The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

Pain had told me the whole story.

He and Hardin had met in the parlor at Miss Violet’s and took a shine to each other, so they’d come to the Daisy for some supper and to talk about common acquaintances back home in Texas. Two jayhawkers sitting at the next table started talking loud about what a pesthole Texas was and how Kansas would be a far better place if every Texan in it was run out for good. Hardin turned around in his chair and said that back in Texas it was common knowledge there were three kinds of suns in Kansas—sunshine, sunflowers, and sons of bitches—and didn’t neither of them look like sunshine or flowers to him. One of the hawkers jumped up and grabbed him by the collar—and Hardin whipped out his Colt and hit the fella across the nose with it. Pain said it sounded like breaking a kindling stick. The fella dropped to his knees with blood pouring down his chin as the other hawker pulled a belly gun and fired—but he missed Hardin and hit Pain in the arm. Hardin shot twice—the first bullet nicked the jayhawker’s cheek and sprayed some feathers off the hat of a young woman behind him, and the second blew off the hawker’s lower jaw.

While I was telling Bill what happened, we got word that Hardin had gone to the livery, saddled up, and rode off hell-for-leather to the south. “Just as well,” Bill said. “This looks like self-defense, plain and simple, but I’m damned if I ever met anybody forced to do so much self-defending as that boy.” He was one to talk.

Over the next couple of days a half-dozen drovers, including Columbus Carol and Jake Johnson, came to Bill to put in a good word for Hardin. Bill told them he considered the jayhawker shooting a case of self-defense and Hardin was still squared with him. He made it seem like he was doing them a favor, but he was just doing what was best for himself. All those Texans in town were looking up to Hardin like some kind of hero, and it would have been hell to pay if Bill had come down hard on him.

When Hardin paid his next visit to town, Bill invited him into the Applejack to palaver over a couple of drinks. He told him about a new Texas reward poster that was making the rounds: the price on Hardin’s head was up to one thousand dollars. He offered Hardin a deal. He’d let him wear his guns in town, and he’d make fast work of any bounty men who might come into Abilene looking for him—but in trade Hardin had to keep his Texas friends unarmed and not do anything to make Bill look bad.

Hardin said that was fair enough and they touched glasses on it.

On the afternoon they had their famous standoff, I was getting my hair trimmed by Wanda May up in my room. Violet kept coming by to see how much longer we’d be, telling us the parlor was full of horny galoots waiting to be serviced and the other girls couldn’t take care of them all. It was true. That summer in Abilene was the hardest-working I ever knew. The house was operating every hour of the day and night. But making all that money was hard on Violet’s nerves. The richer she got, the bitchier she got. She got to where she wouldn’t stand for anybody taking a break longer than to ease their bladder or eat a quick meal. “Time is money, ladies!” she’d say, clapping her hands like she was chop-chopping a bunch of coolies. She damn sure didn’t chop-chop me. She knew I wouldn’t have stood for it. I would’ve left there in a Kansas City minute and gone to work for Dapper Dan Foster or Louella Sweet. The both of them were always trying to get me to switch to their house. They wanted me for the same reason Violet didn’t get bossy with me—I was Bill’s special girl and everybody knew it.

Bill liked me special because he knew I was a fool for killers. I’ve never been able to explain it and I’m not about to try now. But the first time he was with me he must’ve smelled it under my perfume or felt it in my bones. There’s something about a killer that’s always set my blood humming and made my skin jump at their touch. And Bill, well, I’d go so hot under his hands I’d let steam. Even if Violet hadn’t allowed Bill the run of the house for free, I never would’ve charged him a nickel. He sometimes went to other houses, of course, men naturally craving variety like they do, and he sometimes went to some of the other girls in Violet’s. But mostly he came to me. It increased his pleasure to know how much I thrilled to the touch of his killer hands. Hell, we all of us got our ways.

Violet didn’t charge Bill because he was so damn good for business. Other men wanted to take their pleasure wherever Bill took his. They wanted to sit at the same poker tables and drink from the same bottles and mount the same women. I brought Bill to Violet’s and a heap of business followed Bill. It’s why Violet Hayes wasn’t about to take a chance on losing me to Dapper Dan or Louella.

Anyhow, just when Wanda May finished my hair, Violet came to the door again and said she had a special party waiting on us in the Meadow Room. It wasn’t unusual for some flush galoot to buy himself two girls at once —or even three, if his hankering was that much bigger than his pecker and his common sense—and that’s what the Meadow Room was for. It was called that because it’s about how big the bed in there was.

So me and Wanda May followed Violet down the hall in our shimmies—and who do we find waiting in the Meadow but Wild Bill and another fella. They were sitting at the small table by the window with a near-empty bottle and two full ones, and they were grinning at us like wolves. I knew right off what they had in mind. Bill always was one for whorehouse adventure. I took a quick look at Wanda May and saw her staring at the stranger with her mouth open. “Here they are, boys,” Violet said. “The best in the house. Y’all have a real nice time, hear?” And she scooted on out and shut the door.

The other one was a good bit younger than Bill, tall and good-looking. Myself, I always preferred the sort of handsome that’s got some wear on it, like Bill’s. At first I figured this one for a gambler, dressed as he was in a black suit and long string tie. But then I looked square into those gray eyes and I knew exactly what he was. My blood suddenly sang it to me. Then it struck me who he was—hell, we’d only been hearing about him for days. Just then Wanda May said, “Johnny? John Wesley?”

He looked at her close for a minute, then jumped up all bright-eyed and said “Hannie Willingham! Be God damned!” He grabbed her up and swung her around, the two of them laughing like kids. Bill and me looked at each other. I silently said, “Hannie Willingham?” and we busted out laughing too.

“Hellfire,” Wes said, hugging Wanda to him while she kissed him all over his neck and face, “I knew this sweet thing back when I was learning to cowboy in Navarro County.” Bill smiled in that lazy way of his and poured us all a drink. “Damn world’s getting smaller all the time, ain’t it, Little Arkansas?” I said I didn’t know Wes was from Arkansas, and him and Bill laughed like that was the best joke they’d heard all day.

Bill didn’t waste any time warming things up. He never did. He caught hold of the hem of my shimmy and tugged me over beside his chair. “What you got on that evil mind, you bad ole injun fighter?” I said, running my hand through his long yellow hair. Wes and Wanda sat on the edge of the big bed, sipping their whiskey and nuzzling some, but also watching as Bill took out his pistola and rubbed the barrel up along the inside of my leg. He slid it real slow all the way up under my shimmy, and when the tip of it touched my bare cunny, I grabbed a fistful of his hair and held on tight. He grinned up at me like the devil himself and stroked me gently with that iron thing till my legs got all trembly and I was breathing through my mouth and cussing him low. He’d never done that to me before—and there he was, doing it front of Wes and Wanda May. He kept at it till I thought I was going to faint from the pure pleasure of it. He suddenly pressed the pistol up hard against me and cocked the gun—and I let a moan and fell on him like I’d been hit behind the knees.

He sat me on his lap and held the gun up so everybody could see the barrel shining with my wetness. “Mag-gie!” Wanda May said. She was grinning big and her eyes were all lit up. “Whoooo!” Wes said. “Somebody’s having herself a good time.” And do you know I believe I blushed? Me, Maggie St. John, the belle of the Abilene whores, blushing like a schoolgirl. I couldn’t help but laugh with them. “Well, somebody else looks to be enjoying the company too,” I said, and gave a pointed look at the front of Wes’s pants. It looked like he had an ear of corn stuck in there.

Next thing you know, we were all of us bare-assed and in that big ole bed—and Lord, what a time! It started out Bill on me and Wes on Wanda, the both of them humping like broncos but fighting like hell to keep from being the first to shoot off, and me and Wanda doing everything we knew how with our hands and hips and whatnot to make our man come first. All that contesting got so wild the bed gave way and hit the floor like it was going to bring the whole house down. Wanda claimed she’d got Wes off before I had Bill, which I knew to be a lie and which Wes said was absolutely not a fact. While we were arguing about it Violet swung open the door with a look on her face like she expected to find dead bodies on the floor. A bunch of grinning galoots were staring in over her shoulders. Bill flung a pillow at her and hollered, “Shut the goddamn door, woman! This ain’t no sideshow!” For