Good With a Gun

In the following excerpt from Follow Me to Hell, Tom Clavin introduces John Wesley Hardin, one of the Old West’s most notorious outlaws and a seasoned murderer. 

John Wesley Hardin is near or at the top of any list of American West “man-killers.” He was a homegrown Texan, born in Bonham in May 1853. The son of a Methodist preacher was a precocious killer, his career of carnage beginning when he was only 14 with the stabbing of another student during a schoolyard confrontation. The following year he shot a black man to death in Polk County.

Hardin was just getting started. After hiding out in his brother’s house in Sumpter, he emerged to kill three U.S. Army soldiers who sought to apprehend him. After soon adding another soldier to the tally, he correctly surmised that the Army would step up efforts to nab him. Incredibly, Hardin laid low by briefly teaching school in Pisgah. His pistol did not cool off completely, though, because to win a bet and a bottle of whiskey he shot a man’s eye out. For Hardin, the school year ended early.

January 1870 found him in Hill County where he was playing cards with a man named Benjamin Bradley. The gunslinger was winning almost every hand. This angered Bradley, who threatened to cut out Hardin’s liver if he won again. By now, being almost 17 years old, Hardin was rather attached to his liver, so when Bradley drew a knife and a six-shooter, Hardin, who was unarmed, folded his cards and left.

That night, Bradley, instead of enjoying his winnings and being alive, went out looking for the young gambler. Finding him, Bradley fired a shot and missed. Hardin, now sporting two pistols, fired and did not miss, striking Bradley in the chest and head. Onlookers noted that Hardin had holsters sewn into his vest so that the butts of his pistols pointed across his chest and he crossed his arms to draw. Bradley did not live long enough to be impressed by such dexterity.

Later that month in Limestone County, Hardin was accompanying a woman home when they were accosted by her “sweetheart”—more likely, her pimp—who demanded money. Hardin threw some on the ground. “He stooped down to pick it up and as he was straightening up I pulled my pistol and fired,” Hardin recalled in his autobiography, published in 1896. “The ball struck him between the eyes and he fell over, a dead robber.”

Ironically, when Hardin finally was tossed in the calaboose, it was for a crime he claimed he did not commit. In early January 1871, he was arrested by City Marshal Laban John Hoffman for a murder in Waco. Hardin was held temporarily in a log jail in the town of Marshall, awaiting trial back in Waco. Somehow, while locked up, he obtained a pistol from another prisoner.

When the day came, two Texas state policemen, Captain Edward T. Stakes and an officer named Jim Smalley, were assigned to escort the accused. While making camp along the way, Stakes went to find fodder for the horses. Left alone with Smalley, Hardin produced the pistol, fatally shot him, and used the policeman’s horse to escape. The fugitive found refuge with his cousins, the Clements, who were then living in Gonzales. They suggested he could make money by signing on to drive cattle to Kansas. This he did in February, and rustled cattle on the side. He did not kill anyone . . . but he came close. While the herd was being collected for the drive to Kansas, a freedman, Bob King, attempted to cut a beef cow out of the herd. When he refused to obey Hardin’s demand to stop, Hardin hit him over the head with his pistol.

He must have completed the cattle drive because Hardin next appeared in Abilene, which at that time was one of the more raucous Kansas cow towns. In 1871, Wild Bill Hickok was the marshal there. The gunfighter-turned-lawman was aware of a Texas arrest warrant for Hardin but he was not especially fond of Texans, so he ignored it. Instead, during a confrontation, he offered Hardin a haven in Abilene for as long as the young man did not kill anyone. This truce lasted until Hardin shot a man trying to break into his hotel room. As Hickok was responding to the gunshots, Hardin leaped out the window, stole a horse and wagon, and fled south, eventually returning to Texas. (For more details of the relationship between Hickok and Hardin—and Hardin’s dubious claim that he got the drop on Hickok—pick up a copy of Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter.)

According to Hardin‘s own account, he kept busy while back in the Lone Star State. In September of that same year, he was involved in a gunfight with two Texas policemen who were also freedmen, Green Paramore and John Lackey, during which Paramore was killed and Lackey wounded. Soon a posse of black men from Austin pursued Hardin to avenge Paramore’s death. They were not successful, with Hardin claiming they returned “sadder and wiser” after he ambushed and killed three of them.

Of all things, it was love that got Hardin involved in the Sutton-Taylor Feud. That same year, he was in Gonzales County and he married Jane Bowen. His new brother-in-law was Robert Bowen, a known rustler, and Hardin renewed his acquaintance with some of his cousins who were allied with a local family, the Taylors. No doubt they brought Hardin up to speed on the feud with the Suttons that had been going on for years, mostly, they contended, to the Taylor faction’s disadvantage.

However, for the rest of that year, Hardin was so occupied with trying to stay out of jail plus stay alive that the Sutton-Taylor Feud would have to wait. In August, he was wounded by a shotgun blast in a gambling dispute at the Gates Saloon in Trinity. Hardin responded by putting a bullet in the gambler’s shoulder. But the gunfighter was wounded seriously enough—two buckshot pellets penetrated his kidney—that for a time it looked as if Hardin would die.

He did not, but he had come close enough that he decided he wanted to settle down—presumably, with his bride. He handed his guns over to Sheriff Dick Reagon of Cherokee County and asked to be tried for his past crimes in order to, as he put it, “clear the slate.” However, when Hardin learned of how many murders Reagon was going to charge him with, he changed his mind. A relative smuggled in a hacksaw to Hardin, and it was also believed the guards were only too happy to look the other way.

During the first few months of 1873, Hardin stayed out of sight and recuperated from his wounds. In May, the Taylor faction killed Jim Cox and Jake Christman at Tumlinson Creek. It was reported that Hardin had decided to pitch in to help the Taylors and had been involved in these killings—and he did not deny that allegation. Then an event in July left no doubt.

On the 18^th, in Cuero, Hardin killed a DeWitt County officer, J.B. Morgan, who happened to be a deputy to Jack Helm. Because he was an avowed Sutton supporter, it was the county sheriff’s turn next—that very same day.

In Albuquerque (Texas, not New Mexico), Hardin encountered Helm. The sheriff was with Sam McCracken, an acquaintance who claimed to be Albuquerque’s first settler. They were at a blacksmith shop. Helm also fashioned himself as an inventor, and he was in Albuquerque to demonstrate a cotton-worm destroyer which he had constructed. Not expecting trouble, Helm had left his boarding house without weapons. When approached by Hardin, Helm may have thought being unable to defend himself could actually save his life.

Such thinking was reasonable—Hardin, for all his faults, was not likely to gun down an unarmed man. But during the conversation, the more-motivated Jim Taylor crept up on Helm from behind, pointed a pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. As the startled Helm turned, Taylor managed to get off a second shot, striking Helm in the chest. Helm rushed Taylor, but Hardin lifted up a shotgun and fired. The blast shattered Helm’s arm. Even though badly wounded, Helm was able to flee into the blacksmith shop. While Hardin held the townspeople at gunpoint, Taylor chased Helm and unloaded the rest of his gun into Helm’s head. “Thus did the leader of the vigilant committee, the sheriff of DeWitt, the terror of the country, whose name was a horror to all law-abiding citizens, meet his death,” Hardin proclaimed. 

Only a day after Helm’s death a strong force of Taylors moved on Joe Tumlinson’s stronghold near Yorktown. After a brief siege a sheriff heading a posse appeared and talked both parties into signing a truce. But the peace lasted only until December of that year, when Wiley Pridgen, a Taylor sympathizer, was killed at Thomaston. Enraged by this murder, the Taylors attacked the Sutton faction, besieged them in Cuero for a day and night, and were besieged in turn when Joe Tumlinson appeared with a larger band of Sutton supporters.

By this time the county was in an uproar. For residents, there was no neutral zone—if they wished to continue to live in the area, they had to take sides. There was constant pursuing and bushwhacking and the body count rose. William Sutton, having had enough and believing his lifespan could be measured in hours, moved to Victoria in an adjoining county. Then he left altogether, the cover story being he was taking a herd of cattle to a northern market. In fact, on March 11, 1874, he had boarded a steamer at Indianola, planning on getting as far away as he could.

Sutton did not manage to get far at all. Before the boat could leave, Jim and Bill Taylor rode up to the dock and killed him and his friend Gabriel Slaughter. It was believed—and Hardin claimed this to be true—that he and his brother Joseph were also involved in the killings.

The response of the Sutton faction was to host a hanging party. The victims would be Kute Tuggle, Jim White, and Scrap Taylor. They were among a group of cowboys who had signed on to take a herd up the trail for Hardin. At Hamilton, they were arrested, charged with cattle theft, and brought back to Clinton. Instead of being tried, though, one night they were taken out of the courthouse and hanged, because of being acquainted with Hardin. 

On May 26, 1874, he turned 21 and he and several others were toasting that milestone in a saloon in Comanche. A county deputy sheriff, Charles Webb, walked in. Webb, a former Texas Ranger, was actually a peace officer in Brown County but he was in Comanche as more of a bounty hunter, having heard of there being a price on Hardin’s head. The gunfighter asked Webb if he had come to arrest him. When Webb replied he had not, Hardin invited him to have a drink. As Hardin led him to the bar, Webb drew his gun. One of Hardin’s men yelled out a warning, and in the ensuing gunfight, Webb was shot dead.

Webb had been a well-liked man and his death resulted immediately in the formation of a lynch mob. Hardin’s parents were taken into protective custody, while his brother Joe and two cousins, brothers Bud and Tom Dixon, were arrested on outstanding warrants. A group of local men broke into the jail in July and hanged the prisoners. After this, Hardin and Jim Taylor parted ways for good.

There was another reason why Hardin decided to go while the going was good: He had heard that Leander McNelly was coming for him. He later wrote, “The State Police had been organized”—meaning the Washington County company—“and McAnally [sic] had been placed on the force, so on consultation with friends, it was thought best that I should leave.”

By then, plenty of damage had been done, and with the likelihood that there would be more as long as there were members of the Sutton and Taylor factions still alive, Governor Coke was persuaded to take action. It was time for Capt. Leander McNelly and his Texas Rangers to end the feud.

The Austin Daily Statesman bid the lawmen goodbye and good luck in its edition of July 25, 1874, concluding: “We trust that the boys may return home in due time to gladden the hearts of the girls who shed tears as the boys ‘lit out’ for the war in DeWitt County.”

Originally published on Tom Clavin’s The Overlook.