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There was probably no
authentic Western character more proficient with their chosen handguns
nor more willing to put them to deadly use than
John Wesley Hardin. His lightning draw and unerring
marksmanship was oft witnessed and judicially documented, and many an
addition to local graveyards had
Wes
to thank for that last bumpy ride. While only eleven kills in
eighteen fights can be independently verified, his probable tally of
upwards to thirty or forty victims killed in face-to-face
gunfights
likely exceeds that of all other known
shootists.... though certainly not all other killers.
A low-life
contemporary of
Hardin's likely murdered more than forty men in his lifetime– but
almost always with a rifle, from a place of ambush.
James P. “Deacon” Miller passed judgment again and again until
finally getting his neck stretched by an intolerant lynch mob in
Oklahoma
in April, 1909.... and may have been the gun-for-hire that put a
bullet through
Billy the
Kid's killer
Pat
Garrett. And for perspective, it helps to remember that
Generals and politicians oversee the deaths of millions more young
boys than
Hardin or any other self-inflating Western desperado could ever
claim credit for.... sometimes for justifiable reasons, sometimes for
reasons not so good. If you think about it, more people
have have lost their lives as a result of contractors’ indifference to
the risks of asbestos. Thousands are killed in a single modern
terrorist strike, and few individuals have more “notches on their
guns” than the sexually deranged serial killers of the modern urban
age.
Historically there
have always been chance or unintentional deaths by firearms, acts of
resistance and retribution, self advancement as well as self defense,
incidents involving rape, the heavy handed brutality or blundering of
drunks, the deadly results of deception and betrayal.
Hardin stands tall in meeting most of his adversaries head on, as
well as never losing a fight. I’m sure that he never hurt a
single woman or child and was kind to beggars, horses and kids. While he made rash moves and occasional mistakes, he was host to few
regrets. He might have wished he hadn’t killed a man for snoring
on a certain nightmare filled evening, but he never drew blood for
anything so crass as personal financial gain. He lived not for
the grail of the Knight, errant though he may have been.... lived not
to fit in, but to distinguish himself. For the dictates of
instinct and heart, not some sense of obligation or duty. Not
for dollars or gold, but for the shining rewards of his own self
defined mission.
Hardin could be relaxed and laughing one minute, tense or solemn
the next– quoting Old Testament lines about Hell and brimstone to a
“treed” audience, between bouts of intemperate opinion and shots of
unholy rotgut whiskey. He was obviously prejudiced against
Indians, Mexicans and blacks, and encouraged– if not instigated–
the majority of the upwards to twenty-seven battles he engaged in.
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Hardin
was, like all of us, a product of both his time and circumstance. If
he combined strict religiosity and moralism with a mean streak and a
periodic disregard for life, it must have in part been due to the
pressures of being the son of a blistering Southern preacher. Named
after the founder of the Methodist Church, he inherited high expectations
and a heavy mantle. Like adolescents in any age, he was no doubt
torn between his love and loyalty to his family and the need to break away
from the familial tether, to establish his personal identity, and
demonstrate to the world his increasing significance and power.
The first to fall victim
to
Hardin's smoking guns was a beefy ex-slave named Major (“Mage”)
Holzhausen. Getting his pride hurt in a wrestling match with fifteen
year old “Johnny” Hardin and another boy, Mage sought reparation with
burning determination and a stout wood club. When the muscular
freedman grabbed the reins of
Hardin's horse some days later, it took five revolver rounds to shoot
him loose. Demonstrating at least a degree of ambivalence if not
remnant empathy and compassion, the fledgling badman then rode eight miles
to get help for the wounded man. Within a week Mage was dead from
his wounds, and
Hardin
went into hiding, a killer baptized in blood.
Much of the gunman’s fame
and popularity in
Texas
was thanks to his frequent battles with despised Federal troops and the
State Police. Not long after becoming a fugitive,
Hardin
got the “drop” on four mounted soldiers his brother Joe believed were out
hunting him.... and together his shotgun and revolver raised the
teenager’s total to five.
His lifetime string of
shootouts were face-up, as they say, but hardly “fair” in the noble or
Hollywood sense.
Hardin
did everything he could to get the upper hand– including ritually
practicing his fast draw and unerring aim, constantly and consciously
anticipating the moods of the people around him, having his gun already in
hand when expecting trouble, and often being the first to initiate a draw
when a poker game or conversation unexpectedly heated up. Nor was he
averse to pulling a gun on unarmed antagonists, as he proved with the
shooting of Mage, and later when making a threatening gambler named Ben
Hinds back down (“As he made for me,”
John
Wesley writes, “I covered him with my pistol and told him I was a
little ‘on the scrap’ myself, the only difference between him and I being
that I used lead.”) His object, and the object of most
dyed-in-the-wool
shootists,
was to “get the drop” on his opponent no matter what it took– meaning to
be the first person in the room able to cock and point their weapon. And if that wasn’t perceived to be enough, he needed to be the first one
to fire a disabling shot. Note that I said “disabling,” meaning the
rounds actually connected with flesh, hit the right person or persons (not
always easy in crowded
saloons),
and did sufficient damage to prevent them from being able to return fire. Whereas an assassin’s purpose is to take life, at the moment of conflict a
gunfighter's intent is not to kill per se but to prevent himself
getting shot, and end the fight to his personal advantage. The best
way to do that, however is bullet placement: a quickly disabling shot.
This most practically means penetration of the head, spine or heart....
and such wounds are generally (if only consequentially) fatal.
Most of
Hardin's stories can be collaborated with police, newspaper and court
records, but at least one of the tales in his autobiography cast a shadow
on the veracity of the rest. Supposedly at the end of a trail ride
to Abilene,
Kansas
the then eighteen year old
John
Wesley also got the drop on the famed gunslinging marshal
Wild Bill
Hickock– by appearing to surrender his revolvers butt first, but then
quickly twirling them into firing position in what is (since the movie
“Tombstone,” at least!) called the “Curly Bill Spin.” I find this
unlikely for a couple of reasons. First, Bill would have likely had
his own revolver out, ready to hit
Hardin
on the head if not shoot him down. If the marshal’s weapons were
holstered, he would have been poised for a draw, and could have easily
grabbed steel and fired before J. W. could have executed the spin. Additionally, the maneuver was a widely known stage trick, and it wasn’t
at all unusual to see
cowboys
showing off with a demonstration when entertaining the boys around a fire.
Hickock
would have likely both known about the move and anticipated it, given the
cocky young Texan he faced. And finally, had it happened the way
described, the loss of face would have demanded timely retribution, not
Bill supposedly saying “Let us compromise this matter and I will be your
friend.” A frontier gunman’s chances of surviving the week depended
as much as anything else on their perceived invulnerability, and no lawman
would be able to keep peace after being seen publicly backing down.
It is likewise unclear if
the Abilene resident
Hardin
drilled with four holes one drunken night, was really someone out to kill
him as he claimed. He may or may not have fired those rounds through
a wooden partition in the room in order to awaken and thus silence the
snoring of a fellow boarder. If so, he was likely embarrassed and
ashamed to find he had inadvertently killed a man in his sleep.... and
thus concocted the version recounted in his book. At any rate, if
Hickock
had no other reason to tend to the brash
cowboy
prior to this, he certainly did now.
Hardin
prudently slipped out across the porch roof, dressed in nothing but his
underwear and his hat. It would be hard to call his rapid retreat
from the scene cowardly. Nobody in their right mind wanted to go up
against another gunman that they believed to be their equal, if there was
any way to avoid it. The results could be both men dead, or
suffering a lifetime of pain due to smashed organs or lingering infection.
In Trinity City,
Texas
in August 1872,
John
Wesley was shot by Phil Sublett– a shotgun wielding drunk intent on
winning his poker stakes back. While he managed to put a round
through Sublett’s shoulder, the two buckshot that ripped through
Hardin's kidney made it look for awhile as if he’d die. State
policemen long on his trail began closing in, and he arranged for a
sickbed surrender to a Sheriff he trusted, Dick Reagon. He
apparently felt well enough by the time they moved him to Gonzales in
October to cut his way out of jail with a smuggled saw, likely with the
deliberate disregard or outright assistance of sympathetic guards.
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