The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  I overheard Mother and Father late that night in their room. “He has killed men, Leonard,” Mother said. “He has been in the penitentiary for most of Callie’s life! He is taking advantage of the poor child—yes, child—who doesn’t know her own mind. What he really wants is the property he’ll gain from the marriage. Surely you can see that. Why else would such a man want to marry one so young?”

  And Father said: “Callie is a child no longer. She’s a grown woman and it’s time she married. One spinster daughter in the family is enough.” (The remark cut me, but not to the quick—I’d long since grown accustomed to such sidelong slashes of his displeasure with my maidenhood.) “Yes, the man committed crimes,” Father said, “and he has paid a dear price for them. Prison cost him the family he once had, and he is lonely for another. He needs a young woman to give it to him. He is a man of courage and fortitude, and we are honored—honored, do you hear?—to have such a man attach to our family. Now that’s the end of it.”

  Within the week Mr. Hardin was at our house once again, this time to confer with Father about the details of the wedding. Callie was shocked by the sight of his face, which was still livid with purple and yellow bruises, and she was unusually subdued at the supper table that evening. When Mr. Hardin told Father that he’d been quite busy writing his memoirs, Callie gave him a stricken look, as though he’d revealed a secret that was theirs alone.

  After supper, she and Mr. Hardin went for a long walk in the south meadow. When they returned she was in better spirits, and the smile she gave me was pure wickedness. Her eyes were dancing and her cheeks were flushed. A leaf of grass clung to her hair. Mother saw it too, and her lips went thin—but of course she said nothing. Mr. Hardin grinned stiffly and had a drink of whiskey with Father, whose celebratory mood had him drinking a good deal more than usual of late.

  They were married on January 8, a chilly but brightly sunny day, in the county courthouse in Junction. Callie looked beautiful in her white dress, and Mr. Hardin, despite the lingering traces of bruise on his face, looked quite distinguished in his black suit and stiff collar. It was a small ceremony, attended only by our family and a few close friends—and of course by Mr. Hardin’s brother, Jefferson Davis, and his wife. A grand ball was scheduled for later that afternoon, and all the important families in the county would be there. While Father conveyed the bride and groom to the home of family friends to refresh themselves and await the hour of the ball, Mother and I and a number of helpful neighbors and kin began preparing the courthouse room where the ball would be held. The room had been cleared of furniture except for several long food tables along the wall and a stand at the front of the room where the string band would play.

  A short time later the tables were laden with steaming platters and covered dishes, with pies and cakes, bowls of punch, and jugs of other potables. The band was tuned and ready, and the room resounded with the laughter and conversations of more than a hundred people. Father checked his pocket watch and said, “They’ll be here any minute now.”

  The time of their scheduled arrival came and went. Father repeatedly consulted his watch and his face grew grim. The conversational din had assumed a quizzical tone, and the guests stirred restlessly. “Perhaps there’s been an accident of some sort,” Mother said in a strained voice. Father decided to go check on the matter, and Mother insisted on going with him. They instructed me to stay in place and placate the guests as best I could.

  People do not believe me when I say I don’t know what happened. I can see their disbelief in their faces. They think I’m withholding the truth from them out of deference to Callie or simply for the perverse pleasure of keeping the knowledge to myself. But it is the truth: even today I do not know. Neither does Mother. And Father remains the most confused of us all—except perhaps for Mr. Hardin, who, if he were to be believed, had no explanation whatsoever for Callie’s perplexing conduct. I asked her about it again and again during the first few weeks, but she absolutely refused to discuss the matter with me. She finally told me that if I did not stop questioning her, she would cease speaking to me altogether. She put an end to Mother and Father’s interrogations in much the same way: she threatened to leave home and live with a cousin in Dallas.

  I only know what everybody else knows. I know that the friends at whose home they awaited the start of the ball left for the courthouse an hour prior to the appointed time. They thought Callie and Mr. Hardin might appreciate a period of privacy together before the party. And so, for that hour, they were alone in the house. I also know that just as Mr. Hardin and Callie were walking from the house to the buggy to come to the ball, Jefferson Davis Hardin and his wife drove up in their own buggy to accompany them to the courthouse. According to Mr. Hardin, Jefferson Davis greeted them by saying, “Howdy there, Brother Wesley—and howdy to that sweet little child you robbed right out of the cradle.” His brother said it jokingly, Mr. Hardin told Mother and Father—but in an instant Callie was in tears and dashing back into the house.

  Mr. Hardin said he was so stunned that for a moment he stood there and watched her go. Jefferson Davis laughed loudly and hollered after her, “Good golly, little girl, you ain’t got to prove it to nobody!” Mr. Hardin said he chided his brother for his remarks and then hurried into the house. But Callie had locked herself in a room and refused to let him in or even to answer his pleas to tell him what was wrong. Mr. Hardin said he tried vainly to explain that his brother had merely been joking about her being a child, but still she would not come out of the room. He was finally forced to break the door open with his shoulder, he said, which unfortunately only added to her distress. She raced from the room and out to the gallery, where she sat in a chair and hugged herself and cried relentlessly and refused to look up into his face. He could not even touch her without prompting her to greater hysterics.

  That is the way Father and Mother found them—Callie hunkered in a chair on the gallery, weeping uncontrollably and seemingly deaf to Mr. Hardin, who knelt beside her, speaking earnestly. When Mr. Hardin saw Father and Mother approaching, he said, “Look, Callie, here are your parents,” and touched her arm. “She shrieked like the devil himself had put a hand to her,” Mother told me. She shrieked and ran to Father and clutched tightly to him, sobbing and begging him to please, please take her home immediately.

  Mr. Hardin followed along in his buggy and, on arrival at the house, continued to try to speak with her. But she shut herself in our room upstairs and absolutely would not see him or even answer his entreaties at the door. Father tried to serve as emissary to her from him, but to no avail. Mother then tried her best to secure some explanation from her, but Callie adamantly refused to discuss it, even with her. Finally, she screamed, “Tell him to go away! Go away and never never never come back! Never! I never want to see him again! I never want to hear from him! I never want to hear his name! Never!” They might have heard her all the way out on the main road.

  And so Mr. Hardin took his leave of us, looking haggard and confused. Father promised him that he would continue to try to persuade Callie to “come around.” Even Mother, no champion of Mr. Hardin, was mortified by Callie’s horrendous behavior and assured him that Callie would soon calm down sufficiently to explain what was troubling her. “I’m sure everything will be fine,” she said. He thanked them both for their efforts on his behalf and said he too was certain that everything would soon be straightened out. But, quite frankly, he did not look as though he believed that in the least.

  He did not return to London again. He moved to the home of friends in Kerrville, about thirty-five miles southeast of Junction. At first, he corresponded with Father almost daily, inquiring after Callie and reporting that he was working busily on his book. He invariably included a separately enclosed letter addressed to her. But she just as invariably refused to accept it, and Father was obliged to keep sending them back to Mr. Hardin with his regrets.

  His correspondence slowly dwindled, and he ceased to enclose separate letters to Calli
e. His missives now came but once a week. They were notes more than letters, and they reflected an exhausted hope of ever being reconciled with his bride.

  The whole pathetic episode has provided grist for the local gossips ever since, but I have steadfastly refused to blush before the fact of my sister’s embarrassment. Why should I? The gossips are absolutely right: those two had no business whatsoever getting married to each other. Their ridicule serves them right.

  In early spring we heard from him for the last time. He wrote that he was going to Pecos to try a legal case. He did not mention Callie, which was just as well. By then Father had succumbed to her entreaties and retained a lawyer to initiate divorce proceedings. Mr. Hardin left for West Texas in April, and he never returned.

  The El Paso Times

  7 APRIL 1895

  Among the many leading citizens of Pecos City now in El Paso is John Wesley Hardin, Esq., a leading member of the Pecos City bar.

  In his young days, Mr. Hardin was as wild as the broad western plains upon which he was raised. But he was a generous, brave-hearted youth and got into no small amount of trouble for the sake of his friends, and soon gained a reputation for being quick-tempered and a dead shot. In those days when one man insulted another, one of the two died then and there. Young Hardin, having a reputation for being a man who never took water, was picked out by every bad man who wanted to make a reputation, and that is where the “bad men” made a mistake, for the young westerner still survives many warm and tragic encounters.

  Forty-one years has steadied the impetuous cowboy down to a quiet, dignified peaceable man of business. Mr. Hardin is a modest gentleman of pleasant address, but underneath the modest dignity is a firmness that never yields except to reason and the law. He is a man who makes friends of all who come in close contact with him. He is here as associate attorney for the prosecution in the case of the State vs. Bud Frazer, charged with assault with intent to kill.

  Mr. Hardin is known all over Texas. He was born and raised in this state.

  El Paso was the last wild town in Texas. With Mexico just across the Rio Grande, and the New Mexico Territory a stone throw north, the town was placed real well for anybody on the dodge from the law. It’s no wonder it attracted all the desperadoes it did. The only way to keep a rein on so many bad actors was with some of the toughest lawmen in the country. Jeff Milton, who’d been a Ranger and a U.S. marshal and was absolutely nobody to fool with, was the chief of police. “Any man I kill had it coming”—that was Jeff Milton’s motto and everybody knew it. Deputy U.S. Marshal George Scarborough was another quick ass-kicker you didn’t want to cross. Old John Selman, who some said had been more of a bandit and mankiller than any of the men he ever arrested, was constable of the first precinct. His son, John Junior, was a city policeman. Like I said—the law in El Paso was every bit as hardcase as the outlaws. And some said it was every bit as crooked.

  I’d come to El Paso that winter, and by spring I’d had enough of the place. It was too damn dangerous for a man of my profession. I was a dealer—poker mostly, sometimes blackjack, now and then faro. I worked at the Gem Saloon and did fairly well for myself. But it was a rare night that somebody at the table didn’t accuse me of pulling stunts with the deal, and things sometimes got fairly tense before cooler heads persuaded the hothead to accept his loss with a little more grace. But cooler heads didn’t always prevail: one night a dealer was shot dead just two tables away from me. The killer was arrested and eventually convicted and hanged, but that didn’t bring the dealer back to life even a little bit. Sore losers are a constant hazard of the trade, of course—it’s one of the first things a gambler learns. But El Paso sure seemed to have way more than its share of men who took personal offense at losing.

  It was Hardin who finally convinced me it was time to shake El Paso’s dust and head for California. He came to town in April—but even before he arrived, the word was out that he was coming. Somebody telephoned the news from Pecos, where Hardin had been pressing a suit for a cousin-in-law named Killing Jim Miller, and the saloon district buzzed about it for days. I recall a newspaper story saying Hardin should be welcomed in town because he was an inspirational example of how a man could rehabilitate himself in prison and triumph over his sordid past. But the saloon rats weren’t interested in any model of reform—they wanted to get a good look at John Wesley Hardin, the famous pistoleer. Some of them had been children when he was packed off to Huntsville Penitentiary, but even among most of the older roughs he was something of a living legend—the quickest, deadliest pistoleer in Texas, the man who made war against the State Police, the man who’d had to replace the grips on his pistols more than once because he’d cut so many notches in them.

  The local lawmen weren’t nearly so glad as the saloon rats to have him in town. I heard that Jeff Milton and George Scarborough met him at the station with shotguns. They warned him against carrying a gun inside the city limits and told him to watch his step. It must’ve been an interesting conversation. Hardin supposedly told them he had no intention of making trouble and hoped nobody would give him any. He said he wanted only to be a good lawyer, and it’s a fact he opened a law office on the second floor of the professional building across the street from the Gem.

  The first night he was in town he came into the Gem and was greeted like some kind of hero. At one point he had a dozen fresh drinks on the bar in front of him, each one bought by a different man. Everybody wanted to be able to say he’d bought a drink for the one and only John Wesley Hardin. Everybody wanted to be his friend. Everybody wanted to hear him tell about facing down Bill Hickok and about the way he gunned down Charlie Webb in Comanche. They gathered round him like some kind of one-man freak show, which I guess in a way he was. The first few times he came in, he accepted the drinks but only threw back a couple of them, and he politely declined to tell stories about his past. He said those days were long gone and he didn’t really care to relive them, thank you. But it just wasn’t in him to ignore all that admiring attention, I guess. It was pretty obvious he liked it, and I don’t guess he got too many free drinks all the time he was in prison. By the time he’d been in town two weeks he was knocking back most of the drinks the boys bought him and grinning bright-eyed at the crowd gathered round as he demonstrated the “road agent’s spin” he’d used on Hickok. No question he could twirl those pistolas. I heard he was putting on the same show in saloons all over El Paso.

  He started sitting in on some of the card games in the Gem, and I know a few of the boys sometimes lost hands to him on purpose, just to make him happy and to stay on his good side. But the fact is, he was a reckless card player, and sometimes the boys couldn’t lose a hand to him even when they tried. I’d always heard he was a hell of a gambler, but you never would’ve known it from the way he played in the Gem. To make things worse, he was one of those bad losers I mentioned before, especially when he’d been drinking.

  One night he got into a stud game at my table and by midnight was just about cleaned out. He was red-eyed and surly and in no mood for the general joshing and chuckling at the table. When Buck Elliot laid down four nines to take the biggest pot of the night—which Hardin had been sure he was going to take with his full house of aces over fives—well, it was too much for him. He said, “Shit!” and sent Buck’s cards flying off the table with a quick backhand sweep of his arm.

  Everybody said, “Hey now!” and “No need for that!” and so on. They’d all got pretty familiar with him in the couple of weeks he’d been in town, and the familiarity had eased them off their tiptoes around him. Maybe that was part of what was bothering him, I don’t know. All I know for sure is what happened. He jumps up and says, “I’ve had enough of your card tricks, boy!” He was talking to me. I was stunned. “I don’t play card tricks!” I said, and the others quickly backed me up. “Hud’s no cheat, Hardin, “ Bill Lepperman said, and Jerome Bradstreet chimes in with, “It ain’t his dealing costing you, Hardin, it’s your playing.”

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p; “Save the bullshit for your gardens, you sonbitches,” Hardin says, and pushes back his coat flaps so we can get a good look at the one pistol on his hip and the other hung in a vest holster. He never did pull them—Buck and the others lied about that. He just let us see them, and that was enough. “The whole bunch of you been playing me for the fish all night long,” he says, “but that damn game’s over. This pot’s mine and I’m taking it. Anybody’s got objections, all he’s got to do is stand up and make them.”

  None of us stood up or said anything more, and he raked up the pot and stuffed it in his pockets. I had a derringer in the waist pocket of my vest, but it might as well have been a frog for all the use I was about to make of it. That was the moment I made up my mind to move on to California.

  As soon as Hardin left, Buck went out in search of a lawman, and a few minutes later was back with Old John at his side. John listened to everybody’s story, then him and Buck set out for the Herndon House, where Hardin lived. But as they were walking past the Wigwam Saloon they spotted him at the bar.

  The way Buck told the story, he was right at Old John’s side as John stepped up to Hardin and told him he was under arrest. But Mack Tracey, who was working the bar that night, told me Buck hung back by the doors, ready as a rabbit to run for it. Buck claimed Old John backed Hardin down, but Mack told it different. He said when Old John told Hardin he was under arrest for robbing a card game, Hardin said he didn’t do any such thing, he’d only taken what was rightfully his. Old John said he could tell it to the judge, and Hardin said, “I’m telling it to you, uncle.” There weren’t but about six people in the saloon at that late hour and they all hustled out of the line of fire. No telling what would’ve happened next, Mack said, if Jeff Milton hadn’t come in just then.