial that hot September. The two biggest rumors were that his gang would try to free him on the road to Comanche—and that a huge vigilante mob had sworn to string him up before he ever set foot in court. Our whole outfit—Ranger Company 35, under Lieutenant N. O. Reynolds, as good a lawman as I ever knew—was assigned to escort Hardin to trial and repel rescuers and lynchers both, whoever came at us. We put him in irons from neck to ankles and propped him on the seat of a barred prison wagon. Half the company rode in front of it and half brought up the rear. We had a chuck wagon too, and an arms and ammunition wagon, and a remuda as big as you’d see in most cattle outfits. In addition to regulation sidearms and carbines, each of us was carrying extra saddle revolvers and a shotgun with buckshot loads. I mean we were ready for war.

  At every town along the way, people came out in droves to have a look at him. No matter how far from the nearest town we might make our camp, they’d show up by the hundreds. Most of them would stand well away from the wagon and talk about him like he was some sort of wild animal exhibit, but the gawking didn’t seem to bother him much. I guess he’d gotten used to it by then. Some would tell him good luck, and he’d say thank you very much, always real polite. Plenty wanted to shake his hand, and he never refused. One old fella pressed right up to the bars of the prison wagon and said, “Why, son, there ain’t a bit of bad in your face. Your life has been misrepresented to me.” At another place, a real pretty red-haired gal said to him, “I wouldn’t have missed seeing you for anything—not even for one hundred dollars.” Hardin winked at her and said, “I hope you think it’s worth it, pretty thing.” She said, “Oh, my, yes! Now I can tell everybody I have seen the notorious John Wesley Hardin and he is so handsome!” Hardin laughed and said, “Yes, well, my wife thinks so.”

  We didn’t have any real trouble on that trip. Things didn’t get truly tense until we arrived in Comanche. We had so much chain on Hardin he couldn’t even stand up, never mind walk. It took six strong men to lift him out of the wagon and carry him bodily into the jail. There was a huge crowd of spectators, of course—some calling out encouragement and some calling him a lowdown killer who deserved nothing but a rope. There were plenty of cussing matches and now and then a fistfight broke out. Our scout brought word that a mob of two hundred vigilantes, most of them from Brown County, was camped just on the other side of town, ready to ride in and take Hardin out and lynch him.

  Sheriff Wilson was plenty worried about a mob action against his jail, and he’d deputized thirty-five local citizens to help repel any attack. His idea was for his men to be inside the jail and the Rangers to guard the outside, but Hardin told Captain Reynolds he didn’t trust the local deputies. “If a mob does attack,” he said, “who’s to say these local boys won’t side with them and let them in? They sure enough let my brother hang. It’d be a whole lot smarter if your men were inside and the sheriff’s men outside, don’t you think?” Reynolds did think so, and that’s how he set up the guard details. It chafed the sheriff that Reynolds put more faith in Hardin than in the Comanche lawmen.

  The next day the town was buzzing with a rumor that the vigilantes were about to storm the jail and take Hardin by main force. So Captain Reynolds put out a word of his own: if the jail was attacked, he would not only order his men to shoot to kill but would turn Wes Hardin out of his cell with a loaded pistol in each hand. He truly meant it—and he told Hardin so. Hardin thanked him and said justice in Texas would be a lot better served if it had more lawmen like him working for it. Some citizens were outraged that a Ranger officer would threaten to do such a thing, but I reckon the mob believed him, because they never did attack.

  * * *

  I drew assignment as a courtroom guard, so I got to witness the whole proceeding. I’ve since seen a lot of legal trials, but not many as hostile to the defendant as that one in Comanche. The night before it began, me and some other Ranger
s took a few drinks in the company of a newspaper editor named Quill, and he told us five men on the jury had taken part in lynching Hardin’s brother Joe three years before. The barkeep, a fella named Wright, said he knew for a fact that the presiding judge had once been hoodwinked by Joe Hardin in a land deal.

  The law of the time wouldn’t permit a murder defendant to take the stand on his own behalf, and most of the witnesses who could have testified for Hardin were either dead or on the dodge from the law themselves—or had been run out of Comanche County by the vigilantes. There really wasn’t much Hardin’s lawyers could do to defend him. The only thing he had going for him was the state’s own poor skill at prosecuting him. Because Hardin wasn’t the only one to shoot Charles Webb, the prosecution set out to prove a conspiracy to murder. They claimed that Hardin and Jim Taylor and others decided to murder Webb because he intended to serve state warrants on them. But the prosecution’s own witnesses had to admit that Webb had been the first to shoot—and even though the state claimed he’d done so only when it became obvious that Hardin and his friends were about to gun him down, their argument sounded thin to me.

  He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-five years with hard labor in the state penitentiary at Huntsville. The judge denied his lawyers’ motion for a new trial, and they immediately filed an appeal with the state Court of Criminal Appeals. He was ordered back to jail in Austin until the appeals court ruled on his case.

  We took him back the same way we’d brought him—chained down in the wagon and guarded by all of Company 35. A gang of hard cases trailed us out of Comanche at a distance. The first time we set up camp for the night, some of those jackasses hid out in the trees and kept hollering stuff like “We got you a new necktie right here, Wes!” and “You’re gonna get what your brother got, Hardin you son of a bitch!” Hardin had forty pounds of iron hanging all over him and looked as spooked as you’d expect any man to under such circumstances. Every time Reynolds sent men out to try and catch the night-callers, they’d shut up and move to another part of the woods. Then as soon as our boys got back to camp they’d start up again. Reynolds finally ordered us to fire a few carbine rounds into the trees in the direction the voices came from, but even that didn’t quiet them down for long. It wasn’t only Hardin whose nerves got put on edge that night. The next day they followed us till about noon before finally turning back.