Selman gripped his cane in his left hand and his right was ready to go for the gun on his hip. Hardin stood with his hands on his coat lapels. I could not see if he was armed. I could see their faces distinctly, however. Both men were rigid with anger. They spoke sharply but not loudly, and the din of the street muffled much of what they said. If I’d been two feet farther from them, I’d have heard none of the conversation at all.
“… know damn well … the goods off him. I know … cheated me!” Selman was saying through his teeth, his gray mustache twitching with anger. “I won’t be cheated, you hear me? I won’t … or anybody else.”
“The hell …,” Hardin said. “… between you and George. He’s your partner, not …”
“What … George … damn business,” Selman said. “I know … cheat me, you … I’m warning … square with me, and I mean soon!”
“Warning me?” Hardin said. “Nobody … a bucket of shit with a badge stuck on it … bastard son … nothing but picking on women.”
Selman’s face darkened with fury. He looked about to have a fit. A streetcar clattered down the street, its bell clanging loudly, and I couldn’t make out any of what he next said to Hardin, nor what Hardin said in response. What Hardin did next, however, is still vivid in my mind. He held out his hands as though showing Selman he held nothing in them. Then he closed the lower fingers of both hands, keeping the thumbs upright and the index fingers pointing at Selman like pistol barrels. He flicked his thumbs down and mouthed the word, “Pow!” Selman stepped backward as though he’d been shoved. He looked astonished. Hardin grinned and slowly raised each index finger in turn to his mouth and softly blew on their tips, as though clearing them of gunsmoke. He then strolled across the street and went into the Acme Saloon.
Selman watched him every step of the way, his face inflamed with fury, then turned and saw me staring at him.
“Ah … Constable Selman,” I said, “my name is Peckinpah. Of The Police Gazette. I wonder if—”
“Kiss my ass!” he said, and stalked away.
When I told Hardin I was with the Gazette and offered to buy the next round, the first thing he wanted to know was whether I’d covered the Sullivan-Kilrain bare knuckle championship fight six years earlier. “We heard about it in the pen,” he said, “but I’ve never met anybody who saw it with his own eyes.”
I hadn’t been at the fight either, but I knew several of the reporters who had, which made me the nearest thing to an eyewitness he’d yet met. So I was obliged to recapitulate for him everything I could recall about the progress of that epic battle as it had been told to me. I admitted I’d been astonished by the outcome, that I’d never expected Sullivan, sodden drunkard that he was, to withstand the assault of the younger and quicker Kilrain under the roasting Mississippi sun. When Kilrain drew first blood and Sullivan paused to vomit in the early going, I told him that the reporters all figured Sully was done for. Hardin seemed enrapt. “But he wasn’t done, was he,” he said, “that old warhorse?” He certainly was not, I agreed. After seventy-five rounds spanning two hours and sixteen minutes, Kilrain’s seconds threw in the sponge. Hardin smiled widely. “Never bet against the warhorse,” he said.
We were standing at the end of the bar nearest the front door, and I signaled Frank the bartender for another round for us. Hardin’s interest took another turn when I told him the Gazette’s chief correspondent for the Sullivan-Kilrain fight had been none other than Steve Brodie, the famous bridge-jumper, who was a good friend of mine. I then had to expound at length about the various jumps I’d seen Steve Brodie make. I told of more than once having seen him pulled unconscious from a river, blood running from his nose and mouth and ears, sometimes his ribs broken and his shoes knocked from his feet. Dozens of men and boys were killed every year in their attempts to emulate Steve Brodie.
“Damn, but that man’s got daring!” Hardin said. “And he can surely take a beating, can’t he?” John Wesley Hardin is the only man I ever spoke to about Steve Brodie who never said he wondered why a man would risk his life and take such beatings jumping off high bridges.
He said he’d be pleased to grant me an interview for the Gazette on one condition—that I didn’t call him a “pistolero.” I had suggested that my lead-in would refer to him as the most famous pistolero in the West. “I never did much care for that word,” he said. “Sounds too damn Mexican.” Well then, I asked, what term would he prefer? Gunfighter? Shootist? Pistolman? Mankiller? “They called Wild Bill the Prince of the Pistoleers,” he said. “‘Pistoleer’ always did sound properly American to me.” All right, I said, “pistoleer” it was. I’d call him the King of the Pistoleers. He smiled and said, “Sounds about right.”
We never did get to the interview. He was far too persistent in interrogating me—particularly about the writing craft. He told me he’d been writing the story of his life for the past several months and was very near to completing the book. He asked me question after question about techniques of narration, exposition, and description—though he did not know the proper terminology for many of these things. I said I’d be happy to read his work and offer whatever helpful criticism I might. He smiled almost shyly and said he’d be grateful.
I kept trying to shift the conversation to the subject of himself, but he much preferred to hear about the stories I’d covered for the Gazette—about the execution of William Kemmler, the first condemned man to die in the electric chair, a process that took more than eight minutes and left the carcass half cooked; about the white slavery rings I’d investigated in New York’s lower depths; about the sex scandals and the opium dens and the labor riots; about crimes of passion. When I at last managed to ask him about his beginnings as a desperado, he was perfunctory. “Just say I was drove to it by murdering Yankee occupation troops and carpetbaggers. Anybody who wants to can read about it in my book. But tell me, what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?”
* * *
A few minutes later a friend of his named Henry Brown came in and informed him that Old John Selman was sitting on a keg on the sidewalk in front of the saloon.
“His son Young John and Captain Carr came along just now and I heard him tell them to stay close by and be ready for trouble with you,” Henry Brown said.
“Just like the old coward to ask for help,” Hardin said. “How’s he look?”
“Hard to say,” Henry Brown said. “But he ain’t smiling.”
“Bastard’s scared,” Hardin said. “No bushwhacker likes the idea of going up against a man face-to-face. Reckon I’ll let him stew in his own sweat a while longer. Let him think some more on the way things stand.”
“And then what?” I asked. “Will you go out and face him down?” I tried to mask my excitement with a tone of nonchalance—but, in truth, I was heady with the prospect of witnessing a dime-novel shootout between two famous gunmen.
“Well now,” he said with a smile, “let’s just wait and see what happens.” I think he knew how I was feeling and was amused by it.
He shook the bar dice with Henry Brown to decide who would buy the next round. I told him I’d witnessed the exchange he’d had with Selman across the street, but that I hadn’t overheard enough of it to know exactly what was going on. “I know you rattled him with those two-gun fingers,” I said, and we both chuckled. “You see how he flinched when I shot him with these .44 caliber fingers?” Hardin said. “Old jasper damn near had a heart attack.”