The Pistoleer (16 page)

I
and my youngest boy, Robert, who was fourteen that winter, came across them in the woods about ten miles north of Belton. All three were wearing badges. State Police. Two were as dead as the whitetail buck we were toting on a shoulder pole. One’s head was half gone, and I knew a shotgun had to’ve done it. The other dead one was all shot up in the chest and crotch both. It was powerful cold and their blood had frosted purple. The third one was still alive, but he was bad gut-shot and I knew he wouldn’t make it. I sent Robert for the sheriff in Belton while I waited with the dying one. It wasn’t nothing but a death watch.

He said his name was Ben Parkerson, and it took him three hard hours to die. He begged for water so bad I took my canteen out from under my coat and let him have a small taste. I was wanting to do the charitable thing, but I should’ve known better. As soon as the water reached his gut he hollered like a burnt baby. When he wasn’t wailing from the pain, he was talking a blue streak, the way some do when they’re hurt bad and breathing their last. It was mostly a lot of rambling at first, but then he seemed to get a better grip on his hurting, and he told me what happened.

They’d gotten word Wes Hardin was in Bell County, and they’d been hunting him for two days. Then, in the middle of last night, Parkerson had been woke by a shotgun blast. He saw Davis, who was supposed to be on guard, laid out on the ground with his head wide open. Then he heard two pistol shots and felt a fire in his belly. Next thing he knew, he was looking at Hardin standing in the light of the campfire pointing his pistols at Lankford. Lankford had his hands up and was begging Hardin not to kill him. “Je-sus!” Hardin said. “Just smell of yourself, you sorry sonbitch. You been looking all over hell’s half acre for me, and now you found me you shit your pants. Ain’t you ashamed?”

“He shot him down like a damn dog,” Parkerson said. “He shot him over and over. The bushes lit up with every shot. He just fired and fired till the hammers were snapping on empty.” He started crying again, and pretty soon he was tossing and rolling his eyes with the pain and praying out loud to the Lord Jesus. Most of everything he said after that didn’t make much sense until near the end, when he settled down some again. He was crying real soft and talking to somebody named Lucy when he died. That was in January of the year 1871.

L
EGENDS
O
F
A
BILENE

The El Paso Daily Herald
,

20
AUGUST
1895

Mr. E. L. Shackleford testified as follows:

“My name is E. L. Shackleford; am in the general brokerage business. When I came down the street this evening I had understood from some parties that Mr. Hardin had made some threats against Mr. Selman, who had formerly been in my employ and was a friend of mine. I came over to the Acme Saloon, where I met Mr. Selman. At the time I met Mr. Selman he was in the saloon with several others and was drinking with them. I told him I had understood there was occasion for him to have trouble, and having heard of the character of the man with whom he would have trouble, I advised him as a friend not to get under the influence of liquor. We walked out on the sidewalk and came back into the saloon, I being some distance ahead of Selman, walking toward the back of the saloon. Then I heard shots fired. I can’t say who fired the shots, as I did not see it. I did not turn around, but left immediately. The room was full of powder smoke, and I could not have seen anything anyhow.”

(Signed) E. L. Shackleford

The Life of John Wesley Hardin as Written by Himself

“In those days my life was constantly in danger from secret or hired assassins, and I was always on the lookout.”

——

“We stopped next at Newton and took that town in good style. The policemen tried to hold us down, but they all resigned—I reckon. We certainly shut up that town.”

——

“I have seen many fast towns, but I think Abilene beat them all.”

——

“Wild Bill was a brave, handsome fellow, but somewhat overbearing. He had fine sense and was a splendid judge of human nature.”

W
e’re Clements women, me and my sisters Mary Ann and Minerva, Clements born and raised. And we’ll die Clements, no matter our names changed when we married, two of us into the Browns and one into the Densons. It’s a proud family we come from. None of us, man nor woman, ever took a step back from anybody—and I mean Huck too, our adopted little brother. We called him Maverick because he strayed onto the ranch one day when he wasn’t but about eight years old. He’d been orphaned by the cholera and been wandering on his own for months. Daddy was so impressed with his natural grit, he took him in and raised him like one of our own. All our brothers—Manning, Jim, Joe, Gipson, and Huck—had hard bark, as people used to say about the kind of man who stood his ground and could take care of himself and his own. It’s how Daddy raised them up to be. There wasn’t a boy in the Sandies—which is what that whole region around Gonzales County was called—to ever talk vulgar or make bold with me or my sisters, not with brothers like ours to protect the family honor. I’m telling all this so you’ll properly appreciate the admiration we had for Cousin Wesley. We Clements were a lot more used to getting admiration than giving it, but we’d heard all about Wesley before we ever made his acquaintance, and none of us ever felt nothing but proud for being kin to him.

You can imagine how pleased we all were when he showed up at the family ranch over by Elm Creek one late winter morning and introduced himself to Daddy and Momma. The boys were all out at their cow camp south of Smiley getting things ready for a roundup, so Daddy took Wesley out there to meet them. He sent Huck to give the news to me and my husband Barton Brown. Soon as I heard, I went off in the buckboard to tell my sisters and their husbands, and then me and Mary Ann and Minerva went directly to the family ranch to help Momma prepare a big welcome supper.

By the time they came in from the camp that evening, you’d of thought they’d known each other all their lives, they were joking so free and easy with Wesley and he with them. They come clomping into the house laughing and trying to raise knuckle knots on each other’s arms and boxing with open hands and knocking into the furniture, causing such a ruckus that Momma had to yell at them to quit before she took a hickory switch to all their behinds and she didn’t care how big they all were. Jim and Joe jumped to attention and saluted and said, “Yessir, Miz General, sir!” Momma tried to look fierce at them but it was all she could do to keep a straight face. “John Wesley,” she said, “I know
your
momma didn’t raise her boys to sass and mock her like these disrespectful no-counts of mine.”

When Daddy introduced him to me and my sisters, Wesley said he was honored—and he kissed each of us on the hand! You should’ve heard the boys whoop at that, but Wesley didn’t seem to mind their joshing one bit. Well,
my
heart just fluttered like a bird on a string! Mary Ann turned red as a radish, and Minerva didn’t hardly know where to look, she was so flustered. But they were as tickled as I was, I could tell. Listen, if I hadn’t been already married, I’d of set my sights on him for myself, cousin and all. He was
so
good-looking! He had a good strong face with the sweetest smile. But best of all was his eyes. They were warm and bluish-gray and really
looked
at you. Most men are either too shy or too scared to meet a pretty woman in the eyes for more than a second without getting nervous, but not Wesley. He looked a girl in the eyes as easy as offering her his arm.

It was a real fine supper we had in his honor that evening. Barton and Ferd and Jim—our husbands—were there too, naturally, and had brought all the children, and the house was chock-full of laughter and loud talk, good smells and babies crying and the clatter of dishware. I thought the tables might split from the weight of all the dishes set on it. There was fried pork and possum stew and sweet corn, yams and snap beans, mashed turnips, red gravy, corn bread and molasses—just everything.

He’d learned a good deal about his Clements kin from his daddy the Reverend, and he wanted to be caught up on what Clementses had got married lately and what babies had been born and who’d passed on and been buried. He’d come to us direct from visiting his family up in Mount Calm, and he said all the Hardins was in good health and spirits. His daddy was busy as ever with his good works, teaching and preaching all over Hill and Limestone counties. His momma and sister Elizabeth and little brother Jefferson Davis were doing just fine, and his big brother Joseph had married a Mount Calm girl and was fixing to move to Comanche to open his own law office.

It wasn’t till we moved the children to another part of the house and cleared off the table and left it to the men that he talked about his troubles with the law. Daddy brought out a jug and passed it around for them all to fill their cups. Matches flared and pipes and cigars got lit, and the room got misty with good-smelling smoke. While Momma and Minerva tended to the children, me and Mary Ann washed the pots and dishes in the open dog-run, trying not to make too much clatter so we could listen in on the men’s talk.

Wesley told about having to shoot three State Policemen in self-defense up in Bell County just a couple of weeks earlier—and before them, a bounty man who’d tried to back-shoot him outside a saloon in Fairfield. “I didn’t kill the bounty man,” he said, “I just shot him where his pleasure hangs. “ That got a good laugh at the table. “Leastways
he
won’t be siring any more sons of bitches into this world,’ Daddy said. Me and Mary Ann grinned at each other with our faces turned away from the men.

Then Barton asked him outright if it was true he’d shot a Nigra man off a fence in Hillsboro just for looking mean at him as he rode by. Barton said he’d read it in a newspaper. No Clements would of been so rude as to ask Cousin Wesley such a thing, but all the Browns were mannerless that way and didn’t know any better. Me and Minerva both knew we’d disappointed Momma by marrying into that family, though she never said it. It’s some hard choices we all have to make in this life. Mary Ann had done better, marrying the only Denson boy to be had.