The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

reason—maybe her—Simp and the hawker got into a fight. They say that when Simp got the hawker down and started putting the boot to him, the squaw ran up and got in some pretty good kicks of her own, which sounds like she was ready for a change of men. The way the story goes, Simp took her to live with him in a cabin deep in a woods by the Navasota. They say him and the squaw were completely bare-ass and humping like hell on the riverbank one evening when a Yank hunting party snuck up and shot them more than a hundred times.

FUGITIVE DAYS

The El Paso Daily Herald,

20 AUGUST 1895

Frank Patterson, the bartender at the Acme Saloon, testified before the coroner as follows:

“My name is Frank Patterson. I am a bartender at present at the Acme Saloon. This evening about 11 o’clock J. W. Hardin was standing with Henry Brown shaking dice and Mr. Selman walked in at the door and shot him. Mr. E. L. Shackleford was also in the saloon at the time the shooting took place. Mr. Selman said something as he came in at the door. Hardin was standing with his back to Mr. Selman. I did not see him face around before he fell or make any motion. All I saw was that Mr. Selman came in the door, said something and shot and Hardin fell. Don’t think Hardin ever spoke. The first shot was in the head.”

(Signed) F. F. Patterson

The Life of John Wesley Hardin as Written by Himself

“I liked fast horses and would bet on any kind of a horse race, a chicken fight, a dog fight, or anything down to throwing ‘crack-a-loo’ or spitting at a mark.”

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“I had been receiving letters from my father and mother urging me to quit my wild habits and turn to better ways.”

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“I was young then and loved every pretty girl I met.”

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“If there is any power to save man, woman, or child from harm, outside the power of the Living God, it is this thing called pluck.”

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“Everybody … tried to help me and everybody was my friend, but the infamous police were after me and there were several mischief-makers about me.”

My wife, Slider, was cousin to Wes and introduced us at a get-together over at Jim Page’s place on the Brazos River, where Wes and his brother Joe were staying. They’d come down after visiting at Slider’s momma’s house in Hillsboro for a time and everybody was damn happy to know Wes was all right. We’d only recently heard of the Yankees’ back-shooting murder of Simp Dixon and had been worried the blues might of got to Wes too.

We hit it off right away, me and Wes, but Joe was standoffish and we never did cotton to each other much. When I found out how much Wes liked gambling and horse races, I told him he’d surely enjoy Towash, a small but high-kicking town a few miles from the Page place. It had plenty of loud saloons and gambling halls, and just outside of town was the Boles Track where they raced quarter horses. On race days that little town was just booming with action. Wes said he liked the sound of it, and we agreed to go to the track together on the coming Saturday.

Joe wasn’t keen on the idea at all. “Are you forgetting there are soldiers hunting for you?” he asked Wes. “Soldiers who intend to shoot you on sight?”

“To do that,” Wes said with a big smile, “they got to see me before I see them.” He tried to make light of Joe’s nagging, but I could see it irritated him. I don’t believe he was sorry when Joe headed on back home to Navarro County the next day.

During the next couple of weeks we spent plenty of time in Towash, me and Wes. Like I said, it was a wild place, and Wes took to it like a redbone to a hollow full of coon. That boy would gamble at anything. He was the best I ever saw at calling the turn at the faro table—at guessing the exact order of the last three cards in the tiger, the box the dealer deals the cards out of. Calling the turn pays four-to-one, and Wes won himself just fistfuls of money. We played mostly in The Alabama Star because it had the best table layout—and because they had a dealer there named Sad Horse Tom, whose real name was Tommy Flatt. He had the longest face you’ve ever seen, and every time somebody had a winning streak or called the turn oh him, that face would get even longer. You can imagine what he looked like whenever Wes had one of his good nights at his table. Poor fella’s face got so long and miserable-looking he looked like a horse about to cry. Wes started calling him Sad Horse Tom and pretty soon everybody called him that. One night, right after Wes had called the turn on him for the second time in an hour, Sad Horse Tom said to him, “Kid, you must have Jesus whispering the cards in your ear.”

Wes liked that, and from then on, every time the last turn came up, he’d cup his hand to his ear and look up and say, “All right, Lord, let me hear them.” He’d nod his head like he was listening real careful, then say, “All right, sir, I’ll do it.” If the turn came up the way he called it, he’d smile at the ceiling and say, “Thanks, partner.” But if he lost, he’d look around at everybody with a real exaggerated expression of disgust and say something like, “Well, hell, if that’s all the dependable the Good Lord Jesus is going to be, it’s no wonder so many folk are turning heathen nowadays.” He could always get a laugh from the boys at the table.

Except for Sad Horse Tom, most everybody was always glad to see Wes come in the Star. He was free and easy with his winnings, and I don’t recall a single time he didn’t buy the house a round after winning a big poker pot or calling the turn at faro. He was a damn good joke teller too, and just as good at laughing at the ones you told him. He smiled a lot and usually meant it when he did. He liked to sing along with the piano. He was just an easy young fella to like.

Besides gambling in the Towash saloons nearly every night, we went out to the Boles Track every Saturday. We both liked the races even more than the table games, and we both usually came out winners at the end of a day’s matches. But the more Wes saw of the Towash races, the more he hankered for a racer of his own, since neither his old paint nor my ornery buckskin was near good enough to run against the racers at Boles. Well, he was the sort to do whatever he set his mind to, so I figured he’d get a racer, all right—I just never expected him to show up with the one he did.

Come Christmas morning, I hear him halooing me out in front of the house, so I go to the door and there he is, sitting on this beautiful roan stallion I ain’t never seen before. I couldn’t help but stand there with my mouth open and admire it—I mean, it was a fine-looking animal! Wes just grinned down at me for a minute before he finally says, “I guess you could stand there all day letting the cold air in on your wife and child, or you might scrape up whatever money you got, saddle up, and go with me over to Boles to increase your holdings.”

It was a beautiful day—chilly but sunny, with no wind and not a cloud in the sky. As we rode over to Boles, Wes told me the horse belonged to his daddy, who’d got it as a present from a man in Polk County. He’d named it Copperhead in honor of its sire, a stud from Ohio. The Reverend had given everybody at the Page place a real Christmas Eve surprise when he showed up so unexpected. He’d written Wes a couple of letters since moving to Navarro County but hadn’t said anything about coming out to see him. What he had done in each letter was ask him to please quit the gambling life he’d taken up and get on back to his family where he belonged. “Joe sure must of gave him an earful,” Wes said. It was pretty obvious he was caught between a rock and a hard place—the rock being his daddy wanting him to lead a righteous life like Joe and start doing the family