Anyhow, when Stokes said we’d shoot him dead if he tried to run, Hardin said yessir, yessir, he understood, and we didn’t have to worry none about him being so foolish as trying to escape. He was a completely innocent man and all he wanted was the chance to prove it in court. “I ain’t worried,” he said, “because I trust in the Lord and in the justice of our courts. As soon as you fellas get me in front of a judge is how soon I’ll be a free man again, or my name ain’t Frank Josephson.”
The Sabine was swollen bad and running fast under a thick haze. It was a hard crossing. Stokes threw a lariat over Hardin’s mule and gave his end of the rope a few turns around his saddle horn, then nudged his horse into the river and led Hardin across. Me and Smolley went directly behind them—Smolley with his gun in his hand, ready to shoot Hardin if he somehow got loose and tried to swim away. We made it all right, but soaked as we were the cold wind really cut into us. As soon as we reached higher ground we made camp and got a big fire going to warm the chill out of our bones and dry our clothes and boots. We took turns guarding Hardin through the night. On my shift he didn’t do nothing but sleep like a baby.
When we got to the Trinity it was way up over its banks and booming even harder than the Sabine had been. We followed it south a few miles to where there was a ferry. The ferryman said it was too rough to cross, but Stokes persuaded him that things would be a lot rougher if he didn’t take us over. It was a wild crossing that had us hanging tight to the rail and nearly pitched Stokes’s horse in the river. Smolley held a shotgun on Hardin the whole time. I don’t know if Hardin was more scared of falling in the river and drowning or of Smolley accidentally pulling the trigger from all the tossing about.
It was mighty wet going for a while after that, and it stayed cold as the dickens. The bottoms were a foot under icy water, and the sloughs nothing but frosty mud. Hardin kept asking us to untie him from the mule. He was scared he’d drown for sure if the animal lost its footing and fell down in the water. Stokes told him to shut up or Smolley would pull him off the mule and drown him himself.
We were on higher land by nightfall and made camp. Stokes was in a short temper. He cuffed Hardin a good one for not moving fast enough when he ordered him to round up some firewood. There was a town called Fairfield a few miles off and Stokes said he was going there to get fodder for the animals. I happened to know there was a saloon and a couple of whores there, so I guess I knew what he was really going for.
After Stokes left, Smolley followed Hardin around while he searched out wood with his hands still cuffed. Smolley kept taking out his pistol and cocking it and pointing it at him. Kept saying what a pleasure it’d be to blow his brains out. He must of drawed that pistol and said that to him upward of a dozen times. I didn’t much care for it, but I knew better than to butt into Smolley’s fun, so I busied myself cleaning my pistol on a blanket.
Hardin looked about to cry from being so scared. He said, “Please be careful with that gun, Sergeant. I ain’t no badman, sir, believe me. I just want to get to a courtroom and prove it.” Smolley’d uncock the pistol and twirl it a few times, then cock it again and aim at him and say “Pow!”—and laugh to see him cringe.
While he built a fireguard of rocks and set the wood in it, Hardin kept glancing scared over his shoulder at Smolley. He put a match to the kindling, then knelt over it with his back to us to shield it against the breeze. He struck a half-dozen matches trying to get it going. All of a sudden he started sobbing hard and rocking back and forth in that big coat. Smolley gave a big horse laugh and started over to him—to give him a good kick, prob’ly. He said, “What’s the matter, boy? You want your momma?”
Hardin spun around on his knees with a big pistol in his hands and shot Smolley in the face. Smolley staggered back and his legs gave out and he fell on his ass and sat there with his arms hanging limp at his sides. He had a hole under his left eye and looked awful surprised. Hardin scooted over to him and snatched away his gun.
I never moved. I just sat there with my pistol in pieces in front of me and felt my guts go soft when Hardin aimed the pistol at me and cocked it.
“Hands on your head, boy!” I did it quick.
Smolley was watching him with his mouth open, like maybe he was trying to think of something to say. Hardin grinned down at him and put the pistol in his face. “Hit me
He worked the key out of Smolley’s pocket and undid the cuffs, then came over and put them on me and told me to get my hands back on my head. He kicked the pieces of my gun into the bushes, then searched all through Smolley’s saddlebags—looking for his own guns, I reckoned—and cussed when he didn’t find them. Stokes had took them with him. While he saddled Smolley’s horse, I sat there with my cuffed hands on my head and didn’t say a word. I kept expecting him to put a ball in me any second.
When he was mounted and ready to ride, he reined the snorting pony around me in tight prancing circles. “Listen here,” he said, “I am John Wesley Hardin, and whatever reason you got for being a State Police, it ain’t a good one.” Well, I figured I was dead for sure—but then he said, “I’m obliged to you for not letting on about the gun, and whyever you did
I knew right off why he made me throw away the cuffs. Without them on me, there wasn’t much chance Stokes would believe my story of how Hardin made his escape and killed Smolley but not me. He’d be sure to lay the blame on me for losing his prisoner—prob’ly even claim I’d helped him escape. That’s the moment my career in the State Police come to an end. In another minute I was saddled up and out of there my ownself, riding hard for Louisiana.
Funny, ain’t it? Wes Hardin, by damn! Thinking I’d left that pistola on him a-purpose!
I and my youngest boy, Robert, who was fourteen that winter, came across them in the woods about ten miles north of Belton. All three were wearing badges. State Police. Two were as dead as the whitetail buck we were toting on a shoulder pole. One’s head was half gone, and I knew a shotgun had to’ve done it. The other dead one was all shot up in the chest and crotch both. It was powerful cold and their blood had frosted purple. The third one was still alive, but he was bad gut-shot and I knew he wouldn’t make it. I sent Robert for the sheriff in Belton while I waited with the dying one. It wasn’t nothing but a death watch.
He said his name was Ben Parkerson, and it took him three hard hours to die. He begged for water so bad I took my canteen out from under my coat and let him have a small taste. I was wanting to do the charitable thing, but I should’ve known better. As soon as the water reached his gut he hollered like a burnt baby. When he wasn’t wailing from the pain, he was talking a blue streak, the way some do when they’re hurt bad and breathing their last. It was mostly a lot of rambling at first, but then he seemed to get a better grip on his hurting, and he told me what happened.
They’d gotten word Wes Hardin was in Bell County, and they’d been hunting him for two days. Then, in the middle of last night, Parkerson had been woke by a shotgun blast. He saw Davis, who was supposed to be on guard, laid out on the ground with his head wide open. Then he heard two pistol shots and felt a fire in his belly. Next thing he knew, he was looking at Hardin standing in the light of the campfire pointing his pistols at Lankford. Lankford had his hands up and was begging Hardin not to kill him. “Je-sus!” Hardin said. “Just smell of yourself, you sorry sonbitch. You been looking all over hell’s half acre for me, and now you found me you shit your pants. Ain’t you ashamed?”
“He shot him down like a damn dog,” Parkerson said. “He shot him over and over. The bushes lit up with every shot. He just fired and fired till the hammers were snapping on empty.” He started crying again, and pretty soon he was tossing and rolling his eyes with the pain and praying out loud to the Lord Jesus. Most of everything he said after that didn’t make much sense until near the end, when he settled down some again. He was crying real soft and talking to somebody named Lucy when he died. That was in January of the year 1871.
LEGENDS OF ABILENE
