The Pistoleer (15 page)

T
he State Police showed up just before dawn. It was three of them, with a warrant for Harold Garlits, wanted for murdering some barber named Huffman in Waco. The leader was the oldest of the three, a lieutenant named Stokes who looked to be fifty or so. He sent Shithead running to fetch Sheriff Cookie from home. Hardin started explaining to him that they had the wrong man, his name was Josephson and so on, but Stokes told him to save it for the judge.

Sheriff Cookie came in looking displeased about being woke up so early in the day. He gave the lieutenant’s warrant a quick onceover, then let Hardin out of the cell. The biggest of the policemen, a nigger breed of some sort with a bad white scar across one eye, put a pair of cuffs on him.

“Hey, bubba, not so tight!” Hardin said to him.

The breed socked him full in the mouth, knocking him back against the cell bars and nearly off his feet. It was so sudden I flinched back from the bars. Sheriff Cookie looked riled, but he kept his mouth shut. Most sheriffs did, when they dealt with the State Police.

“Now, boy,” the lieutenant said to Hardin, “Sergeant Smolley here don’t much care for back-sass. Me neither. Don’t be giving us no more of it.” He said it the way a man might say he hoped it wouldn’t rain.

Hardin licked the blood off his mashed lips and said, “No, sir.” He gave the breed a fearful look. Hell, I don’t blame him. That was one scary son of a bitch.

The lieutenant told the third policeman to search the prisoner. He was a young jasper who didn’t look too happy to be there.

“That ain’t necessary,” Sheriff Cookie said. “Don’t you think I done that before locking him in? I got his guns right here.” He went to the desk to get them. The lieutenant told the youngster to search Hardin anyway.

When the boy dug his hands under Hardin’s bear coat, I thought sure he’d find the gun. Maybe he just wasn’t any good at searching, or maybe there was some other reason, I don’t know. All I know is, he patted Hardin from his neck to his boot tops, then told the lieutenant, “He’s unarmed.” Sheriff Cookie handed over Hardin’s pistols. Then the breed pulled Hardin on outside and that was the last I saw of him.

W
hen we went to Marshall to pick up Wes Hardin, we didn’t know that’s who he was. The warrant said he was somebody named Garlits, wanted for killing a man in a Waco barbershop, and our orders were to take him to Waco for trial. It was early morning when we got there—and so goddamn cold I thought my teeth would crack. Icicles hung from the eaves and our horses stepped careful on the icy patches in the street. The weather put Smolley and Stokes in even worse tempers than usual. When Hardin complained his cuffs was on too tight, Smolley punched him one in the mouth for back-sassing. Stokes had me pat him down for a weapon just to irritate the sheriff by showing he didn’t trust him to’ve done the job right, so I only went through the motions of a search. It’d be a different tale I’m telling if I’d of searched him proper.

We took Hardin out and hobbled his feet under his mount—an ornery old black mule Stokes got for him through some kind of deal he made with the Longview sheriff who’d arrested him. The mule didn’t have a saddle, and Hardin had to ride on a blanket, injun style. The Longview sheriff was looking on, and Hardin told him he wanted his own horse. “I rode in on a fine roan stallion,” he said. “My saddle’s Mexican leather. I got goods in the saddlebags, including a vest my sister made me that I’m special fond of.” The Longview sheriff said for Hardin not to worry, he’d take real good care of his property for him. He said, “You be sure and come see me about your horse and goods if you don’t get hung, or when you get out of prison in about thirty years.” Stokes and Smolley gave a loud laugh at that. It was lots of thieves wearing badges in those days. Hardin started to argue about it, but Stokes told him he’d best remember what he told him about back-sass, and Hardin quit complaining.

When we got out on the trail, Stokes told him if he tried to escape we’d fill him so full of lead it’d take the three of us to lift his carcass back onto the mule. Stokes nodded at Smolley and said, “That breed’ll skin you alive for the pure pleasure of it if I so much as give him the wink to do it.”

That was the truth. Smolley was about the meanest I ever met of the bad lot of bullies and thieves to be found in the State Police. A good many of them was mean-ass Nigras. I never thought I’d see the day when a Nigra’d be wearing a badge, but there they were. That’s how fast and strange the world was changing. All the fellers on the force were hard cases, naturally, and ain’t no question some of them were on the run from the law their ownselfs. But most were like me—ex-soldiers down on their luck who’d joined up because it was the only choice other than being a robber and it seemed wiser to be among the sons of bitches who put people in jail than be among them who got put in jail. Just the same, I don’t recall a single time I got the full sixty dollars pay I had coming to me every month. They was always deducting money from our pay for one damn thing or another, so it’s no wonder so many on the force was prone to helping theirselves out with their badge. There was a good bit of “confiscation” from the men we arrested—money, horses, guns, whatever might be of personal use or could be sold off easy. I never did such confiscations myself. I could of been a robber, but I never was no bully nor no thief.

Jim Smolley was the worst of both. They said he’d been one of Sherman’s bummers in the march across Georgia, and before that had rode with a band of Comancheros. He was part white, part Mex, and a big part Nigra, which he looked more than anything else. Stokes was near as much a bully as Smolley and an even bigger thief, and he often picked me to work with the two of them—I think because he figured I was so young and new to the force I wouldn’t never make any trouble for him about the way he did things. I hate to admit it, but he was right. I never could bring myself to snitch on them, even though I saw them shoot more than one prisoner for no more reason than back-sassing or. cussing them, then write in their report that the prisoner had tried to escape. Like I said, there was plenty other State Policemen just like them. But I want it known that not all of us used our badge for a license to steal and commit meanness. Some of us were on the force because it was steady pay for legal work at a time when such was hard to come by. No other reason why.

Anyhow, when Stokes said we’d shoot him dead if he tried to run, Hardin said yessir, yessir, he understood, and we didn’t have to worry none about him being so foolish as trying to escape. He was a completely innocent man and all he wanted was the chance to prove it in court. “I ain’t worried,” he said, “because I trust in the Lord and in the justice of our courts. As soon as you fellas get me in front of a judge is how soon I’ll be a free man again, or my name ain’t Frank Josephson.”

The Sabine was swollen bad and running fast under a thick haze. It was a hard crossing. Stokes threw a lariat over Hardin’s mule and gave his end of the rope a few turns around his saddle horn, then nudged his horse into the river and led Hardin across. Me and Smolley went directly behind them—Smolley with his gun in his hand, ready to shoot Hardin if he somehow got loose and tried to swim away. We made it all right, but soaked as we were the cold wind really cut into us. As soon as we reached higher ground we made camp and got a big fire going to warm the chill out of our bones and dry our clothes and boots. We took turns guarding Hardin through the night. On my shift he didn’t do nothing but sleep like a baby.

When we got to the Trinity it was way up over its banks and booming even harder than the Sabine had been. We followed it south a few miles to where there was a ferry. The ferryman said it was too rough to cross, but Stokes persuaded him that things would be a lot rougher if he didn’t take us over. It was a wild crossing that had us hanging tight to the rail and nearly pitched Stokes’s horse in the river. Smolley held a shotgun on Hardin the whole time. I don’t know if Hardin was more scared of falling in the river and drowning or of Smolley accidentally pulling the trigger from all the tossing about.

It was mighty wet going for a while after that, and it stayed cold as the dickens. The bottoms were a foot under icy water, and the sloughs nothing but frosty mud. Hardin kept asking us to untie him from the mule. He was scared he’d drown for sure if the animal lost its footing and fell down in the water. Stokes told him to shut up or Smolley would pull him off the mule and drown him himself.

We were on higher land by nightfall and made camp. Stokes was in a short temper. He cuffed Hardin a good one for not moving fast enough when he ordered him to round up some firewood. There was a town called Fairfield a few miles off and Stokes said he was going there to get fodder for the animals. I happened to know there was a saloon and a couple of whores there, so I guess I knew what he was really going for.

After Stokes left, Smolley followed Hardin around while he searched out wood with his hands still cuffed. Smolley kept taking out his pistol and cocking it and pointing it at him. Kept saying what a pleasure it’d be to blow his brains out. He must of drawed that pistol and said that to him upward of a dozen times. I didn’t much care for it, but I knew better than to butt into Smolley’s fun, so I busied myself cleaning my pistol on a blanket.

Hardin looked about to cry from being so scared. He said, “Please be careful with that gun, Sergeant. I ain’t no badman, sir, believe me. I just want to get to a courtroom and prove it.” Smolley’d uncock the pistol and twirl it a few times, then cock it again and aim at him and say “Pow!”—and laugh to see him cringe.

While he built a fireguard of rocks and set the wood in it, Hardin kept glancing scared over his shoulder at Smolley. He put a match to the kindling, then knelt over it with his back to us to shield it against the breeze. He struck a half-dozen matches trying to get it going. All of a sudden he started sobbing hard and rocking back and forth in that big coat. Smolley gave a big horse laugh and started over to him—to give him a good kick, prob’ly. He said, “What’s the matter, boy? You want your momma?”

Hardin spun around on his knees with a big pistol in his hands and shot Smolley in the face. Smolley staggered back and his legs gave out and he fell on his ass and sat there with his arms hanging limp at his sides. He had a hole under his left eye and looked awful surprised. Hardin scooted over to him and snatched away his gun.

I never moved. I just sat there with my pistol in pieces in front of me and felt my guts go soft when Hardin aimed the pistol at me and cocked it.

“Hands on your head, boy!” I did it quick.

Smolley was watching him with his mouth open, like maybe he was trying to think of something to say. Hardin grinned down at him and put the pistol in his face. “Hit me
now,
nigger,” he said. And he shot him in the eye.

He worked the key out of Smolley’s pocket and undid the cuffs, then came over and put them on me and told me to get my hands back on my head. He kicked the pieces of my gun into the bushes, then searched all through Smolley’s saddlebags—looking for his own guns, I reckoned—and cussed when he didn’t find them. Stokes had took them with him. While he saddled Smolley’s horse, I sat there with my cuffed hands on my head and didn’t say a word. I kept expecting him to put a ball in me any second.

When he was mounted and ready to ride, he reined the snorting pony around me in tight prancing circles. “Listen here,” he said, “I am John Wesley Hardin, and whatever reason you got for being a State Police, it ain’t a good one.” Well, I figured I was dead for sure—but then he said, “I’m obliged to you for not letting on about the gun, and whyever you did
that,
it’s a
damn
good reason. But you’re a State Police and I ain’t shot you dead, so we’re even.” He tossed me the cuffs key and told me to take them off and fling them way into the brush. Then he said, “I ever see you again and you still wearing that badge, I’ll do you like that nigger, you hear?” And he touched spurs to the horse and rode off into the dark.

I knew right off why he made me throw away the cuffs. Without them on me, there wasn’t much chance Stokes would believe my story of how Hardin made his escape and killed Smolley but not me. He’d be sure to lay the blame on me for losing his prisoner—prob’ly even claim I’d helped him escape. That’s the moment my career in the State Police come to an end. In another minute I was saddled up and out of there my ownself, riding hard for Louisiana.

Funny, ain’t it? Wes Hardin, by damn! Thinking I’d left that pistola on him a-purpose!