The Pistoleer (45 page)

H
is transformation, according to officials at Huntsville, had been truly miraculous. Despite having been a most intractable convict during his first few years in the penitentiary, he had, after thirteen years, become a model prisoner. He was held up to the other inmates as supreme proof and example of what a man might make of himself behind bars if he truly tried. The prison superintendent had informed Wesley that if he persisted in his remarkable reform, he would likely be set free within the next two years.

Wesley was elated by the prospect; but his elation was shadowed by another ominous legal cloud. Namely: he was still under indictment in DeWitt County for having killed a man there twenty years before, a deputy sheriff named Morgan. It was quite possible that he would be granted an early termination of his present sentence only to be put right back in prison upon conviction for the Morgan killing.

His plight was brought to my attention by Billy Teagarden, whose father had been my dear friend for many years. Billy and Wesley had been friends since boyhood and had been corresponding with each other of late, and Billy advised me that Wesley wished to retain me as legal counsel in the matter of the Morgan killing. I had to confess admiration for Wesley Hardin’s astonishing feat of character reformation, and I said I would be pleased to represent him. Shortly thereafter I received a most impressive letter from Wesley himself. That he was no ordinary convict was immediately evident in his intelligent composition and ready grasp of legal principle. Clearly his study of law had taken effect.

I visited him in Huntsville, and we put our heads together and devised a strategy. He agreed that
if
the DeWitt charge would be reduced to manslaughter, and
if
the judge would permit his sentence (normally two to five years for manslaughter) to run concurrently with the one he was already serving,
then
he would plead guilty as charged—even though, as he repeatedly assured me, he was not in the least guilty. “That man Morgan forced my hand, Judge Fly,” Wesley told me. “He gave me no choice but to defend myself, which is something I always could do real well.”

I assured him I was certain the incident transpired exactly as he claimed, but it was possible a jury in Cuero would not share my certainty. It was because of a jury’s unpredictable nature that he was willing to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit—
if
the conviction would not add to his time in prison. The scales of Lady Justice sometimes take ironic tilts.

I
discussed the matter with Bubba Anderson, the state attorney in Cuero, with whom I happened to be friends. Because Bubba had no ax to grind with Wesley—and because he wanted to rid his old caseload of the Morgan killing—and because even a manslaughter conviction of Hardin would look good on his prosecutorial record and improve his chances of achieving the political future he was after—he was willing to accept the plea bargain. Bubba then went to see the judge who would hear the case—and because Bubba and the judge were drinking companions and long-time associates at a poker club, they had no difficulty reaching an accord.

Once everything was in proper legal alignment to assure a favorable dispensation of justice in the matter of the Morgan killing, I delivered the news to Wesley. He was quite gratified, of course, so much so that he arranged for a cousin in Gonzales County to meet in a certain Cuero saloon with a representative of the DeWitt County Council for Law and Order and deliver to him a cash contribution toward the Council’s good works. The Council for Law and Order was an unofficial organization whose small but influential membership was comprised of some of the most important judges in the region, including the judge who was to hear Wesley’s case in Cuero. Another undeniable truth about the scales of Justice is that nothing so emphatically affects their tilt as the impressive heft of gold.

*    *    *

T
he trial was held in Cuero on New Year’s Day of 1892, and proceeded exactly as arranged. The whole thing took less than twenty minutes. We entered a plea of guilty and the judge handed down a sentence of two years’ imprisonment to run concurrent with sentence being served.

That trip to Cuero was the first time Wesley had been outside the walls of Huntsville in more than thirteen years. Immediately prior to the trial, his family was permitted to visit him for a few minutes in a courtroom side chamber. I was in the chamber with him, discussing some last-minute points pertaining to the proceedings, when a deputy came in and announced they had arrived.

Suddenly Wes seemed nervous and unsure of himself. It had been a long time since they’d last seen each other. He had shown me photographs of his children which his wife had sent to him over the years—but it is one thing to see children grow up in a sequence of pictures, and quite another to come face-to-face with them after long separation. The only photograph he had of Jane was one which showed the two of them standing arm-in-arm in Jackson Square in New Orleans. She was smiling widely, her hat in her hands, her eyes happy, her light hair lifting in a breeze and shining in the sun. Wesley looked lean and grinned confidently under his cocked hat, his thumbs hooked in his vest.

“I’ve been in prison more than twice as long as we lived together,” he’d said softly, staring at the picture in his hand. It was remarkable how young he yet looked. He was heavier now than in the photograph—not with fat but with the muscle of hard labor and the settled flesh of confined living. For all the punishment he’d taken during his early years in Huntsville, his face remained fairly free of scars, and his eyes were still quick and keen. His vitality of spirit was rare among long-time convicts.

I patted his arm encouragingly and excused myself, then followed the deputy into the outer room, where the family was waiting to be ushered into the chamber. With them was Fred Duderstadt, Wesley’s long-time friend who had been of such great help to Jane and the children during Wesley’s incarceration. He introduced himself to me, then presented the family. Molly, the eldest at eighteen, was a striking lass with lively eyes and a determined countenance, and little Jane, a slight fair thing of thirteen, was as pretty as a porcelain doll. John Junior was a strapping buck of seventeen or so and looked every bit the rugged ranch hand he had become under Fred Duderstadt’s tutelage. They were all extremely well mannered but somewhat subdued, which I supposed was natural, given the circumstances.

Jane was a shock. Her hair was completely gray and her face deeply lined. Her shoulders sagged. Her eyes were dark wells of suffering. When I gently shook her offered hand, the bones under her pallid skin felt fragile as matchsticks. Her weak smile roused my heart’s pity. She had become an old woman at the age of thirty-five.

The deputy led them into the chamber. In a few minutes Fred returned and we went outside to smoke on the portico. He commented on how well Wesley appeared—and a moment later confirmed my suspicion that he was thinking the same thing I was when he said, “It’s hard on a woman, I reckon. They can’t help but stand by and suffer. It wears on them.” I had to agree. During the brief trial a few minutes later, she sat directly behind Wesley, and I believe most of the spectators in the courtroom took her for his mother.

M
y efforts on behalf of Wesley did not end with the Cuero trial. No sooner was he returned to Huntsville than he engaged me in his quest for a full pardon from the state of Texas. Although he was assured of gaining his release from prison in another year or so, his full civil rights could be restored only by a pardon from the governor, and he now devoted himself zealously toward acquiring that legal absolution.

It was certainly an auspicious time to petition for it. His heroic achievement of self-reform had been hailed by Huntsville officials and widely publicized by newspapers throughout the state. Dave Hamilton, newly elected to the legislature, had joined Billy Teagarden’s unflagging efforts on Wesley’s behalf. But the most favorable factor in his quest for pardon was the governor himself. James Stephen Hogg, “the people’s governor,” the first Texas native to govern the state, a wellborn man who’d grown up poor and was a fervent champion of the downtrodden, had just won a strenuous reelection campaign. If there was ever a governor whose sympathies might be moved by a plea from a convict of demonstrably reformed character, that governor was Big Jim Hogg.

Wesley labored hard and diligently on the careful composition of his petition. It included a detailed account of his crime and all the mitigating factors relating to it, and cited legal reference as it applied to his trial and the testimony rendered thereat. He had not proceeded very far, however, when he was distracted by the news that Jane had been taken seriously ill. In a frantic exchange of letters with his children he was assured that their mother was recovering well.

Perhaps so, but not for long. She soon fell ill again, this time even more seriously than before. I heard the bad news from Billy and immediately wrote to Wesley to inquire if I might be of any service to his family. I received no reply. I learned from Billy that Wesley was writing daily letters to his children, admonishing them to do everything possible for their mother and constantly plying them with questions about her condition. He sent me a brief note near the end of October. “I spend my days and nights beseeching the Lord to make my darling well,” he wrote. “I am confident He will not abandon her, she who has suffered so much on my behalf.” To his children he wrote: “Any serious mishap to your lovable mama would be … a calamity irretrievable and irreparable.”

O
n the sixth of November, 1892, Jane Hardin died. I was told that her final words were, “Oh, sweet Jesus,
yes
!”

H
e grieved in the dark solitude of his cell. A guard reported that he’d chewed his tongue bloody. The officials feared he’d gone mad. They said he sometimes howled in the night. Billy suspected that had it not been for his love of the children, Wesley might have ended his own life. “His whole excitement about getting freed soon,” Billy said to me, “was because he and Jane would finally be back together. But now …” He turned his palms up and shrugged.

Jane was buried near her childhood home of Coon Hollow, and Wesley’s children were taken in by Fred Duderstadt and his family. Except for quite brief letters to the children, Wesley shunned contact with the outside world. He answered no letters—perhaps did not even read them. He would receive no visitors. The guards reported that he simply lay in his bunk and stared at the stone ceiling.

But one cannot grieve forever, after all. One either recovers or goes mad and that’s the end of it. Over the next few months he slowly came back to life. He wrote letters of gratitude to Billy and to me and, I’m sure, to many others who had expressed their condolences and offered to help in his time of deep sorrow. And then he resumed work on his petition for pardon.

H
e submitted an early draft of the petition to me for critique, and I was most impressed by its clarity and cohesion, as well as by its astute legal references. With but minimum guidance from me, he had crafted a legal instrument of no less quality than those composed by attorneys of long practice. Indeed, it was in some ways superior. Unlike most legal documents, his was informed by a general semantic clarity and ease of style. In November of 1893 he forwarded the completed petition to me and asked that I deliver it personally to the governor, with whom I had by then become warmly acquainted through several audiences on various matters of law and politics.

J
ohn Wesley Hardin was released from the Huntsville Penitentiary on February 17, 1894. He was forty years old and had been in prison for fifteen years, four months, and twelve days. One month later, his petition for pardon was granted by Governor Hogg. I forwarded it to Wesley with the following letter:

Dear Sir—Enclosed I send you a full pardon from the governor of Texas. I congratulate you on its reception and trust that it is the dawn of a bright and peaceful future. There is time to retrieve a lost past. Turn your back upon it with all its suffering and sorrow and fix your eyes upon the future with the determination to make yoursetfan honorable and useful member of society. The hand of every true man will be extended to assist you in your upward course and I trust that the name of Hardin will in the future be associated with the performance of deeds that will ennoble his family and be a blessing to humanity. Did you ever read Victor Hugo’s masterpiece, “Les Miserables”? If not, you ought to read it. It paints in graphic words the life of one who had tasted the bitterest dregs of life’s cup, but in his Christian manhood rose above it almost like a god and left behind him a path luminous with good deeds. With the best wishes for your welfare and happiness, I am, yours very truly
,

W. S. FLY