The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

I wish I’d used my head sooner and not cleaned up the blood before I realized how good it would of been for business to leave it be. I should of let it dry and marked off the spot with some paint or a rope. Even so, my trade about doubled for the next few months with gawkers come to see where it happened. At least I was smart enough to pick the buckshot out of the doorjamb before they did. I sold each shot for as much as two dollars apiece, and when I ran out I just broke open some shells in the back room and sold that as the real thing. Damn fools never knew the difference.

He came in with his cousin Barnett Jones and a few other friends of theirs. Barnett lived over near Livingston and had been in my saloon many a time. I knew him real well. I was right proud when he introduced me to Wes. I had a nice ten-pin alley in the back room, and the two of them went back there to roll a few games. I had Freddie spell me at the front bar so I could go back there and watch.

After winning about four, five games in a row, Barnett said he wouldn’t play him anymore. “I’m just stealing it from you, the way you play,” he told Wes. “I’ll play for fun, but no more betting. Daddy’d skin me alive if he found out I’d took such advantage of kin.” But Wes insisted they keep playing for money. “A man’s supposed to give a fella a chance to win his money back, god-damnit.” And so on. You know how it is with a fella who’s losing bad.

Right about then, this fella who’d been watching them play says he wouldn’t mind wagering on a few rolls. His name was Phil Sublett. He was an overdressed dandy with a thin mustache and a high opinion of himself, a tinhorn, always on the lookout for a sure thing. He must of reckoned he had one just then against Wes.

“Fine with me!” Wes says. “Don’t much matter to me who I win it back from. What’s your bet, mister?” Sublett says how does three dollars a ball sound? Wes says how does five? The gambler smiles real big and says, “It’s a bet.” So they each put up fifty dollars to cover all ten balls and hand the stake to me.

Well, sir, Wes wins the first two rolls and everybody in the place is laughing and cheering at what we all figure ain’t nothing more than simple luck, considering the way he was playing just a minute earlier. Then he wins the next two balls and Sublett does some hot cussing and looks at Wes out the sides of his eyes and Wes laughs and says something about the luck of the Irish. When he wins the fifth roll, we all just look at each other. Barnett gives me a wink and I finally catch on how bad they’ve hornswoggled Sublett.

When Wes won the sixth roll, even Sublett knew he’d been taken in and was pretty hot about it. He said he wanted to lower the bet to two dollars a ball. Nothing doing, Wes said; they made the bet for five and that was what it’d stay. Sublett said either the bet got lowered or he was quitting. Wes says, “You quit and you forfeit the whole bet.”

Well, Sublett was a tinhorn gambler but he didn’t lack for guts, just brains, and he grabbed for his pocket gun. Wes caught his gunhand by the wrist and slapped him three or four quick times across the mouth, then twisted the little gun away from him and pushed it up into his nose. I thought Sublett had breathed his last. But Barnett grabbed Wes’s arm and said, “Hold on, cousin—it ain’t worth it!” Sublett’s eyes looked like boiled eggs and his face was splotched red around his mouth where Wes had slapped him. Wes let go of him and said, “You best give up gambling, hoss, if you gonna take losing as hard as all that.”

He hands me Sublett’s derringer and I stick it under my apron. “Let’s get on with it,” he says, and then rolls again. Sublett loses that roll worst of all, naturally, as shook up as he was. “Oh, hell,” Wes says, “now it’s like playing against some softbrain. This ain’t no contest.” He takes the stake money from me and counts out his own fifty plus thirty-five of Sublett’s and hands him the fifteen left over. “Here, bubba,” he tells him, “game’s over. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. Hell, I’ll buy everybody a drink!”

We all go out to the front room and Wes stands the house a round. Then I notice Sublett’s left the scene. He’d likely slipped out the side-alley door while everybody was cheering Wes and thanking him for his generosity. I reckoned he felt too damn shamed to stay and drink with us.

Ten minutes later Wes went over to the front doors to have a look outside—which was the worst thing he could of done at that moment. Somebody in the back of the room yelled, “Watch it, Wes!” And there was Sublett, standing just inside the side-alley door, aiming a shotgun. Wes started to turn and pull his pistol, but there was only thirty feet between them and Sublett had the drop on him and couldn’t miss, not with Wes squared in the doorway like he was, just a perfect target.

The charge hit him just above the hip and knocked him clean out of the room. Everybody dropped to the floor and Sublett fired the second barrel at the empty doorway and took out a good chunk of doorjamb. Then he lowered the shotgun and stood there for a minute, looking like he couldn’t believe he’d done it.

Sublett was just starting to smile when Wes lurched back in through the door, clutching at his mangled side, his face all twisted up in pain. He yelled, “You sonbitch!” and got off a wild shot just as Sublett dropped the scattergun and ran out.

The blood was rolling off his wound and drenching his pant leg, but he staggered back outside as Sublett came out from the alley and ran down the street. Wes stumbled out into the street after him and got off a couple of shots, and Tim Jackson swore he saw Sublett catch one in the shoulder, but I don’t know. Sublett disappeared around the corner and that’s the last any of us ever saw of him. He had to of had a horse all saddled and waiting to get away as fast as he did.

Wes managed to gimp about ten feet down the street before he dropped, and we all went running up to him. He was gasping and wide-eyed. “I reckon I’m killed,” he said.

Barnett kept trying to soothe him as me and a bunch of the boys hoisted him up, one on each leg and one under each arm, and started toting him fast over to Doc Carrington’s office. It was a hell of a wound and left a bright red trail all the way to the doc’s. I thought sure he’d be empty as a tore-open water bag by the time we got him there.

On the way over, he told Barnett to take his money belt off him, that it had about two thousand dollars in gold, and that his saddlebags were holding another two or three hundred in silver. He told him to get the money to his wife and to tell her he tried to avoid this trouble but had no choice in the matter.

He was breathing rough when we got him into Doc Carrington’s, but his eyes were still burning with life. We put him on the table in the office and the doc sent one of the fellas to go get Doc Lester from his office in the livery, where he tended to animals and people both. Then he ran the rest of us on outside. Barnett was the last to come out. He had the money belt with him. It was dripping blood and had seven buckshot wedged in it.