The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

While they’re arguing, the judge scoops up his money and yanks on his boots. He says, “That’s it for me, gentlemen, we really must do it again sometime”—and he goes out the door in a flash.

For a second Bradley and Wes just glared at each other—then everybody moved at the same time. Bradley whipped out a huge Bowie and took a wild cut at Wes just as Hamp Davis grabbed for the old Walker Colt on my hip. We wrestled for it, his rotten breath full in my face, and he wrenched it out of my hand and gave me elbow in the mouth, knocking me on my ass. I heard Bradley holler, “Shoot him, shoot him!” and saw Wes going out the door on his hands and knees as quick as a kicked cat.

“You stupid shit!” Bradley yells at Davis. “Why didn’t you shoot him?”

“Who you calling stupid, you Ozark hillbilly!” Davis yells back. “We got the bastard’s money, so what’s the need of killing him? You want more law on our ass?”

Then Bradley takes notice of me and I figure he’s for sure going to stick that Arkansas toothpick in me just so he can have the pleasure of sticking somebody. But Davis waves the Walker at me and says, “You! Get the hell out of here! Tell your peckerwood partner we ever see him again we’ll cut his balls off.”

“Same goes for you, dogshit,” Bradley says to me as I scrabble by them on all fours, headed for the door, expecting to get the Bowie in my ribs as I go by, but all he did was spit on me.

As soon as I cleared the door I straightened up and started running. The road was lit up nearly bright as day under a full moon and the air was cold enough to make my teeth ache. I ran about fifty yards before I thought to cut over into the trees alongside the road where the shadows were long and deep. Once I got into the dark, I leaned up against a tree to catch my breath and let my heart slow down some.

“John,” somebody whispers right behind me, and I give such a start I bump my head on a low limb. Wes puts his hand on my arm and says, “Easy.” I could barely make him out, it was so dark in among the trees.

“Christ sake, Wes,” I say, “let’s get the hell out of here.” I don’t mind saying I was scared.

“Not yet,” he says. “It’s my fault they got my money, but I ain’t about to go home barefoot and without my gun. Lend me yours.”

I told him Davis had it. “They take your money too?” he asks me, and that’s the first I realize they didn’t. I reckon they were too taken with him to think of robbing me.

Then we hear Bradley and Davis coming up the road and we hunched deeper into the shadows. They were laughing and passing the bottle back and forth. They went by within fifteen feet of us, their breath steaming in the bright moonlight. I saw my Walker in Davis’s pants, and Bradley had Wes’s gunbelt and Colt slung over his shoulder. Bradley was saying he knew a whore in Dallas who could smoke a cigar with her cunt. “I know one in New Orleans can do that too,” Davis said. “Even blows smoke rings with it.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Bradley says, and Davis laughs. “You’ll say any damn thing to go somebody better. That’s why you got no friends, you damned peckerwood.”

As soon as they were around the bend in the road, Wes says, “Looks like they left my boots. I’m gonna go back and see. Follow along behind them till they’re past the judge’s house, then see if you can borrow a gun from him.” Before I could argue about it, he vanished into the dark.

The lights in the judge’s house were all out, but once Bradley and Davis were on up the road, I knocked and knocked on the door until I heard the judge calling down the stairs and asking what in thunder’s going on, and then I knocked all the harder. By the time he showed up at the door with a candle in one hand and a pistol in the other, here comes Wes trotting across the yard and clumping up onto the porch in his boots.

The judge leans out the door with his candle held up high to throw more light on us and says, “Hey, you boys …” his face full of surprise as he recognizes us. Wes steps up and snatches the gun out of his hand just as slick as you please.

“What the hell …” the judge starts to bluster, and Wes says, “Excuse my bad manners, Judge, but I got an awful bad need of this hogleg right now.”

It was a big Remington .45. Wes broke it open to check the loads, then hopped off the porch and headed off up the road. Before I could follow along, the judge grabbed me by the arm and says, “Listen, son, I didn’t hand it over willingly, you just remember that if we all end up in court.” Then he slammed the door shut and blew out the light.

I ran to catch up to Wes as he moved along in the shadows of the trees. We eased by the darkened cotton gin and closed in on the lights of the grocery. We could hear Bradley’s bunch laughing and swearing before we got close enough to make them out clearly. Three of them were out in front, talking and smoking. One of them was Bradley. The others were all inside.

Wes motioned for me to follow him deeper into the woods. We made our way around the grocery in the dark and came out of the trees at the stable. There was a dim light burning inside, but when we peeked, all we saw were the animals and the sleeping stable boy. I was surprised our horses were still there. Bradley must’ve figured we had come straight here, saddled up, and hauled hindquarters. “Get them ready,” Wes said. “I’ll be up there a ways where I can keep an eye on things.”

I woke the boy up and helped him saddle the animals, then led the horses up to where Wes was standing in the shadow of a large oak, watching the grocery, about forty yards away. “Mount up,” he tells me. “If this doesn’t go right, get the hell out of here and take Copperhead with you. Be sure Daddy gets him back.”

Holding the Remington down at his side, he starts heading toward the three men in front of the grocery. They don’t notice him till he stops about halfway to them and hollers, “Bradley! You, Jim Bradley!”

I could see everything plain as day from where I sat on Rollo. Bradley looked over at him and yelled, “Who’s that?”

“Me, you Arkansas slop bucket!” Wes yells. “I want the money you stole from me! I want my gun!”

Bradley steps out into the road and says, “Well, God damn, looka here. I thought I’d seen the last of this skinny bigmouthed son of a bitch.”

“My money!” Wes hollers. “And my gun! Now!”

“Well, sure,” Bradley yells back, taking a few steps toward Wes. His two buddies moved up alongside of him. “So happens I got your money here in my pocket. And right here’s your gun.” He pulls a revolver out of his belt. “Come on over and get it.” The other two laugh.

“You got the sand to meet me straight up?” Wes says. “Just you and me? Or you too damn yellow?” Now he’s walking slow toward Bradley again.

Bradley says something to the other two and they laugh again, but they hold back as he starts heading toward Wes.

They were about thirty feet apart when Bradley jerked up the Colt and fired. The ball cracked into a low branch of the big oak I was next to, and the horses shied. I hunkered down in the saddle as Wes fired and Bradley jerked backward and dropped the gun. He grabbed at his belly and yelled, “Oh, Jesus shit!” and fell down.

Wes fired at the other two as he ran up to Bradley. One yelped and started limping fast back toward the grocery, hollering, “I’m hit, Jody, help me, I’m hit!” But old Jody didn’t even look at his friend as he ran past him and around the side of the store and out of sight.

The door of the grocery banged open and Hamp Davis and the others crowded out on the narrow porch, laughing and shouting and wanting to know what the hell was going on. They were four or five, all of them drunk and bumping into each other. Wes fired and one of them screamed and fell off the porch and started crying like a child. The others jammed up in the door, fighting each other to get back inside. Wes fired again and they all went tumbling in, swearing and kicking at each other.

Wes retrieved his gun and flung Bradley’s into the weeds, then went through Bradley’s pockets. Bradley was curled up on his side with his hands on his belly. I could hear him whimpering and saying something to Wes but I couldn’t make it out. Later, Hamp Davis and a couple of others who’d been in the grocery that night would claim they heard Bradley begging for his life, but I say they were lying their heads off. Wes Hardin wasn’t one to shoot a defenseless man, not even one who robbed him and tried to kill him twice in the same night.

Somebody raised his head up over the windowsill and somebody else poked his around the edge of the door, and they both fired wild shots in our direction. Wes fired back and the window shattered and somebody inside yelled, “Son of a bitch!” Those drunk fools finally thought to blow out the lamps and have darkness on their side—but by the time they did that and all of them started shooting at us, Wes was already back to the horses and mounting up. We got out of there at a gallop, with bullets buzzing by us like hornets.