The meadow creek was less than a quarter mile away, but you couldn’t see it from the house because of the heavy growth of hardwoods lining the steep banks and blending into the pine forest to the south. It took the troopers a while to reach the creek, they were coming so slow. There was a small break in the trees where they could cross fairly easy, but they had to come across single file.
As the first soldier eased his horse down the bank, I heard a shotgun blast and saw a puff of smoke from the clump of sweet gums to their left. The lead rider went backward like he’d been lassoed. I don’t think he hit the ground before John Wesley blew the second rider out of the saddle too. The third Yank jerked his horse around and gave it the spurs, heading back the way he’d come.
John Wesley came charging up out of the trees on his horse, whipping the paint up the bank with the reins, yelling something I couldn’t make out, and went straight after the third soldier. The Yank cut over toward the east treeline, trying to get to cover. As he rode he turned and fired two quick shots with his pistol—but John Wesley kept charging hard and gaining on him fast, and before the Yank could make the trees he closed to within ten feet of him and shot him in the back. The soldier’s arms went up in the air and he tumbled off his horse and John Wesley rode right over him at full gallop.
I tell you, it was something to see.
I took off running, hearing Will and Harold coming behind me, hearing their momma shrieking for them to get back to the house, sounding like she was near out of her mind. The boys passed me by and got to the creek a good ten yards ahead of me. I was plumb out of breath when I got to the bank and stood beside him, looking down at the two dead Yankees. One laid faceup, except he didn’t have a face anymore—it got blowed away along with half his head. The other was belly-down and the hole in his back where the charge had come out was big enough to throw a cat through. John Wesley had hid himself in the trees awful good to get such close shots at them—and they’d been careless, like I said. Their blood was flowing down the creek in lacy red swirls.
The boys were so excited they were just about dancing. Harold kept saying, “Did you see it, Daddy? Did you see it?” Then they were off and running again, splashing through the creek and up the opposite bank and off toward where John Wesley had reined up beside the other Yankee.
When I caught up to them, huffing hard again, John Wesley was down off the paint and holding his hand tight around his other arm. There was blood oozing through his fingers and he was grinning like a crazy man. The dead man at his feet was a Nigra. His eyes and mouth were open wide and one of his cheeks had been crushed by a hoof. The pistol ball had come out just under his collarbone and the thick patch of bright blood looked like a large red flower crushed on his jacket. “I been shot,” John Wesley said. “First damn time.” He said it like it was something he’d been waiting on, like a letter. He was trying hard to stay calm, but there was no hiding his excitement. I couldn’t hardly blame him, not really. I’d seen fellers killed before, but never seen three killed so quick by just one—and never in such a yeehaw way as John Wesley had just done.
“I think we best get these bluebellies out of sight quick as we can, don’t you, Mr. Morgan?” John Wesley said. I said I thought we damn sure should, and I sent Will off to the DuBois place, which was down the creek and into the woods a ways. Gerard DuBois and his boys were good people and I knew they’d be glad to lend us a hand.
The Nigra’s bullet hadn’t taken but a small bite out of John Wesley’s arm, but it was bleeding real free. I tore a strip off his shirtsleeve and used it to tie off the wound, then we got busy stripping down the Nigra. If anybody ever did find the bodies, we didn’t want anything on them to identify them as soldiers.
Just as we’d got back to the creek and started in on the other two dead Yanks, Gerard DuBois and his boys showed up. They’d been in the middle of stringing trotlines across the river, but when Will told them what happened, they hustled right on over to help us out. They about busted John Wesley’s shoulders, pounding them so much in congratulations.
We toted the bare-ass bodies way on down the creek to a special place and buried them deep in the clay. There was lots of wash down at that spot and every rain from then on helped to bury them deeper. It was more than one dead man had been buried around there. We burned all their clothes to ashes. John Wesley didn’t want any of the dead men’s goods, so the DuBois boys rode off with the Yank horses, heading for the Thicket, where there was a fella always ready to pay top money for good horseflesh without a question of where it came from, not even if it carried the U.S. brand. Gerard DuBois took two of the Yankee carbines and I took the other. I couldn’t pass up that Spencer.
The sun was down in the treetops by the time we got back to the house. When my old woman saw the Yankee rifle, she didn’t say anything but she got awful tight in the face, knowing what it would mean if the wrong person ever caught a look at it. I kept it next to the bed but never did take it outside to shoot till long after the Yanks pulled out of Texas.
But even though she was too mad to say anything, she got right to work stripping the binding off John Wesley’s wound and then bandaging it up proper. John Wesley could see how upset she was, and I think he was more uncomfortable about that than about the pain in his arm. When she finished up with him, he said he reckoned he’d best go back home and let his daddy know what happened.
During supper he said he’d leave as soon as it got dark. My old woman wrapped up some corn bread for him. She started to leave the room, then quick came back to him and touched his face and said, “God bless you, boy.” Then she went into the other room and didn’t come out again. I never understood her and never will.
The boys offered their hands and he shook them as seriously as if they were grown men. He hugged the girls and kissed their cheeks. They started to cry, but I told them if they were going to do that they could leave the room, so they quit. We sat around till the last of the daylight faded, then went out to the stable. He saddled up, thanked me again for my hospitality, and rode off. It was a full moon out, but he cut over close to the trees and we lost sight of him in their deep shadow.
Next we heard, his daddy’d got him a schoolteacher job in Navarro County. They say he was a natural-born good teacher of reading and lettering and ciphering. For sure he’d of had a more peaceful life if he’d stayed at it rather than turn cowboy like he did.
The very first time he walked into the schoolroom and said, “Good morning. My name’s Wes Hardin and I’m your new teacher,” I thought to myself, Well now, Mr. Wes Hardin, I might could teach you something too. I knew just by looking at him he hadn’t ever done it, not yet.
I’d been teaching boys things they were mighty glad to learn since just before I turned thirteen—which was when my Uncle Andy introduced me to the original sin, as some call it, on a pile of hay at the back of his barn. I didn’t begrudge Uncle Andy for plucking my cherry—I wanted him to do it as much as he did. All these women who say they never have liked it, I don’t understand them. I loved it right from the first.
The first time Johnny and me did it back there in Pisga was on a blanket under a cottonwood by the lake with a big silver moon blazing through the branches over our heads. Like most boys on their first time with a girl he was quick as a gunshot about it. But then he was ready to go again—and again and again. Lord, there was no quit to that boy. I didn’t keep count, but I bet we did it more than a half-dozen times that night. Like a lot of the tall skinny ones, he was hung like a horse. I mean, he could of cracked pecans with that big thing of his. And talk about a fast learner! That boy wanted to know everything—how’s this feel to you here, how’s that feel to you there, how you like if it I do this, or this, or this? What if I do this here with my tongue? What if I do that there with my finger? He wanted to learn everything all at once. I know I taught him everything I knew at the time—and he damn near wore me out with all his learning and practicing.