good. I stood there with my gun drawn on Wes and said to John, “You best take a bit more care with this young rascal.” Wes just looked at me all innocent and said, “Good Lord, Jack, you don’t think …? Hey, I gave my ” But his eyes couldn’t hide how ready he’d been to snatch John’s gun. Another half a second and John and I would’ve ended up in our own blood on the floor, I don’t doubt that one bit.
After that, John was a good deal more cautious with him, and Wes never got such a chance again the rest of the trip. From then on, whenever we brought his cuffs around in front to let him eat, I’d sit across from him with my pistol cocked and pointed at his head. “God
The news of his arrest preceded us to Memphis, Little Rock, Texarkana—all the stops on our way to Austin —and every station on our route was chock-full of people wanting to have a look at him. We had a private car and naturally kept the doors locked and the windows open only at the tops. We had our shotguns ready at every stop. Most of the spectators cheered and waved at him and held up signs saying, “Free Wes Hardin!” and “We Love You Wes!” and “Hardin is Innocent!”
But not everybody felt that way. At the Little Rock depot, a rough fight broke out between a group of young men with a banner saying “Hardin Is a Hero” and a group with a big placard saying “Hang the Mankiller.”
People gave goods to the conductor to pass on to him—baskets of food (we ate like kings on that trip), bottles of whiskey, good luck pieces ranging from rabbit’s feet to old coins to arrowheads, and envelopes of money, most with just a few dollars in them, but one with fifty dollars and a note saying, “Sorry it aint more, your a good man and god bless.”
I tell you, it was an amazing thing to behold, all those people rooting for him—all those pretty girls calling his name! “Damn, boy,” I said to him as we stared out the window at the mess of pretty things blowing him kisses at the Dallas depot. “I believe a man might smother to death under all that affection.” He grinned and said, “Maybe so—but what a damn fine way to go, don’t you think, Jack?” His face lit up every time he saw such crowds cheering for him. “Lookit them all,” he said. “You really think all them people can be wrong about me?”
There was a telegram for us in Waco, warning that the crowd waiting at the Austin station was too large to control. When Wes heard that he went a little pale and said, “You boys swore you wouldn’t let no mob get me.” John said it might be a mob wanting to hang him or one wanting to set him free, but either way he wasn’t going to take any chances.
He stopped the train a few miles outside of Austin and we rented a hack from a livery for the rest of the ride in. All of us were nervous now for different reasons. “Wes,” John said, “if you try to break, I swear I’ll kill you.” I didn’t say anything, but I had a picture of my two thousand dollars flying off in the wind if Wes got away. Wes just shook his head and said, “I ain’t gonna try a thing, John—you just keep the mob off me.”
We’d made the mistake of not holding the train back till we got into town, and it got there ahead of us—and so the crowd naturally found out real quick from the crew that we were coming in by hack. Just as we turned the corner toward the jail, we saw the horde rushing at us from the other end of the street.
John and I each grabbed Wes under an arm and ran him in through the jail-house door just barely ahead of the clamoring crowd. A deputy bolted the door behind us and the sheriff was quick about posting armed guards at every window. He’d already asked the governor for help to guard Hardin against mob action or a jailbreak attempt, and the governor had promised to reinforce the Austin police with State Rangers.
For the whole time Wes was in Austin, the crowds milled outside the jail day and night—some people wanting to lend support, some wanting to see him hang, most wanting just to have a look at him so they could tell their grandchildren they’d seen John Wesley Hardin with their own two eyes.
Austin had the strongest jail in Texas—solid rock outer walls, floors and interior walls of sheet iron, and a double set of steel bars as thick as my wrist around each cell. He didn’t lack for visitors. When he wasn’t giving an interview to one reporter or another, he was conferring with one or more of his lawyers. He’d retained two of the best criminal attorneys in Texas to defend him. I met an uncle of his named Bob Hardin, and a cousin named Barnett Jones. Together with Wes’s mother, they’d pooled their money to pay the lawyers.
For our part, John did all the talking to the newspaper boys who wanted the story of how we’d come to capture the most famous desperado in Texas. We’d become heroes of a sort ourselves, but nothing on the scale that Wes was. Lord, the good-looking girls in the crowd outside that jail! They sent him cakes and cookies and flowers and locks of their hair. They sent him love notes. Some sent him bits of their underclothes in boxes wrapped in fancy ribbon. When I went to see him to say so long, he was wearing a fresh red rose in his lapel and held up a lacy strip of white cotton for me to see. “The gal that sent this said in a note that it was from the shimmy she wears every night to dream about me.” He tossed it to me through the bars. It was scented with perfume to make you faint. “You best take it. I wouldn’t want my wife to ever find it among my laundry.” The guard let him out into the runaround so he could reach through the second set of bars and shake my hand. “You’re a damn good detective, Jack,” he told me. Best praise I ever got.
Ten months later I got into a drunk argument with Sally McGuire about who-knows-what and that high-strung bitch shot me. In the
(AUSTIN), 29 AUGUST 1877
JOHN WESLEY HARDIN
——
THE PRISONER INTERVIEWED IN JAIL
——
A reporter of the STATESMAN called on … Hardin in the Travis County jail, where he is confined in one of the lower cages near the entrance. He was found in a quiet but pleasant humor, and showed but little objection to being interviewed and making himself agreeable … in his own words:
… I am a prisoner and must stand trial. All I want is to be allowed to appeal to the law of the land, and I hope the officers of the law will protect me for this end. My relatives and friends have met death at the hands of mobs and I want protection, while helpless, against anything of a similar nature. I am satisfied that there are those who would, if opportunity permits, not allow the law to take its course with me. I want to stand trial. I am sick and tired of fleeing from it and would go away if I could. I must see the end of it, and all I ask is that a mob not be permitted to
MURDER ME,
for I believe I can show that I did not have anything to do with the killing of Webb. Had my friends not killed him I might have done so, but it would have been in self-defense.
HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE
Hardin is only 25 years old, and has quite a youthful appearance. He is of light complexion, wears a modest mustache and imperial, is 5 feet 10 inches high and weighs 155 pounds. He is mild-featured and mild-mannered, with a mild blue eye, and talks pleasantly enough. He says he has no fear of the law, and that he is ready for execution if condemned, but he claims to be innocent, and he is charged with much that he never thought of. He wants the authorities to protect him against mobs, for it is mob violence alone that he fears.
(AUSTIN), 29 AUGUST 1877
CASTING OUT OF DEVILS—HOW TEXAS DOES IT
Murderers and thieves have suffered fearfully of late in Texas. Two notorious scoundrels, Ringgold and Gladden, are imprisoned or dead. King Fisher is incarcerated or has been released on bail remaining under the
