The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

I arrived in El Paso on the nineteenth of August, a hot Monday evening I shall never forget.

After asking the depot agent for directions to the Herndon Lodging House, I plunged into the tumult of the streets. The city was raucous with rumbling and clanging streetcars, clattering wagons, clopping hooves, barking dogs, the bray and snort of livestock, with shouting and whistling and laughter, with the cries of newshawks, with music blaring from every saloon—piano and hurdy-gurdy, banjo and guitar, and lustily, badly sung songs.

The sun was almost touching the mountain looming over the town, but the air was still thick with heat and dust. It was pungent with horse droppings and the peppery aromas of Mexican cooking, with the smells of creosote and whiskey and human waste. Old women in black rebozos, their faces as dry and cracked as desert earth, hunkered on the sidewalks with their bony hands extended for alms. Through the open door of a shadowy saloon came a great crash of glass, followed by several resounding smacks, a heavy thump, and an explosive chorus of loud laughter. Four boys on a corner were laughing as well, and poking jackknives into the malodorously bloated carcass of a large black dog, raising a horde of fat green flies with every whooping stab.

It was, as Fox had told me it would be, one tough town.

I refer to Richard Kyle Fox, publisher of The Police Gazette, the most popular periodical of our day. Its specialty was sports, but its larger appeal was rooted in its zealous reportage of sex and violence. Every week the shocking-pink pages of the Gazette presented a plethora of crime, scandal, bizarre spectacle, madness, and death. Gazette readers feasted on each new issue like scavengers alighting on fresh carrion. “I give the American working man what he wants in a newspaper,” Fox often boasted, “the real stuff of life!” And I, who in my youth had been a serious poet with dreams of capturing the light of the stars in my verse, had now been in his employ for over six years. Indeed, I was one of his star reporters. So veers life.

I was in El Paso to try to gain an interview with John Wesley Hardin, the infamous mankiller. Fox had only recently heard about him and had become instantly enthusiastic about the subject. He was a man of sequential obsessions, and his obsession of the moment was the Wild West. He thought an interview with Hardin would be perfect for the Gazette. “It’s a splendid tough tale, this Hardin fella’s, full of life’s hard truths,” Fox said to me in the New York office. “Old West killer does a big stretch in the pen and then, on being set free after many cruel years, takes up the mantle of the man of law. He follows the straight and narrow, he does, but then stumbles and falls to the evil wayside once again, for the leopard can’t change his spots after all, can he now? I hear he robs saloons at his whim, that he shot a man dead in a fight over a woman. I hear he’s a fearsome drunk and most of his fellow citizens want to see him dead, they are so frightened of him. Well, I want to know the details, Sammy lad—as will our readers. Go and get those details, my boy, and write them up for us in your particularly enthralling style, hey?”

That was how I came to be on the loud streets of El Paso on that sultry evening of August 19, 1895.

At the Herndon I was told by the landlady—one Mrs. Williams—that Mr. Hardin was not in and she did not know where he was. “Go poking through the saloons and I guess you’ll sure find him,” she said. Her sneer couched on her face like a bad-tempered cat.

The nearest saloon, The Show, was across the street and just around the corner. As I quaffed my first stein, I made known that I was a Police Gazette reporter interested in Hardin, and the barkeep began talking my ear off, as I’d expected he would. The Gazette was venerated in every tavern in America, even in such remote outposts as El Paso. The Show wasn’t yet busy at that early evening hour, and a handful of other gents soon gathered around me at the bar, taking exception to some of the boniface’s assertions and delivering their own opinions about the city’s most famous resident. Among the things I found out was that Hardin’s chief antagonist in town was a constable named John Selman, who carried a formidable reputation of his own as a man to be reckoned with.

The boys at the bar knew as much about John Henry Selman as they did about Wes Hardin, and they regarded him with nearly equal awe—and equal fear. Selman, I learned, had fought for the Confederacy before moving to Texas. The way they’d heard the tale, he got married, fathered a daughter and three sons, and made his daily bread as a dirt farmer for a few years before settling near Fort Griffin and getting into the cattle business with a partner named John Larn. His first turn as a lawman came when Larn was elected sheriff of Shackelford County and appointed Selman as his chief deputy.

One day a band of Comancheros stole a ten-year-old white girl and her six-year-old brother from a farm a few miles west of Fort Griffin, intending to trade them to the Comanches. Selman and two army scouts tracked them for weeks, all the way across West Texas, before finally catching up with them in the Davis Mountains. They returned with the two children alive and seven Comanchero scalps dangling from their saddle horns.

Not a man at the bar doubted the truth of that story, not even those who were no admirers of Selman. “Old John’s done lots of things over the years, I expect,” said a man in a white skimmer, glancing about cautiously to see who might be overhearing, “some of them not altogether legal, if you know what I mean.” Another man chuckled and added, “Hell, some of them not altogether Christian!”

Not long afterward, Selman killed a bad actor called Shorty Collins who was trying to gun down Sheriff Larn. There was a good deal of dispute—then and now—about the cause of the shooting. Some said Collins was in a heat because Larn and Selman had double-crossed him in a cattle rustling scheme. Whatever the case, the story holds that after killing Collins, Selman went hard outlaw for the next few years, that he went to New Mexico and formed a band of rustlers and robbers called the Seven Rivers Gang.

When he next returned to Texas, he was arrested and charged with rustling, but the case never went to court and eventually the charges were dropped. Then his wife became ill and died. He was broke and feeling aimless, so he parceled out his young children among various families and wandered off in search of better fortune. A few months later he showed up in Fort Stockton, debilitated with the smallpox. The fearful citizens wouldn’t have him among them. He was taken to a spot about two miles from town, laid under a canvas cover to protect him from the sun, supplied with a cask of water, and left to his fate. “Old John’s told this story himself more than once, in more than one saloon,” one of my informants told me. “I guess it’s true. He sure enough has the pox scars on his face to prove it.”

According to the story, Selman was saved by a Mexican cattle dealer who was passing by in a wagon on his way back to his ranch. The Mexican’s young daughter was with him, and they put Selman in the wagon and took him along. The daughter tended to Selman every mile of the way. Each evening, when they made camp for the night, she bathed him with lye soap and then fed him a steaming bowl of menudo, a fiery dish of tripe cooked in chile peppers. By the time they crossed the river into Mexico, Selman was fairly well recovered. “John always has said it was the menudo saved his life,” a man at the bar remarked. “He still eats a bowl of it a day.” Several heads nodded sagely. “That stuff’ll cure you or kill you, one,” someone else said.

When they reached her father’s ranch in Chihuahua, Selman and the girl got married. John went to Texas to retrieve his children but was able to find only his two youngest sons, Bud and Young John. He lived in Mexico for years, and his boys were practically raised as Mexicans. It was said he became best friends with a murderous local captain of rurales—the national police force created by the Mexican dictator Díaz—and that he sometimes helped track down fugitives for a portion of the reward. When his second wife died, he and his sons, now grown, moved back north of the river. To El Paso.

That was six years ago, and all my informants agreed the town was even wilder then than it was now. But even though he was starting to get along in years, Old John still had a lot of pepper in his blood. He quickly earned a reputation for drinking and gambling with the hardiest of them—and for being able to handle himself in a row. El Paso was always in need of tough lawmen, and in ’92 he was elected city constable.

The following year, at age fifty-seven, he married a sixteen-year-old Mexican girl. She was far younger than his sons, both of whom were so angrily embarrassed by the marriage they refused to speak to their father for months. Old John supposedly said, “I don’t know what they’re acting so put out about. Ought to be proud their pappy can still cut such a spicy mustard. I reckon they’re just jealous.” He eventually reconciled with his boys, and one of them, Young John, himself became a city policeman.

Of the eight or nine men at the bar of The Show saloon, four claimed to have witnessed John Selman’s killing of Bass Outlaw in a local whorehouse just the year before. The other men at the bar all snorted derisively and said they’d bet none of the four had been anywhere near the place. “You’d have to build another six floors on that cathouse just to hold everybody who’s sworn he saw the shooting with his own eyes,” one man said, and everybody but the four avowed witnesses had a good guffaw.

Bass Outlaw was a notorious bad actor who had been a Texas Ranger until he was fired for drunkenness. He then became a deputy U.S. marshal. On the night in question, he was drunk and in a fury because the girl he wanted to sport with was engaged with another customer. He loudly proclaimed his intention to go upstairs and kick open the door of every room until he found his favorite whore. Old John was sitting near him and said, “Hey now, Bass, you don’t want to be busting up everybody’s pleasure up there. Just wait your turn.” At that moment, Texas Ranger Joe McKidrict turned to Outlaw and said, “Bass, you’re too drunk to fuck anyhow.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before Outlaw drew his pistol and blasted a hole through his heart. As Selman went for his gun, Outlaw shot him twice in the leg—then Old John put a round through Outlaw’s eye and blew out the side of his head and the fight was done.

“Old John’s had a hobble ever since,” someone said. “The man can’t walk ten feet without his cane.”

“That’s true,” said another, “but his damn gunhand don’t need no cane. That’s what Hardin best keep in mind.”

* * *

The noisy streets were deep in twilight when I came out of The Show and made my way up Utah Street, heading for the Acme Saloon. The sky along the mountain rim was the color of fresh blood. As I reached the corner, I glanced to my left—and there on the sidewalk, not ten paces from me, stood John Henry Selman and John Wesley Hardin, looking quite ready to kill one another.

They were standing face-to-face with three feet between them. I’d heard them described so thoroughly that I recognized them both instantly. A few other pedestrians had also taken notice of them and were hastening across the street or retreating down the sidewalk. Most people in the vicinity, however, remained wholly unaware of the confrontation from first to last.

Selman gripped his cane in his left hand and his right was ready to go for the gun on his hip. Hardin stood with his hands on his coat lapels. I could not see if he was armed. I could see their faces distinctly, however. Both men were rigid with anger. They spoke sharply but not loudly, and the din of the street muffled much of what they said. If I’d been two feet farther from them, I’d have heard none of the conversation at all.

“… know damn well … the goods off him. I know … cheated me!” Selman was saying through his teeth, his gray mustache twitching with anger. “I won’t be cheated, you hear me? I won’t … or anybody else.”

“The hell …,” Hardin said. “… between you and George. He’s your partner, not …”

“What … George … damn business,” Selman said. “I know … cheat me, you … I’m warning … square with me, and I mean soon!”

“Warning me?” Hardin said. “Nobody … a bucket of shit with a badge stuck on it … bastard son … nothing but picking on women.”

Selman’s face darkened with fury. He looked about to have a fit. A streetcar clattered down the street, its bell clanging loudly, and I couldn’t make out any of what he next said to Hardin, nor what Hardin said in response. What Hardin did next, however, is still vivid in my mind. He held out his hands as though showing Selman he held nothing in them. Then he closed the lower fingers of both hands, keeping the thumbs upright and the index fingers pointing at Selman like pistol barrels. He flicked his thumbs down and mouthed the word, “Pow!” Selman stepped backward as though he’d been shoved. He looked astonished. Hardin grinned and slowly raised each index finger in turn to his mouth and softly blew on their tips, as though clearing them of gunsmoke. He then strolled across the street and went into the Acme Saloon.

Selman watched him every step of the way, his face inflamed with fury, then turned and saw me staring at him.

“Ah … Constable Selman,” I said, “my name is Peckinpah. Of The Police Gazette. I wonder if—”

“Kiss my ass!” he said, and stalked away.

When I told Hardin I was with the Gazette and offered to buy the next round, the first thing he wanted to know was whether I’d covered the Sullivan-Kilrain bare knuckle championship fight six years earlier. “We heard about it in the pen,” he said, “but I’ve never met anybody who saw it with his own eyes.”

I hadn’t been at the fight either, but I knew several of the reporters who had, which made me the nearest thing to an eyewitness he’d yet met. So I was obliged to recapitulate for him everything I could recall about the progress of that epic battle as it had been told to me. I admitted I’d been astonished by the outcome, that I’d never expected Sullivan, sodden drunkard that he was, to withstand the assault of the younger and quicker Kilrain under the roasting Mississippi sun. When Kilrain drew first blood and Sullivan paused to vomit in the early going, I told him that the reporters all figured Sully was done for. Hardin seemed enrapt. “But he wasn’t done, was he,” he said, “that old warhorse?” He certainly was not, I agreed. After seventy-five rounds spanning two hours and sixteen minutes, Kilrain’s seconds threw in the sponge. Hardin smiled widely. “Never bet against the warhorse,” he said.

We were standing at the end of the bar nearest the front door, and I signaled Frank the bartender for another round for us. Hardin’s interest took another turn when I told him the Gazette’s chief correspondent for the Sullivan-Kilrain fight had been none other than Steve Brodie, the famous bridge-jumper, who was a good friend of mine. I then had to expound at length about the various jumps I’d seen Steve Brodie make. I told of more than once having seen him pulled unconscious from a river, blood running from his nose and mouth and ears, sometimes his ribs broken and his shoes knocked from his feet. Dozens of men and boys were killed every year in their attempts to emulate Steve Brodie.

“Damn, but that man’s got daring!” Hardin said. “And he can surely take a beating, can’t he?” John Wesley Hardin is the only man I ever spoke to about Steve Brodie who never said he wondered why a man would risk his life and take such beatings jumping off high bridges.

He said he’d be pleased to grant me an interview for the Gazette on one condition—that I didn’t call him a “pistolero.” I had suggested that my lead-in would refer to him as the most famous pistolero in the West. “I never did much care for that word,” he said. “Sounds too damn Mexican.” Well then, I asked, what term would he prefer? Gunfighter? Shootist? Pistolman? Mankiller? “They called Wild Bill the Prince of the Pistoleers,” he said. “‘Pistoleer’ always did sound properly American to me.” All right, I said, “pistoleer” it was. I’d call him the King of the Pistoleers. He smiled and said, “Sounds about right.”

We never did get to the interview. He was far too persistent in interrogating me—particularly about the writing craft. He told me he’d been writing the story of his life for the past several months and was very near to completing the book. He asked me question after question about techniques of narration, exposition, and description—though he did not know the proper terminology for many of these things. I said I’d be happy to read his work and offer whatever helpful criticism I might. He smiled almost shyly and said he’d be grateful.

I kept trying to shift the conversation to the subject of himself, but he much preferred to hear about the stories I’d covered for the Gazette—about the execution of William Kemmler, the first condemned man to die in the electric chair, a process that took more than eight minutes and left the carcass half cooked; about the white slavery rings I’d investigated in New York’s lower depths; about the sex scandals and the opium dens and the labor riots; about crimes of passion. When I at last managed to ask him about his beginnings as a desperado, he was perfunctory. “Just say I was drove to it by murdering Yankee occupation troops and carpetbaggers. Anybody who wants to can read about it in my book. But tell me, what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”

* * *

A few minutes later a friend of his named Henry Brown came in and informed him that Old John Selman was sitting on a keg on the sidewalk in front of the saloon.

“His son Young John and Captain Carr came along just now and I heard him tell them to stay close by and be ready for trouble with you,” Henry Brown said.

“Just like the old coward to ask for help,” Hardin said. “How’s he look?”

“Hard to say,” Henry Brown said. “But he ain’t smiling.”

“Bastard’s scared,” Hardin said. “No bushwhacker likes the idea of going up against a man face-to-face. Reckon I’ll let him stew in his own sweat a while longer. Let him think some more on the way things stand.”

“And then what?” I asked. “Will you go out and face him down?” I tried to mask my excitement with a tone of nonchalance—but, in truth, I was heady with the prospect of witnessing a dime-novel shootout between two famous gunmen.

“Well now,” he said with a smile, “let’s just wait and see what happens.” I think he knew how I was feeling and was amused by it.

He shook the bar dice with Henry Brown to decide who would buy the next round. I told him I’d witnessed the exchange he’d had with Selman across the street, but that I hadn’t overheard enough of it to know exactly what was going on. “I know you rattled him with those two-gun fingers,” I said, and we both chuckled. “You see how he flinched when I shot him with these .44 caliber fingers?” Hardin said. “Old jasper damn near had a heart attack.”

Hardin had been leaning on one elbow on the bar as we conversed, frequently glancing into the back-bar mirror to check the front doors. Quite abruptly he tensed and slipped his right hand up inside his coat. I looked toward the doors and saw Old Selman standing there, his eyes locked on Hardin’s in the mirror, his left hand braced on his cane, his right hanging loosely by his holstered .45 Colt.

He wasn’t alone. But the man with him—who I later found out was one E. L. Shackleford—was no fighter. Indeed, he looked extremely nervous to be standing so near to Old John Selman at the moment. To be truthful, I was not entirely at ease standing so close to Hardin as I was.

Shackleford bolted toward the rear of the barroom, saying loudly, “Back here, John. We’ll have a drink with R.B. and Shorty.” R. B. Stevens, the proprietor of the Acme, and a fellow called Shorty Anderson were taking a drink together just inside the open door of the private room at the rear of the saloon. There were only a handful of patrons in the Acme at the moment.

Selman stood rooted for a few seconds, holding Hardin’s stare in the glass. I looked at Hardin just as he slowly and silently mouthed the words “Do … it,” at Selman.

Selman’s face seemed to turn to wet clay. Hardin smiled and withdrew his hand from his coat. He aimed his index finger at Selman’s image in the mirror and softly said, “Bang.” Then laughed aloud.

Selman broke his gaze, flushing furiously, and hobbled after Shackleford into the back room.

Hardin grinned at me and said, “Only took one finger to shake him up this time.” He smiled broadly all about the room. “Sammy,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder, “I’ll roll you for the round.”

He suddenly seemed twenty years younger—barely more than a boy—a happy, confident, carefree boy. His eyes danced brightly and his smile was a fierce contagious thing. He snatched up the dice cup and said, “I cant lose, boys, not me. But I don’t want to make street beggars of you, so let’s play for quarters.” And he didn’t lose, not once in the next ten rolls against me and then six in a row against Henry Brown.

When Selman and Shackleford came out of the back room, Selman’s face looked as rigid as his cane, but his eyes were red-hot and whiskey-bright. I could feel the heat of his anger as he went past us. He didn’t even glance our way as he headed for the front door. In the back-bar mirror, Hardin watched him go out, and I heard the low chuckle in his throat. He picked up the dice cup, shook it, and rolled the dice. He laughed once more and said to Henry Brown, “You got four sixes to beat.”

As Henry reached for the dice cup, I put a match to my pipe and turned to Hardin. He was smiling happily at himself in the mirror, his hands laced together on the bar. He was utterly and completely a picture of self-satisfaction.

Then his eyes shifted and his smile vanished and I followed his gaze in the mirror and saw Selman standing inside the doors, aiming his Peacemaker at the back of Hardin’s head. Selman shouted, “I will!” And fired.

Even in the roar of the gunshot, I heard the bullet crunch wetly through his skull and clank against the frame of the back-bar mirror. A second gunshot thundered and the bullet smacked against the wall as Hardin slumped to the floor on his back. Selman rushed up and shot him twice more at point-blank range. Then another copper—Young Selman—was clutching Old John by the arm and shouting, “Stop! Stop now! You’ve killed him!”

Old Selman looked crazed. Young Selman took his gun and ushered him away from the body, talking to him rapidly and earnestly. A bright puddle of blood was spreading from under Hardin’s head and a red rivulet ran down his face from a hole over his half-closed and shattered left eye. The other eye was open wide and dead as glass.

My ears rang with the pistol shots and my eyes smarted from the gunsmoke. I saw Shackleford and Henry Brown hurrying out the rear door. I wanted to leave too, but was afraid that if I released my grip on the bar my legs would fail me.

In an instant the saloon was in full tumult, jammed with babbling gawkers shoving against one another for a better look at the corpse of John Wesley Hardin. Each new arrival had to be told by the man who had arrived just before him what had happened. There was argument and angry gesticulation.

I heard a man explaining loudly to another that Selman had beaten Hardin to the draw and shot him squarely through the eye.

A gaggle of whores from the house around the corner entered in a perfumed rush of swirling skirts and a jabbering frenzy. There was gasping and cursing and an outbreak of weeping. Some of them stooped and dipped handkerchiefs or the hems of their underskirts into the blood on the floor. I saw one gently touch Hardin’s face. I saw one stare at her bloody fingertip a moment, and then lick it.

Stevens, the proprietor, and a lawman named Carr tried futilely to drive everyone back and stood arguing over the body. Stevens wanted the dead man removed from the premises at once, but Carr said adamantly that he would not do any such thing until the police chief showed up and took charge. He sat on his heels beside the body and searched it—and withdrew a pair of pistols.

A man later identified to me as Jeff Milton pushed his way through the crowd, the Selmans close behind him. He said, “All you, get the hell back, goddamnit!”—and back they fell.

He and the Selmans stared down at the dead man on the floor. Old John was grinning like a lunatic. He poked at Hardin’s shoulder with the tip of his cane. “See, Jeff?” he said. “You see? Like I said! He went for his gun and I killed him. I did it!” He put his hand out to Milton. “Shake the hand of the man who killed John Wesley Hardin.”

Milton glanced at Selmans hand as though he might spit into it. “This man,” he said, pointing at the body, “was shot in the back!” He stared at Selman with hugely profound contempt, then stomped away.

I saw Stevens crouch beside the bar and pick something up between thumb and finger. Smiling like a prizewinner, he showed me the bullet that had passed through Hardin’s head. He dropped it in a whiskey glass and set it on a shelf behind the bar for display.

The undertaker’s assistants arrived and took the body away to the parlor, where it was examined by a team of physicians for their official report. Within hours, photographs of Hardin’s naked corpse, his several wounds starkly evident, were being hawked on the streets.

This report appeared in The El Paso Daily Herald of 20 August 1895:

The following evidence was given Justice Howe this afternoon by the three physicians whose names are signed thereto:

“We, the undersigned, practicing physicians, hereby certify that we have examined the gunshot wounds on the person of the deceased, John Wesley Hardin, and it is our opinion that the wound causing death was caused by a bullet; that the bullet entered near the base of the skull posteriorly and came out at the upper comer of the left eye.”

(Signed)

S. G. Sherard,

W. N. Vilas,

Alward White.

The wounds on Hardin’s body were on the back of the head, coming out just over the left eye. Another shot in the right breast, just missing the nipple, and another through the right arm. The body was embalmed by Undertaker Powell and will be interred at Concordia at 4 P.M.

John Wesley Hardin was buried in the Concordia Cemetery in El Paso. Inscribed on a small plate fixed to his coffin was the phrase, “At Peace. “ None of his kin were in attendance at the funeral, only myself and a handful of curious onlookers—and a veiled woman dressed in black. She left immediately upon the casket’s lowering in the ground.

John Henry Selman was indicted for murder and stood trial in El Paso. His attorney was Albert Bacon Falls, who later became Secretary of the Interior and went to prison for his part in the Teapot Dome scandal. Falls argued that Selman acted in self-defense. The jury could not reach a verdict, so the judge ordered a new trial and released Selman on bond. The night before I departed El Paso I saw him ensconced in a dark corner of the Wigwam Saloon, half drunk but looking sharply at every man who entered the premises, his mind likely occupied with visions of young pistoleers seeking their portion of fame by way of the man who killed John Wesley Hardin.

The El Paso Times

5 APRIL 1896

John Selman, the victor of not less than twenty shooting affrays in Texas, the exterminator of “bad men,” and the slayer of John Wesley Hardin, is dying tonight with a bullet hole through his body. About three months ago Selman and United States Deputy Marshal Geo. Scarborough had a quarrel over a game of cards, since which occurrence the relations between them have not been cordial. This morning at 4 o’clock they met in the Wigwam Saloon and both were drinking. Scarborough says that Selman said, “Come, I want to see you,” and that the two men walked into an alley beside the saloon, and Selman, whose son is in Juárez, Mexico, in jail on a charge of abducting a young lady from there to this side, said to Scarborough: “I want you to come over the river with me this morning. We must get that boy out of jail.”

Scarborough expressed his willingness to go with Selman, but stated that no bad breaks must be made in Juàrez. Scarborough says that Selman then reached for his pistol, with the remark, “I believe I will kill you.” Scarborough pulled his gun and began shooting. At the second shot Selman fell, and Scarborough fired two more shots as Selman attempted to rise. When Selman was searched no pistol could be found on him or anywhere around him. He says he had a pistol, but that it was taken from him after he fell and before the police reached him. Scarborough’s first shot hit Selman in the neck. The next two shots also took effect, one through the left leg just above the knee and the other entering the right side just under the lower rib. A fourth wound in the right hip is supposed to have been caused by Selman’s pistol going off prematurely, as the ball ranged downward. Scarborough is about 38 years old. He was born in Louisiana and was raised in Texas, and for several years was sheriff of Jones County. Selman was raised on the Colorado River in Texas. He was about 58 years old and has lived a stormy life. When not drinking he was as gentle as a child, but he did not know what fear was, and has killed not less than twenty outlaws. He was a dead shot and quick with his gun. He was an old officer in the service. Some years ago he fought a band of cattle thieves in Donna Anna County, New Mexico, killing two and capturing the others, four in all. He killed Bass Outlaw, a deputy United States marshal, in El Paso a few years ago.