The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

If his assailant had aimed at his head instead of his middle, they would have carried him directly to the undertaker rather than to me. Or if the shooter had been standing five to ten feet closer to him so that the load had not spread quite so much before impact. Or if he hadn’t been wearing a well-packed money belt which shielded him from some of the shot. But if, if, if—if is meaningless. It is the premise of a parlor game. What might have happened to him is what did happen to him. And thus he was not killed.

He was, however, at the lip of the abyss, as it were, when they brought him to me. The buckshot charge had torn away a sizable portion of tissue from his side and had severed several large veins. My immediate obligation was to contain the bleeding. But I was also quite concerned with two distinct entry wounds positioned rather more toward the navel. I turned him on his side but perceived no exit perforations, so it was clear the two shot were still in him. I was inclined to believe the wound was mortal, for his blood loss was quite severe. Yet his eyes showed clear focus and his breathing, though rapid, was even and strong. He was neither lung-shot nor wounded in the stomach, and his spirit seemed robust. I have seen many men die for lack of endurance against the shock of their wounds, but had Mr. Hardin expired on my table, it would not have been for want of grit.

By the time Dr. Lester arrived, I had extracted eight scattered and relatively shallow-perforation buckshot and had determined that the two wounds closer to the navel had lacerated the kidney and were most likely positioned near the lower juncture of posterior ribs and spine. It would be difficult to extract them, but not to do so at once would entail the greater jeopardy. Dr. Lester concurred. Up to this point, Mr. Hardin had endured my probings and extractions with impressive fortitude, holding tightly to the edges of the table and giving little evidence of his pain except for an occasional grimace and grunt. He rejected the opiate I offered him to dull the even greater pain he would feel when I went after the buckshot at his spine. “If death’s going to get me,” he said, “I want to give it a clear look in the eye when it does.”

We labored over him for more than an hour, and though he cursed loudly at times in reaction to my deep and sinuous explorations with the forceps, his tolerance of the pain was extraordinary. He bore the cauterizing iron with hardly more than a quivering flexion of sinew at each application. A man of less constitution would not likely have survived the procedure.

When at last I had removed the two buckshot, we stitched the gaping wound as best we could and carefully bandaged it. Lester and I looked as though we’d been in attendance at a hog slaughter. We were blood to the elbows and our aprons were heavily stained. Mr. Hardin was deathly pale from the loss of blood, and his sweat exuded severe pain’s prodigious reek. Yet he did not lose consciousness at any point in the procedure. He even smiled when we told him the ordeal was over. “Damn shame,” he said in a whisper, “it was so much fun.” Grit.

I informed him quite frankly that the chance for his survival was no better than sixty percent. The immediate dangers, as I made clear to him, were fever and infection—and, of course, a recurrence of profuse hermorrhaging if he did not keep passively to his bed while recuperating. He thanked me warmly for my services, assured me that his kinsman would see to my recompense, and said he would obey my instructions to the letter.

His friends made arrangements for him at a hotel across the street. Despite my protests, his kinsman, a lively fellow named Barnett, pressed a pair of twenty-dollar gold pieces on me, an exceptionally generous payment. As they were easing him onto a litter to carry him to his quarters, I heard Barnett whisper to him that they had cut the telegraph wires and posted lookouts at either end of town.

* * *

I have on many occasions been asked how it feels to have saved the life of a man who had already killed so many, and who, because of my surgical skill, survived to kill so many more. My answer has never varied. I am proud to have done it. I applied all my skill to save a man in extremis and I succeeded. As one sworn to the Oath of Hippocrates, I could have done no less than try. And I utterly reject any responsibility whatsoever for his subsequent depredations. He was the captain of his soul, I of mine—and I shall discuss it no further.