The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

The wedding bells rang for them in Riddleville on a cool sunny day in March. They moved into a small house out on Fred Duderstadt’s ranch. Wes talked about rounding up a herd and making another drive to Kansas along with my Lucas and the Clements brothers, but then they heard the Kansas beef market was still too low to make a drive worthwhile. So the Clementses decided to work a small herd of steers over to the coast for shipment to Mobile, and Wes decided he would try the horse business for a while. My Lucas and his brother John threw in with him. They’d heard it was a good market for horses just across the river in Sabine Parish.

While Lucas and John got to work building a corral on the Duderstadt place, Wes rode down to the King ranch and made a deal for horseflesh. It was expected he’d be gone about twelve days or so, but he’d only been gone barely more than a week when Lucas went out to the corral one morning and found Wes’s horse Old Bob in there, white-caked all over and too played out to even lift its head. Wes had bought that fine horse from my brother-in-law John, and now it was ruined for fair.

When Wes showed up later in the day and Lucas asked him what had happened to Old Bob, he grinned a little shamefaced and said he’d made a straight-through ride from just south of the Nueces to Gonzales County. That’s over a hundred miles, and Wes said he’d rode it in a little over six hours. It’s no wonder the poor animal was foundered. I never could abide mistreatment of a horse, and I asked Lucas whatever had possessed Wesley Hardin to do such a thing to Old Bob. He said Wes told him he’d all of a sudden got so lonely for his bride he couldn’t stand it and just wanted to get home to her as quick as he could. When he told me this, Lucas shrugged and studied his right hand like he always did when he wasn’t sure if a thing made sense or not.

But of course it did. There’s lots of things somebody might do they wouldn’t normally except they’re neck-deep in love. Wes had rode that horse near to death for the love of Jane. I pitied the poor horse, but it made all the sense in the world.

You could see how awful much he loved her just by how he beamed on her all evening at the party Manning Clements threw for them at his house toward the end of May. We were celebrating Jane’s announcement that they were expecting their first child late next winter.

They soon had the herd all ready, and Lucas and John agreed to drive it to Hemphill, and because Daddy Harper was sheriff of Sabine County, Wes thought it was as safe a town as any for them to meet up in and take care of business. He went on ahead of the herd to visit for a spell with some of his kinfolk in Livingston. As I recall, he bought himself a racer in Polk County and took that horse with him to Hemphill. Lucas said that animal won Wes just barrels of money.

After Lucas and John showed up with the herd and the horses got sold, the two of them decided to stay in Hemphill and visit with their daddy awhile. But Wes wanted to get back to Jane and said so long. The thing is, he didn’t head back directly. He started back by way of his old stomping grounds in Trinity County so he could call on more kinfolk he hadn’t seen for a time. It turned out to be a real bad idea, though, because it was in Trinity he got himself shot-gunned.