One night about ten months later I arrested a bullying big drunk of a seaman named Davison in a bad saloon over by the river docks, but when I pulled him out on the sidewalk a mean crowd followed us, including three of his shipmates, and the situation got tight real fast. The sailors pulled knives and backed me and my prisoner against the wall, saying I either let their friend go or they’d cut me up for fish bait. The crowd was egging them on, wanting a show. I’d cuffed Davison’s hands behind him, but he was putting up a hell of a fuss and it took both hands to hold him. I knew if I was forced to pull my gun I’d have to shoot—and with that crowd, no telling what could happen.
Then one of the sailors gave a grunt and his eyes rolled up and down he went. And there John stood, grinning at me and holding a big army Colt that he’d clubbed the fella with. “Stand fast, boys,” he told the other two, and they froze in place.
I grabbed Davison by the hair and rammed his head into the brick wall, putting an end to his nuisance and freeing my hands of him. John backed up beside me, still holding his gun on the other two, and said, “Evening, Gus. They said at the station you’d been sent here to settle a row, but damn if it don’t look like it’s trying to settle you.”
“Evening yourself, John,” I said. “Real good to see you. Excuse me a minute.”
I took the knives off the two tars and gave each one a hard backhand across the mouth, drawing blood both times. I told them to pick up their trash and get out of my sight before I cut their noses off. They didn’t waste any time hoisting up the one John coldcocked and making off down the wharf. I told the crowd the show was over and to break it up, and they started milling back into the bar, grumbling that nobody’d been killed. I took a mug of beer from one fella and poured it in Davison’s face to bring him around.
“Mr. Swain,” I said, “let me check this gentleman into the Crossbars Hotel and we’ll go sit ourselves down with a bottle so you can tell me why it’s taken you so damn long to come to our fair city.”
A half hour later we were drinking rye at a back table in Feller’s Club and he was telling me he’d found the saloon his old trail friend had owned in Gainesville—but Bama Bill himself had been dead for two months. He’d got into a drunken fight with the high yella woman he lived with just outside of town and she’d broke his head open with an iron skillet. She’d covered up her crime by burning down the house and claiming the fire killed Bill. But she was a good Christian woman and her conscience bothered her too much to live with, so she went to the sheriff and confessed. Two nights later, while the sheriff was at supper, a bunch of Bama Bill’s friends broke her out of the jail and took her out in the swamp and a few of them had their way with her and then they drowned her.
John heard this story from Sam Burnette, who’d come to own the saloon after Bill’s death. But Sam was champing at the bit to go prospecting for silver in Colorado, and he was ready to sell. In just a couple of days they’d made the deal and John had himself a saloon.
Shack Wilson, the Gainesville sheriff, became one of his regulars, not only at the bar but in the poker room John set up in the back. They started going bass fishing together. Shack introduced him to a neighbor of his named Salter who raised a kind of hunting dog called a Texas leopard, which is the best wild-hog hunting dog there is. The three of them would go into the forest every now and then and come out with enough pig for all their families to feast on for days.
One day when he was tending bar, in walks a couple of Texans he knew from his trail-driving days. They recognized him too, mustache and all. But before they could say anything, John put out his hand and said, “Name’s John Swain! Always glad to see new faces in here.” He took them to a table at the rear of the room and they had a quiet talk. The Texans were in town on some cattle deal and were mighty glad to see him. They said they’d been hearing all sorts of tales about him back in Texas for the last ten months—that he’d robbed banks in Waco and Dallas, that he’d killed the sheriff in Livingston last Christmas and two Texas Rangers in San Antone just last month and four possemen near Austin the month before that. Every time somebody got shot dead in Texas and there weren’t any witnesses, you could bet the blame would fall on John Wesley Hardin. “I guess it’s a compliment,” John told them, “to be so often remembered by my fellow Texans.” The two trail partners swore they wouldn’t say a word back in Texas about having seen him, and Wes told them he knew he could trust them. The Texans were in town a week and spent every night in John’s saloon, drinking and gambling and having a high time. Three days after they left back for Texas, John had sold the saloon and set out with his family for Jacksonville without letting anyone know where he was going. “It’s not that I don’t trust them old boys,” he said, “I just thought it’d be wise to proceed as if I didn’t.”
He did real well in Jacksonville—got into cattle shipping and bought himself a butcher shop, and both businesses prospered. Their little rented house on the bank of the St. Johns was shaded by palms and cooled by the river breezes. Jane loved living in the midst of all that lush greenery. They often took the wagon out to the beach with a picnic lunch and played in the breakers. Jane was rosy with sun and the glow of pregnancy, and Molly was dark as an Indian. In August “J. H. Swain, Jr.” was born, and for the next two weeks John handed a cigar to every man he met. I got into the habit of taking supper at their house two or three evenings a week. I taught John the fun of fishing in the surf, and we’d go hunting in the swamps for deer and pig. He shot a couple of good-size alligators one day and we dragged them out on ropes and had them skinned by an old Creek from the St. John backwater. John hung the skin of the sixteen-footer on the front porch of his house and had the fourteen-footer made into belts and hat bands and two fine pairs of boots, one for me and one for himself. We got to be damn fine friends and got to talking about going partners in the timber business up in the Panhandle.
Of course we did a little gambling every so often. We sat in on Bobby Chiles’s poker game on Tuesday nights in the back of his saloon, and in Fred Johnson’s game every Thursday. I always did all right, but John most always came out the big winner. The fellas used to cuss me half joking and half not for introducing him to our games. “Don’t seem we can do much about your luck, Swain,” Bobby Chiles said to him one time, “but we ought to take a damn horsewhip to Kennedy for bringing you around here in the first place.”
One night—he’d been in Jacksonville about a year, I guess—we came out of Bobby Chiles’s with a nice bourbon glow and bumped into a pair of strangers coming through the doors. They were big rascals and wore tight black suits and derby hats. One had a black handlebar and the other’s face was full of orange freckles. “Pardon me, friend,” I said to the handlebar, then saw the look he gave John and I knew they’d come for him. Freckles stood aside to let us pass and John nodded thanks.
We paused under the streetlight in front of the saloon to fire up cigars, and John whispered, “Looks like they’re on to me.” I glanced real casual up at the saloon window behind him and saw Handlebar peeking out. “Best go your own way, Gus,” he said. “It ain’t your fight.” Hell it ain’t, I told him. In my best copper’s voice I said I was an authorized agent of the law, sworn to protect the honest citizens of Jacksonville from those who would interfere with the exercise of their civil liberties. John smiled and said, “Well hell then,” and we headed off toward the deserted section of town by the old port on the river.