I have a fuzzy recollection of John Selman—the policeman son, not the murdering constable father—sweet- talking me on the street and asking me to hand over the pistola. I remember the gun slipping out of my hand and discharging when it hit the sidewalk and the bullet ricocheting off a wall. He said in the report that I dropped it when I tried to twirl it. He quick grabbed it up and put the arm on me.
That was it for the sweet-talk. He was real sarcastic about calling me “the grieving widow.” He said—and plenty of witnesses backed him on this too—I cursed him like a muleskinner all the way to the jail. He said I told him Wes would give him a new asshole right between the eyes for treating me so low.
He wanted to jail me till I sobered up, but Jeff Milton wouldn’t have me put in a cell. Jeff took me direct to Judge Howe, drunk as I was. I know the judge gave me a lecture—I have a vague picture of his face looking all serious and his big thick finger shaking at me. I had a terrible feeling the next day that I’d laughed and said something nasty about what his finger looked like, wagging up and down at me that way. Anyhow, to make a long drunk story short, I was fined fifty dollars and Jeff Milton took me home.
Wes must have heard about it the minute he got off the train. He came charging into the room and threw his valise against the wall. It knocked his manuscript off the table in a flutter of pages. He looked like he was ready to rip me to pieces. I could see how hard he was fighting to keep himself under control. He sat on the bed with his fists tight and white on his knees and made me sit in a chair across the room and tell him my side of what happened. I did the best I could, considering how little I could remember about the whole thing. I wasn’t lying when I finished up by telling him I was sorry, and I didn’t talk back when he said, “You sure are. You’re about the sorriest bitch in this whole sorry town.” I figured I had that coming.
He poured himself a glass of whiskey and sat there sipping from it and staring at me without saying anything for a long time. I kept my mouth shut and waited for him to make up his mind about what to do. I was sorry for what I’d done, but I wasn’t going to let myself get beat like a dog for it. I’d decided that if he tried it, I’d holler out the window like I was on fire.
But the whiskey seemed to soothe him. He put the empty glass aside and rubbed his face with both hands and made the most tired sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Then he got down on his hands and knees and carefully gathered up his manuscript and stacked it on the table. Then he took me by the hand and we got in bed with our clothes on and just lay there holding each other gently. I could feel his heart beating hard against my breast.
He
“For God’s sake, Wes,” I said, “it’s almost the twentieth century. Nobody gives a damn about such silliness. Why don’t we just leave this awful place? Let’s go to Santa Fe. Let’s go to Denver.” The look he gave me was more pitiful than angry.
The next morning he went out and found Young Selman walking his beat and gave him loud hell for arresting me. I heard all about it from Patsy Webster, one of the dozen witnesses. She said Wes called Young Selman a bully and a coward for arresting a woman. “You wouldn’t have dared done it if I’d been in town,” Wes told him. They say Young Selman looked scared but held his ground and took the bullyragging with his mouth shut. Wes almost always wore a gun or two in defiance of the town ordinance against doing so, but he usually kept them out of sight under his coat or vest. This time, however, he opened his coat wide so Young Selman could clearly see the pistols. “I’m giving you fair warning,” Wes told him. “You come near her again and you’ll answer to me.”
He was quiet and moody during the next two days. He cleaned his pistols and practiced his quick draws. He dealt himself hands of cards. Now and then he sat at the little writing table and wrote more of his book. In the evening he’d put on his guns and go down to one or another of the saloons, have a couple of drinks and play a few hands. My heart would lodge in my throat from the minute he walked out the door until the moment he came back. I couldn’t help feeling he was trying to prove something—though I can’t say what it was or who he thought he was proving it to. He drank steadily but only got drunk enough to stay loose. I believe his head was just full of snakes.
Sometimes, when he didn’t know I was watching, I’d see him staring at himself in the mirror with such intense concentration he looked like he was trying hard to place a face he hadn’t seen in a long time. He made love like he was dreaming about it instead of really doing it. His touch, his kiss, even his cock—they all felt like a stranger’s.
That Saturday he said he’d been thinking over what I’d said about moving to Santa Fe, and he now thought it wasn’t a bad idea. “The territory needs lawyers,” he said. “We can get a new start, breathe some mountain air that’s not full of desert dust.”
It was wonderful news—but when he said he wanted me to leave ahead of him while he took care of closing his office and paying off a few bills and such, I felt a shiver run through me. He wanted me to go up there right away and check into a hotel and start looking around town for a nice office for him. I said I wanted to wait so we could leave together, but he said no, we’d do it the way he said. We nearly got into an argument about it, but I caught myself in time to avoid it. All right, I said, we’d do it his way.
On Sunday morning I left El Paso on the train for Santa Fe. I’d had a sleepless night and was red-eyed and jumpy. The passing landscape glared so whitely it hurt to look out at it. The air lunging through the open windows was as hot as desperate breath and didn’t do a thing but swirl dust through the coach. Still, I was so tired the rocking car lulled me into a sweaty, fitful sleep.
Just before we reached Las Cruces I dreamt about Wesley. I saw him standing at a long brightly lighted bar in a dim saloon, tossing dice and laughing. Then a shadowy figure came up behind him and pointed a long accusing finger at the back of his head….
The loud bang of a coach window woke me with a start, my throat tight and pulsing wildly—and the train whistle shrieked like the devil in grief.
20 AUGUST 1895
… This morning early a
“I met Wes Hardin last evening close to the Acme Saloon. When we met, Hardin said, ‘You’ve got a son that is a bastardly, cowardly, s__ of a b__.’
“I said: ‘Which one?’
“Hardin said: ‘John, the one that is on the police force. He pulled my woman when I was absent and robbed her of $50, which they would not have done if I had been there.’
“I said: ‘Hardin, no man can talk about my children like that without fighting, you cowardly, s__ of a b__.’”
“Hardin said: ‘I am unarmed.’
“I said: ‘Go and get your gun. I am armed.’
“Then he said: ‘I’ll go and get a gun and when I meet you I’ll meet you smoking and make you pull like a wolf around the block.’
“Hardin then went into the saloon and began shaking dice with Henry Brown.… I sat down on a beer keg in front of the Acme Saloon and waited for Hardin to come out. I insisted on the police force keeping out of the trouble because it was a personal matter between Hardin and myself. Hardin had insulted me personally.
