The Pistoleer (26 page)

One of the fellas listening to Manning’s story, a drummer passing through, muttered something about how it didn’t seem too awful “sporting” of West to shoot that third fella in the head thataway. Manning jumped out of the barber chair and grabbed him by the collar in both fists. “That son of a bitch and all the rest of them rode all the way down here to kill Wes!” he shouted in the fella’s face, which turned about white as a sheet. “All of them against just one of him! So what the hell you mean
sporting,
you stupid shitbucket?” A bunch of us managed to calm Manning down just enough to let loose of the fella, and I mean that stranger cleared out
quick.

The tale of Wes’s fight against the San Antonio posse spread through the Sandies like fire in dry grass. It made all the newspapers. Some editorials called him a hero for standing up to the damned State Police and the cowardly vigilantes who supported them—but others referred to him as a bloody desperado who ought to be shot down like a dog or strung up from the highest oak in Texas.

We then got word that a mob of about fifty Nigra police and some of their white-trash amigos were threatening to come to Smiley and burn the town down for being a friend to Wes Hardin. When Wes heard about it, he went to the telegraph office and sent a wire to State Police headquarters saying, “Come on down. Won’t one of you be going back.” When they still hadn’t showed themselves a week later, we knew they weren’t ever coming. Fact is, we never did see too much of the State Police in Gonzales after Wes sent them that telegram.

W
es then left the Sandies for a time. Some said he’d gone up to Hill County to visit with his daddy and momma, and some said he’d gone to San Antone to start a horse business. I don’t know. The Clementses must of known, of course, but they never said, and I don’t blame them. You never knew who might be whispering into the ears of the State Police. He didn’t show up around here again till shortly after Christmas, when Gip Clements got married to Annie Tenelle. Matter of fact, it was at Gip and Annie’s wedding dance that Wes and Jane announced their engagement.

T
he wedding bells rang for them in Riddleville on a cool sunny day in March. They moved into a small house out on Fred Duderstadt’s ranch. Wes talked about rounding up a herd and making another drive to Kansas along with my Lucas and the Clements brothers, but then they heard the Kansas beef market was still too low to make a drive worthwhile. So the Clementses decided to work a small herd of steers over to the coast for shipment to Mobile, and Wes decided he would try the horse business for a while. My Lucas and his brother John threw in with him. They’d heard it was a good market for horses just across the river in Sabine Parish.

While Lucas and John got to work building a corral on the Duderstadt place, Wes rode down to the King ranch and made a deal for horseflesh. It was expected he’d be gone about twelve days or so, but he’d only been gone barely more than a week when Lucas went out to the corral one morning and found Wes’s horse Old Bob in there, white-caked all over and too played out to even lift its head. Wes had bought that fine horse from my brother-in-law John, and now it was ruined for fair.

When Wes showed up later in the day and Lucas asked him what had happened to Old Bob, he grinned a little shamefaced and said he’d made a straight-through ride from just south of the Nueces to Gonzales County. That’s over a hundred miles, and Wes said he’d rode it in a little over six hours. It’s no wonder the poor animal was foundered. I never could abide mistreatment of a horse, and I asked Lucas whatever had possessed Wesley Hardin to do such a thing to Old Bob. He said Wes told him he’d all of a sudden got so lonely for his bride he couldn’t stand it and just wanted to get home to her as quick as he could. When he told me this, Lucas shrugged and studied his right hand like he always did when he wasn’t sure if a thing made sense or not.

But of course it did. There’s lots of things somebody might do they wouldn’t normally except they’re neck-deep in love. Wes had rode that horse near to death for the love of Jane. I pitied the poor horse, but it made all the sense in the world.

You could see how awful much he loved her just by how he beamed on her all evening at the party Manning Clements threw for them at his house toward the end of May. We were celebrating Jane’s announcement that they were expecting their first child late next winter.

T
hey soon had the herd all ready, and Lucas and John agreed to drive it to Hemphill, and because Daddy Harper was sheriff of Sabine County, Wes thought it was as safe a town as any for them to meet up in and take care of business. He went on ahead of the herd to visit for a spell with some of his kinfolk in Livingston. As I recall, he bought himself a racer in Polk County and took that horse with him to Hemphill. Lucas said that animal won Wes just barrels of money.

After Lucas and John showed up with the herd and the horses got sold, the two of them decided to stay in Hemphill and visit with their daddy awhile. But Wes wanted to get back to Jane and said so long. The thing is, he didn’t head back directly. He started back by way of his old stomping grounds in Trinity County so he could call on more kinfolk he hadn’t seen for a time. It turned out to be a real bad idea, though, because it was in Trinity he got himself shot-gunned.

I
wish I’d used my head sooner and not cleaned up the blood before I realized how good it would of been for business to leave it be. I should of let it dry and marked off the spot with some paint or a rope. Even so, my trade about doubled for the next few months with gawkers come to see where it happened. At least I was smart enough to pick the buckshot out of the doorjamb before they did. I sold each shot for as much as two dollars apiece, and when I ran out I just broke open some shells in the back room and sold that as the real thing. Damn fools never knew the difference.

H
e came in with his cousin Barnett Jones and a few other friends of theirs. Barnett lived over near Livingston and had been in my saloon many a time. I knew him real well. I was right proud when he introduced me to Wes. I had a nice ten-pin alley in the back room, and the two of them went back there to roll a few games. I had Freddie spell me at the front bar so I could go back there and watch.

After winning about four, five games in a row, Barnett said he wouldn’t play him anymore. “I’m just stealing it from you, the way you play,” he told Wes. “I’ll play for fun, but no more betting. Daddy’d skin me alive if he found out I’d took such advantage of kin.” But Wes insisted they keep playing for money. “A man’s supposed to give a fella a chance to win his money back, god-damnit.” And so on. You know how it is with a fella who’s losing bad.

Right about then, this fella who’d been watching them play says he wouldn’t mind wagering on a few rolls. His name was Phil Sublett. He was an overdressed dandy with a thin mustache and a high opinion of himself, a tinhorn, always on the lookout for a sure thing. He must of reckoned he had one just then against Wes.

“Fine with me!” Wes says. “Don’t much matter to me who I win it back from. What’s your bet, mister?” Sublett says how does three dollars a ball sound? Wes says how does five? The gambler smiles real big and says, “It’s a bet.” So they each put up fifty dollars to cover all ten balls and hand the stake to me.

Well, sir, Wes wins the first two rolls and everybody in the place is laughing and cheering at what we all figure ain’t nothing more than simple luck, considering the way he was playing just a minute earlier. Then he wins the next two balls and Sublett does some hot cussing and looks at Wes out the sides of his eyes and Wes laughs and says something about the luck of the Irish. When he wins the fifth roll, we all just look at each other. Barnett gives me a wink and I finally catch on how bad they’ve hornswoggled Sublett.

When Wes won the sixth roll, even Sublett knew he’d been taken in and was pretty hot about it. He said he wanted to lower the bet to two dollars a ball. Nothing doing, Wes said; they made the bet for five and that was what it’d stay. Sublett said either the bet got lowered or he was quitting. Wes says, “You quit and you forfeit the whole bet.”

Well, Sublett was a tinhorn gambler but he didn’t lack for guts, just brains, and he grabbed for his pocket gun. Wes caught his gunhand by the wrist and slapped him three or four quick times across the mouth, then twisted the little gun away from him and pushed it up into his nose. I thought Sublett had breathed his last. But Barnett grabbed Wes’s arm and said, “Hold on, cousin—it ain’t worth it!” Sublett’s eyes looked like boiled eggs and his face was splotched red around his mouth where Wes had slapped him. Wes let go of him and said, “You best give up gambling, hoss, if you gonna take losing as hard as all that.”

He hands me Sublett’s derringer and I stick it under my apron. “Let’s get on with it,” he says, and then rolls again. Sublett loses that roll worst of all, naturally, as shook up as he was. “Oh, hell,” Wes says, “now it’s like playing against some softbrain. This ain’t no contest.” He takes the stake money from me and counts out his own fifty plus thirty-five of Sublett’s and hands him the fifteen left over. “Here, bubba,” he tells him, “game’s over. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. Hell, I’ll buy
everybody
a drink!”

We all go out to the front room and Wes stands the house a round. Then I notice Sublett’s left the scene. He’d likely slipped out the side-alley door while everybody was cheering Wes and thanking him for his generosity. I reckoned he felt too damn shamed to stay and drink with us.

Ten minutes later Wes went over to the front doors to have a look outside—which was the worst thing he could of done at that moment. Somebody in the back of the room yelled, “Watch it, Wes!” And there was Sublett, standing just inside the side-alley door, aiming a shotgun. Wes started to turn and pull his pistol, but there was only thirty feet between them and Sublett had the drop on him and couldn’t miss, not with Wes squared in the doorway like he was, just a perfect target.

The charge hit him just above the hip and knocked him clean out of the room. Everybody dropped to the floor and Sublett fired the second barrel at the empty doorway and took out a good chunk of doorjamb. Then he lowered the shotgun and stood there for a minute, looking like he couldn’t believe he’d done it.

Sublett was just starting to smile when Wes lurched back in through the door, clutching at his mangled side, his face all twisted up in pain. He yelled, “You sonbitch!” and got off a wild shot just as Sublett dropped the scattergun and ran out.

The blood was rolling off his wound and drenching his pant leg, but he staggered back outside as Sublett came out from the alley and ran down the street. Wes stumbled out into the street after him and got off a couple of shots, and Tim Jackson swore he saw Sublett catch one in the shoulder, but I don’t know. Sublett disappeared around the corner and that’s the last any of us ever saw of him. He had to of had a horse all saddled and waiting to get away as fast as he did.

Wes managed to gimp about ten feet down the street before he dropped, and we all went running up to him. He was gasping and wide-eyed. “I reckon I’m killed,” he said.

Barnett kept trying to soothe him as me and a bunch of the boys hoisted him up, one on each leg and one under each arm, and started toting him fast over to Doc Carrington’s office. It was a hell of a wound and left a bright red trail all the way to the doc’s. I thought sure he’d be empty as a tore-open water bag by the time we got him there.

On the way over, he told Barnett to take his money belt off him, that it had about two thousand dollars in gold, and that his saddlebags were holding another two or three hundred in silver. He told him to get the money to his wife and to tell her he tried to avoid this trouble but had no choice in the matter.

He was breathing rough when we got him into Doc Carrington’s, but his eyes were still burning with life. We put him on the table in the office and the doc sent one of the fellas to go get Doc Lester from his office in the livery, where he tended to animals and people both. Then he ran the rest of us on outside. Barnett was the last to come out. He had the money belt with him. It was dripping blood and had seven buckshot wedged in it.