Forty Times a Killer Read online

  When I returned to the stable, I ate some more of Jas. Glee, prop.’s stew, cold and congealed with fat though it was, then searched through Wes’s saddlebags for the old Colt revolvers.

  To my considerable distress, only the gun with the loose cylinder was fully charged. The other had three empty chambers.

  Wes was adamant that he wanted a fully loaded pistol, and since I had no money for caps, powder and shot, I decided that the defective revolver would have to do.

  I had a deal of confidence in John Wesley’s shooting skills with any kind of firearm, including a Colt that was falling apart.

  As I’d seen Wes do, I shoved the revolver into the waistband behind my back and covered it with my coat.

  Glee walked into the livery carrying a fine English sidesaddle and caught me in the act. He placed the saddle on a rack, then stared at me for a long time before he spoke.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything foolish, young feller. If you’re planning to brace Al Dillard, forget it.” A fly landed on his cheek and he brushed it away with an irritable hand. “Draw down on Dillard and he’ll kill your fer sure, like he’s done to seven or more afore ye, all of them bigger and meaner men than you.”

  My belly churned and I racked my brain for the right . . . no, any words.

  Finally I managed to say, “Wes and me have a lot of enemies. I figured I should go armed.”

  Glee looked at me, through me, then said, “Can you shoot?”

  “Some.”

  “Some don’t cut it, young feller. But real good does. Can you shoot real good?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Then best you leave the pistol here.”

  “Jas. Glee, prop., that’s probably sound advice, but I won’t take it.”

  Glee shook his head. “Then suit yourself, boy. But mind what I said about Dillard. He don’t take kindly to sass.”

  Glee took up the sidesaddle again, studied a small tear in the leather of the cantle, then his eyes shifted to me again. “What I said about Dillard taking no sass, tell that to John Wesley as well.”

  I nodded. “I surely will.”

  “Makes no difference, really,” Glee said. “He won’t listen.”

  I’d slept late, so by the time I headed for the jailhouse the sun was high in the sky. All traces of yesterday’s sandstorm had fled but for grit on the boardwalks and in the corners of windowpanes. A few innocent white clouds drifted in the indigo sky like lilies on a pond and the air smelled fresh with the promise of the new day.

  Despite the beckoning morning, I felt ill at ease and the breakfast I’d eaten was a red-hot cannonball in my belly.

  I never carried a gun in those days. My wrists were too thin and weak to absorb the recoil, and on those occasions when John Wesley bade me try, I never once managed to hit a mark, be it at ten paces or two.

  Thus I was very conscious of the three-pound Colt that dragged down the back of my pants and I was sure that everyone I passed in the street could see it.

  In truth, several men gave me slit-eyed looks as they walked by, but that was probably because a ragged little runt who looked like he’d missed too many meals in his childhood, limping along with his left leg in a steel cage, was a sight to see.

  When I stepped into the jailer’s office, Alan Dillard glanced up at me from a leather-bound ledger and said, “What you got in your poke?”

  My heart jumped in my chest. Had he tumbled to the revolver?

  I hesitated, and Dillard prompted, “In your hand, boy.”

  I was so relieved, I felt like I’d been touched by an angel. “Oh this?” I held up the candy sack. “It’s molasses candy. Wes is right partial to it and I thought it might cheer him up.”

  “Never cared for it myself,” Dillard said, making a face. He pointed at the door to the cell with the steel pen he’d been using. “It’s unlocked. Ten minutes, mind. No longer.”

  I nodded my thanks and stepped through the door into the wretched half-light of the cell area.

  Wes was lying on his cot. When he saw me he jumped up and a quick stride took him to the bars.

  “Did you get it?” He looked like an excited kid asking about a birthday present.

  I nodded, moved close to the bars, and turned my back. “Hurry.” My anxious eyes were fixed on the door.

  It took only a moment. Wes grabbed the revolver and in a trice, fourteen inches of Colt disappeared into his waistband.

  It always surprised me that a man with such a narrow, sharply defined face and thin lips could pout. But Wes did.

  Sounding petulant, he said, “You brought me the bust-up Colt.”

  “I know. It was the one with all the cylinders charged.”

  “Damn it. I thought I taught you how to load a gun,” Wes said, a hint of anger in his voice.

  “I didn’t have the price of powder and shot. All the money we have is in your pocket.” I was a little angry myself, getting little thanks for walking past a named man killer like Alan Dillard with a contraband revolver stuck down my pants.

  Wes’s smile was a little forced, I thought.

  “Well, at least you brought the sour drops,” he said, glancing at the paper sack in my hand.

  “They didn’t have any at the general store, so I bought you molasses taffy.”

  “I don’t like molasses taffy,” Wes said, pouting again. “I declare, Little Bit, can’t you do anything the hell right?”

  I stifled the sharp retort on my tongue as he reached through the bars and pulled me closer to him.

  “Listen, earlier the black woman brought me coffee and said she’d be back around one with my lunch. Dillard came in with her and he opened the cell to let her inside.”

  This time John Wesley’s smile was genuine. “I’ll kill them both, then make a run for the livery. Have the horses saddled, ready to go.”

  He scowled. “Think I can trust you to do that right?”

  I didn’t answer his question. “Wes, Jas. Glee, prop. says Dillard is a real good gun. I think he’ll be hard to kill.”

  I saw it again, as I’d seen it so often before. Wes puffed up and his handsome young face took on that everybody-look-at-me expression that was so difficult for me to stomach.

  “Hard to kill for you, maybe, but not for me. Dillard may be good with a gun, but on his best day he can’t shade John Wesley Hardin.”

  I was Wes’s only audience, and not much of a one at that, so all he wanted to hear were his own boasts . . . and he believed every single word of them.

  In the event, his plan came to naught.

  The door slammed open so violently it banged against the partition wall and two men stepped inside, their spurs ringing.

  One of then carried manacles, the other a rope.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Yankee Assassins

  The man with the manacles was E.T. Stakes, the other, holding a rope that I thankfully noted didn’t end in a noose, was Constable Jim Smalley. Alan Dillard, the cell key in his hand, stood behind them.

  “We’re taking a ride, John Wesley,” Stakes said, “so gather up what’s your’n.”

  For a moment, Wes’s eyes were calculating, figuring his chances against three guns. He obviously decided against making a play. “Where are you taking me, and why?”

  “Waco,” Stakes said. “Where you’ll get a fair trial before you’re hung.”

  Stakes had pouched black eyes and the small, tight, intolerant mouth you sometimes see in elderly nuns. When he smiled, the effect was most unpleasant. “I’ll hang bunting on the scaffold myself, John Wesley. Make it look festive for your send-off, like.”

  “Waco is two hundred miles away,” Wes said.

  “A hundred and seventy-five to be exact,” Stakes said. “But never fear, Mr. Hardin, I’ll do everything I can to make your trip an enjoyable one.”

  “You’re a damned liar,” Wes said.

  Stakes smiled with his lips shut, like a closed steel purse. “Ain’t I, though?”

 
He turned to Alan Dillard. “You took his guns?”

  The jailer nodded. “Yeah, they’re locked in my desk.”

  “Who is he?” Jim Smalley looked at me the same way a man does the sole of his boot after he’s stepped in dog doo-doo.

  “He’s nobody.” Dillard turned to Stakes. ”I’ll release the prisoner.”

  Before the jailer stepped to the cell, I said, “I want to tag along with John Wesley.”

  It was Stakes’ turn to gut me with a withering stare. “What the hell for, boy?”

  “Sir, Wes is a friend of mine and I’ve got nothing else to do.” Then I quickly added, “I’m a good trail cook.” That was only partially true, but indeed, I could boil coffee and dredge salt pork in flour and fry it with the best of them.

  It seemed that I amused Stakes. “You got a hoss, boy?”

  I nodded. “Sure do.”

  He said to Smalley, “What do you say, Jim?”

  The man’s answer was to step in front of me and pat me down. “What’s in the poke?”

  “Molasses taffy. I like it, but Wes doesn’t.”

  Smalley turned to Stakes. “He’s an idiot.”

  “I know, but he’s an idiot who can cook,” Stakes said. “It will take five, maybe six days to reach Waco. Do you want to rustle up the coffee and grub?”

  “Hell, no.” Smalley thought for a moment, then said, “All right, let the idiot do it.”

  “What’s your name, boy?” Stakes asked.

  “Folks call me Little Bit,” I said.

  “All right, Little Bit, listen up,” Stakes said. “I’m a plain man, bacon and pan bread is what I want, and coffee strong enough to float a silver dollar. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, then we’ll get along.” Stakes nodded to Dillard. “Let Hardin out, jailer.”

  Before the cell door swung open, Wes smiled at me and winked.

  I knew what that meant.

  He had killing on his mind.

  I returned to the livery and saddled my horse, then started in on Wes’s mount.

  As I looked around for the blanket, Jas. Glee, prop. stopped me.

  “Them lawmen already got a hoss fer John Wesley,” he said. “They requisitioned one of the mustangs you and him brung in.”

  “What does that mean?” I said, never having tussled with the word requisitioned before.

  “It means they took it in the name of the law, boy.”

  “Wes’s saddle is still here.”

  “No matter,” Glee said. “He ain’t going fur.”

  “It’s nigh on two hundred miles to Waco,” I said.

  “He won’t get there.”

  “They mean to kill him?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  “But Stakes promised him a fair trial.”

  “What E.T. Stakes promises and what E.T. Stakes delivers are seldom one and the same thing, boy.” Glee put his hand on my shoulder, a fatherly gesture no man had ever done to me before. It felt strange.

  “Listen, boy,” he said. “The Yankees who currently rule the great state of Texas have had enough of John Wesley and his kind—unreconstructed Johnny Rebs that claim the war didn’t end at Appomattox. As far as the government is concerned, a trial would be a waste of time. Better to gun Hardin on the trail and, for the price of a few cents’ worth of powder and ball, tie up everything nicely in a big blue bow.”

  “What can I do?” I felt scared, lost, like a blind man trying to feel his way out of a burning building.

  “How badly do you want to keep on living?” Glee said.

  I shook my head, bewildered. “What kind of question is that to ask a man?”

  “I’ll answer it for you, boy. You ain’t a man, not yet you aren’t. As to the question I asked, if you want to remain above ground, stay here in Longview. If you want to take your chances on getting a bullet in the back, go with John Wesley.”

  “I’ll go. He’s my friend.”

  Glee smiled. “You’re learning, boy. That was a man’s answer.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Murderous Plot

  I led my horse back to the jail where John Wesley was already mounted on the mustang; his only saddle a ragged blanket, his legs lashed under the pony’s belly with a rope.

  “Dillard, sell me a saddle or let me get my own from the livery,” Wes said. “This hoss has a backbone like the thin end of a timber wedge.”

  “Sorry,” Dillard said. “You’ll be less likely to make a dash for it, John Wesley.”

  “At least give him another damned blanket,” I said.

  Nobody paid me the least mind.

  Stakes gathered up the mustang’s lead rope then swung into the saddle.

  Jim Smalley followed suit, slid the Henry rifle from under his knee and laid it across the saddle horn. “Let’s ride. We’re burning daylight and we need to put two hundred miles of git between us and Longview.”

  I mounted, and then Alan Dillard did something that surprised me.

  He stepped off the boardwalk and slipped ajar into my coat pocket. “Pickles. For the trail.”

  I was dumfounded, but managed to nod and mumble my thanks before I kicked my horse into motion and followed the others.

  Since Alan Dillard drops out of my narrative here, let me mention that he didn’t live to scratch a gray head. He died of jungle fever on Samoa in 1889 while working as a civilian contractor for the U.S. Navy. It is interesting to note that Dillard passed away in the parlor of the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, who was living in the island nation at that time.

  We camped that evening under a disused railroad trestle, the temperature surprisingly cool after the heat of the day. Around us lay a world of broken ground, treeless hills and patches of thorny cactus. The moon rose fat and fair, its pale light banished by the crimson glow of our campfire.

  After a hearty supper of strong coffee, salt pork, and sourdough bread, we sat around the fire and I wondered where Wes had hidden the Colt I’d given him.

  Only later did I discover that he’d tied it under his arm and then covered the big revolver with his shirt and coat.

  Stakes had untied Wes’s legs, and it caused considerable merriment in Jim Smalley. “Here now, Hardin,” he said, staring at Wes over the rim of his coffee cup. “How far do you think you’d get if you stood up and made a break for it?”

  Before Wes could make any kind of answer, Stakes grinned and said, “One step, Jim. I’d gun him for sure.”

  “Well, E.T., I think I’d let him run for a spell and then go after him. Make it a chase, like.”

  Stakes nodded. “It would be good sport.”

  “I won’t run,” Wes said. “All I ever did was try to obey the law. I’m in great fear that the kin of the men I killed in fair fights will lay for us on the trail and try to do for me.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Smalley said. “We’ll protect you, young feller. I mean, we want to watch you hang in Waco, hear that snap! when your neck gets broke.”

  Stakes cackled. “Hell, Jim, it won’t be like that.” He made a pantomime of a hanging man, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he made horrible strangling sounds.

  Then he smiled. “They don’t break necks in Waco. It’s too quick and robs the folks of a show.”

  “I say, Hardin,” Smalley said, “when you’re standing there on the gallows, piss and crap running down your legs, and the hangman asks if you’ve got any last words, here’s what you say. ‘Fancy whores and strong drink led me to this pass, but I had a good mother.’”

  Stakes grinned. “You’re right, Jim. The women love that.”

  “I don’t want to hang,” Wes said, his voice a scared whine. Then, I swear, he squeezed out a single tear that trickled down his cheek like a raindrop. “This will break my poor mother’s heart.”

  “Aw, that’s a shame, ain’t it, E.T.?” Smalley said. “Even this piece of garbage, the lowest of the low, has a mother.”

  “Please d
on’t let them hang me,” Wes pleaded, his red-eyes fixed on Stakes. “I’m so afraid, Mr. Stakes.”

  “Sure, sure, kid,” the lawman said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Smalley almost choked as he suppressed a giggle.

  I remember sitting there in the chill of the night, the steel brace cold against the skin of my wasted leg, thinking that even the most naïve circuit preacher would have more sense than the two fools mocking John Wesley Hardin. The preacher would know all too well that it’s dangerous to tease the devil.

  As most of you will recall, winter came early that year of 1871, and by the time we reached the Sabine River we all shivered with cold.

  The lawmen, taking no chances, lashed Wes’s feet under his pony again and placed him in the middle of the procession as we prepared to cross the swollen waters.

  Wes, playing his role of terrified youngster to the hilt, rambled on about death and life everlasting, and when we were midway across he even launched loudly and tunelessly into a grand old hymn.

  “Shall we gather at the river,

  Where bright angel feet have trod,

  With its crystal tide forever

  Flowing by the throne of God?”

  “Shut the hell up,” Smalley yelled. His horse had stumbled and plunged him underwater and he was soaked to the skin and mad as a rained-on rooster.

  “Sorry, Mr. Smalley,” Wes said. “As I get nearer to judgment and death, I feel a need for the comfort of religion.”

  “Wail that damn song again, and you’ll be a sight closer to death than you think,” Smalley said.

  Wes grinned but said nothing. Taking my cue from him, I also kept my mouth shut.

  By the time we reached the far bank of the Sabine we were all frozen and wet, but we rode for two more miles before Stakes called a halt and told us to dismount and prepare a camp.

  There was a ramshackle ranch house in the distance, but Stakes said he wouldn’t ask for shelter, since the rancher was likely to be kin of his prisoner. “Go ask him if we can borry an axe, and then chop up some kindling,” he told me. “Be quick. It’s damn cold and we need a fire.”

  I did as I was told, but when I reached the gate to the property I quickly drew rein.