The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

I have taught legions of students in my long career as a bona fide professor of Law and the Liberal Arts, and the most dramatic exemplum I’ve yet seen of the dictum that character is fate was John Wesley Hardin.

In the autumn of 1870 his elder brother Joseph had enrolled in my school of preparatory legal studies at Round Rock and had persuaded John Wesley to do likewise. John Wesley was, however, a legally declared outlaw with a price on his head. I was fully aware 6f his situation, yet also in full accord with Joseph’s view—and the Reverend James Hardin’s—that the state was unjustly persecuting John Wesley for actions of self-defense, and not, as it charged, for deliberate criminal conduct. The fact remained, however, that, as a wanted man, John Wesley could not risk attending my lectures in person.

But he was both determined and resourceful. He made a secret camp in the woods just a few miles from Round Rock, and every evening Joseph took a different and roundabout route to it, lest he be followed by agents of the damnable State Police—or worse, by one or more members of the legions of bounty men in pursuit of the reward for John Wesley’s capture. While John Wesley prepared their supper, Joseph summarized the day’s lecture for him. Later, after Joseph departed for home, John Wesley would study by firelight deep into the night. No student of mine ever matriculated under more difficult conditions than did John Wesley during the apprehensive weeks that followed. I was immensely pleased when they both passed their examinations at the end of the term and earned their diplomas.

And yet … character is fate, sayeth Heraclitus.

John Wesley Hardin was a highly intelligent young man of good education and sound moral upbringing. It could hardly have been otherwise with a father like the Reverend James Hardin and a mother like Mary Elizabeth Dixon. And yet … there is something in a man’s soul that has no tie whatever to the influence of bloodkin or books, yet is the very essence of his nature. I herewith embolden to suggest that, for John Wesley, that essence manifested itself as a lack of clear perception of The Good, of a sense of worthy endeavor. He was possessed of many superlatives of mind and spirit, and would certainly have achieved greatness—of that I am entirely convinced—had not, for whatever unfathomable reason, the darker angels of his nature held sway. That sway constituted nothing less than a tragic flaw.

Tragic, yes. As a lifelong student of the works of Euripedes, Seneca, the Glorious Bard—all the great tragedists of our heritage—I am well versed in the nature and design of tragedy, and “tragic” defined his character … and thereby sealed his fate. Alas.