The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

months afterward me and Wanda could make each other burst out laughing just by imitating that look on Violet’s face.

We sat on the broken bed and passed the bottle around, and I noticed Wes’s heavy manhood showing signs of life as he admired my titties—they were something to admire in those days, if I say so myself. Wanda slid over by Bill and took hold of his long skinny thing and said to it, “Pardon me, sir, but haven’t we met someplace before?” And that got us going again—this time me on Wes, Wanda on Bill. It started out another contest, but we all got too involved in what we were doing to give a damn who shot when.

We went at it all afternoon, now and then stopping to rest a little, take a drink, have a smoke. At one point, Wanda ran her finger along one of Bill’s scars and asked him if he could remember where he’d got it. It was bright pink and thick as a curtain cord and ran from his left collarbone to under his right arm. “The McCanles scrimmage,” Bill said. He was scars from neck to knees, and could tell you how he got every one. The long ones were from cuts and the tight puckered ones were from bullets. All Wes had was a tiny pale one on his lip where he’d been punched once and a little pinched one on his arm where a Yankee soldier had winged him. “Unless you die young, Little Arkansas,” Bill said, “you’ll look like this one day. Probably worse, since you got more of them looking to kill you than I do. With me they get a reputation. With you they get a reputation and a reward.”

Bill used me to show Wes some humping positions he’d learned from a Pawnee medicine man back when he was scouting for the army. Damn if some of those ways weren’t new to me. A couple felt pretty nice, but most were so god-awful awkward only an injun would’ve been fool enough to do it that way. Then me and Bill watched Wanda slide down under Wes and pleasure him with her special “tongue and titty trick.” Then they watched me treat Bill to a trip around the world. Then me and Wanda teamed up on Wes while Bill recovered some of his sap—and then we doubled up on him too. All afternoon it was nothing but wet nakednesss wherever you turned or put out your hand.

By the time the room was in shadows we were one whipped bunch. The room was just reeking of sex. The whiskey was all gone and the boys were complaining in that boastful way men do that their peckers were so sore they’d likely fall off. Bill gave me a few last kisses on the tits and belly while he got dressed, but Wanda started fooling around with Wes again before he could get his pants on. “Sweet Jesus, girl,” he said, “have pity on a poor wore-out cowhand.” But damn if all her licking and handling didn’t get that big raw thing up on its feet again. So he crawled up on her and gave Bill a grin that wasn’t nothing but a banty rooster challenge. Bill shook his head in a sorrowful way and said, “Hell no! I guess I’m too old anymore, Arkansas. You win.” Hell, he wasn’t beat, he was just getting bored. He couldn’t wait to get to the card table and a fresh bottle, that’s all. I knew him. After he gave me a good-bye kiss on the nose and went on out, I sat at the foot of the bed and watched Wes and Wanda hump each other sweet and slow.

I’ve had a thousand wild times with men—ten thousand!—but that’s the one sticks in my mind the clearest, even after all these years. Wes and Wild Bill. God damn me, but I loved those fucking killers.

A few days after Wes got himself squared with Hickok for shooting the mouth off some bad actor from Kansas, I joined him for a breakfast of oysters and eggs in the American House, him and Johnny Coran and Jim Rodgers. We were laughing and going on about the good times we’d been having ourselves in Abilene and about Johnny being so black-assed because somebody’d stole his Mexican head. He’d bought it from a fella in a Missouri guerrilla shirt who’d stopped by our cow camp for a cup of coffee. The fella claimed it came off a Mex who tried to steal his packhorse over in the Red Hills. He’d taken the head to Wichita, thinking there might be a reward out for the horse thief, but the sheriff there said no, he didn’t have a paper on anybody that looked like that Mex. The Missouri fella didn’t much know what to do with the head after that. He said he wouldn’t of felt right to just throw it away, so he’d had it hanging on his saddle horn for nearly a week before Johnny bought it off him for ten dollars. It was still in pretty fair shape, all things considered, only just starting to go rank. It had a hole under its greasy hair in back where the .44 caliber slug had gone in, and a good portion of the forehead was missing where it had come out, but when you put a hat on it you could hardly see the damage. Johnny’d brought the head into town that night and it had naturally drawn a good deal of attention. At first Johnny wouldn’t let anybody else handle it, but after he got drunk enough to get sociable he let the boys have some fun with it, putting a cigar in its mouth and a whore’s pink garter for a headband, such as that. But he was mad as a sunstruck dog when he woke up in some whorehouse next morning and found out somebody’d stole it. “I find the thieving son of a bitch who took it,” he said, “I’ll be taking two heads back.” He’d spent all day asking after it in the saloons and whorehouses but never did find out what happened to it.

Anyhow, we’d just ordered up another pot of coffee when who should show up at the table but Manning and Gip Clements, Wes’s cousins. They’d just rode in off the trail and had been hunting for him all over town. They looked tired, both of them dark around the eyes and carrying a layer of dust. Wes was damn happy to see them. He introduced them all around and started to tell about how he’d got the drop on Hickok with the old road agent’s spin when Manning interrupted to say Wild Bill was exactly who he had on his mind. He said him and Gip had run into some hard trouble out on the trail and were wondering if Hickok might try to do something about it.

What happened was this. Manning and Gip had taken over a herd for Doc Burnett after his first ramrod had got himself too badly cut up in a fight to stay on the job. But they had trouble right from the start from a couple of trail hands named Dolph and Joe Shadden. Johnny said he knew the Shadden brothers. “Never had no trouble with them myself, but I know for a fact they can both of them be mean as snakes.” I’d heard of them too, though never nothing good.

The trouble started when the Shaddens refused to take their turn on night guard anymore. They thought the youngsters making their first drive ought to do all the nighthawking since they were low men on the totem pole. Manning told them they could either take their turn on night guard like everybody else or they could quit. They said fine, they’d quit, but they wanted the full pay they’d signed on for back in San Antonio. In a pig’s ass, Manning said. He’d pay them for working as much of the drive as they had—they were at the Red River at the time—and not a damned nickel more. So the Shaddens stayed on and night hawked like everybody else, but as the drive moved through the Nations they never let up trying to cause trouble in one way or another. They kept trying to turn the rest of the outfit against the Clementses and stirred up a deal of discontent. They complained about everything. They were slow to follow orders and always cussing Manning under their breath. They tried to pick fights with the few hands who favored the Clementses. The tension just got worse and worse. Manning and Gip took turns sleeping so they could watch over each other in the night.

Things came to a head one drizzly evening after they’d crossed into Kansas. Manning rode out to help a night guard round up a couple of steers that had wandered off from the herd, and when he got back to camp he found Dolph slapping and shoving on Little Eddie Moorhouse, the youngest hand in the outfit. Gip was trying to get between them, but Joe Shadden kept grabbing him away and telling him to mind his own goddamn business. Manning ran up and shouldered Joe off Gip just as Dolph knocked Little Eddie down into the cookfire. Little Eddie screamed and rolled out of the flames, and some of the hands rushed up and started tearing his smoking shirt off him. Joe pulled his boot knife and swiped at Manning and nicked him on the collarbone. Gip and Dolph pulled pistols and Gip shot Joe in the arm just as Dolph blew a hole through Gip’s floppy rain slicker. Before Dolph could fire again, Manning shot him through the heart. And then, while Joe was struggling to pull his pistol with his bad arm, Manning shot him square in the brainpan.

Manning turned the herd over to one of the other hands, and him and Gip got the hell away from there. They about rode their horses to death getting to Abilene. They’d sent a telegram to Doc Burnett in Fort Worth telling him what happened. “There’s some in the outfit who’ll tell the truth about it,” Manning said, “but there’s as many who’ll lie and say I shot them in cold blood.” He figured the news had likely reached Wichita by morning and already been telegraphed to Abilene.

“Hickok’s sure to have papers on me,” Manning said. “If I’d been thinking clear, I wouldn’t of come here. I probably ought to head east right now and make my way back home by way of Arkansas.”

Hell no, Wes said, there wasn’t any need to do that. He had an understanding with Hickok. He’d see to it Manning got squared with him.

“You can square me with Wild Bill Hickok?” Manning said.

“Hey, cousin, me and Bill’re the best of friends,” Wes said with a sly smile. “But now listen, you boys give