The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

get the key by twelve,” the Catfoot said, “that wild bunch is gonna come storming.”

A few minutes before eight, Bill stood up and stretched. He checked the loads in both navies, then adjusted his tie and put on his hat. “When Coe comes here with the key,” he told Tom, “don’t fuss with him, just hand Clements over.” He was being casual but it was all show. The situation had put him in a corner and was agitating him no end. Behind his easy smile he was in a fury.

So off Bill went to meet Hardin at the Alamo. Tom and me sat out on the jailhouse gallery, watching the street and listening hard, ready to run to help him at the first gunshot. The saloon lights blazed into the street. The crowd in the Bull’s Head kept growing, and the music and the yahooing was louder than ever. Nothing like the possibility of mob action to put a bunch of peckerwoods in a high-time mood.

Later we heard all about how Bill and Hardin had done the town together. They made a big show of being pals and took turns buying a round for the house every place they went. Their gambling luck was pure gold. They won over a thousand dollars apiece on that spree. You ask me, such a profitable streak of luck ought to’ve pretty well made up for whatever agitation Bill’s pride had to endure that evening. But unfortunately—especially for the Catfoot—Bill didn’t see it that way.

Sometime around eleven a big hack stopped in front of the Bull’s Head and about seven or eight painted cats lit off it, teasing each other and laughing loud, all of them drunk and bold as brass. They spotted me and Tom watching them and started whistling and cooing and having sport with us. I didn’t really mind their attention, but Tom got hacked about it. He always was a little stiff-necked about the soiled sisterhood. I believe his people were hard-shell Baptists.

“Oh, deputy,” one called out, “you pinched any bad girls tonight?” and they all snickered like fillies. Coe came out and snapped at them, and most of them quick followed him inside, but two of them hung back, giggling and whispering together and looking our way. One came weaving out into the street and said, “Hey, Deputies! Lookee here!” She pulled down the front of her dress and showed us her bare teats for about one enjoyable second—firm creamy things, they were, with big pink tips—then yanked the dress back up and laughed like she was being tickled.

“That tears it,” Tom said. He jumped off the sidewalk and stomped over to her and put her under arrest for public indecency. “Indecency?” she whooped. “In fucking Abilene? ” Tom grabbed her by the arm and tugged her toward the jail, but she was a fighter and started kicking at him and trying to bite his hand. Then the other one ran up and jumped on his back, and he really had his work cut out. I didn’t have much choice but to lend him a hand.

As I pried the one off his back he let out a yelp and I saw she had her teeth in his ear. Then she turned on me, trying her level best to knee me in the jewel sack. I finally got her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides and holding her too close to knee me—and getting a good bit of enjoyment from it besides, I will admit. I guess she was too, because she started chuckling and wiggling around in my arms without really fighting to get free. Meantime, Tom was gripping the other one’s arms crossways over her chest from behind so she couldn’t turn around and hit or kick at him anymore. Her teats were bulging out of her dress, but she wasn’t funning like mine, and she kept cussing and fussing and giving Tom a terrible time of it.

I heard laughter and saw we’d drawn a crowd of spectators, including Bill and Hardin. They were applauding us like we were some kind of street show. “Real good, boys,” Bill said, “real fine police work. I think you’d best put that desperado in irons, Tom, before she busts loose of you and rawhides the whole town all by herself.” Hardin thought that was funny, but Tom was in a sweaty rage and feeling a good bit foolish to be struggling with that feisty girl while Bill and Hardin and a bunch of gawkers looked on and laughed about it.

Just then she bit him good on the hand. He gave a howl and punched her so hard she would’ve fallen if he hadn’t been holding her tight. She tried to pull away but he held her fast and smacked her twice more, beating her down to her knees.

Bill rushed up and socked him on the jaw with as pretty a roundhouse as I’ve ever seen. Knocked him loose of her and down on his ass. For good measure he gave him a kick in the belly that blew the breath out of him. Tom got up on all fours and puked his supper into the street.

Bill helped the girl up, calling her Suzanne. Now I recognized her as a Tennessee girl who worked at Violet’s. She said she was all right and to just leave her be. The girl I had hold of said to let go, so I did, and she went and helped Suzanne to adjust her clothes and fix herself up some. Hardin was grinning big about the whole thing. Bill gave Tom a hand up and retrieved his hat for him. Tom wiped at his mouth with his shirtsleeve and winced at the pain of his jaw. Bill asked if it was broke and he shook his head. He looked at Bill like a boy who’s just got whipped by his daddy. “Son, you don’t never hit a woman,” Bill said. He dusted off Tom’s back while Tom felt of his damaged ear. “Leastways not unless she’s trying to steal your money,” he said. He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Course now,” he said, “if she was to try making off with your horse, you’d be right to shoot the bitch.”

Bill and Hardin escorted the girls into the Bull’s Head, and me and Tom went back up on the gallery and sat there for more than half an hour without saying anything. Tom kept rubbing his jaw and fingering his ear. Then Bill and Hardin left the Bull’s Head together and headed off for the Applejack. They were followed by a man named Arlo Greaves, who worked for Phil Coe. Finally Tom said, “All this business with Hardin is just chewing Bill’s nerves to bits, ain’t it?” I couldn’t help but laugh along with him. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me Tom Carson had enough grit to fill a cattle car. And he for damn sure loved Bill Hickok more than the man deserved.

As the hour got close to midnight the hullabaloo in the Bull’s Head was loud enough to disturb the dead. A bunch of hard cases were gathered at the saloon door and letting us see they were armed and ready. There was no sign of the Catfoot, who must’ve figured we sure didn’t need him just then to tell us what the Bull’s Head boys were up to. At ten minutes of midnight some two dozen armed men had spilled out of the saloon and into the street and were rebel yelling and twirling pistols and passing bottles among themselves. “Get your hat, Manning!” one hollered. “Hey, Deputies,” another yelled, waving his pistol at us, “I got my jail key right here!”

And then here came Arlo Greaves down the street. He pushed his way through the crowd and into the saloon. A minute later Phil Coe came out and spoke to the Texans and there were groans of disappointment. Coe crossed over to us and handed Tom the cell key. When Clements walked out the front door, the Texans cheered, and he waved his hat at them. Coe gave him a pistol. “It’s one of Wes’s,” he told him. “He sent it along so you wont be traveling nekkid.”

Clements went off with Arlo Greaves to wherever his horse was waiting for him. Phil Coe gave us a shit- eating grin and then strutted back to the Bull’s Head with the wild boys at his heels. Him and Bill had always got along good, but not after that night. He’d made an enemy of Bill for life. (For Coe, that was only another two months, till the day he got drunk as a coot and shot at a dog in the street for fun—and then stupidly fired on Bill when he came out to arrest him. Bill put two bullets in Coe’s gut and it took Fancy Phil two hard days to die. Sad to say, Mike Williams came running around the corner with his gun in his hand just as Bill shot Coe—and in the hot blur of the moment Bill whirled and shot him too. Killed his own deputy. The newspaper went hard on him for it. It claimed he’d become more dangerous to the town than the wild boys he was supposed to protect it from. The townsfolk agreed, and Abilene fired Wild Bill. But all that came later.)

*    *    *

The day after Clements was set free, Bill seemed distracted. He lost hand after hand in the Alamo and looked to be drinking more serious than usual. That evening when I got back to the jail after making rounds, he was at his desk, sharing a bottle with the Catfoot. They were talking about their scouting days for the Union army. Bill said he once knew a scout, a half-breed Apache, who’d bet the other scouts he could slip into the commanding officer’s tent while he was asleep and cut off a lock of his beard without being discovered. “Hell, we thought we had us some easy money and each bet him twenty dollars,” Bill said. Him and another scout watched from the bushes as the breed crawled off toward the major’s tent—and they were still watching twenty minutes later when the breed tapped them on the shoulder. “He was grinning to beat hell and holding a crop of the major’s red beard,” Bill said. “The next day you could see the spot on the CO’s face where the crop was taken. Damn breed was the best sneakup I ever knew.”

The Catfoot looked offended. “It’s some of us could of shaved the man without waking him,” he said. “It’s nothing to take a lock of hair off a sleeping man.” Besides, he said, all that could of happened to the sneakup if he’d been caught was to get locked up overnight and then kicked off the army payroll. “No sneakup job’s worth bragging about unless it could get you killed,” he said. “Like all them injuns I snuck up on. Now those sneakups took nerve.” Bill smiled and said that was mighty bold talk. The