The Pistoleer (47 page)

Lord, what a ruckus he stirred up! Practically overnight the election became a contest between Old Bill and Wes Hardin, who wasn’t even a candidate. Old Bill responded with some articles of his own in
The Gonzales Inquirer.
Who in his right mind, he asked the readers, would take the word of a damn convict who’d murdered dozens of people? He called Wes and Bob Coleman a pair of liars, and he accused Bob of recruiting Wes on his side of the campaign by promising to make him his chief deputy if he won the election. Old Bill asked the good citizens of Gonzales to consider if they were ready to hand Wes Hardin a badge and give him armed legal authority over themselves.

Tempers boiled all over town, and most political arguments ended in a fistfight. Some men thought that even if Wes’s accusations against Old Bill were true, it was low of him to make them after all these years. If Bill
had
helped him to break jail, it was a mean way of thanking him for it to tell the tale now. Others argued that if Old Bill
had
been a crooked lawman, nobody, not even Wes, was obliged to keep it a secret. By telling the truth about Jones, Wes was showing just how completely he himself had reformed.

Then Wes announced that he wouldn’t stay in Gonzales County if W. E. Jones won the election. If Old Bill got voted sheriff, he said, the enforcers of the law in Gonzales would be more dishonest than those who openly violated the law, and he himself would not live in a county that would accept such corruption.

I
t was the closest election we ever had. Over four thousand votes were cast and carefully counted. And when the dust all settled, the winner—by eight votes—was Old Bill Jones.

A couple of weeks later, Wes went out to the Duderstadt ranch and said his good-byes to his children and to Fred and his family. The next morning he loaded his trunk on a wagon, hitched his saddle horse to the back of it, and giddapped the team on out of Gonzales County, heading west.

T
hey met at a Christmas party and were married two weeks later—and they saw each other for the last time just a few hours after that. Merciful Jesus! I have heard of whirlwind romance, but that of my little sister Callie and Mr. John Wesley Hardin was a fools’ tornado! It was an astonishing episode from first to last, and I’m sorry to say they deserve the ridicule they received for it.

He was
forty-one
years old, for goodness’ sake. Callie was seventeen. He had a
daughter
her age. I was twenty-four and felt like a child beside him. They said he killed forty men before being sent to prison. The wickedest boy Callie knew at the time was Marcus Framm, who once shot a farmer’s prize hen with a squirrel rifle. You see my point: the differences between them were far greater than their years.

The Christmas party was given by the Dennisons, neighbors of ours in London, and was partly in honor of Mr. Hardin, who had very recently moved to Kimble County from Gonzales and opened a law office. He had not yet been out of prison a year. The Dennisons were related to the Hardins and quite close to Jefferson Davis Hardin, Mr. Hardin’s younger brother, who lived in Junction, about fifteen miles south of London. But, until the party, they had never met Mr. Hardin himself.

It is important to know that Callie had always been a willful and rebellious girl with a taste for stories of adventurous outlaws. She was an avid reader of dime novelettes. I used to chide her for her silly interest in such lurid literature, but my disapproval—as well as Mother’s—only seemed to increase her enjoyment of it. Willful—she was simply willful. Father, who is said to have been a bit of a rapscallion in his youth, did not seriously object to Callie’s reading such trash—but then Father never objected in any way to Callie. She was his favorite. Mother always said they were cut from the same rebellious cloth.

Not that Callie lacked for feminine wiles—she was an incorrigible coquette. The truth will out and I must be honest. But although I admit to a grudging covetousness of her perfect face and figure, I most adamantly deny, as some have suggested, that I was envious of her to the point of rejoicing in her humiliation with Mr. Hardin. Nonsense! She is my sister and I love her dearly. There
were,
however, occasions when she played the coquette to such extreme that I secretly wished to grab her and shake some sense into her. The occasion of our initial meeting with Mr. Hardin was just such a time.

On being introduced to him at the party, Callie fairly gushed. “Why, Mr. Hardin,” she said, trilling like an addled songbird, “I am ever so delighted to make your acquaintance. I feel as though I’m meeting a legend in the flesh. Father has often praised your great courage in opposing the hateful State Police.” Lord.

And him, forty-one years old and dressed impeccably in a handsome black suit and silk tie—and you’d have thought he had never been flattered by a pretty young thing before to see the silly grin he gave her. We all knew he’d been married for only a short time before going to prison and that he was a widower by the time he got out. And though one might suppose that fifteen years in the penitentiary would blunt a man’s social grace, it obviously did not completely dull his. “Miss Callie,” he said, “I would fight the entire State Police force all over again—
and
the Texas Rangers to the last man—if that’s what it took to have the honor of the next dance with you.”

He
was
handsome—in a weathered sort of way. He was tall and ruggedly distinguished and his dark hair was only lightly seasoned with gray. His brows were thick, his jaw strong, and he wore a heavy mustache. But his chief feature was his eyes, which were at once alluring and yet fearsome—if that makes sense. They were as darkly gray as storm clouds and exuded a confusing mixture of independence, cruelty, and loneliness. Little wonder that Callie, with her penchant for renegade spirits, would be entranced by eyes as those—the eyes of the lonesome outlaw and all that.

She did not leave his side the entire evening. When they were not dancing to the fiddles, they sat together in a corner, sipping punch and conversing with goodly animation, so utterly indifferent to everyone else it was rude.

As Father’s hired man Johnston drove us home at the end of the evening, she told me their chief topic of conversation had been the book he had begun to write, the story of his life. She was thrilled that he’d deigned to discuss such a personal undertaking with her, and of course she thought that his autobiography was the most wonderful idea.
She
would certainly rush to purchase a copy of the book, she assured him, and she was absolutely certain many other readers would too. As they’d bid each other good night, she invited him to come visit her at home. “He has always loved the name Callie,” she informed me. “His younger daughter was named Callie at birth. The only reason he later changed it to Jane was to honor his wife. Isn’t that wonderful?” I wasn’t at all sure
what
she thought was wonderful, but she did not really expect an answer.

F
ather was rich. He’d gone to the War a penniless young man and risen to the rank of captain by the time he came home after Appomattox. He became a cowboy and quickly learned the cattle business. Before long he was a drover, and eventually became one of the most successful stockmen in our part of the state. Furthermore, he had bought more and more land over the years and was now the largest property owner in Kimble County. But his fondest memories, he always said, were of his days as a young cowboy driving the herds to Kansas. Mr. Hardin, it so happened, had also been a cowboy in his youth, and within five minutes of making each other’s acquaintance when he came to visit—a mere week after the Christmas party—they were deep in loud reminiscence about those
glorious
old days on the Chisholm Trail.

“Excuse us,” Father said to the rest of us—including Callie, who had put on her best dress in honor of Mr. Hardin’s visit—“while I get to know this old rascal a little better.” They retired to Father’s study to continue their talk about the old days on the trail. The moment the door closed, Callie stamped her foot and said, “He came to see
me,
not to talk to Father about stupid old cows!” I believe she would have stormed into the study after them and created a scene if Mother hadn’t prevailed upon her to mind her manners—as well as conspired to retrieve the men from the study by having supper served earlier than usual.

They’d had a few drinks of whiskey in the study—Mr. Hardin claimed they were the first he’d tasted since “my period of employment with the state,” as he amusingly phrased it—and their effects were quite obvious on him. His eyes were mischievously bright, his voice louder, his gestures broader. He smiled at Callie constantly and even winked at her across the table a time or two. Callie was delighted by his indiscreet attentions and beamed upon him as radiantly as the full moon framed in the window. Mother was somewhat nonplussed, but Father was a bit fired with whiskey too, and unmindful of all the flagrant flirting. When we’d done with dessert and coffee, Mr. Hardin asked Father (“Captain Len,” he called him, quite aware of the way he was addressed by everyone in the county) for permission to take Callie for a short ride in the buggy. Father said of course, wholly ignoring Mother’s deep frown.

When they returned, less than an hour later, Callie was smiling as mysteriously as a cat. Mr. Hardin took another drink with Father, then shook his hand and bid us all good evening. That night, as we lay in our beds in the darkened bedroom, Callie told me Mr. Hardin had asked her to be his wife. “Good Lord, Callie!” I said.

“I haven’t said yes or no,” she said. “I really didn’t expect that. I told him I’d have to think it over.” She pushed up on an elbow and stared at me in the dark, looking like a pale shadow in her cotton shimmy. “Are you shocked, Annie Lee? Just think—you’d be sister-in-law to John Wesley Hardin, the most famous desperado in all Texas.” She giggled like a devilish child.

“But he’s old enough to be your
father!
” I said. “And he hasn’t a handful of dirt to his name.”

“Oh,
you!
” she said. “Nobody else would say a mean thing like that. You’re just jealous!”

M
other
was
shocked when Callie broke the news. I know she thought Mr. Hardin too old for Callie—and far too familiar with the world’s harsher truths. But she simply said that marriage was a serious decision and perhaps Callie and Mr. Hardin ought give themselves a little more time to discuss it. Father, of course, thought the marriage was a splendid idea and would brook no talk against it. Callie had to remind him that she had not yet accepted the proposal. “But I know you will,” Father said with a sly grin. Callie just smiled at him and kept mute.

The following day she received a letter from Mr. Hardin, asking for her answer to his “proposition.” He also told her that on his way home the previous evening, he’d been thrown hard from the buggy when a coyote spooked the horse. His face had been bruised and his ribs cracked, he wrote, but he was sure he’d be fine in a few days.

When Callie showed the letter to Father that evening, he smiled widely. “And what is your answer to his proposition to be, daughter?” he asked. Callie’s face was difficult to read just then. She studied Mother’s sad look for a moment, then met my own stare directly. I suppose my disapproval must have been visible, because Callie twisted her mouth at me in disdain, and then said to Father, “My answer will be yes.” Father beamed and told her he wished to meet with Mr. Hardin about the matter as soon as possible. “I’ll write to him today,” Callie said.

T
here is another story about the way he acquired the broken ribs and the bruises on his face. Rita Maria, wife of one of Father’s ranch foremen, was my prized confidante, my informant about life in the rougher reaches.
Her
source was her husband Francisco. He told her that on his way home to Junction after his visit Mr. Hardin had stopped at an isolated roadside inn to have a drink or two. It was said he was already a little drunk when he arrived, and in a short time he was drunker yet. He began to brag to the bartender that he would soon be a force to reckon with in Kimble County. But his loud bragging soon wore thin on some of the other patrons, most of whom were rough cedar choppers. Hard words ensued and Mr. Hardin challenged one of the choppers to a fistfight. They went outside and fought under the moon in a wide gully behind the building. And that, Francisco told Rita Maria, was how Mr. Hardin had received his injuries—or so he had heard.

I
overheard Mother and Father late that night in their room. “He has killed men, Leonard,” Mother said. “He has been in the penitentiary for most of Callie’s life! He is taking advantage of the poor child—yes,
child
—who doesn’t know her own mind. What he really wants is the property he’ll gain from the marriage. Surely you can see that. Why else would such a man want to marry one so young?”

And Father said: “Callie is a child no longer. She’s a grown woman and it’s time she married. One spinster daughter in the family is enough.” (The remark cut me, but not to the quick—I’d long since grown accustomed to such sidelong slashes of his displeasure with my maidenhood.) “Yes, the man committed crimes,” Father said, “and he has paid a dear price for them. Prison cost him the family he once had, and he is lonely for another. He needs a young woman to give it to him. He is a man of courage and fortitude, and we are honored—
honored,
do you hear?—to have such a man attach to our family. Now that’s the end of it.”