happy to read his work and offer whatever helpful criticism I might. He smiled almost shyly and said he’d be grateful.
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
* * *
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 “
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
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, “
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
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
