The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

Once Momma had taught me all she could, she finally said could take care of a customer all on my own, and he was the next one to walk through the door. I later found out he wasn’t but a couple of years older than me. He was devilish good-looking—and just as bold as you please with those blue eyes. Momma certainly wouldn’t have let me tend to him if she’d been in front when he came in, but she was out in back, dealing with the dry goods man.

I’d never done an alteration like the one he wanted, never even heard of such a thing. I told him maybe I ought to go get Momma, but he just smiled real warm and said he knew I could do it and would be honored if I would. He took off the vest and spread it on the table, then placed his pistol on it to show me exactly what he had in mind. He explained how drawing a pistol out of a hip holster required three different movements—down and up and out. But how if he had holsters in his vest he’d only need to make two—in and out. He demonstrated the movements on me with his two pointing fingers, and I flinched each time like he was throwing snakes at me. But I couldn’t help smiling back.

I had to use a couple of large patches of softened leather and do some careful cutting and lots of close stitching with the strongest thread I had. Then I had to cover over part of the outside of the vest so the heavy thread wouldn’t show.

I was nearly done when Momma came back inside and saw what I was doing. She didn’t say a word. She just nodded when he said, “Good day to you, ma’am,” and she sat and watched me finish up.

The whole thing didn’t take me even an hour. He put it on and tried it out right there. Momma and I jumped at the way those big pistols seemed to pop out into his hands. He was so pleased with it he paid me an extra dollar more than what we’d agreed on. And then, as he was leaving, he gave me a big bold wink—right there in front of Momma! I felt my face catch fire and thought sure I’d catch something even hotter from Momma for my shameless blushing. I didn’t care. I’d never before felt anything like what I felt run through me when he gave me that wicked wink.

Momma didn’t light into me, though. She just sat there staring at the door for a minute after he’d gone. Finally, she said, “Did you see how happy you made that boy?” She didn’t ask in a way that wanted an answer. “Snatching out those things as quick as the devil can spit. Right under our own roof. He can’t wait to put them to use.” She looked at me all accusing, but I didn’t feel like I’d done anything to be accused of.

“The world’s full of handsome, well-mannered evils with pretty eyes, girl, “ she said to me. “You best start keeping that in mind.”

The truth is, you couldn’t have got that thought out of my mind with dynamite. But it didn’t much matter, since I never again even came close to meeting anybody in the way of dangerous men. Two years later I married a storekeeper named Walter. He said his prayers every night before getting into bed with me, as if he was embarking on a perilous mission. I do believe his seed was as timid as he was, and that’s why I never conceived. I don’t even blush to say it anymore. His notion of a high time was to join in the singing at tent meetings. The biggest excitement of his life was when he sold a full wagonload of goods to a party of army engineers that passed through one day. If the smallpox hadn’t taken him at the age of thirty-nine, he likely would have bored himself to death and never even known what it was he died of.

I never bothered to remarry, but for a long time I didn’t stop yearning for an excitement to match what I felt in that one hour I spent making those holsters and feeling his eyes on me the whole time. I can’t count the nights I laid awake and wished some man would step up to me and say or do a thing to make my heart jump the way it did when he gave me that wink. Then I got old and quit my foolish wishing.

But I never did feel guilty about those holsters, not even years later when I come to find out who he was. I felt just the opposite. If I hadn’t made them, he’d of found somebody else to do it. But deep in my heart I just know nobody else could have made them as good.