The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

The six months cousin Wes spent hiding out on our farm was probably the most peaceful time of his life. Since the start of his troubles with the law, I mean. It was surely an exciting time for us, though—“us” meaning me and my brothers Aaron and Joey. What was mostly so exciting about it was the times we all spent sporting at Mrs. Miller’s or Kate Vine’s over in Brenham, the closest town. It was Wes who introduced us to the pleasures of such establishments. Every Saturday—and on any day it rained or was too wet to work the fields—we’d all four ride into Brenham and have a high time at one or the other of those two fine places.

Of course none of us—I mean me and my brothers—ever had the money to pay for such sporting. It was always Wes treating us to the girls. The first thing he’d do when we got into town was go straight to the gaming tables and win enough to pay for all four of us at Kate’s or Mrs. Miller’s. I thought he could of been a rich man if he’d gambled for a living instead of just doing it for sporting money, but he said doing it for a living would take most of the fun out of it.

It was in Brenham that he met Phil Coe, the fanciest-dressing, fanciest-talking gambling man I ever knew. He was a big fella with a close beard. He carried a gold-headed walking stick and fastened his necktie with a diamond pin. His pistola was pearl-handled and he wore it in a holster under his arm. They said he was awful good with that gun, but I don’t know, I never did see him shoot. He sure saw how Wes could shoot, though—everybody in town did—because the first time we all went into Brenham together, Wes got into a contest with some of the local deadeyes and beat them all so bad they wouldn’t none of them shoot against him again. He finished up the show by shooting the windcock on the church steeple at the end of the street. He started it spinning with the first shot and kept it spinning with the next five. The fellas watching clapped and whistled like they were at a hoochie show. Reverend Hart came stomping over, all red-faced and mad enough to spit nails, but he calmed down quick when Wes gave him a twenty-dollar donation toward his good work for the Lord.

Later on when Coe and Wes got to be friends, Wes challenged him to a friendly shooting match, but Coe backed off. I was standing at the bar with them when he told Wes, “I never discharge my firearm except when compelled by serious circumstance, and the only truly serious circumstance is the defense of one’s own life.” That’s how he talked. But that was horseshit about never pulling his gun except to defend himself. He knew damn well he couldn’t outshoot Wes, and he didn’t want to get shown up in public, that’s all.

He couldn’t beat Wes at the gaming tables, either—not near as often as Wes beat him, anyway. But he was a genuine gambler, Phil Coe was, so he never got riled about losing. He’d just make a joke and play on and wait for the cards to start coming his way again, which they usually did once Wes dropped out of the game with his winnings and we headed for the sporting house.

It was Phil Coe who gave Wes the nickname “Little Seven-up,” on account of Wes’s constant good luck with that game. Pretty soon everybody in the saloons was calling him by it. One time Joey called him that in the house and Ma heard him and wanted to know what it meant. She knew plenty, but it was our good fortune she didn’t know the names of all the games of chance. That quick-thinker Wes told her it was a sort of ice cream soda he’d gotten so fond of that the fellers in town had started calling him by that name. Ma thought that was real fine. In fact, she liked the name so much she took up calling him by it. One night at supper Pa heard her use it, and he gave us a what-the-hell look. Ma caught it and explained to him about the nickname. “Oh, yes,” Pa said, “I believe I’ve cut my thirst with that particular soda a time or two myself.” When Ma went to the stove to fetch the stewpot, he gave us a wink behind her back. He’d been a hellion himself before he married Ma and she put the bridle on him.

One last thing about Phil Coe. I didn’t much care for his airs and fancy talk and I’ve said so, but he did become a true friend to Wes, so that made him all right with me and my brothers. We were sincerely sorry a few years later when we heard he’d got himself killed up in Abilene by none other than Wild Bill.

I don’t mean to give the idea it was all high times in town while Wes was living with us, because of course it wasn’t. Mostly it was the same as before he came and after he went away again. What we mainly did was work. Pa made a deal with him that gave Wes a share of the crops he helped us bring in. When it came to axing timber, grubbing stumps, clearing rocks, plowing fields, hoeing cotton, splitting rails, putting up fences—all the kinds of work that keeps you at it from sunup to sundown on a farm—Wes matched our own sweat drop for drop. You might not have thought it to look at him when he was duded up in his black suit, but he was powerful strong. In his clothes he usually looked like a bean pole holding up a hat, but when he took his shirt off to swing an ax he looked like he was made of ropes and trace chains. There wasn’t a thing on his bones but long hard muscle.

The end of Wes’s good days on our farm came with the news that Ed Davis had formed up the State Police. Davis was a son of a bitch who got himself made governor back the previous December in the crookedest election ever held in Texas. He did it with the conniving help of the carpetbaggers and the scalawags and President Useless Ass Grant himself, who was the biggest son of a bitch of them all—except for maybe Lincoln.

The only good thing about Davis’s election was that Useless Ass took it to mean Texas was “reconstructed,” and he pulled all the Yankee troops out of the state. That was the good news. The bad news was that we now had the State Police.

There’s never been a group of lawmen in Texas more despised than those black-hearted bastards. They was about half of them Nigra bullies, and the rest mostly the worst sort of mean-minded white trash to be found anywhere—the sort of fellas who if they hadn’t been made State Policemen would’ve been on the run from them their ownselfs. They had the authority to arrest you anywhere in the state, the local sheriffs be damned—though lots of sheriffs worked in cahoots with them, of course. It didn’t take long for the word to get around that you didn’t ever want to be pulled in by the State Police. Too many of their prisoners got shot dead for “trying to escape.”

Late that summer we got word they had a list of men they most wanted to run down and that Wes’s name was on it. A few nights later we saw the proof for ourselfs and came to know just what it really meant. We were all in The Palace, watching Wes win us some money at stud so we would all live it up at Kate Vine’s, when in comes Jules Forge with a state wanted list he’d pulled off a jail wall in Austin. There were ten names on it, with Bill Longley’s at the top and Wes’s right under it. It offered five hundred dollars for Longley, dead or alive, four hundred for Wes, and lesser sums for everybody else.

You should of seen how fast the idea of four hundred dollars changed the mood in the room as the list made its way from table to table. Four hundred dollars was a mountain of money. There were fellers in there who’d turn in their own sweet mommas for forty dollars, if they had the chance.

Jules had showed the paper to Wes first, and Wes had smiled and passed it on and kept playing like it hadn’t been nothing but a revival notice. But I watched him close and could see he wasn’t really as much at ease as he was making out to be. He began talking to me and Aaron a good deal more while he played his hands, joking and showing us his hole cards. We were sitting just back of him, and every time he turned our way I saw his eyes sweep the room behind us. We caught on quick and started keeping close watch on his back. Some of the hard cases kept looking his way out the sides of their eyes.

Just about then, Phil Coe came in, and I can’t say how I knew, but I knew he’d heard about the reward list. He stared at Wes for a second with no expression at all, then nodded to him and took a seat at a table against the wall just inside the door.

Wes played for about another ten minutes, I guess, even though he’d already won even more than usual, and I have to say they were ten of the most nervous minutes I’ve ever knowed. Finally Wes pockets his winnings and says, “All right, cousins, let’s go to Kate’s and tickle the elephant.”

I’d never heard it so quiet in The Palace as when we were walking out. The only sound was our heels on the floor. The damn door seemed a mile away. My back was twitching from all the eyes I felt on it, and I half expected Phil Coe to make a pull on Wes at any second. Four hundred dollars might be all the push he needed to risk his hand against Wes. But as we got closer to him, I saw that he was looking past us, watching our backs. Without looking at Wes as we went by, he smiled, and in a voice sounding extra loud in all that quiet, he said, “You take care now, John Wesley.”

Two days later Wes sold his share of the crop to Pa and said so long to us all. He’d been somewhat famous when he came to us, but thanks to that State Police poster he was a whole lot more famous when he left. A few months later we heard the reward for his capture was up to a thousand dollars. A thousand! It wasn’t all that surprising, though, since by then he’d killed a State Policeman.