The Pistoleer: A Novel of John Wesley Hardin

by James Carlos Blake

  When Bill and Hardin came back out, they’d made another deal. It was the best solution they could come up with to protect Bill’s reputation and Hardin’s cousin, both. Hardin sat down next to Clements so he could talk low and explained the setup to him. Bill was going to put him in jail, then give Hardin the key at midnight so he could let him out—and then Clements would leave town immediately. Clements didn’t look real pleased with the plan, but he didn’t say anything. Hardin stood up and patted his cousin on the shoulder. “Eight o’clock, then,” he said to Bill, “at the Alamo,” and Bill nodded. Then Hardin went off to arrange to have Clements’s horse ready for him, and me and Bill and Clements headed off to jail.

  But first Bill took him into the Bull’s Head saloon and bought him and me a drink. He wanted the Texans to see Clements in his custody. He wanted to remind them who the cock of the walk was in Abilene. The looks we got were red as hate, and the meanness in the room was like a bitter smoke. I gulped down my drink and held the shotgun tight, the barrels low and ready. Ben Thompson kept scowling at us from his table and muttering to the men sitting with him. At the end of the bar, Phil Coe looked unhappy. The grumbling around us got louder and full of threat. Bill acted like he didn’t hear a bit of it. Even Clements looked more worried than him. Bill smiled at himself in the back-bar mirror and casually sipped his whiskey with his left hand. When we left, the place was in a rage.

  Bill played a few hands of solitaire at his desk while Tom and me stood at the door and listened to the yelling and cussing over in the saloon. Suddenly the Catfoot jumped out of the shadows at the end of the gallery and grinned to see how he’d caught me and Tom by surprise. The Catfoot was Bills best pair of ears in town. He’d been an army scout in the southwest territories and a friend of Kit Carson’s. He claimed he’d snuck up within arm’s length of many an Indian without ever being seen. By the time he took up scouting for Bill in the alleyways of Abilene, his drinking habit had robbed some of the sureness off his feet, but he was still the best sneakabout in town. He wore moccasin boots and dark clothes and a black kerchief around his head instead of a hat, making him look injun. Since first meeting Bill he had let his graying hair grow down to his shoulders too. He flat idolized Wild Bill and would do any fool thing he asked. What he’d been doing just now was mingling with the crowd in the Bull’s Head, and he’d come to report to Bill what he’d heard. It hadn’t required any sneaking about. The way he’d crossed over to the jail was just to show off.

  He told Bill the Bull’s Head boys were boiling mad about Clements’s arrest. They were saying Bill had put the arm on him only because he was a Texan. Besides, they knew Wes was squared with Bill and they figured the fix ought to include his cousin. The way they saw it, being squared didn’t mean jackshit to a man if it didn’t include his kin. “Phil Coe said Clements oughtn’t to be arrested in Abilene anyway,” the Catfoot said, “not for something he done someplace else. And Ben, he said it goes to show no Texan can take your word for anything.”

  “Piss on Ben Thompson and the damn dog he rode in on,” Bill said. He sent the Catfoot back to the Bull’s Head and told Tom to go round up two more deputies. He wanted four shotgun guards in the jail in case the Texans tried to break out Clements.

  A few minutes later I saw Hardin go in the Bull’s Head. The shouting and carrying on got louder for a time, then eased off some. Tom returned with Mike Williams and Steve Wheeler and everybody loaded their scatterguns with buckshot. A half hour later Hardin left the saloon, and here came the Catfoot back again.

  He said there were forty Texas hard cases in the saloon ready to help spring Clements. They were arming from a wagonload of weapons a Comanchero friend of Thompson’s had brung into the alley. Thompson had been all for storming the jail right now, but then Hardin showed up and got them to hold off. He told them about the deal he’d made with Bill to spring Clements, but most of the Texans didn’t believe Bill would hold to it, not even Phil Coe. Hardin told Coe he’d send him the key to Clements’s cell at midnight and he could let him out himself. “If Coe don’t get the key by twelve,” the Catfoot said, “that wild bunch is gonna come storming.”

  A few minutes before eight, Bill stood up and stretched. He checked the loads in both navies, then adjusted his tie and put on his hat. “When Coe comes here with the key,” he told Tom, “don’t fuss with him, just hand Clements over.” He was being casual but it was all show. The situation had put him in a corner and was agitating him no end. Behind his easy smile he was in a fury.

  So off Bill went to meet Hardin at the Alamo. Tom and me sat out on the jailhouse gallery, watching the street and listening hard, ready to run to help him at the first gunshot. The saloon lights blazed into the street. The crowd in the Bull’s Head kept growing, and the music and the yahooing was louder than ever. Nothing like the possibility of mob action to put a bunch of peckerwoods in a high-time mood.

  Later we heard all about how Bill and Hardin had done the town together. They made a big show of being pals and took turns buying a round for the house every place they went. Their gambling luck was pure gold. They won over a thousand dollars apiece on that spree. You ask me, such a profitable streak of luck ought to’ve pretty well made up for whatever agitation Bill’s pride had to endure that evening. But unfortunately—especially for the Catfoot—Bill didn’t see it that way.

  Sometime around eleven a big hack stopped in front of the Bull’s Head and about seven or eight painted cats lit off it, teasing each other and laughing loud, all of them drunk and bold as brass. They spotted me and Tom watching them and started whistling and cooing and having sport with us. I didn’t really mind their attention, but Tom got hacked about it. He always was a little stiff-necked about the soiled sisterhood. I believe his people were hard-shell Baptists.

  “Oh, deputy,” one called out, “you pinched any bad girls tonight?” and they all snickered like fillies. Coe came out and snapped at them, and most of them quick followed him inside, but two of them hung back, giggling and whispering together and looking our way. One came weaving out into the street and said, “Hey, Deputies! Lookee here!” She pulled down the front of her dress and showed us her bare teats for about one enjoyable second—firm creamy things, they were, with big pink tips—then yanked the dress back up and laughed like she was being tickled.

  “That tears it,” Tom said. He jumped off the sidewalk and stomped over to her and put her under arrest for public indecency. “Indecency?” she whooped. “In fucking Abilene?” Tom grabbed her by the arm and tugged her toward the jail, but she was a fighter and started kicking at him and trying to bite his hand. Then the other one ran up and jumped on his back, and he really had his work cut out. I didn’t have much choice but to lend him a hand.

  As I pried the one off his back he let out a yelp and I saw she had her teeth in his ear. Then she turned on me, trying her level best to knee me in the jewel sack. I finally got her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides and holding her too close to knee me—and getting a good bit of enjoyment from it besides, I will admit. I guess she was too, because she started chuckling and wiggling around in my arms without really fighting to get free. Meantime, Tom was gripping the other one’s arms crossways over her chest from behind so she couldn’t turn around and hit or kick at him anymore. Her teats were bulging out of her dress, but she wasn’t funning like mine, and she kept cussing and fussing and giving Tom a terrible time of it.

  I heard laughter and saw we’d drawn a crowd of spectators, including Bill and Hardin. They were applauding us like we were some kind of street show. “Real good, boys,” Bill said, “real fine police work. I think you’d best put that desperado in irons, Tom, before she busts loose of you and rawhides the whole town all by herself.” Hardin thought that was funny, but Tom was in a sweaty rage and feeling a good bit foolish to be struggling with that feisty girl while Bill and Hardin and a bunch of gawkers looked on and laughed about it.

  Just then she bit him good on the hand. He gave a howl a
nd punched her so hard she would’ve fallen if he hadn’t been holding her tight. She tried to pull away but he held her fast and smacked her twice more, beating her down to her knees.

  Bill rushed up and socked him on the jaw with as pretty a roundhouse as I’ve ever seen. Knocked him loose of her and down on his ass. For good measure he gave him a kick in the belly that blew the breath out of him. Tom got up on all fours and puked his supper into the street.

  Bill helped the girl up, calling her Suzanne. Now I recognized her as a Tennessee girl who worked at Violet’s. She said she was all right and to just leave her be. The girl I had hold of said to let go, so I did, and she went and helped Suzanne to adjust her clothes and fix herself up some. Hardin was grinning big about the whole thing. Bill gave Tom a hand up and retrieved his hat for him. Tom wiped at his mouth with his shirtsleeve and winced at the pain of his jaw. Bill asked if it was broke and he shook his head. He looked at Bill like a boy who’s just got whipped by his daddy. “Son, you don’t never hit a woman,” Bill said. He dusted off Tom’s back while Tom felt of his damaged ear. “Leastways not unless she’s trying to steal your money,” he said. He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Course now,” he said, “if she was to try making off with your horse, you’d be right to shoot the bitch.”

  Bill and Hardin escorted the girls into the Bull’s Head, and me and Tom went back up on the gallery and sat there for more than half an hour without saying anything. Tom kept rubbing his jaw and fingering his ear. Then Bill and Hardin left the Bull’s Head together and headed off for the Applejack. They were followed by a man named Arlo Greaves, who worked for Phil Coe. Finally Tom said, “All this business with Hardin is just chewing Bill’s nerves to bits, ain’t it?” I couldn’t help but laugh along with him. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me Tom Carson had enough grit to fill a cattle car. And he for damn sure loved Bill Hickok more than the man deserved.

  As the hour got close to midnight the hullabaloo in the Bull’s Head was loud enough to disturb the dead. A bunch of hard cases were gathered at the saloon door and letting us see they were armed and ready. There was no sign of the Catfoot, who must’ve figured we sure didn’t need him just then to tell us what the Bull’s Head boys were up to. At ten minutes of midnight some two dozen armed men had spilled out of the saloon and into the street and were rebel yelling and twirling pistols and passing bottles among themselves. “Get your hat, Manning!” one hollered. “Hey, Deputies,” another yelled, waving his pistol at us, “I got my jail key right here!”

  And then here came Arlo Greaves down the street. He pushed his way through the crowd and into the saloon. A minute later Phil Coe came out and spoke to the Texans and there were groans of disappointment. Coe crossed over to us and handed Tom the cell key. When Clements walked out the front door, the Texans cheered, and he waved his hat at them. Coe gave him a pistol. “It’s one of Wes’s,” he told him. “He sent it along so you wont be traveling nekkid.”

  Clements went off with Arlo Greaves to wherever his horse was waiting for him. Phil Coe gave us a shit-eating grin and then strutted back to the Bull’s Head with the wild boys at his heels. Him and Bill had always got along good, but not after that night. He’d made an enemy of Bill for life. (For Coe, that was only another two months, till the day he got drunk as a coot and shot at a dog in the street for fun—and then stupidly fired on Bill when he came out to arrest him. Bill put two bullets in Coe’s gut and it took Fancy Phil two hard days to die. Sad to say, Mike Williams came running around the corner with his gun in his hand just as Bill shot Coe—and in the hot blur of the moment Bill whirled and shot him too. Killed his own deputy. The newspaper went hard on him for it. It claimed he’d become more dangerous to the town than the wild boys he was supposed to protect it from. The townsfolk agreed, and Abilene fired Wild Bill. But all that came later.)

  * * *

  The day after Clements was set free, Bill seemed distracted. He lost hand after hand in the Alamo and looked to be drinking more serious than usual. That evening when I got back to the jail after making rounds, he was at his desk, sharing a bottle with the Catfoot. They were talking about their scouting days for the Union army. Bill said he once knew a scout, a half-breed Apache, who’d bet the other scouts he could slip into the commanding officer’s tent while he was asleep and cut off a lock of his beard without being discovered. “Hell, we thought we had us some easy money and each bet him twenty dollars,” Bill said. Him and another scout watched from the bushes as the breed crawled off toward the major’s tent—and they were still watching twenty minutes later when the breed tapped them on the shoulder. “He was grinning to beat hell and holding a crop of the major’s red beard,” Bill said. “The next day you could see the spot on the CO’s face where the crop was taken. Damn breed was the best sneakup I ever knew.”

  The Catfoot looked offended. “It’s some of us could of shaved the man without waking him,” he said. “It’s nothing to take a lock of hair off a sleeping man.” Besides, he said, all that could of happened to the sneakup if he’d been caught was to get locked up overnight and then kicked off the army payroll. “No sneakup job’s worth bragging about unless it could get you killed,” he said. “Like all them injuns I snuck up on. Now those sneakups took nerve.” Bill smiled and said that was mighty bold talk. The Catfoot said he was ready to back it up anytime. “Just you name the bet,” he said, tossing off a drink.

  Bill affected to think about it, stroking his mustaches while he poured the Catfoot another. Then he dug four fifty-dollar gold pieces out of his pocket and slapped them on the desktop. “I’ll put these against that fine new Mexican saddle of yours,” he said, “that you can’t take a crop off Hardin’s head tonight.”

  Tom Carson told me later he was fairly sure Bill was just funning with the Catfoot, trying to get him to admit he wasn’t the sneakup he used to be, but I don’t know. If that was so, why didn’t he stop the Catfoot from going through with it when he saw he was really going to try? Tom’s answer was that Bill must of thought Hardin would treat it as a joke if he caught Catfoot in the act. Yeah, sure. Shows how damn blind Tom could make himself when it came to Bill’s mean side, that’s what I think.

  Anyhow, later that night, there we were, me and Tom and the Catfoot, standing in the shadows across the street from the American House, watching Hardin and his cousin Gip Clements going in after a night on the town. There was a moon out and the Catfoot’s eyes were shining with excitement as much as from all the whiskey he’d put down. His breath could’ve killed bugs. He was carrying a straight razor he’d honed for an hour. “I guess old Longhair will sure enough have to admit who’s the best sneakup in the world after tonight, hey?” He gave us a grin and vanished into the shadows.

  We passed the time watching the hotel and listening to the music from the saloons and parlor houses on the next block, the lowing of the cattle at the rail yard, the shouts and yahoos in the distance, the now-and-then sound of breaking glass followed by high female laughter. The damn town did know how to have a good time.

  And then bam-bam-bam!—gunshots from the American House. There were three more as we raced across the street and charged into the lobby. “Upstairs!” the desk clerk yelled, peeking around from behind the counter.

  The hallway reeked of gunsmoke. The Catfoot was curled up on the floor in a mess of blood, wide-eyed dead. He was hugging something tight against his chest, which turned out to be Hardin’s pants—the cousin’s too. Damn fool must of thought it’d be funny to take them back to Bill along with the lock of hair that he had gripped in one hand. There was no sign of the razor.

  The Catfoot’s blood trailed back to a shut door a few feet down the hall. For a moment I couldn’t hear a thing but my own hard breathing—and then I heard a soft scuffling coming from inside the room. Tom heard it too, and signaled to me to cover him, then ran up beside the door with his pistol cocked. Behind us the stairs were suddenly full of stomping boots and loud voices. “Give it up, Hardin!” Tom holler
ed at the door.

  Then Bill and Mike were in the hallway, both carrying shotguns. They had to have been damn close by to get up there as quick as they did. Bill hardly glanced at the Catfoot. He cocked the shotgun and nodded at Tom and Tom gave the door a hell of a kick, busting it open wide. Bill thrust the shotgun in the doorway and fired both barrels. Christ! In that little hallway the blasts were loud as dynamite.

  I followed Tom and Bill through the door, ready to shoot anything that moved, but the room was empty. I couldn’t hear anything for the ringing in my ears. Bill rushed to the window to take a look out on the portico and down in the alley. I peeked over his shoulder and saw Steve looking up at us, waving his arms and yelling something. I saw Bill’s lips say “Shit!” He shoved me aside and hustled out of the room with the rest of us on his tail.

  There was a crowd of drunks and curious citizens already gathered on the street. Bill pulled Steve back into the alley to question him out of their hearing. Steve looked ready to cry—and Bill looked ready to hit him. Steve said Hardin and Clements had dropped down off the portico and got the jump on him. Hardin held a razor to his throat while Clements relieved him of his shotgun and pistol. They’d grabbed the nearest two horses off the front hitching post and rode off together to the end of town. Then one kept going on the south road and the other broke off to the east. He didn’t know which was Hardin. Except for their hats and boots, they’d both been in their underclothes.

  That shut us all up a moment. We were all thinking the same thing. Mike was the first to chuckle about it. Then Tom gave a little snort like he was fighting to hold it back, and I felt myself grinning hard. I mean, I could just see it—Hardin the mankiller hightailing it out of Abilene in his underwear. Then all three of us busted out laughing, and then Steve couldn’t help but join in. Bill tried not to. He looked up at the stars and stroked his mustaches like he was trying to think of something else, but he couldn’t pull it off, and in another minute all five of us were laughing like loonies. We just stood there in the alley, laughing and laughing, with a crowd of citizens gawking at us from the street. “They looked like plucked chickens!” Steve said—and we all doubled up again. It was a good minute before we got ourselves under control and dried our eyes.