how he ought to quit bronc busting and become an acrobat in the circus since he liked to spend so much time flipping through the air. Wes took all their joshing real good. Every time he get throwed, he’d get up grinning, shake his joints back into place, hitch up his pants, tug down his hat, and mount right back up again. That bronc was as mean as they come and throwed him at least a dozen times before Wes finally broke the ornery jughead. The next morning Wes was walking stiff-legged and rode with his face all pinched up, he was so sore—which naturally made the boys josh him some more. They said the cayuse musta finally got so bored with throwing him, it decided being saddle-broke might be a more interesting life. The truth is, they admired the hell out of him for sticking with that horse the way he had. Wes Hardin had sand, no question about it.
I had him working roundups with Big Len Richards and Joe O. And there was plenty to round up out there too. For years after the War there were more longhorns wandering loose all over Texas than you could shake a branding iron at. Most of them were mavericks, but lots of them were just strays—cows that once upon a time belonged to ranchers who went off to fight the Yankees and either never came back or came back long after their ranches had gone to hell and their herds had scattered all over the countryside. It was only a matter of time before some of them strays started getting rounded up by fellas who couldn’t stand the temptation of seeing so many of them running around loose. Besides, it didn’t take a whole lot of artwork with a branding iron to change a brand. I ain’t saying we ever did that sort of thing at
Anyhow, Wes already knew a good bit about roping by the time he came to work for me. He had real quick fingers, which you have to have to be any good with a lariat. You got to be able to size the loop—make it bigger or smaller—with just your throwing hand, while your other hand’s paying out rope and working the reins. And you got to be able to do this while you’re riding at full gallop. You got to be able to do it as natural as you spit and breathe. You watch a roper’s hands real close sometime when he’s working and you’ll see just how fast and smooth his fingers move. Quick and sure as a banjo picker’s.
After his first few days at the camp, he was roping longhorns like he’d been doing it all his life. Big Len showed him how to lasso a calf with a heel catch so you could drag it behind your horse right up to the fire to get cut and branded. Joe O showed him how two riders could team up to bring down a big steer with what we call a head-and-heel catch, and inside a week he was even making over-and-under catches, which some cowhands never get the hang of even after years of trying.
Wes learned everything real good and real quick. I showed him how to cut the balls off a calf as slick as peeling a potato and how to heat an iron just right so it leaves a good clear brand but doesn’t burn too deep and set the hide on fire. I taught him the proper way to saw a pair of horns, which you sometimes had to do to cows with horns so long they couldn’t help but stab other cows when they got bunched up tight. I showed him how to use an ax for the job when the horns were too hard for the saw. There wasn’t anything about cattle that boy didn’t want to know. He even had me show him how to doctor a cow for screwworms and lumpy jaw and other such troubles. He said he figured to have his own herds someday and ought to know how to take care of them. He had a head on his shoulders.
It wasn’t all work, of course. Every now and then we’d go into town to see a horse race and wet our snouts and try our luck at the card tables. If there’s a man alive who don’t like horse racing I never met him. To see a couple of fast horses come galloping hard between two long lines of spectators all jumping up and down and yelling their lungs out as the horses go rumbling past, kicking up clods of dirt, huffing and big-eyed and showing their teeth, the big muscles stretched in their necks and their riders hunched down low and whipping at them with the reins and shouting in their ear—well, hell, if that don’t make your heart hop faster I’d say you were ready for burial. It’s something about a horse race that gets my blood jumping long before the animals even get to the starting line. Wes was the same way. He was always talking about buying himself a racer someday soon.
He’d surely be able to afford one, the way he raked in the winnings at the gaming tables. That boy was the luckiest gambler I ever saw. And I don’t mean at just one particular kind of game. He won at
I won’t ever forget the night he filled two of them on Frank Polk. Simp had introduced them earlier that same day and they’d taken a shine to each other, partly because they were both wanted by the Yankee army, just like Simp. I liked Frank all right, and had hired him on, but he was near as crazy as Simp in a lot of ways, another fella you had to tread lightly with. He was a big-chested, black-bearded rascal who’d shot and wounded two soldiers in a fight in Dallas a few weeks earlier and was naturally claiming self-defense. But the word on Frank was that he’d also pulled a few robberies here and there in North Texas and had killed a store clerk in one of them. The word was, the clerk had been unarmed. But that was just the word, which is wrong about as often as it’s not.
Anyhow, on this particular night I’m talking about, me and Frank and Wes and Terry Threefingers and Joel Knapp were in the Tall Hat playing stud and drinking straight whiskey—all except Terry, who was drinking Grizzly Milk, a mix of whiskey and milk and sugar, because his stomach had been ailing him lately. None of the pots was big enough to talk about till an hour into the game when suddenly we were looking at one of about two hundred dollars. Wes drew to a straight and got it to take the hand, and Frank cussed and beat his fist on the table. He was about half drunk by then and had been losing heavy, and he was steamed because he’d been holding kings up over tens and had thought sure the hand was his. Wes smiled at him and said, “Tough one to lose, Frank. But hell, ain’t they all?”
Except that he was fairly red-eyed himself, you never would of known Wes had put down at least as much whiskey as Frank had. Wes could drink. I don’t remember whiskey ever tangling his tongue or making him do the hard-wind walk.
Frank wouldn’t even look at him, he was so steamed. He growled at me, “Your deal, Newman—so deal the damn things.”
Half an hour later Wes did it again. He filled a straight flush to beat Frank’s full house of aces over jacks and took in nearly three hundred dollars.
“Goddamnit!” Frank yells. He shoves his chair back from the table with a loud scrape and puts his hand on the butt of his gun. Looking hard at Wes, he says, “I have never seen such goddamn luck of the draw in all my whole life.” His face and voice were just full of accusation.
Things got quiet downright quick. Wes kept his eyes on Frank and his right hand was out of sight under the table as he pulled in the pot with his left. “Well, Frank,” he says, “I hope you keep on seeing it for as long as I’m sitting here.”
When you’re at the table at a time like that, you want to get away from it as quick and as far as you can, but you’re afraid any move you make might set things off like a spark to powder, so you sit still as a stone and hope for the best. All around us the barflies were scooting for cover. I’d seen Wes shoot those Colts of his a few times by then and I knew he was a deadeye, but I hadn’t seen him fast-draw. I’d heard he was quick as a snake. Frank was a damn good shot too, but only fair on the draw—but he had a nerve of flint and wasn’t afraid of the devil himself. The thing is, whenever a pair of fellas got into it with only three feet of space between them, they almost always both got hit for sure and usually both got killed.
Just then I see past Wes to where Simp’s coming in the back door from taking a piss outside, his rifle in the crook of his arm. I can see he catches wise to what’s happening at the table, and as he heads toward us he cocks the hammer on the Sharps. Wes and Frank are locked up in a staring match and don’t see him coming. When he gets within two feet of the table, Simp gives me a wink and fires a round into the floor.
Sweet Christ almighty! You ever
Frank jumps straight up out of his chair like he’s been stung in the ass and his pistol goes twirling out of his hand like he’s doing some kind of trick and it comes down on the table and goes off—BLAM!—and he falls back into his chair and crashes over backward and lays there on the floor, stock-still.
I never saw Wes move—but there he was, turned half around in his chair with his cocked Colt in his hand and square in Simp’s chest.
For a second nobody moved—then Wes hollers: “You stupid dumb jackleg asshole! You looking to get
