He started sitting in on some of the card games in the Gem, and I know a few of the boys sometimes lost hands to him on purpose, just to make him happy and to stay on his good side. But the fact is, he was a reckless card player, and sometimes the boys couldn’t lose a hand to him even when they tried. I’d always heard he was a hell of a gambler, but you never would’ve known it from the way he played in the Gem. To make things worse, he was one of those bad losers I mentioned before, especially when he’d been drinking.
One night he got into a stud game at my table and by midnight was just about cleaned out. He was red-eyed and surly and in no mood for the general joshing and chuckling at the table. When Buck Elliot laid down four nines to take the biggest pot of the night—which Hardin had been sure he was going to take with his full house of aces over fives—well, it was too much for him. He said, “Shit!” and sent Buck’s cards flying off the table with a quick backhand sweep of his arm.
Everybody said, “Hey now!” and “No need for that!” and so on. They’d all got pretty familiar with him in the couple of weeks he’d been in town, and the familiarity had eased them off their tiptoes around him. Maybe that was part of what was bothering him, I don’t know. All I know for sure is what happened. He jumps up and says, “I’ve had enough of your card tricks, boy!” He was talking to me. I was stunned. “I don’t play card tricks!” I said, and the others quickly backed me up. “Hud’s no cheat, Hardin, “ Bill Lepperman said, and Jerome Bradstreet chimes in with, “It ain’t his dealing costing you, Hardin, it’s your playing.”
“Save the bullshit for your gardens, you sonbitches,” Hardin says, and pushes back his coat flaps so we can get a good look at the one pistol on his hip and the other hung in a vest holster. He never did pull them—Buck and the others lied about that. He just let us see them, and that was enough. “The whole bunch of you been playing me for the fish all night long,” he says, “but that damn game’s over. This pot’s mine and I’m taking it. Anybody’s got objections, all he’s got to do is stand up and make them.”
None of us stood up or said anything more, and he raked up the pot and stuffed it in his pockets. I had a derringer in the waist pocket of my vest, but it might as well have been a frog for all the use I was about to make of it. That was the moment I made up my mind to move on to California.
As soon as Hardin left, Buck went out in search of a lawman, and a few minutes later was back with Old John at his side. John listened to everybody’s story, then him and Buck set out for the Herndon House, where Hardin lived. But as they were walking past the Wigwam Saloon they spotted him at the bar.
The way Buck told the story, he was right at Old John’s side as John stepped up to Hardin and told him he was under arrest. But Mack Tracey, who was working the bar that night, told me Buck hung back by the doors, ready as a rabbit to run for it. Buck claimed Old John backed Hardin down, but Mack told it different. He said when Old John told Hardin he was under arrest for robbing a card game, Hardin said he didn’t do any such thing, he’d only taken what was rightfully his. Old John said he could tell it to the judge, and Hardin said, “I’m telling it to you, uncle.” There weren’t but about six people in the saloon at that late hour and they all hustled out of the line of fire. No telling what would’ve happened next, Mack said, if Jeff Milton hadn’t come in just then.
Chief Milton heard one side of the story from Hardin, then the other from Buck, then said to Hardin, “If you can prove they were cheating you, I’ll do something about it—but if you can’t, then you’re in the wrong, and you know you are. Now you told me yourself when you first got to town you didn’t want any trouble. I’m holding you to your word.”
Hardin said he knew he’d been cheated but couldn’t prove it. “Then I’ll have to arrest you for robbery, Wes,” Chief Milton told him.
“I’ll have that pistol,” Old John said, and started to reach for the pistol on Hardin’s hip. But Hardin stepped back from him and squared off. “No you won’t,” he said. “Jeff can arrest me, but you can’t arrest one side of me, you murdering old buzzard. I know all about you.”
Mack said Old John’s eyes flamed up and for a moment it looked like he might pull—but he didn’t. “If Old John was ever going to pull on Wes Hardin in a stand-up gunfight, that was the time he’d of done it,” Mack said. “The man had just called him a murderer, for Christ’s sake. But Old John didn’t get old by. taking chances in a stand-up fight, if you know what I mean—and if you ever tell him I said that, I’ll call you a bald-ass liar.”
Anyhow, that’s what I saw of John Wesley Hardin with my own eyes in El Paso and what I heard about him with my own ears. Jeff Milton took him before Judge Howe and the judge made him repay the money to Buck, then fined him twenty-five dollars.
They say Hardin and Jeff got to be friends after that and often took a drink or two in the saloons together—and George Scarborough with them. Some say the three of them got to be thick as thieves and even conspired in the killing of Martin McRose. I wouldn’t know. By then I was on my way to California. But I do know that Hardin and Old John weren’t friends for even a minute. Between them, it was bad blood from the start.
There’s nothing worse can happen to a man than to fall in love with a hot-ass bitch. That’s what happened to Marty. Hell, she used to give me some looks, and I ain’t nothing to look at. If it had a dick, she was interested.
Me and Vic and Tom were at the cantina table in Juárez with them when Scarborough told Marty that Hardin was keeping company with his wife. He said it real casual, while he was rolling himself a smoke. He said everybody in El Paso knew it too and was having a good laugh about it. Marty’s grin looked like wood. He said what the hell did he care, she wasn’t his wife no more. He said he’d divorced the no-good tramp in Ojinaga a coupla months ago, so she could fuck all El Paso for all he cared. Bullshit. He was lying to try and save face. Whenever Marty was really steamed, a big vein on his forehead would swell up, and just then it looked about to pop.
“Well,” Scarborough says, “you mighta divorced her and all, like you say, but I bet those fellas laughing at you in the saloons across the river don’t know it. I bet Hardin don’t know it.”
He was smart, Scarborough, egging Marty like that. A couple of days earlier, when he figured Marty was holding out on him, he said he’d arrest him next time he crossed the river. Old Selman had throwed a fit about being cheated and said he’d shoot Marty if he set foot back in Texas. But now Scarborough wanted to deal. “Cut me half the take from the cows,” he said, “and I’ll set Hardin up for you.” He’d trick him into showing up at the railroad bridge in the middle of the night and Marty could be laying for him and let him have it.
“What about your bigmouthed pal Selman?” Marty says. “He want the other half of the take?” Scarborough says, “Fuck Selman. Old bastard don’t know how to get along. This is between you and me.” Marty wanted to know how he would get Hardin to go to the bridge in the middle of the goddamn night, and Scarborough says, “Hell, me and him are big buddies now, ain’t you heard? I’ll tell him a dealer I know is selling some guns to some Mexes at the bridge tonight and wants to hire protection for himself in case the greasers try a cross. Hardin’ll go for it. He’s trying to prove he’s still the man he was before he went to the pen. Been pushing his luck lately.”