Forty Times a Killer (20 page)

In late January 1874, John Wesley joined his wife in Comanche and I was reacquainted with his brother Joe, a man I'd always liked. He was a slim young lawyer with a lovely wife and a thriving legal practice. He was well respected in Comanche and owned a large amount of property in the town. Jane was not happy to see me.

 

 

Much later, she didn't object when I celebrated the last weekend in May with the Hardin family.

The town fathers had declared the date a festival, and Comanche was going full blast. The saloons, splitting at the seams, roared and throngs of people patronized the racetrack.

Wes entered his American stud, Rondo, in several races and the big horse won easily, earning him three thousand dollars, fifty head of cattle, fifteen saddle horses and a Studebaker wagon. Naturally, a celebration followed and the rum punches flowed freely.

The day shaded into night and the lamps were lit around the town square. Jane and most of the other friends and family called it a day, but Wes, Jim Taylor, and myself decided to celebrate further. Drunk, we staggered into Jack Wright's saloon where Wes tossed a double eagle onto the counter and ordered drinks all round. We were noisy and boisterous certainly, but not belligerent.

Wes was friendly to everyone and even pressed a second gold coin into the hand of a saloon girl who had a birthday that night.

But trouble soon appeared in the form of Comanche deputy sheriff Frank Wilson, a decent sort, who'd also been drinking. He stepped beside Wes and put his hand on his arm “John, the people of this town have treated you well, have they not?”

Wes, grinning, admitted that they had and said he had his racetrack winnings to prove it.

“Then don't drink anymore. Go home to your wife and avoid trouble,” Wilson said. His eyes narrowing a little, he added, “You know it is a violation of the law to carry a pistol.”

For some reason, in my drunken state, I took exception to this statement and pushed between Wilson and Wes. “Leave us the hell alone. We're not bothering anyone.”

Wilson stared at me for a moment as though trying to figure out what species I was, then his balled fist came down like a sledgehammer on the top of my bowler, ramming it down over my eyes.

I staggered around, trying to push the damned thing off my head.

This brought cheers, jeers, and laughter from the crowd and more than a few empty bottles were thrown in my direction.

Finally, I grabbed the brim in both hands and shoved upward with all my strength. My head popped free of the bowler like a cork out of a bottle and I could see again. I caught Wes's look of utter disdain.

He focused on the deputy again. “Frank, my pistols are behind the bar. Out of sight, out of mind, as my ma says.” Wes didn't mention that hideout gun he carried under his vest.

“Leave the weapons right here, John,” Wilson said. “Pick them up in the morning and stay for breakfast.”

Jim Taylor, drunk as a skunk himself, pleaded with Wes to go home. In the end, he agreed, saying that the evening had lost its snap anyhow.

“Remember to let the guns stay behind the bar, John,” Wilson said. “Pick them up in the morning and then have breakfast. You haven't lived until you've tasted Jack's biscuits and gravy.”

Things might have ended amicably . . . but outside a predator stalked the night, a man with an overinflated ego and a yearning to be known as a
pistola rapida
.

 

 

Brown County Deputy Sheriff Charlie Webb was a two-gun man. He carried his newfangled Single Action Army Colts in crossed gun belts, the holsters finely carved in a flowered pattern. He was said to have killed four white men and a Negro, and his fine mustache and dashing good looks impressed the ladies when he cut a dash.

I believe that Webb was looking for trouble that night and had selected John Wesley as his target. Killing Wes was a way to enhance his reputation and establish himself as a dangerous man with a gun.

How it come up, Webb had been pacing up and down outside the saloon and walked within a few feet of Wes who stood on the boardwalk with me, Jim Taylor, and Bud Dixon, Wes's cousin.

For some reason the sight of Webb irritated Wes. “Have you any papers for my arrest?”

“Easy, Wes,” Dixon said. Then to Webb, “That man has friends in this town and won't be arrested.”

“Hell, man, I don't know you,” Webb said to Wes.

“My name is John Wesley Hardin and I come from good Texas stock.”

“Well, now we've been introduced, I remember the name,” Webb said. “But I still don't have an arrest warrant.”

“You're holding something behind your back.” Wes was on edge and sobering rapidly.

“Only a ten-cent stogie.” Webb produced the cigar, its tip glowing red in the gloom.

I saw Wes relax. Now he was prepared to be friendly. “Come, join us for a drink, Deputy Webb. A hot gin punch is warming on such a chilly evening.”

“By all means,” Webb said, smiling.

Wes turned to reenter the saloon—and I saw Webb's hands drop for his guns.

“Look out, Wes!” I shrieked.

John Wesley turned as Webb fired. The lawman's bullet burned across Wes's ribs on his left side, ripping a gash in his coat and his skin.

Wes instantly returned fire and his ball hit Webb in the face, just below his left eye.

Cursing, his mouth running blood, Webb took a step back and fired again.

His bullet splintered wood from the sidewalk between Wes's feet.

Jim Taylor and Bud Dixon cut loose. Their .44 balls tore great holes through Webb's body and he fell dead.

Thus perished an arrogant man whose gun skills fell far short of his ambitions. I shed no tears for him.

Within a couple minutes of Webb's death, all hell broke loose. The news of Webb's death was carried through the town like a fiery cross. Comanche spawned a ravening pack of vigilantes yelling, “Hang the killers!” The bloodthirsty mob rushed Wes and his stalwarts, myself included, only to be driven off by a rattle of pistol fire.

Recently appointed Comanche sheriff John Carnes rushed to the scene, just as the vigilantes launched another attack.

Believing, I'm sure, that a fine man like John Wesley didn't deserve to be the guest of honor at a hemp party, Carnes held off the mob with a scattergun.

Fearlessly, Wes handed his gun to Carnes. “It was not my fault, John. Webb tried to murder me, but I didn't think things would come to such a pass.”

“Get the hell into the saloon and stay there. This situation could get out of hand real fast.” Carnes turned to me. “You too, Peckerwood, go with them. And if you've got any prayers, this would be a good time to say them.”

Scared, my weak bladder betrayed me as I scrambled into the saloon after Wes and the others. I was almost knocked over as the crowd inside stampeded for the door and a saloon girl with yellow hair and big blue eyes pushed me aside and yelled, “Get the hell out of my way, gimp!”

From somewhere inside I heard Wes shout, “The side door!”

The noise in the street had risen to a roar as men demanded Wes's head. I heard Carnes plead with them to calm down and he vowed that he would see
justice done
.

Throwing tables and chairs aside, I limped to the side door in time to see Wes and Jim Taylor in the alley outside, swinging into the saddles of horses they didn't own.

“Wes!” I screamed. “Wait for me!” I was terrified of hanging, and my despairing wail sounded frantic, even to my own ears.

Wes saw me, heard me, ignored me. He galloped out of the alley into the street, but Jim Taylor, a big and strong man, leaned from the saddle, grabbed me by the back of my coat and threw me on a horse. Then he too was gone.

The paint I straddled didn't like the feel of my steel leg and he bucked a few times. But I managed to grab the reins and leave the alley at a dead run.

Bullets split the air around me as I followed Wes's dust, a billowing cloud tinted orange by the street's reflector lamps. I glanced behind and saw John Wesley's wife in the street, a handkerchief to her eyes. Beside her stood his father with his brother Joe, both holding shotguns.

Then I was beyond the town, galloping into the night.

I allowed the paint to pick his way since I don't see real well in darkness. After half an hour I caught up to the others who sat their blown horses outside a burned out cabin.

Wes grinned at me. “You made it, Little Bit.”

“No thanks to you,” I said, feeling mean and petty as I uttered the words.

“In a situation like that, it's every man for himself,” Wes said. “If you didn't know that before, you sure as hell know it now.”

“Truer words was never spoke,” Jim Taylor said.

A strange thought popped into my head as I sat silent in the saddle after listening to Wes and Dixon.
How many of his precious cattle would Wes give to save my life?

No matter how I studied on it, up, down, sideways, I came to the same conclusion.

The answer, that liked to break my heart, was
none
.

Anger over the killing of Charlie Webb was out of all proportion to the worth of the man himself.

Wes had shot Webb in self-defense. Everybody knew that except the town fathers of Comanche and their damn, foaming-at-the-mouth citizens. The imbeciles even sent a letter of complaint to Governor Coke demanding a strong force of Texas Rangers to rid their county “of murderers and thieves led by the notorious John Wesley Hardin.”

Wes was no murderer and although he lifted stray cattle and horses now and then, he was not a thief. However, he had managed to rope in a couple cousins who supported him in this matter.

The authorities, aided and abetted by vengeful Yankees, thrust Wes into the same category as the Mexican bandits who came up from the Rio Grande to kill and plunder.

It was an outrage.

But worse was to follow.

A force of fifty Rangers arrived in Comanche with orders to hunt down “the John Wesley Hardin gang of murderers who are preying on the citizens of this county.”

Wes was enraged. “Call those Rangers what they are. A vigilante band leading a mob composed of the enemies of law and order.”

We were living rough in the brush, every man's hand turned against us, when Wes got news that his wife and many of his relatives and friends had been taken into “protective custody” and were locked up in a two story rock house in Comanche.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Wes huddled with Jim Taylor and they made war plans.

After a while, they called the rest of us over and we sat around a spitting fire in a cold, drizzling rain, surrounded by a tangle of scrub oak, thorn briar, and thickets of poison ivy.

“We follow the lead of the great Bloody Bill Anderson and raid into Comanche,” Wes said. “We'll free my wife and my father, then teach those turncoats and Yankees a lesson they'll never forget.”

“He was a rum one, was Bill,” Wes's cousin Ham Anderson said. “He'd kill them all, like he done in Lawrence, Kansas that time.”

“And so will we,” Wes said. “Except the women and children. We're Southern patriots fighting Yankee tyranny, not the murderers of innocents.”

“Hear, hear,” Jim Taylor said.

And me, caught up in the moment, exclaimed, “Huzzah!”

Anderson glared at me, the skin of his young face tight to the bone. He didn't like me. “You only get to say that when you bear arms like a man.”

Wes smiled. “Let him be, Ham. Little Bit is one of us.”

“To the death,” I said.

But nobody listened to me or cared.

“When do we hit them, Wes?” Taylor asked.

“In a couple days. We need a few more men.”

“Once the word gets around, they'll come in,” Taylor said. “I guarantee we'll have two score fighting men soon. When our boys open the ball, they'll play Comanche such a tune they'll remember it forever.”

 

 

Days passed, but the volunteers never materialized.

Men stayed close to their homes and loved ones as lynch mobs roamed the countryside, hanging or shooting any man they deemed an outlaw or just a damned nuisance.

The Rangers, in their eagerness to root out anyone connected with John Wesley Hardin, seed, breed, and generation, turned a blind eye to the mayhem and the murder of patriots.

Then came the day that Ham Anderson, and Alec Barekman, another young Hardin cousin, weighed the odds against them and decided to cut and run. Their intention was to surrender to the authorities in Comanche, but within twenty-four hours they were both in shallow graves . . . gunned down by the Rangers.

Dead men tell no tales, and when the Ranger fusillade was over, both Anderson and Barekman weighed about five pounds heavier deceased than they did when they were alive. Those poor boys took a lot of Ranger lead, and their deaths plunged Wes into a deep depression.

All talk of a raid on Comanche ceased and Wes took to compulsively reading a Bible that someone had brought to camp.

“Wes,” I said to him, “we have to ride north and live among the savage Canadians for a spell. With no Yankee law chasing us, we can sit back and make plans for the Wild West show, big plans.”

Wes looked up from the Good Book and regarded me with lusterless eyes.

“And there's gold up there,” I said, talking into his silence. “Nuggets big as a man's fist just lying on the ground for the taking.” I smiled. “Within a few months, maybe just weeks, we'll have enough gold to fund the show and have plenty to spare. Hell, you could ride back into Comanche in a carriage and pair. A rich man can thumb his nose at everybody, including the Yankee law.”

“Who told you there's gold for the taking?” Wes asked.

“I read it in a book.”

“There's only one book a man should read—the holy book I'm holding in my hand.”

“At least let's get out of Texas,” I said. “We'll head to the New Mexico Territory. No one will find us there.”

Wes stared at me with quizzical eyes. “What's this ‘we' and ‘us' business? There's only me and you. There's no ‘we' and ‘us.' If I decide to leave Texas, I'll go by myself. A cripple would only slow me down.”

Wes dropped his eyes to the Bible again and read, his lips moving. Without looking up, he said, “Get away from me, Little Bit. Leave me the hell alone.” After a pause, he added, “And take a bath sometime, huh?”

Wes was worried about his wife and kinfolk, and I forgave his harsh words. Besides, later that day he gave me whiskey and a cigar and said I was “a stout fellow.”