I kept trying to shift the conversation to the subject of himself, but he much preferred to hear about the stories I’d covered for the Gazette—about the execution of William Kemmler, the first condemned man to die in the electric chair, a process that took more than eight minutes and left the carcass half cooked; about the white slavery rings I’d investigated in New York’s lower depths; about the sex scandals and the opium dens and the labor riots; about crimes of passion. When I at last managed to ask him about his beginnings as a desperado, he was perfunctory. “Just say I was drove to it by murdering Yankee occupation troops and carpetbaggers. Anybody who wants to can read about it in my book. But tell me, what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”
* * *
A few minutes later a friend of his named Henry Brown came in and informed him that Old John Selman was sitting on a keg on the sidewalk in front of the saloon.
“His son Young John and Captain Carr came along just now and I heard him tell them to stay close by and be ready for trouble with you,” Henry Brown said.
“Just like the old coward to ask for help,” Hardin said. “How’s he look?”
“Hard to say,” Henry Brown said. “But he ain’t smiling.”
“Bastard’s scared,” Hardin said. “No bushwhacker likes the idea of going up against a man face-to-face. Reckon I’ll let him stew in his own sweat a while longer. Let him think some more on the way things stand.”
“And then what?” I asked. “Will you go out and face him down?” I tried to mask my excitement with a tone of nonchalance—but, in truth, I was heady with the prospect of witnessing a dime-novel shootout between two famous gunmen.
“Well now,” he said with a smile, “let’s just wait and see what happens.” I think he knew how I was feeling and was amused by it.
He shook the bar dice with Henry Brown to decide who would buy the next round. I told him I’d witnessed the exchange he’d had with Selman across the street, but that I hadn’t overheard enough of it to know exactly what was going on. “I know you rattled him with those two-gun fingers,” I said, and we both chuckled. “You see how he flinched when I shot him with these .44 caliber fingers?” Hardin said. “Old jasper damn near had a heart attack.”
Hardin had been leaning on one elbow on the bar as we conversed, frequently glancing into the back-bar mirror to check the front doors. Quite abruptly he tensed and slipped his right hand up inside his coat. I looked toward the doors and saw Old Selman standing there, his eyes locked on Hardin’s in the mirror, his left hand braced on his cane, his right hanging loosely by his holstered .45 Colt.
He wasn’t alone. But the man with him—who I later found out was one E. L. Shackleford—was no fighter. Indeed, he looked extremely nervous to be standing so near to Old John Selman at the moment. To be truthful, I was not entirely at ease standing so close to Hardin as I was.
Shackleford bolted toward the rear of the barroom, saying loudly, “Back here, John. We’ll have a drink with R.B. and Shorty.” R. B. Stevens, the proprietor of the Acme, and a fellow called Shorty Anderson were taking a drink together just inside the open door of the private room at the rear of the saloon. There were only a handful of patrons in the Acme at the moment.
Selman stood rooted for a few seconds, holding Hardin’s stare in the glass. I looked at Hardin just as he slowly and silently mouthed the words “Do … it,” at Selman.
Selman’s face seemed to turn to wet clay. Hardin smiled and withdrew his hand from his coat. He aimed his index finger at Selman’s image in the mirror and softly said, “Bang.” Then laughed aloud.
Selman broke his gaze, flushing furiously, and hobbled after Shackleford into the back room.
Hardin grinned at me and said, “Only took one finger to shake him up this time.” He smiled broadly all about the room. “Sammy,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder, “I’ll roll you for the round.”
He suddenly seemed twenty years younger—barely more than a boy—a happy, confident, carefree boy. His eyes danced brightly and his smile was a fierce contagious thing. He snatched up the dice cup and said, “I cant lose, boys, not me. But I don’t want to make street beggars of you, so let’s play for quarters.” And he didn’t lose, not once in the next ten rolls against me and then six in a row against Henry Brown.
When Selman and Shackleford came out of the back room, Selman’s face looked as rigid as his cane, but his eyes were red-hot and whiskey-bright. I could feel the heat of his anger as he went past us. He didn’t even glance our way as he headed for the front door. In the back-bar mirror, Hardin watched him go out, and I heard the low chuckle in his throat. He picked up the dice cup, shook it, and rolled the dice. He laughed once more and said to Henry Brown, “You got four sixes to beat.”
As Henry reached for the dice cup, I put a match to my pipe and turned to Hardin. He was smiling happily at himself in the mirror, his hands laced together on the bar. He was utterly and completely a picture of self-satisfaction.
Then his eyes shifted and his smile vanished and I followed his gaze in the mirror and saw Selman standing inside the doors, aiming his Peacemaker at the back of Hardin’s head. Selman shouted, “I will!” And fired.
Even in the roar of the gunshot, I heard the bullet crunch wetly through his skull and clank against the frame of the back-bar mirror. A second gunshot thundered and the bullet smacked against the wall as Hardin slumped to the floor on his back. Selman rushed up and shot him twice more at point-blank range. Then another copper—Young Selman—was clutching Old John by the arm and shouting, “Stop! Stop now! You’ve killed him!”
Old Selman looked crazed. Young Selman took his gun and ushered him away from the body, talking to him rapidly and earnestly. A bright puddle of blood was spreading from under Hardin’s head and a red rivulet ran down his face from a hole over his half-closed and shattered left eye. The other eye was open wide and dead as glass.
My ears rang with the pistol shots and my eyes smarted from the gunsmoke. I saw Shackleford and Henry Brown hurrying out the rear door. I wanted to leave too, but was afraid that if I released my grip on the bar my legs would fail me.
In an instant the saloon was in full tumult, jammed with babbling gawkers shoving against one another for a better look at the corpse of John Wesley Hardin. Each new arrival had to be told by the man who had arrived just before him what had happened. There was argument and angry gesticulation.
I heard a man explaining loudly to another that Selman had beaten Hardin to the draw and shot him squarely through the eye.
A gaggle of whores from the house around the corner entered in a perfumed rush of swirling skirts and a jabbering frenzy. There was gasping and cursing and an outbreak of weeping. Some of them stooped and dipped handkerchiefs or the hems of their underskirts into the blood on the floor. I saw one gently touch Hardin’s face. I saw one stare at her bloody fingertip a moment, and then lick it.
Stevens, the proprietor, and a lawman named Carr tried futilely to drive everyone back and stood arguing over the body. Stevens wanted the dead man removed from the premises at once, but Carr said adamantly that he would not do any such thing until the police chief showed up and took charge. He sat on his heels beside the body and searched it—and withdrew a pair of pistols.
A man later identified to me as Jeff Milton pushed his way through the crowd, the Selmans close behind him. He said, “All you, get the hell back, goddamnit!”—and back they fell.
He and the Selmans stared down at the dead man on the floor. Old John was grinning like a lunatic. He poked at Hardin’s shoulder with the tip of his cane. “See, Jeff?” he said. “You see? Like I said! He went for his gun and I killed him. I did it!” He put his hand out to Milton. “Shake the hand of the man who killed John Wesley Hardin.”
Milton glanced at Selmans hand as though he might spit into it. “This man,” he said, pointing at the body, “was shot in the back!” He stared at Selman with hugely profound contempt, then stomped away.
I saw
Stevens crouch beside the bar and pick something up between thumb and finger. Smiling like a prizewinner, he showed me the bullet that had passed through Hardin’s head. He dropped it in a whiskey glass and set it on a shelf behind the bar for display.
The undertaker’s assistants arrived and took the body away to the parlor, where it was examined by a team of physicians for their official report. Within hours, photographs of Hardin’s naked corpse, his several wounds starkly evident, were being hawked on the streets.
This report appeared in The El Paso Daily Herald of 20 August 1895:
The following evidence was given Justice Howe this afternoon by the three physicians whose names are signed thereto:
“We, the undersigned, practicing physicians, hereby certify that we have examined the gunshot wounds on the person of the deceased, John Wesley Hardin, and it is our opinion that the wound causing death was caused by a bullet; that the bullet entered near the base of the skull posteriorly and came out at the upper comer of the left eye.”
(Signed)
S. G. Sherard,
W. N. Vilas,
Alward White.
The wounds on Hardin’s body were on the back of the head, coming out just over the left eye. Another shot in the right breast, just missing the nipple, and another through the right arm. The body was embalmed by Undertaker Powell and will be interred at Concordia at 4 P.M.
John Wesley Hardin was buried in the Concordia Cemetery in El Paso. Inscribed on a small plate fixed to his coffin was the phrase, “At Peace. “ None of his kin were in attendance at the funeral, only myself and a handful of curious onlookers—and a veiled woman dressed in black. She left immediately upon the casket’s lowering in the ground.
John Henry Selman was indicted for murder and stood trial in El Paso. His attorney was Albert Bacon Falls, who later became Secretary of the Interior and went to prison for his part in the Teapot Dome scandal. Falls argued that Selman acted in self-defense. The jury could not reach a verdict, so the judge ordered a new trial and released Selman on bond. The night before I departed El Paso I saw him ensconced in a dark corner of the Wigwam Saloon, half drunk but looking sharply at every man who entered the premises, his mind likely occupied with visions of young pistoleers seeking their portion of fame by way of the man who killed John Wesley Hardin.
The El Paso Times
5 APRIL 1896
John Selman, the victor of not less than twenty shooting affrays in Texas, the exterminator of “bad men,” and the slayer of John Wesley Hardin, is dying tonight with a bullet hole through his body. About three months ago Selman and United States Deputy Marshal Geo. Scarborough had a quarrel over a game of cards, since which occurrence the relations between them have not been cordial. This morning at 4 o’clock they met in the Wigwam Saloon and both were drinking. Scarborough says that Selman said, “Come, I want to see you,” and that the two men walked into an alley beside the saloon, and Selman, whose son is in Juárez, Mexico, in jail on a charge of abducting a young lady from there to this side, said to Scarborough: “I want you to come over the river with me this morning. We must get that boy out of jail.”
Scarborough expressed his willingness to go with Selman, but stated that no bad breaks must be made in Juàrez. Scarborough says that Selman then reached for his pistol, with the remark, “I believe I will kill you.” Scarborough pulled his gun and began shooting. At the second shot Selman fell, and Scarborough fired two more shots as Selman attempted to rise. When Selman was searched no pistol could be found on him or anywhere around him. He says he had a pistol, but that it was taken from him after he fell and before the police reached him. Scarborough’s first shot hit Selman in the neck. The next two shots also took effect, one through the left leg just above the knee and the other entering the right side just under the lower rib. A fourth wound in the right hip is supposed to have been caused by Selman’s pistol going off prematurely, as the ball ranged downward. Scarborough is about 38 years old. He was born in Louisiana and was raised in Texas, and for several years was sheriff of Jones County. Selman was raised on the Colorado River in Texas. He was about 58 years old and has lived a stormy life. When not drinking he was as gentle as a child, but he did not know what fear was, and has killed not less than twenty outlaws. He was a dead shot and quick with his gun. He was an old officer in the service. Some years ago he fought a band of cattle thieves in Donna Anna County, New Mexico, killing two and capturing the others, four in all. He killed Bass Outlaw, a deputy United States marshal, in El Paso a few years ago.
EPILOGUE
“True, it is almost as bad to kill as to be killed. It drove my father to an early grave; it almost distracted my mother; it killed my brother Joe and my cousins Tom and William; it left my brother’s widow with two helpless babes … to say nothing of the grief of countless others. I do say, however, that the man who does not exercise the first law of nature—that of self-preservation—is not worthy of living and breathing the breath of life.”
From The Life of John Wesley Hardin as Written by Himself
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The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin Page 38