The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

A few days after Wes got himself squared with Hickok for shooting the mouth off some bad actor from Kansas, I joined him for a breakfast of oysters and eggs in the American House, him and Johnny Coran and Jim Rodgers. We were laughing and going on about the good times we’d been having ourselves in Abilene and about Johnny being so black-assed because somebody’d stole his Mexican head. He’d bought it from a fella in a Missouri guerrilla shirt who’d stopped by our cow camp for a cup of coffee. The fella claimed it came off a Mex who tried to steal his packhorse over in the Red Hills. He’d taken the head to Wichita, thinking there might be a reward out for the horse thief, but the sheriff there said no, he didn’t have a paper on anybody that looked like that Mex. The Missouri fella didn’t much know what to do with the head after that. He said he wouldn’t of felt right to just throw it away, so he’d had it hanging on his saddle horn for nearly a week before Johnny bought it off him for ten dollars. It was still in pretty fair shape, all things considered, only just starting to go rank. It had a hole under its greasy hair in back where the .44 caliber slug had gone in, and a good portion of the forehead was missing where it had come out, but when you put a hat on it you could hardly see the damage. Johnny’d brought the head into town that night and it had naturally drawn a good deal of attention. At first Johnny wouldn’t let anybody else handle it, but after he got drunk enough to get sociable he let the boys have some fun with it, putting a cigar in its mouth and a whore’s pink garter for a headband, such as that. But he was mad as a sunstruck dog when he woke up in some whorehouse next morning and found out somebody’d stole it. “I find the thieving son of a bitch who took it,” he said, “I’ll be taking two heads back.” He’d spent all day asking after it in the saloons and whorehouses but never did find out what happened to it.

Anyhow, we’d just ordered up another pot of coffee when who should show up at the table but Manning and Gip Clements, Wes’s cousins. They’d just rode in off the trail and had been hunting for him all over town. They looked tired, both of them dark around the eyes and carrying a layer of dust. Wes was damn happy to see them. He introduced them all around and started to tell about how he’d got the drop on Hickok with the old road agent’s spin when Manning interrupted to say Wild Bill was exactly who he had on his mind. He said him and Gip had run into some hard trouble out on the trail and were wondering if Hickok might try to do something about it.

What happened was this. Manning and Gip had taken over a herd for Doc Burnett after his first ramrod had got himself too badly cut up in a fight to stay on the job. But they had trouble right from the start from a couple of trail hands named Dolph and Joe Shadden. Johnny said he knew the Shadden brothers. “Never had no trouble with them myself, but I know for a fact they can both of them be mean as snakes.” I’d heard of them too, though never nothing good.

The trouble started when the Shaddens refused to take their turn on night guard anymore. They thought the youngsters making their first drive ought to do all the nighthawking since they were low men on the totem pole. Manning told them they could either take their turn on night guard like everybody else or they could quit. They said fine, they’d quit, but they wanted the full pay they’d signed on for back in San Antonio. In a pig’s ass, Manning said. He’d pay them for working as much of the drive as they had—they were at the Red River at the time—and not a damned nickel more. So the Shaddens stayed on and night hawked like everybody else, but as the drive moved through the Nations they never let up trying to cause trouble in one way or another. They kept trying to turn the rest of the outfit against the Clementses and stirred up a deal of discontent. They complained about everything. They were slow to follow orders and always cussing Manning under their breath. They tried to pick fights with the few hands who favored the Clementses. The tension just got worse and worse. Manning and Gip took turns sleeping so they could watch over each other in the night.

Things came to a head one drizzly evening after they’d crossed into Kansas. Manning rode out to help a night guard round up a couple of steers that had wandered off from the herd, and when he got back to camp he found Dolph slapping and shoving on Little Eddie Moorhouse, the youngest hand in the outfit. Gip was trying to get between them, but Joe Shadden kept grabbing him away and telling him to mind his own goddamn business. Manning ran up and shouldered Joe off Gip just as Dolph knocked Little Eddie down into the cookfire. Little Eddie screamed and rolled out of the flames, and some of the hands rushed up and started tearing his smoking shirt off him. Joe pulled his boot knife and swiped at Manning and nicked him on the collarbone. Gip and Dolph pulled pistols and Gip shot Joe in the arm just as Dolph blew a hole through Gip’s floppy rain slicker. Before Dolph could fire again, Manning shot him through the heart. And then, while Joe was struggling to pull his pistol with his bad arm, Manning shot him square in the brainpan.

Manning turned the herd over to one of the other hands, and him and Gip got the hell away from there. They about rode their horses to death getting to Abilene. They’d sent a telegram to Doc Burnett in Fort Worth telling him what happened. “There’s some in the outfit who’ll tell the truth about it,” Manning said, “but there’s as many who’ll lie and say I shot them in cold blood.” He figured the news had likely reached Wichita by morning and already been telegraphed to Abilene.

“Hickok’s sure to have papers on me,” Manning said. “If I’d been thinking clear, I wouldn’t of come here. I probably ought to head east right now and make my way back home by way of Arkansas.”

Hell no, Wes said, there wasn’t any need to do that. He had an understanding with Hickok. He’d see to it Manning got squared with him.

“You can square me with Wild Bill Hickok?” Manning said.

“Hey, cousin, me and Bill’re the best of friends,” Wes said with a sly smile. “But now listen, you boys give your gunbelts to Johnny here and he’ll hold them for you out at his camp. I can square you with Bill, but if he sees you packing iron in town he might not bother asking questions before he pulls the law on you.”

“What the hell?” Manning said. “You’re packing.”

Wes stood up and put on his hat. “Yes indeed,” he said, and gave Manning a wink, “but I’m special.” He truly enjoyed being the fair-haired boy with Hickok. “You all stay put till I get back.”

The Clements boys ordered oysters and eggs and the biggest steaks in the house, then tore into it all like they hadn’t eaten in a week. Pretty soon Wes was back, smiling bigger than before. He’d spotted Hickok in the Alamo, he said, but didn’t want to disturb him at his poker, so he’d gone to see Columbus Carol in the Bull’s Head and explained the situation to him. Carol promised he’d talk to Wild Bill and square Manning with him.

“See, cousin?” Wes said, punching Manning on the arm. “Everything’s all took care of.”

After eating, we all had a so-long drink together in the Applejack, then Johnny and Jim and me went back to our Cottonwood camp to wait for the rise in beef prices we’d been told would happen in the next few days.

Next morning, Manning showed up to get his guns from Johnny. He was packing a Colt he’d got from Wes before leaving town. He sat down for a cup of coffee and told us it had been a hell of a night in Abilene, though he hadn’t seen much of it because Hickok had arrested him after all. He’d spent several hours in the hoosegow, passing the time with a medicine salesman accused of poisoning six citizens who’d drunk some of his special elixirs, and with a beat-up cowboy who’d rode his horse into a saloon and up on a faro table—which had made everybody laugh except the faro players, who pulled him off his cayuse and punched him bloody before one of Hickok’s deputies showed up and hauled him off to jail. Anyhow, Wes had finally finagled Manning out of jail some way or other and then quick hustled him out of town.

We all wanted to hear more details, of course, and we tried to impose on him to stay with us till the next day, but he said he was itchy to get back to Texas. “I reckon Wes’ll be along sooner or later,” he said, “and he can tell you the story a lot fuller than I can. “ So we gave him provisions and wished him well, and off he went.

And early next morning here comes Wes on the fly—riding in his damn nightclothes, I ain’t lying—and with the law hot on his tail.