The Pistoleer (49 page)

The local lawmen weren’t nearly so glad as the saloon rats to have him in town. I heard that Jeff Milton and George Scarborough met him at the station with shotguns. They warned him against carrying a gun inside the city limits and told him to watch his step. It must’ve been an interesting conversation. Hardin supposedly told them he had no intention of making trouble and hoped nobody would give him any. He said he wanted only to be a good lawyer, and it’s a fact he opened a law office on the second floor of the professional building across the street from the Gem.

The first night he was in town he came into the Gem and was greeted like some kind of hero. At one point he had a dozen fresh drinks on the bar in front of him, each one bought by a different man. Everybody wanted to be able to say he’d bought a drink for the one and only John Wesley Hardin. Everybody wanted to be his friend. Everybody wanted to hear him tell about facing down Bill Hickok and about the way he gunned down Charlie Webb in Comanche. They gathered round him like some kind of one-man freak show, which I guess in a way he was. The first few times he came in, he accepted the drinks but only threw back a couple of them, and he politely declined to tell stories about his past. He said those days were long gone and he didn’t really care to relive them, thank you. But it just wasn’t in him to ignore all that admiring attention, I guess. It was pretty obvious he liked it, and I don’t guess he got too many free drinks all the time he was in prison. By the time he’d been in town two weeks he was knocking back most of the drinks the boys bought him and grinning bright-eyed at the crowd gathered round as he demonstrated the “road agent’s spin” he’d used on Hickok. No question he could twirl those pistolas. I heard he was putting on the same show in saloons all over El Paso.

He started sitting in on some of the card games in the Gem, and I know a few of the boys sometimes lost hands to him on purpose, just to make him happy and to stay on his good side. But the fact is, he was a reckless card player, and sometimes the boys couldn’t lose a hand to him even when they tried. I’d always heard he was a hell of a gambler, but you never would’ve known it from the way he played in the Gem. To make things worse, he was one of those bad losers I mentioned before, especially when he’d been drinking.

One night he got into a stud game at my table and by midnight was just about cleaned out. He was red-eyed and surly and in no mood for the general joshing and chuckling at the table. When Buck Elliot laid down four nines to take the biggest pot of the night—which Hardin had been sure he was going to take with his full house of aces over fives—well, it was too much for him. He said, “Shit!” and sent Buck’s cards flying off the table with a quick backhand sweep of his arm.

Everybody said, “Hey now!” and “No need for that!” and so on. They’d all got pretty familiar with him in the couple of weeks he’d been in town, and the familiarity had eased them off their tiptoes around him. Maybe that was part of what was bothering him, I don’t know. All I know for sure is what happened. He jumps up and says, “I’ve had enough of your card tricks, boy!” He was talking to me. I was stunned. “
I
don’t play card tricks!” I said, and the others quickly backed me up. “Hud’s no cheat, Hardin, “ Bill Lepperman said, and Jerome Bradstreet chimes in with, “It ain’t his dealing costing you, Hardin, it’s your playing.”

“Save the bullshit for your gardens, you sonbitches,” Hardin says, and pushes back his coat flaps so we can get a good look at the one pistol on his hip and the other hung in a vest holster. He never did pull them—Buck and the others lied about that. He just let us see them, and that was enough. “The whole bunch of you been playing me for the fish all night long,” he says, “but that damn game’s over. This pot’s mine and I’m taking it. Anybody’s got objections, all he’s got to do is stand up and make them.”

None of us stood up or said anything more, and he raked up the pot and stuffed it in his pockets. I had a derringer in the waist pocket of my vest, but it might as well have been a frog for all the use I was about to make of it. That was the moment I made up my mind to move on to California.

As soon as Hardin left, Buck went out in search of a lawman, and a few minutes later was back with Old John at his side. John listened to everybody’s story, then him and Buck set out for the Herndon House, where Hardin lived. But as they were walking past the Wigwam Saloon they spotted him at the bar.

The way Buck told the story, he was right at Old John’s side as John stepped up to Hardin and told him he was under arrest. But Mack Tracey, who was working the bar that night, told me Buck hung back by the doors, ready as a rabbit to run for it. Buck claimed Old John backed Hardin down, but Mack told it different. He said when Old John told Hardin he was under arrest for robbing a card game, Hardin said he didn’t do any such thing, he’d only taken what was rightfully his. Old John said he could tell it to the judge, and Hardin said, “I’m telling it to
you,
uncle.” There weren’t but about six people in the saloon at that late hour and they all hustled out of the line of fire. No telling what would’ve happened next, Mack said, if Jeff Milton hadn’t come in just then.

Chief Milton heard one side of the story from Hardin, then the other from Buck, then said to Hardin, “If you can prove they were cheating you, I’ll do something about it—but if you can’t, then you’re in the wrong, and you know you are. Now you told me yourself when you first got to town you didn’t want any trouble. I’m holding you to your word.”

Hardin said he knew he’d been cheated but couldn’t prove it. “Then I’ll have to arrest you for robbery, Wes,” Chief Milton told him.

“I’ll have that pistol,” Old John said, and started to reach for the pistol on Hardin’s hip. But Hardin stepped back from him and squared off. “No you won’t,” he said. “Jeff can arrest me, but
you
can’t arrest one side of me, you murdering old buzzard. I know all about you.”

Mack said Old John’s eyes flamed up and for a moment it looked like he might pull—but he didn’t. “If Old John was ever going to pull on Wes Hardin in a stand-up gunfight, that was the time he’d of done it,” Mack said. “The man had just called him a murderer, for Christ’s sake. But Old John didn’t get old by. taking chances in a stand-up fight, if you know what I mean—and if you ever tell him I said that, I’ll call you a bald-ass liar.”

Anyhow, that’s what I saw of John Wesley Hardin with my own eyes in El Paso and what I heard about him with my own ears. Jeff Milton took him before Judge Howe and the judge made him repay the money to Buck, then fined him twenty-five dollars.

They say Hardin and Jeff got to be friends after that and often took a drink or two in the saloons together—and George Scarborough with them. Some say the three of them got to be thick as thieves and even conspired in the killing of Martin McRose. I wouldn’t know. By then I was on my way to California. But I do know that Hardin and Old John weren’t friends for even a minute. Between them, it was bad blood from the start.

T
here’s nothing worse can happen to a man than to fall in love with a hot-ass bitch. That’s what happened to Marty. Hell, she used to give
me
some looks, and I ain’t
nothing
to look at. If it had a dick, she was interested.

Me and Vic and Tom were at the cantina table in Juárez with them when Scarborough told Marty that Hardin was keeping company with his wife. He said it real casual, while he was rolling himself a smoke. He said everybody in El Paso knew it too and was having a good laugh about it. Marty’s grin looked like wood. He said what the hell did he care, she wasn’t his wife no more. He said he’d divorced the no-good tramp in Ojinaga a coupla months ago, so she could fuck all El Paso for all he cared. Bullshit. He was lying to try and save face. Whenever Marty was really steamed, a big vein on his forehead would swell up, and just then it looked about to pop.

“Well,” Scarborough says, “you mighta divorced her and all, like you say, but I bet those fellas laughing at you in the saloons across the river don’t know it. I bet
Hardin
don’t know it.”

He was smart, Scarborough, egging Marty like that. A couple of days earlier, when he figured Marty was holding out on him, he said he’d arrest him next time he crossed the river. Old Selman had throwed a fit about being cheated and said he’d shoot Marty if he set foot back in Texas. But now Scarborough wanted to deal. “Cut me half the take from the cows,” he said, “and I’ll set Hardin up for you.” He’d trick him into showing up at the railroad bridge in the middle of the night and Marty could be laying for him and let him have it.

“What about your bigmouthed pal Selman?” Marty says. “He want the
other
half of the take?” Scarborough says, “Fuck Selman. Old bastard don’t know how to get along. This is between you and me.” Marty wanted to know how he would get Hardin to go to the bridge in the middle of the goddamn night, and Scarborough says, “Hell, me and him are big buddies now, ain’t you heard? I’ll tell him a dealer I know is selling some guns to some Mexes at the bridge tonight and wants to hire protection for himself in case the greasers try a cross. Hardin’ll go for it. He’s trying to prove he’s still the man he was before he went to the pen. Been pushing his luck lately.”

“I’ll push his fucking luck,” Marty says. All right, he says, it’s a deal—only he ain’t giving Scarborough a nickel until after Hardin’s taken care of. “Sure,” Scarborough says with a big phony smile, “I trust you. Just don’t forget to bring the money.” Marty gives him a go-to-hell smile back and says, “Don’t worry about that, George. I always keep my money on me—all of it. It’s the safest place.” Scarborough says, “All right, then—the rail bridge at midnight,” and heads back to El Paso to set the thing up.

That night, Marty posted me at our end of the bridge with my Remington repeater to cover their retreat if they had to make a run for it back to our side. Then him and Vic and Tom went out to the middle of the bridge to meet Scarborough. There was a mist on the river, but the other side was lit up by a streetlight good enough for me to see everything. At the far end of the bridge, a pair of ice wagons stood on one side of the tracks. George Scarborough came out from behind one of them.

They met out on the bridge and talked for a minute. Scarborough pointed to the wagons like he was saying that was where Marty could lay for Hardin. Marty nodded and they all headed that way.

As soon as they got to the end of the bridge, Scarborough pulled his gun and shot Marty twice in the head and jumped off to the side just as rifles opened fire from one of the ice wagons and a shotgun blasted from the other. Vic and Tom went down before they could clear their holsters. I ducked behind one of the bridge posts and watched from the shadow. Hell no, I didn’t shoot. It wouldn’t of helped Marty and Vic and Tom one bit, but it likely woulda brought the shooters running over to kill me too.

All that shooting didn’t take five seconds. Then Scarborough scoots out and takes out Marty’s gun, fires it in the air and drops it on the ground, then quick cleans out Marty’s pockets. The police captain, Milton, and a man the next day’s newspapers said was a Texas Ranger came out from behind one of the wagons, both of them with carbines—and from behind the other wagon comes Wes Hardin with a shotgun. I’d always figured Milton was in on the deal for those cows we rustled in Little Texas. The Ranger too, I guess. Lawmen—Christ! A dog’s hind leg ain’t as crooked as a lawman.

Hardin gave the scattergun to Milton and hurried off down the street, but Scarborough, Milton, and the Ranger stayed and smoked cigars while a crowd of excited sports came out of the nearby saloons and gathered to gawk at the bodies.

The newspapers said they were shot for resisting arrest on warrants of cattle rustling, but the talk in the saloons was that Hardin had paid Scarborough and Milton to kill Marty so he could have Beulah McRose for himself. Well, he wanted the bitch, all right, and he got her—but he did his own shooting, like I said. The others were just paying Marty back for crossing them. While they were at it, they crossed Old Man Selman too, for some damn reason. Hardin musta been behind it, though—because just look how Selman got even with
him.