The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

a sort to disappoint the ladies nor diminish a man’s sense of his own manhood.” Just the same, he wouldn’t have done anything about the sign—live and let live whenever possible, that was Bill’s motto—except that Mayor T. C. Henry got a storm of complaints from henpecked storekeepers, red-faced mothers with giggling children, and preachers having purple fits. He came into the jail like a man being chased by yellow jackets. “You got to do something about that sign, Bill, that’s all there is to it.”

So Bill told Johnny Coombs the painter to get his equipment and come along with us to the Bull’s Head. Johnny no sooner got up on the ladder and started to paint over the offending portions of the big bull when Phil Coe came out of the saloon and asked what was going on. When Bill told him, Phil shrugged and said, “I warned Ben that sign would rile the good folk.” Fancy Phil Coe was easy enough to get along with and had fairly decent manners for a Texan—which is why it seems all the more pitiful that of the only two men Bill killed in Abilene he was one of them.

While him and Bill were talking and watching Johnny paint, Ben Thompson came stomping out. He wasn’t nearly so agreeable a fella as Phil. He was as stocky as the bull on the sign and had a reputation as a good pistolman. They said he’d killed at least ten white men in Texas and served two years in prison for trying to kill his wife’s brother for beating up on her. I believe Bill was one of the few men Ben Thompson ever truly feared in his life—and so naturally Ben hated him.

“If they don’t like the sign,” he told Bill, “tell them not to look at it, damn their eyes!” He was wearing a gun in defiance of Bill’s ordinance. Sorry, Bill told him, but the sign was going to change whether Ben liked it or not.

There was but six feet between them and you could see Ben trying with all his might to beat his fear and pull on Bill. He got all sweaty and tight in the face but he just couldn’t do it. When he finally broke off the stare, his face was splotchy with shame. Phil Coe looked embarrassed for him. Ben pretended to watch Johnny paint for a minute, then started back into the saloon with his back as stiff as a fence post.

“Don’t wear that useless hogleg on the street again,” Bill called after him. He normally wasn’t one to rub a man’s face in it, but Ben brought out the worst in him. Ben’s ears got red as beets but he went on inside without looking back. You could smell the rank hate he left in the air.

A couple of days after the business with the sign, I arrived at the jail one morning just as Columbus Carol was coming out. He was puffing a cigar and calling “So long, Bill” over his shoulder. He saw me and gave one of those big winks that always made me want to shoot him in the eye. “Howdy, Deputy!” he yelled. “Arrested any bad hombres lately? Har-har-har!” I never did understand how Bill came to be good buddies with that loudmouth son of a bitch.

Carol had pastured his herds at the North Cottonwood, about thirty miles south of town, and intended to keep them there awhile. He wasn’t the only drover doing that. The cattle market was glutted and the price of beef was on the floor. But he’d been to the bank and borrowed enough to pay off his men, and it was mostly them we heard across the street in the Bull’s Head. Bill told us all this—and that the main reason Carol had come to see him was to square Wes Hardin. He smiled and said, “I want you boys to give that young hoss wide room, hear? If he gets wildhair, you fetch me. I’ll be the one to deal with him.” What about if we saw him wearing his guns, I asked, but he didn’t answer. He was already going out the door and on his way to the Alamo for his morning toddy.

I couldn’t help but admire Bill’s smarts. He knew Carol would brag to everybody in town about squaring Hardin with his good buddy Wild Bill. It was a reason everybody would understand for Bill not coming down on Hardin. They’d all think, Hell, Hickok ain’t shying from Wes, he’s just doing Columbus a favor is all. Just the same, there was only so much slack Bill could give. If Hardin pulled on his string too hard, Bill would have to do something about it, consequences be damned.

The following night Bill was wearing his best Prince Albert, so I knew something was up but couldn’t figure what. I went out on a turn with him and he headed us over to the Applejack. We had to make our way through swarms of drunks and yahooing cowhands in the street. We kept a lookout for guns but didn’t spot a one. The wild boys had seen Bill head-knock too many gun-toters not to take him serious about wearing guns on this side of the river.

The piano player in the Applejack was practically hitting the keys with his fists to be heard in all the clamor of talk and laughter and shouting and dealers’ calls. When Bill ordered a drink for me as well as himself, I knew for sure something was going on and wished he’d let me in on it. He normally didn’t like for us to drink on the job. “One drunk lawman out on the town’s enough,” he’d say, meaning himself. He clinked his glass against mine and said, “To love, Tommy boy, wherever it’s keeping its pretty ass.”

He tossed off the drink and the barkeep poured him another, but I only sipped at mine to be polite. No matter what Bill was up to, I wasn’t about to do any real drinking in a crowd like that. It was practically all Texans, and we were getting a lot of eyeballing. Bill noticed the grip I had on my shotgun down alongside my leg and told me to put it up on the bar. “These fellers are mostly just gawkers,” he said. “Don’t let them think they got you twitchy.”

Pretty soon George Johnson pushed in beside Bill and hollered, “Wild Bill! Got somebody here you ought to meet!” George was a friend of Bills, an easygoing railroad agent who knew most of the Texas cowhands. He reached back and put his hand on the shoulder of a tall young fellow wearing a new black suit with a red plaid vest and a black hat with a silver concho band around it—and two big army .44s tied down on his legs. “Bill,” George said, “meet Wes Hardin. Wes, this here is the one and only Wild Bill Hickok.”

My hand instinctively went to my shotgun, but Bill tapped my arm, so I let it be. It was clear he’d had George set up the meeting, and it irritated hell out of me that he hadn’t let me in on it beforehand. It’s how he was about a lot of things, lousy with secrets.

Neither one put his hand out. They just nodded and said they were proud to make each other’s acquaintance. Bill offered to buy him a whiskey, but Hardin insisted the drinks were on him and ordered a bottle. They clinked glasses and drank to each other’s health. While they had a couple of drinks more, Bill told him he’d heard about the fight with the Mexicans on the Newton Prairie and was impressed by the shooting they said he’d done. “You did the republic a service, getting rid of so many troublemakers all at one time,” he said.

Hardin smiled big as the moon. “Glad you feel that way,” he said. “I’d been wondering how I stood with the law hereabouts.” For all their pleasantries, they were both doing everything left-handed. Hardin kept his right hand hooked by a thumb in his gunbelt, and Bill had his on his hip, from where he could snatch the navy just quick as a blink.

“Got something to show you, Little Arkansas,” Bill said. I don’t know anybody who knows why in hell Bill called him by that name, but that’s what he always called him from then on—and for some damn reason Hardin seemed pleased by it. Bill took the Texas reward poster out of his coat with his left hand and shook it open for Hardin to see. Hardin gave it a glance and his smile got tight. Bill crumpled it up and said, “It don’t mean jackshit. Nor any other papers they send on you. The way I see it, Little Arkansas, I got enough to do just keeping all these wild hairs from tearing up the town—and you got enough troubles back home without adding to them here. Now you impress me as a bright fella who’s his own man. I don’t believe you’re likely to be influenced by any bitter souls in town who try to use you for their own low purposes.”

“Like Ben Thompson, you mean?” Hardin said with a smile. “Phil Coe’s an old friend of mine. Soon as I come into town he invited me to the Bull’s Head and introduced me to Ben. Friendly fella, Ben. Kept pushing free whiskey at me and telling me how us Texans got to stick together here in Bloody Kansas. He had a lot to say about you.”

Bill nodded and said, “I’ll wager he did.”

Hardin poured another left-handed round of drinks and said, “He said you are a Texan-hating Yankee sonbitch and the world would be a better place without you. I’m using his words, you understand. No offense.” Bill shook his head to say none taken. But George Johnson’s eyes had gone wide at the sudden bluntness of the conversation, and he eased back into the crowd and vanished. I knew how he felt. Up on the bar my shotgun looked a mile away. “Ben also says,” Hardin went on, “that you prefer killing Texans to even Mexicans and niggers.”

Even if most the men crowded around us hadn’t been as drunk and distracted as they were, they couldn’t have overheard much of the conversation between Bill and Hardin, not in all the loudness. “Folks will believe what they want to believe,” Bill said.

“That’s a true fact,” Hardin said. “And one of the things I’ve always believed is that a man ought to do his own fighting. I told Ben so. I said, ‘Ben, if what you’re saying is Wild Bill needs killing, why don’t you just go on over there and do it?’”

Bill let out a belly laugh and said he bet that raised Ben’s eyebrows some. “Damn sure did,” Hardin said, “but