31. John Wesley Hardin: A Life on the Run

John Wesley Hardin was a man who became an outlaw from a young age and the life of this outlaw never seemed to slow down. Join us as we hear how this rollercoaster of a life unfolded.

Email: ryan.thestolengoods@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Return Of The Host
• 2:00 Why Hardin’s Story Matters
• 4:45 1853 Backdrop And Birth
• 8:20 Violence Shapes A Boy
• 15:30 First Kill And Outlaw Birth
• 20:10 Ambushes, Escapes, And Bravado
• 28:30 Trail Drives And Rising Body Count
• 33:00 Abilene, Wild Bill, And Snoring Death
• 39:30 Texas Feuds And Dirty Politics
• 45:10 The Taylor–Sutton War Ignites
• 52:00 Assassinations And Public Opinion Turns
• 58:30 The Webb Shooting And Mob Fury
• 1:05:40 Manhunt, Lynchings, And Flight Plans
• 1:12:30 Exile, Aliases, And Florida Schemes
• 1:20:00 Rangers Close In: The Train Arrest
• 1:25:30 Trial, Prison Years, And Reinvention
• 1:31:00 Law License, Miller, And El Paso Spiral

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Seven coordinates. Outlaw Locator. Hi, I'm Ryan McCarthy and welcome to the Stolen Goods. This podcast is all about outlaws, bandits, and scourges of the seven seas. Each episode, we're going to take a look at a different one of these characters and learn about them. We'll shine the spotlight on some of the most infamous bandits, outlaws, and pirates in history and even dig deeper to learn about some that maybe you haven't heard of before. I am not a historian, nor do I claim to be an expert on the topic. I'm just a guy who thinks this type of stuff is rad and wants to learn more about it. So you and I are going to go on this journey and learn about this part of history together. So grab your bow and arrow, six shooter, and bag of blue and join me as we walk the plank and plunge into the lawless world of banditry and swashbucklery. Is that a word? Together. Alright. Now welcome back to the stolen goods. My name is Ryan McCarthy, and thank you so much for joining me. Uh it's been a minute. It's been like two and a half years. Yeah, life got lifey. And uh I had to take a break, but as long as I paid Buzzsprout.com money every month, they kept my podcast alive and well. I think that's money well spent. I always planned on coming back to the stolen goods. I really enjoyed doing this. Once uh I figured out how to manage all of the new things in my life, I kind of fell out of the groove and I needed to get my groove back. So I watched how Stella got her groove back. That didn't help, but I figured I would just keep on plugging away. And uh here we are. Now, I'm not gonna be doing a podcast every week the way I used to do it because I just don't have the time to do that. And I was kind of going crazy. I was kind of obsessed with it, and uh it wasn't healthy. I was just kind of uh that's all I was doing. And I'm the kind of person that when I get into something, I kind of go full bore and sooner or later it kind of tapers back, and I realize that I'm being crazy and I need to do things at a reasonable pace, but it takes some time, but it is a lot of fun, and I love researching these individuals, uh, so we're going to continue doing it, and I'm gonna put out episodes as often as I can. And I don't know how long this episode is gonna be. This one's gonna be pretty long. This is a long one. Uh, we are covering a gentleman in history who is very well documented, and part of the reason why he's so well documented is because he wrote his own autobiography. We are talking about the infamous John Wesley Harden, of course. And whether or not his autobiography is accurate, you know, it's up for debate. No, I will say this. I did read his autobiography. I'd be a pretty terrible researcher if I didn't. But while I was online and looking around and researching everything, I came across a website for the University of Oklahoma press, which said when giving their little review of Hardin's autobiography, it says while biased, it is remarkably accurate and readable. Like remarkably readable. That's the part that I cling to, you know. Because it's like, who would have thought that any gunslinger back in the old west would have written any book that wasn't a complete chore to get through? You know what I mean? Now I'm not saying that it's a easy read. I mean it it's only like a hundred pages. So it you can get through it, but he only has one chapter in his life, you know, and it's like a page and a half long paragraphs, the spelling is all messed up, you know. But despite all that, even if it is kind of inaccurate, just like a general history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pirates, I mean, who knows how accurate that is, but we run with that. So we're gonna run with this. A few things to talk about before we jump into the time machine. There is this one article in a 1924 issue of Frontier Times magazine written by John Hunter, where Hardin's midwife, when he was born, was quoted as saying he was either going to be a great hero or a monumental villain. Another thing is that he never killed anyone who didn't need killing. So that was really nice of him. And he claims to have killed over 40 people. Records confirm about 27 of those, which is still pretty impressive. So, without further ado, I think it's time that we just get on with it. We've waited too long, so let's jump into the time machine, let's get out of here, and let's head back there right now. So here we are in 1853. So, what happened this year? Oh, yeah, that's right. On January 1st, the city of Cincinnati, Ohio was presented with the first practical steam-powered horse-drawn fire engine, which was able to build up enough pressure in just five minutes on the way to the fire and allowed five men to spray more water out of fire than hundreds of men using hand pumps. This steam fire engine was initially opposed by the firefighters, but ended up revolutionizing firefighting. And on April 1st, 1853, Cincinnati became the first city in the world with a professional and fully paid fire department. Not to be confused with Boston, which became the first city in the country with a publicly funded fire department. The first steam engine used by Cincinnati was named Uncle Joe Ross, after a prominent city council member. By 1854, the residents of Cincinnati had raised enough money for the fire department to buy another fire engine, which they called Citizen's Gift. I personally think this next one is hilarious. On April 7th, 1853, Chloroform gained massive popularity as an anesthetic when Queen Victoria allowed her doctor, Jon Snow, who was kind enough to take a break from battling wildlings and white walkers, to administer chloroform to her while giving birth to her eighth child, good lord, Prince Leopold. Chloroform was originally invented in 1831 by Dr. Samuel Guthrie by combining chlorinated lime with ethanol to be used as a pesticide. But that didn't seem to take off. It was first administered as an anesthetic in 1847 when James Young Simpson used it on himself. That's dedication to science. It didn't take long, however, for chloroform to claim its first victim when 15-year-old Hannah Greener died from the effects on January 28, 1848. Word started to spread about the dangers of chloroform after that. But then Queen Victoria said that the effects were so satisfactory that she asked for chloroform to be administered for her next childbirth as well, leading chloroform to be affectionately known in Britain as anesthesia a la Rhine. From that point on, it was a rap, and chloroform became a super popular anesthetic despite its already documented health risks. Chloroform wasn't officially banned in clinical use until the 1970s with the publication of Vincent Joseph Collins' second edition of Principles of Anesthesiology in 1976. And on May 26, 1853, in the town of Bonham, Texas, a young boy named John Wesley Hardin was born. Now, unlike a lot of other pirates and outlaws we've covered, we do know a lot about John's early life because he did take it upon himself to write his own autobiography. So here we go. John was born to James Gibson Hardin, aka Gip, and Mary Elizabeth Dixon. Gip Harden was a Methodist preacher and a circuit rider, meaning he was tasked with riding around to different towns in his area to get Methodist denominations up off the ground. As a result of Gib Hardin's devotion to the Methodist Church, John was named after the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley. John described his mother in his autobiography as blonde, highly cultured, and charity predominated in her disposition. Sounds like a hell of a lady. Shortly after his birth, in 1855, his father moved the family to Moscow, Texas, where his father got a job as a school teacher. The family kicked around for about four years until 1859 when they moved to Sumter in Trinity County. It's here that he witnessed his first taste of violence when a man named Turner Evans was stabbed to death in Sumter. Turner Evans was a wealthy man who claimed that a man named John Ruff owed him money. One night, while he was drunk, him and his henchmen went door to door looking for Ruff until he ran into him at a grocery store and started beating on Ruff with his cane like a maniac while his cronies helped, to the point that Ruff could not take it anymore and pulled out a knife and stabbed Evans in the throat, severing his jugular and killing him instantly. John Wesley Harden was there in the store and saw the whole thing. After this, later in life, John refers to this event saying, Readers, you see what drink and passion will do. If you wish to be successful in life, be temperate and control your passions. If you don't, ruin and death is the inevitable result. Time will show that John should have taken his own advice. It was shortly after this, in 1861, that John's father passed the bar, became a lawyer, and he was like, we're out of here, and he moved the family to Livingston in Polk County. 1861 also marked the beginning of the Civil War, when the Confederate Army attacked Fort Sumner in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor on April 12th, the event that is generally considered the beginning of the Civil War. The Harden household was a pro-South family, and John's father had even gone into town to organize a company to go off to fight in the war. A year later, in 1862, John and his cousin Bartlett tried to sneak off to join the Confederate Army at nine years old. Well, his father caught wind of this, and according to John, gave him a sound thrashing. So apparently Gip Harden, on one hand, is a devout Methodist, but on the other hand, he's not above beating up a nine-year-old. But for the next three years, until the last battle of the Civil War, which was fought at Palmito Ranch in Texas on May 13, 1865, John grew up in a Texas that did not hide its hatred for the North, and John witnessed countless pictures, sculptures, and other effigies of Abraham Lincoln getting shot, stabbed, and burned. And according to John, in his own words, the way you bend a twig is the way it will grow is an old saying and a true one. So I grew up a rebel. It is around this time in Hardin's autobiography, which he does not document with dates very well, so I'm not totally sure when this happened, but John regals us with a story that I find a little hard to believe. Apparently, while living in well Livingston, John's father got the bright idea along with his friend Captain T. L. Epperson to move out to the countryside about three miles outside of town and start farming. Now, apparently Captain Epperson made up pretty well in the farming life and was quite successful, but not so much with Gip. Nope, James Harden hated farming, with John saying that the worst part about it were the ticks. They were everywhere. If they were hunting, fishing, or doing whatever, the ticks were right there with them. So finally, James sold the farm to his brother Barnett, saying, You can have it. But while John and his family were living there, John got into quite a sticky situation. One day, John and his dad were out hunting when one of their horses, Jack, strayed off, and they found out that Jack had made his way to Bob Sykes' place. So the next morning, John packed up some supplies, and him and the dogs started making their way to old man Sykes' farm. But when he got there, Sykes, being the hospitable fellow he was, insisted that John stay for dinner. And according to John, the meal was gotten up in good country style. So John was not shy about eating a lot. But by the time John, the dogs, and Jack started making their way back to the Harden Ranch, it was late and starting to get dark, and it began to rain, and they had about three and a half miles of dense woods to get through with tons of wild animals all over the place. Well, a couple of miles into the trip, he found his dog, Watch, at the base of a tree barking, and the other dogs surrounding the area looking up. So John is like, what the hell is going on? He looks up and he realizes that there are four raccoons up in the tree. Now, John wanted those coons as he called them to bring him back home because they would make a fine stew and he would be lauded as a hero. Unfortunately, there were no branches low to the ground for him to climb on. So get this, he rode Jack to the base of the tree and stood on Jack's back, and he threw a rope over the lowest branch and starts ascending the tree to the branch that the raccoons are on, and he ties himself to the tree. And as you can imagine, these raccoons are essentially backed up against the wall with every muscle fiber on high alert. So he gets up there, unarmed, mind you, and he breaks off a branch to use as a weapon, and the raccoons start attacking him, and he ends up dropping the branch. So now he is weaponless against a bunch of scrappy raccoons, and he gets into a fist fight with them. Are you hearing this? This kid is like 12. So he starts throwing them out of the tree one at a time, 50 feet up in the air, and the dogs make short work of them. Then John shimmies down the tree trunk, all caught up with raccoon lacerations, ties all the raccoons together with his galluses, which are essentially suspenders, and after some coercing, finally convinces Jack to let him tie the dead raccoons to the saddle and heads back home. I don't blame Jack. I wouldn't want a bunch of dead bodies flopped all over me either. Now, long story short, he makes it back with the raccoons, and everybody thinks he's amazing. I don't know, man. You know me. I want to believe, but this one's really out there. Alright. After the war ended, later in 1865, Hardin's father moved the family back to Sumter, where he taught school and practiced law, and John and his brother Joe were enrolled in the local school. And it was here in 1867 when Harden, at the age of 14, got into a fight with another kid at school named Charles Slower, after Slower accused Harden of writing some graffiti on the wall of the schoolhouse that said, I love Sal, and Sal loves mutton. Those are some fighting words if I ever heard any. And I'm assuming Sal is short for Sally? Harden also explains that something was said about Sal's appearance that didn't do Sal any favors. John not only denied it, but accused Slower of being the actual author of the message. This enraged Charles, who charged Harden with the knife. But as you can imagine, by this point, John is clearly the type of 14-year-old who also carries a knife on him and stabs Slower instead, almost killing him. And according to multiple sources, the result of this is that he nearly got suspended. Nearly! Like getting into a knife fight on school property back then wasn't quite suspension worthy. Apparently, the trustees of the school had heard the truth of the matter and learned that Slater was the antagonist in this little scuffle. And instead of suspending John, he was exonerated of all wrongdoing. John caps off this little anecdote by letting the reader know that Charles in later years was hung by an angry mob a few towns over. So it's safe to say that Mr. Slower wasn't exactly living right. Well, things continued to pick up a year later in 1868 when John went to go visit his uncle on the farm and along with his cousin got into a wrestling match with a former slave named Major Mage Halshozen, a name that is dripping with African heritage. Mage was what was known as a Freeman, a former slave that had since been freed and once belonged to Judge Claiborne Claive Howchozen, who was a cousin of sorts to John's uncle's wife. Everybody got that? Well, John and his cousin ended up throwing the large man down twice and cutting Mage on the second takedown, making him bleed his own blood, which pissed off Mage more. But then John's uncle and a few others broke up the fight and told John to go inside as Mage was being escorted off the property while threatening to kill John, basically saying, You can't hide forever. Now, this is all according to John's autobiography, where he is good at everything. So who knows what really happened. Anyway, the next morning, John and his horse Old Paint were delivering a message to Captain Sam Rose's place, close to the Hal Schosen farm, and ran into Mage on the side of the road, and Mage wasted no time attacking John while he was on his horse. Mage grabbed John's horse's bridle and started beating on him with a stick, and John had no choice but to draw his cult dragoon 44-6 shooter, the cult 45 single action army was not invented yet, and proceeded to shoot Mage point blank five times until finally Mage went down. John then took off to get help and brought Uncle Clay back to Mage, who was still alive but clearly dying. Claybe gave John a$20 gold coin and told him to go find his father, tell him everything that had happened. Mage died shortly afterward in November 1868, and James Harden was convinced that in this newly union-occupied Texas, the law was not going to look favorably on John for killing a black man, regardless of whether or not it was self-defense, especially considering that about a third of the new police force was black. So John's father told him to go into hiding until the whole thing blew over and bam, John Wesley Harden's an outlaw. It could be safely assumed that there would be no blowing over, and this just started a roller coaster ride of violence and evading authorities that went on for years. First thing he did was hightail it to his older brother Joseph's place in Logolus Prairie, which was an affectionate nickname for Nogalis Prairie, which currently has a thriving population of 109 people, and hid out at Old Man Morgan's farm on the outskirts of town. But a few weeks later, the authorities found out where Harden was and headed there to apprehend him. But his brother Joe found out about this and tipped John off. Three soldiers were sent to arrest him, but John knew that there was only one area of the creek that they could pass to reach him. So John decided to hide out in the creek and ambush them. After a fierce firefight, all three soldiers were shot and killed, with his Colt 44 saying in his autobiography, I waylaid them, as I had no mercy on men who I knew only wanted to get my body to torture and kill. It was ward of the knife for me, and I brought it on by opening the fight with my double-barreled shotgun and ending it with a captain ball six shooter. John didn't get away unscathed though. He took a shot in the arm, but he still managed to bury the three soldiers about a hundred yards downstream to cover up the murders with a little help. People in the area were sympathetic to Harden's situation and helped cover up everything, taking all their horses and burning their belongings. It was like the soldiers were never there. But it wasn't like he could just go home now. Obviously, the missing soldiers would cause suspicion, and he was still an outlaw. So in January 1869, his father and him went to Navarro County, where his father took a job as a school teacher. And guess what? So did John. That's right, folks. After killing four people, Harden took a job molding the young minds of children from 6 to 16. He's 15 at this point if you're keeping score. But he decided that the life of a school teacher was not for him, and he had the great idea of becoming a cowboy. He had relatives in the business and could just jump right in. And before he knew it, he was eyebrow deep in the cowboy lifestyle and starts hanging out with a bunch of lowlives like Jim Newman, who bet hardened a bottle of whiskey that he couldn't shoot a man's eye out. Apparently, John did not shoot the man's eye out, and Newman won the bet. And apparently the same Jim Newman went on to become sheriff of Nolan County. Why not? John also took it upon himself to confront a black man that he claimed was harassing old white people who were in the way of his wagon as he went through town. So John dressed up like an old man was walking across the street about the same time that he knew the man would be passing by on his wagon to piss him off. And once the man got off his wagon to start pushing John around, John got up and he threw off his cloak and he was like, Tiz I, John Wesley Harden. And he held the man at gunpoint while he groveled on his knees for his life. And according to John, he fired a warning shot off to the side to scare the man and finishes the story saying that the man turned his life around and became a model citizen. Another man that Harden got wrapped up with was Frank Polk, who killed a man named Tom Brady in Corsicana. Polk and Harden were both confronted by Union soldiers, but Hardin got away and Polk did not and got thrown in the slammer for a couple years. Then there was his cousin Simp Dixon, a man with a very unfortunate name, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and hated Yankees because apparently they tortured and killed his mother, brother, and sister. Not gonna lie, that's a pretty valid reason to hate Yankees. Dixon was a wanted man by the Union and had a reward out for him. So one night, those Dan Yankees ambushed Hardin and Dixon in Richland, resulting in a gunfight that left two Union soldiers dead and the rest flee. Dixon was later killed in Limestone County at the age of 19. After this, in the fall of 1869, John's brother Joe convinced him to leave Navarro County and go with him down to Hill County where he visited some family and continued his crazy ways and got himself into all sorts of trouble. While he was down there, his own father was sending him letters begging him to stop his fast-living ways, and even came down to visit him on Christmas Eve to let him know that the whole family was up in Navarro County, and it would be great if he could come up there to see them. But instead of doing that, he borrowed his father's horse, and him and his cousin's husband, John Collins, went down to Bowl's Track to bet on some horses and get into whatever shenanigans they could get into. It was here that he was introduced to a couple of Arkansas boys, Benjamin, Jim Bradley, Judge Moore, and another man named Hamp Davis, who was so inconsequential to the story that I debated whether or not to even mention him. So they all bet on some forest races for a while and then started a poker game in a house that was just four walls, a fireplace, and a dirt floor. Not exactly Foxwoods. So John starts to get comfortable. He kicks off his boots and he starts mopping the floor with these guys, and Bradley starts calling him a cheater and pulls his gun on John, who is apparently unarmed because he gave his gun to Collins like an idiot. But Collins stepped in long enough for Hardin to make a break for. But later, he heads back to the house to get his boots and his money and is now strapped, and he runs into Bradley and Bradley shoots him and misses. However, Hardin fires back and does not miss and shoots Bradley in the head. This shooting was heavily witnessed, so we know how Hardin wore his guns. His holsters were sewn into his vest with the handles facing in. He claimed that this was the fastest way to draw. After he got his boots, he then went to find Judge Moore for his money. But Moore, not knowing that Bradley was dead, said he wouldn't give him his money without Bradley saying so, and Moore was never seen again. You can do the math. So, John had to go back to his dad and break the news they had done it again and couldn't come back to the family in Navarro County, and had to lay low for a while longer. But he soon found out that there was an angry mob out for blood and was cornered by a 15-man posse in a cotton pen. John agreed to surrender to two men, not an entire mob. So two men came up to the cotton pen and Harding came out armed with a double-barrel shotgun and held them up and took all out of the guns and told them to meet him at Jim Page's place. But he never went to Jim Page's. Instead, he went to Brennan to meet his uncle. Why the mob fell for that, I do not know. On his way to see his uncle, about 20 miles outside of Pisgah, in a little town called Hillhorn, he ran into a circus, and while there he bumped into a circus man. Harden excused himself, but the circus man got mad and threatened to smash his nose, to which Harden said back that he was a bit of a smasher himself. The circus man got pissed and drew his gun, but not quick enough. John drew first, shot the man in the head. Bam. After that, while in Cossie, I don't know if I'm saying these names right, he ran into a lovely young woman who was a prostitute. Only he didn't know that yet. They were hanging out for a little while until her pimp showed up and demanded that John pay him a hundred bucks. So John is like, Alright, chill out, man. I only have like 50 bucks on me. But the pimp insisted that he get the rest. So he took out the money and threw it on the ground. And when the pimp went to pick it up, John shot him in the head. He then picks up the money and walks out, ice cold. He finally arrived at his uncle's farm on January 20th, 1870, and worked as a farmer with his cousins that season and frequently visited Brennan proper to drink, gamble, and play cards, earning the nickname Young Seven Up. While in Brennan, Harden met a slew of dirtbags that would help encourage him down this path of self-destruction, like Bill Longley, a notorious gunslinger known for his quick draw and even quicker temper. Longley even killed his own childhood friend Wilson Anderson with a shotgun. He also met James Madison Brown, who was more lawman than outlaw, and later even became the sheriff that had Bill Longley hanged. On numerous occasions, he was threatened by these scoundrels for cheating or not giving them a chance to win their money back, to which, according to John, he was never phased and would threaten them back and they would always back down. Trust me, his autobiography is rife with bravado. Through this time of farming by day and drunken debauchery by night, John and his cousins tried to keep the Brennan shenanigans away from his aunt and uncle. But for some reason, he had his aunt hang on to his money. So every time he needed to go into town for whatever, she would be like, Oh, let me go with you, and he would have to come up with some excuse why she couldn't go. And then, when he won a bunch of money gambling, she'd be like, Where did all this money come from? So he may be a notorious gunslinger, but at the end of the day, underneath it all, at this point, he's just a 17-year-old trying to sneak out of the house to party. He stayed there until the crops were fully harvested. But he caught wind that law enforcement was starting to mobilize in the area. Maybe not for him, but he still thought it'd be a good idea to start moving on. Well, everything seemed to chill out for about a year between January 1870 and January 1871 when John starts making his way to Shreveport, Louisiana, when unbeknownst to him in Waco, Texas, something was brewing that was going to come back to bite our friend John in the ass. You see, on September 5th, 1870, a man named Laban John Hoffman retired from the Texas Police Force in Clinton Hill County and became the Waco City Marshal. Then, four months later, on January 6, 1871, Hoffman went into a barbershop on the corner of Square and 2nd Street to get a shave. Shortly after he arrived and his face was all lathered up, an unknown man rode up on horseback, walked into the barbershop, took a good look at Hoffman to make sure it was him, then went behind the barber chair and shot Hoffman at the back of the head. He then jumped on his horse, sped off, firing two shots at the approaching police, and threw some money at the toll collector at the bridge and said, haven't time to wait for the change as he galloped away. That man was later tracked down and identified as Wild George Thomason, or Williams, nobody seems to really know, and was gunned down but never apprehended. He was presumed mortally wounded, and therefore the search was called off. However, he was never found. What does any of this have to do with John Leslie Hardin, you may ask? Well, it turns out the rumors started flying around that Harden was Thomason's accomplice, and John was arrested shortly afterward in a town called Longview, a murder that Harden went to his grave claiming he had nothing to do with. And since Harden was pretty outspoken about the murders that he had committed, even ones that can't be corroborated, for him to say he didn't do this, I have to believe him. Nevertheless, he was arrested and thrown in jail in January 1871. There were three other men in the cell with him, and for some unknown reason, one of them still had a gun on him. Hardin bought the gun off him for$40 along with a coat for$20. So when the guards escorted him from Longview to Waco, where the trial would be held, he had the colt pistol hidden in his new overcoat. Harden was escorted by Captain Edward T. Stakes and Officer Jim Smalley. One night, when they stopped to make camp, Stakes went to get food for the horses, leaving Smalley in charge of Harden. But all Smalley did was taunt and hit Harden. So Harden decided to curl up in the fetal position by the horse and pretended to cry. Then, when Smalley went to grab Harden, he pulled out his pistol and shot and killed Smalley and used his horse to escape. He was later arrested in Bell County by three men named Smith, Jones, and Davis. Names don't get much more plain Jane than that. But these guys are apparently idiots and got drunk one night and fell asleep, and Harden picked up Davis' shotgun and Jones' six shooter and admitted in his book that he shot both Jones and Smith in the head with a shotgun while they were sleeping. And when Davis started to wake up and saw what was happening, he started begging for his life, but Hardin wasn't having any of this and rattled off shots from the six shooter until he was convinced that Davis was dead. He vowed at that point to never surrender at the barrel of a gun again. After this, somewhere around the 12th of January 1871, Hardin went back to see his father and tell him what he had done, and his father suggested that he hightailed in Mexico and even accompanied him part of the way. The town of Gonzalez was on the way, and he decided to visit his cousins the Clements, the family that connects John Wesley Hardin to killer Jim Miller, and he told them that he was in trouble and that he was on his way to Mexico, and that Clements suggested that he become a cowboy and drive a herd of cattle up to Kansas. Hardin liked this idea. It would provide plenty of time for the heat to cool off and all the authorities to lose interest. So he became a cattle hand, or more appropriately, a cattle rustler, stealing and driving cattle for Jake Johnson, Columbus Carroll. These are not the names of upstanding citizens, people. In February 1871, he made friends with all the Mexicans in his party and went to a Mexican camp and got into an argument with man dealing three card Monty. The dealer and his friends started to reach him for their knives, so Hardin pistol whipped one of them, shot one in the arm and one in the lung. Then him and his friends ran off laughing. Later that month, when they were gathering cattle for the drive to Kansas, Hardin was made trail boss and was given strict orders to not let anyone into. The herd. A black man named Bob King came into the herd to cut cattle. Cutting cattle out is a term for going into a herd, usually with a trained horse and a skilled rider, to remove a specific cow, usually if it is sick or belongs to another herd, etc. So John went up to King was like, What are you doing? And King said, I'm cutting cattle, all open like that. So Hardin told him to get out of there, but the guy just kept on doing it. So Hardin went up to him and pistol whipped him. And according to Hardin's autobiography, Kang begged his pardon and left. Can you imagine getting pistol whipped and then just being like, oh, I beg your pardon? Finally, in March 1871, they started to make their way to Abilene, Kansas. Everything was cool until they got to Williamson, Texas, where everyone got the measles, except, of course, for Hardin and Jim Clements. So they set up camp and let everyone rest, and Hardin spent the time branding cattle and tending to the sick. While he was there, a white steer kept on going in and out of the herd and causing trouble. No matter what John did, the steer wouldn't stay away, so John did what any rational person would do and he shot the steer in the face. Hardin ended up getting sued by the steer's owner for$200. That's about$5,200 today. Also, while on this trek, Hardin killed six men, four Mexicans and two Indians on separate occasions. The Mexicans were part of another cattle drive that they ran into on Newton Prairie. At a certain point, their two herds got all intertwined, and while Hardin and one of the men from the other cattle drive were trying to separate the herds on horseback, they got into a bit of a scuffle, and the Mexican shot Hardin through his hat, completely missing his head. Hardin's Cap and Ball 6-shooter was old and didn't fire, but he finally steadied the cylinder and got a round off and hit the man in the leg. After that, they called a truce, but later, Hardin borrowed his friend's gun and tracked the man down and shot him in the head. A firefight erupted between the two parties and at least three of the vaqueros, or Mexican cowboys, were killed, although Hardin claimed that he killed at least double that. Of course he did. Later, while Hardin was out turkey hunting, an Indian shot an arrow at him from across the South Canadian River, so Hardin shot back and killed him. Hardin and his buddies then hid the body so the man's tribe wouldn't find out. Then later, a tribe tried to tax them for their cattle at 10 cents a head. And for the record, 10 cents in 1871 is the equivalent of$2.59 today. And a cattle drive in 1871 had on average 2,500 cattle, so by that mat they would have to pay$6,475. Well, Hardin and his gang weren't having that. So when one of the Indians tried to steal a beef cow, Hardin shot him in the head. After that, the tribe got the message and backed off. Finally, on June 1st, 1871, John's party made it to Abilene, Kansas. In this town was the infamous lawman James Butler Haycock, aka Wild Bill Hickcock. Why Wild Bill? Apparently, when he listed in the army, he enlisted under his father's name, William, and served under the name William Haycock. He must have done some wild stuff in the war and earned the name Wild Bill. Anyway, Wild Bill was one of the most feared lawmen in the West. And even though Hickok was legitimate in his own right, a lot of his stories are apparently lies that he told himself. He had recently taken up the role of sheriff in Abilene on April 15, 1871, after his predecessor, Tom Bear River Smith, was killed serving an arrest warrant on November 2nd, 1870. That means Abilene was just lawless for like five months. How lawless? Remember that town Brenham, where Harden and his cousin snuck off to party? Well, Abilene was like Brenham on steroids. In his book, Hardin said, I have seen many fast towns, but I think Abilene beat them all. The town was filled with sporting men and women, gamblers, cowboys, desperados, and the like. It was well supplied with barrooms, hotels, barbershops, and gambling houses, and everything was open. And it wasn't long before Hardin started getting into trouble. At first, everything started off fine. Hardin turned in their herd and got paid. Hardin was convinced that even though he was a wanted man, he would be safe there, so he stayed at$150 a month to look after the cattle and keep strays in line. Hardin was operating under the alias Wesley Clemens and acquired the nickname Little Arkansas and soon ran into a few of his friends from back in the Brenham days, Phil Coe and Ben Thompson, a couple of real scoundrels. They were running a saloon called the Bull's Head Saloon, which had a sign on the side of the building of a bull with a large erect um member. You see what happens when you don't have a sheriff for five months? Well, residents started to complain to Hickok about the lewd sign, and when Hickok asked them to take it down, they refused. So Hickok removed the sign for them. Well, Cohen Thompson were not pleased by this and tried to get Harden to kill Hickok for them. However, Hickok was a bit of a legend by this point, and Harden already had a lot of respect for the man, so he refused, saying, If Bill needs killing, why don't you kill him yourself? Harden spent much of his time drinking and gambling in these unsavory establishments, and Harden soon after ran into Hickok at a saloon and got to chatting with the lawman. Hickok gave Harden a little advice on not hanging out with low lives like Thompson and Co. saying, Young man, I am favorably impressed with you, but don't let Ben Thompson influence you. You're in enough trouble now, and if I can do you a favor, I will. Hickok started to leave the bar, and Harden followed him out, and that's when Hickok noticed that Harden was packing heat and told him that he couldn't carry guns within city limits, and told Harden to give up his guns. Thus begins the very famous story where Harden begins to hand his guns over to Hickok handle first, but at the last second, as Hickok starts to reach for his guns, Harden pulled Curly Bill's move from Toonstone and playfully spun his pistols around so they were pointing upside down, barrel first, at Wild Bill, as if Harden was saying, Gotcha. However, I read on the website Legends of America in a great article called John Wesley Harden and the Shootest Archetype by Jesse L. Wolf Harden, no relation, that this most likely didn't happen because a seasoned vet like Hickok would never let someone get the drop on him like that. And even if he did, he would never be able to let it slide, especially in public like it was if he ever expected to command authority at town like Abilene again. But apparently they became fast friends, and later, on a cattle drive they were both on, Hickok allowed Harden to wear his guns. He even helped break Harden's cousin Jim Clemens out of jail after he killed two cowboys. Clearly, the line between Lawman and Outlaw was thin and blurry back then. One night, when they were at a hotel bar, Harden and his friend, mentioned only as Payne, got into an argument with an anti-Texan that turned ugly when Payne got shot in the arm and Harden shot the anti-Texan in the mouth. They made a break for it out of town and headed to the Cottonwood Trail only to find out that on July 4th, 1871, one of their friends, a trail boss from another party named Billy Corrin, was killed by a Mexican named Badino on the trail, and obviously because Hardin was so awesome, everyone begged him to get involved and track down the killer. Hardin agreed to this request, and he, along with several others, were deputized to track down Badino. They then told a few others to go back to Abilene to get a warrant and get word to Corin's brother John to make haste and spare no horse flesh to join the pursuit, and on January 20th, they caught up with Badino in a restaurant in a town called Bluff. And when Harden told the man to surrender, Badino dropped his knife and fork and reached for his gun, but not quick enough, Harden was forced to shoot the man between the eyes. Now, even though according to Hardin, all of his shots were total crit shots in the head, making him sound mega ostentatious, he is actually documented to be pretty accurate, much more accurate than his peers. Most gunslingers in the Old West were actually pretty bad shots, since ammo was expensive, so you couldn't afford to just fire off tons of rounds at the range. However, Hardin was so accurate because of his early exposure to guns, giving him more time to practice his aim, perfect his quick draw, and develop cool-headedness that gave him an advantage under pressure. According to John, he was received back in the town with people throwing money at him in gratitude for killing Billy Corin's killer. And John claims that he didn't expect to receive any reward, but decided that there was nothing wrong with taking it, and claims that he made about$1,000 in reward money off the deal. For the record,$1,000 in 1871 was the equivalent of$26,000. I'm in the wrong business. That being said, they made their way back to Abilene by the end of July or early August. And on August 6th, while him and his cousin Gib Clements and a man named Charles Cougar were staying in the American House Hotel after a hard night of drinking and gambling, Charles Cougar was snoring so loud that Harden couldn't take it anymore, and he fired a shot through the wall where Cougar was sleeping in an attempt to wake him up and tell him to roll over so he would stop snoring. But unfortunately, Harden did not aim high enough and ended up shooting Cougar through the heart and killing him instantly. Harden knew he had messed up, and him and Gip escaped out the balcony window while Harden was still pantsless. Of course, this isn't the story that Harden told in his autobiography. According to him, a man broke into his room with a Dirk dagger, which is a foot-long knife. Of course it was. He may as well said that the man kicked down the door holding a samurai sword. So Harden claims that he shot the man four times and the intruder fell back holding John's pants for some reason, which explains why he was pantsless. But instead of John walking up to the dead guy in the hallway and retrieving his pants, he shut the door and started screaming that he would shoot the first man that came in. Now, in later years, stories were told about Hardin saying that he was so mean that he even killed a man for snoring. Hardin even later talked about how people said a lot of things about him and how he killed six men for snoring. He joked, saying that that wasn't true and that he only killed one man for snoring. But despite this confession, he still omitted it from his autobiography. Anyway, back to reality. As him and Gibb are escaping off the balcony, they saw Hickok and some officers showing up. Harden was pretty sure that his friendship with Hickok wasn't going to get him out of this one, so he jumped off the balcony to the ground and hid in the haystack for a while, despite one of the officers suggesting that they should burn the haystack to smoke him out if he was in there. But Hardin called their bluff and knew that they wouldn't burn the stack since it was so close to the store. After laying low in the haystack for a while, he crawled out and saw a man riding up on horseback. Harden looked the other way and saw that there were still a couple of squads of police down the road. So he stops the man on the horse and asks him if he knows who he is and flashes his now empty revolver. This man doesn't know it's empty though, and the man gets the hint and gets off the horse and Harden hops on. Few of the police officers saw this, and Harden had to make a break for it to the Smoky River, knowing that there was a cattle camp on the other side. So he took off with a bunch of police in hot pursuit, but Harden was 19, 155 pounds, and a very skilled rider, who was able to outrun them and make it to the river, swim across, claiming that his horse swam like a duck and made it to the other side with bullets whizzing by him as he continued to put distance between him and the pursuing officers. By the time he made it to the camp, he was sunburned and still pantsless and only wearing his nightshirt, and looked pretty sad, but had managed to get there, according to him, with the pursuing lawman still four miles back. When he got to camp, he told the cook what had happened, and the cook whipped him up some food as Hardin told him his situation. By the time lawman Tom Carson and his two deputies got there, they asked the cook if he had seen Hardin, and the cook said that he had gone to the herd and that they should just chill out and have some dinner while they waited. While the police officers were eating, Hardin snuck up behind them and robbed them at gunpoint of their pants and boots. Hardin met back up with Gip Clemens and hightailed it back to Texas, never to return to Abilene. Alright, so he makes it back to Texas and regroups back at the Clements Ranch in Gonzalez, sometime in mid-September 1871, where he claims that he was constantly harassed by the police, claiming that the police in DeWitt and Gonzalez were made up of carpetbaggers and scallywags and practiced mob law, also saying that police were made up of ignorant Negroes more concerned with destroying life and liberty than protecting it. His words, not mine. But on October 6, 1871, while at a grocery store in South Gonzales, he had a run-in with two Freeman police officers, Green Paramore and John Lackey. Paramore confronted Hardin in the grocery store, saying, Throw up your hands or die. Hardin basically told him to be cool. He didn't want to be killed by accident. Paramore then told Hardin to give up his guns. So Hardin started to hand his guns over, handle first, but then he spun a gun around in his hand and shot the police officer in the head. The other officer, Lackey, who was riding a white mule, saw this from outside and started shooting into the grocery store. So Hardin started shooting at him and knocked him off his mule, injuring him but not killing him. Afterwards, he looked back to see that he had killed Paramore while Lackey escaped. Anyway, later that month, a posse of black men hunted down Harden to seek retribution for their fallen comrade Paramore, but Harden killed three of them, saying that they left older and wiser. Harden was involved in a handful of other gunfights over the next few months, but we're just gonna glaze right over all of that. If we covered every person that Harden killed, we'd be here for hours. However, in the middle of all this killing, Harden attended his cousin Gip Clement's wedding to Annie Tamillow, to Neo, I don't know, where he met the love of his life and future bride, Jane Bowen. And on February 27, 1872, he got married to that poor woman who had probably had no idea what she was in for. But John really did try to settle down for a little bit, but once a trouble magnet, always a troublemagnet. In July 1872, he drove a herd of horses to Louisiana. Or more specifically, he had Jesse and Billy Harper drive them while he went on ahead to Hemp Hill, Texas, about 10 miles west of the Louisiana border, where he gambled and raised horses. He had a new horse named Joe, who names their horse Joe. But apparently Joe was killing it and won a race against a man from St. Augustine for 250 bucks. He then got into an argument with a man named Sonny Spites after he tried to arrest a man named O'Connor for possession of a pistol. Harden, for whatever reason, was able to smooth things over with the police and was able to get O'Connor acquitted. Meanwhile, a 10-year-old boy started giving Spites crap in front of the courthouse, saying only a coward would arrest a traveler. At this, Spites threatened to whip the young boy, so Hardin got up in Spites' face and was like, You want to hit that boy? You're gonna have to go through me. Spites threatened to arrest Harden for interference, and Harden said that he couldn't even arrest half of him. This enraged Spites, and he started to draw his pistol, but Harden was quicker and drew both his six-shooter and his derringer and shot Spites in the shoulder. The Derringer, for the record, was a small single-barreled muzzle loaded percussion lock handgun, usually 41 caliber, invented by Henry Derringer in 1825, and the gun used by John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Anyway, Spitz started running to the courthouse to tell Judge Roberts what had happened. So Hardin knew it was time to get out of there. So he ran back to Billy Harper's place and hopped on his horse, Joe, with the sheriff and his men hot on his trail. Billy got the bars lowered and Harden took off with bullets whizzing around him and Joe took two in the neck. But Hardin also said that they were able to make some ground between them and the sheriff and his men. So it sounds like Joe is alright. After this, on August 7, 1872, Hardin and some of his friends and family members went out bowling at John Gates Saloon and Tenpin Bowl. Apparently, bowling has been around since 3200 BC in ancient Egypt, and the first indoor all-weather bowling lane was built in London in 1455. So bowling was nothing new at this point. So they were out bowling for drinks, and Harden surprisingly admits they lost two rounds, but don't worry, it didn't last. And him and Phil Sublet bet on a game at$5 a ball, up to$50. Well, Harden had already won 30 of the$50 when Phil decided he was going to withdraw from the bet, but Harden was like, you can't back out, but the game's to 50. So Sublet got mad and put his hand on his pistol. Harden wasn't having this and slapped Sublet in the face and then shoved a bulldog at his head. Whatever that means. Their friends got in the middle of it and broke it up and everything was cool. Then Hardin bowled one more ball and won, and allowed Sublet to then withdraw after losing only$35. What a guy. After that, they went to the bar and Harden bought Sublet a drink, but noticed that Sublet was missing and realized quickly that he had probably gone off to get a gun. So Hardin went looking for Sublet, but Gates, the owner, told him that everything was cool and he should just go back to the bowling alley. And when he got there, he saw Sublet coming to the front door with a shotgun, saying, Clear the way, I will shoot anyone that interferes with me. Come out, you gosh darn son of a gun. He might not have used those words exactly. But just then, Sublet fired, and Hardin went to get out of the doorway, but was grabbed by some drunk guy who was saying that the two of them could take anyone on. John was like, Get off me, dude, and he pushes the man out of the way, but it was too late, and Sublet got off another shot and Harden knew immediately that he had been hit. But he still raised his gun and fired back at Sublet, who dropped his shotgun and tried to run away. Harden chased him into a grocery store and fired one more shot that hit Sublet in the shoulder before he was gone. At this point, his friends and his cousin Bartlett caught up to him, and John was really starting to feel the loss of blood and told Bartlett to take his belt, which had$2,000 in gold and his saddlebags that had$250 in silver to give to his wife. For the record, today that's$58,000. Who walks around with that much cash? I guess when banks are getting robbed left and right, it's not that bad of an idea. However, his cousin was like, nah man, we're gonna get you some help. And they brought him to Dr. Carrington's where another doctor got called in and they concluded that two buckshots had passed through his kidney and were lodged between his spine and his ribs. So they asked if John could manage his surgery without opiates, to which John was like, obviously duh, claiming that he wanted to be clear headed for the operation. Hardin was on bed rest for the rest of the week, and it was real touch and go for a while, and on August 15th, 1872, he was told that he needed to be moved or else the police were gonna find him. So his friends very gingerly moved him to Sulfur Springs until the heat turned up again, and then on to Sumter, and then finally to his friend Dave Harrell's house, where he was able to chill out for the rest of August. But finally, around the 1st of September, for the record, his autobiography is rife with incorrect dates. But anyway, around the 1st of September, Sheriff Regan and a few deputies came looking for Harden at Harold's place, and Mrs. Harrel tried to tell the police that he wasn't there, but the cops weren't buying it, so they went into the backyard armed with Winchester rifles, and Harden was still pretty banged up, but healthy enough to crawl to the back door with his shotgun and got into a shooting match with the deputies and took a shot himself to the leg. He claims to have shot both the deputies in the fight as well before him and Harrel escaped to his friend Till Watson's place. Once he was moved to Watson's place, it was there that he found out that he killed one of the deputies. Now he knew he was in trouble. He had a new wound in his leg on top of the still-mending wound in his rib, and it was clear that he really needed medical attention. So he told his friend Dave to get Sheriff Regan that he was ready to surrender. So Sheriff Regan and his deputies came to Watson's place, and Harden told him that he would surrender under one condition, or maybe like four. He told Regan that he wanted no jail time, half the reward, medical attention, and protection from mob law. On top of that, he wanted to go to Austin right away and then off to Gonzales. And according to him, the sheriff agreed to all of these terms, which seems unlikely, but what do I know? After the deal was made, Regan asked for his guns, and as Harden was reaching for one of them, one of the deputies got nervous and shot Harden again in the leg, so now he's got four bullet wounds and really needs medical attention. So, in early September 1872, they headed out for Austin. But Pitt stopped in Rusk, which is in the opposite direction of Austin, but whatever, and he got all patched up in a hotel by Dr. Jimson. While he was there, he was visited by all sorts of people who wanted to get a look at the infamous John Wesley Harden. And of course, John was the perfect gentleman to everyone. Now, according to John, while he was at this hotel, he was nursed back to health by Regan's son, whose name was Dude. D-O-O-D. That's a terrible name. I don't know how true that is, but fun fact, Dude is Dutch for death. So don't name your son Dude unless you want him to be Super Goth. Well, they finally made it to Austin, where Harden hung out in jail for a couple days while Regan went back to get his horse Joe. So Joe was still around, and John started making friends with all of the other inmates, and they would all scream fresh fish whenever someone new came in, and his friends would smuggle him food from the local hotels, and being the super gracious gentleman that Harden was, he would split up all the food and give him his friends in jail. What a guy. They finally made it back to Gonzalez in October 1872, where the people were Hardin's friends and were outraged by the treatment he was receiving. Now, even though Hardin had surrendered on his own accord, provided that he got all the demands that he asked for, he soon found out just how many crimes they were going to try and convict him of. This changed his tune real quick. Fortunately, there are plenty of people in town that were willing to help him out, and one of them smuggled him in a hacksaw, Looney Tune style, and in the middle of the night he hacked through his window bars and escaped. He spent the rest of the year in early 1873 resting from his wounds back home with his beloved Jane and his misfit friends, and on February 6th, 1873, his first daughter Mary was born. By April, he was back to his old self and apparently got into an altercation with a man at a bar who asked him to buy him a drink, and Hardin refused. Hardin left and the man followed him out and asked if he was armed, and Hardin said yes. So the man told him to defend himself, but the man was too slow and Hardin killed him. Harden didn't find out until later that that man was Deputy Sheriff J.B. Morgan. Telling you, trouble just finds this guy. Now, one of the byproducts of living in Gonzalez was getting into the epitome of the wrong crowd. Not that Harden was any angel to begin with. This lineup of sleaze bags included John's cousins Manning and Gip Clements, George Tanil, Manning Clements' brother-in-law, Rockwood Burtzell, Thomas J. Halderman, and Harden's own brother-in-law, Joshua Robert Bowen, aka Brown Bowen. Brown Bowen was so hardcore that in late 1872, Harden suspected that Tom Halderman was a spy for the police, so Bowen walked up to Halderman while he was sleeping drunk on a bench outside of a local store, pulled the blanket down so he could see his face, shot him in the head, right in front of Halderman's son. Bowen later said that he didn't see the kid there until his finger was up against the trigger, and by that point it was too late. This band of Riffraff was affiliated with a family of horse and cattle rustlers, the Taylors, who were at the heart of a feud that had been going on for the last six years in Texas known as the Taylor-Sutton Feud. Let's take it from the beginning. Josiah Taylor had moved to Texas from Virginia in 1811 as a captain in the Gutierrez-Mage expedition of 1812 and 1813, which was an early filibusting expedition against the rising Spanish presidents from Mexico in Texas. His sons were Pitkin and Creed Taylor. The tensions really started in 1866 in the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in Texas, when Buck Taylor shot and killed a black state police officer that had attended a party at the Taylor Estate in Cuero, DeWitt County, Texas. And later Hayes Taylor killed a black officer in Indianola, Texas, which is now a ghost town in what is now Calhoun County, Texas. Then, in 1867, two more Taylors got into trouble in Carnes County when they got into a shootout and killed two Yankee soldiers in Mason, Texas. They escaped and made it back to their father's ranch in Carnes County. But tensions between the Taylors and the police were running high and only getting higher when in March 1868, Deputy Sheriff William E. Sutton led a posse against a band of horse rustlers in Bass Drop, Texas, and shot and killed Charlie Taylor along with another man, James Sharp, who they shot on the return trip claiming that he was trying to escape. All it was going to take was one more match, one more spark, and they got it. On Christmas Eve 1868, when Buck Taylor accused William Sutton of a dishonest horse sale that resulted in a gunfight where Sutton killed Buck Taylor and another man, Dick Chisholm. And just like that, a feud between the state police and the Taylor family erupting, with both sides generating massive alliances and resulting in the longest and bloodiest feud in Texas history with the confirmed 83 deaths. The state police, backed by the might of the Union Army, were led by Jim Cox, Joe Tomlison, William Sutton, and their leader, Captain Jack Helm, who was a real dirtbag in his own right. Under Helm's regime, the State Police terrorized Southeast Texas with the Taylor faction firmly in their crosshairs. And on August 23rd, 1869, Jack Helm and his squad ambushed Jack Taylor, a.k.a. Hayes Taylor, and his brother Philip as they were returning to their father's ranch in Carnes County. Philip was wounded but able to escape, but not Hayes. He was killed, but not before taking down five of Helm's regulators. Then there was the assassination of Pick and Taylor's two son-in-laws, Henry and William Kelly, who on August 26, 1870, were picked up for some trivial charges and taken a few miles from home and executed right in front of their mother, who was hiding and saw the whole thing. After this, it was clear that Jack Helm was too crazy, so he was fired from the state police. But don't worry, he got hired as the sheriff of DeWitt County. Because why not? The bloodshed did not stop there. Once Jack Helm was kicked off the force, William Sutton became the recognized leader of the state police, and things picked up right where they left off. In October 1872, Pitkin Taylor, the current patriarch of the Taylor faction, was lured out of his house in the middle of the night after some state police rang a cowbell, tricking Pitkin into thinking that one of his cows had wandered into the field. When Pitkin came out of the house, he was shot. He died six months later. When this happened, the Taylor faction, now led by Jim and Billy Taylor, swore vengeance on the Sutton faction. What does any of this have to do with John Wesley Harden, you might ask? Well, it was around October 1872 when Harden got back into town, and even though he didn't really have any skin in the game, Harden didn't care much for the police for obvious reasons and clearly liked to stir things up. And as that article in Legends of America called John Wesley Harden and the Shooters Archetype said, his participation at such a sensitive time reminds me of an old Irish joke in which a lad coming upon a barroom brawl asks, Is this a private fight or can anyone join? So now John Wesley Harden is team Taylor all day. After the killing of Pick and Taylor, the Taylor faction's first order of business was to take out William Sutton. And on April 1st, 1873, they caught up with him in a billiard hall in Cuero and shot him through the door. He was injured but got away. And then they caught up with Sutton later in July, but he was able to get away then too. Shortly after this, in May, Jack Helm, who wasn't part of the state police anymore but was actively trying to take out the Taylor faction as the sheriff, confronted Hardin and Gonzalez and tried to get him to turn on the Taylors and fight with the police, telling him that they would get him out of trouble. But they messed up when they said that he was going to have to help turn a lot of his friends. And if they didn't turn, they would have to be killed by Hardin. But Hardin's loyalty was with the Taylors, and he told them that none of them were turning, and neither would he. Helm and his crew retaliated by terrorizing the neighborhood and giving John's wife Jane a hard time. That was a big no-no. So on May 17, 1873, Hardin and Jim Taylor went to visit Jack Helm in Albuquerque, Texas, which was totally abandoned in 1912 and is now a ghost town, where Helm was working on an invention of his called a cotton worm destroyer machine in Bland's blacksmith's shop. An invention that he had filed a patent on on November 16, 1872. While he was working on this invention, he was typically unarmed and only had his bowie knife on him when Hardin and Taylor entered the shop. Hardin distracted Helm while Taylor came up behind him and tried to shoot him in the back, but his revolver jammed. Helm spun around and figured out what was happening just as Taylor was able to shoot off a round at Helm's chest. Helm started to charge Taylor, and Taylor yelled at Harden, Shoot this damn scoundrel! So Hardin shot him with a shotgun that shattered his arm. Helm tried to run away, and while Harden held the public back at gunpoint, Taylor chased Helm down, caught up with him, and unloaded the five remaining rounds of his revolver in Helm's head. Brutal. The worst part about this is that his patent for the Cotton Worm Destroyer Machine was approved just three days later on May 20th. Killed before he could accomplish his dream. So now Harden is a firm fixture of the Taylor Sutton feud. Over the next half year or so, the feud can Continued with murders committed by both sides, and no matter how hard they tried, they just could not seem to track down and kill William Sutton, or Bill, as Hardin called it in his book. I mean, if you're fixing to kill somebody, I guess you can be on a casual name basis with them. One major thorn on Harden's side was that Sutton was the cause of some major cattle driving competition. Not only did this dig into Hardin's business, but on multiple occasions, Sutton was responsible for setting Hardin's cattle loose. So Hardin and the Taylors were really sick of this guy, and Hardin basically compared him to the roadrunner in Looney Tunes, saying in his book, We had often tried to catch him, but he was so wily that he always eluded us. But by March of 1874, Hardin started to concoct a plan to finally get rid of this guy. Hardin found out that Sutton was getting ready to drive a herd of cattle up to Kansas, but Sutton was the boss, so he wouldn't be the one doing the cattle driving. Instead, he was going to take a steamboat from Indianola, Texas, to New Orleans and then a train from there to Kansas. Some say that the feud had gotten to Sutton, the heat was too hot, and he was leaving Texas for good. Jim Taylor wanted Sutton dead for the murder of his father, and Hardin wanted him dead too, mainly because he was just a major pain in the butt. But how could they use this knowledge of Sutton's travel plans to their advantage? They knew he was going to Indianola, but didn't know when he would be leaving for New Orleans. So Hardin enlisted his brother Joe and his cousin Alec Barrickman to go to Indianola to spy on Sutton and find out when he would be leaving and report back. I assumed that back in 1874, there wasn't a steamboat ferry every hour on the hour, so it was going to take a few days for this to all happen, which gave Hardin and his gang some time to hash this out. Finally, Joe and Alec reported back that Sutton would be boarding a steamboat named the Clinton on March 11, 1874. So Jim and his cousin Billy Taylor rode to Indianola and walked right up onto the dock where people were boarding the Clinton and saw Sutton, his wife, and Sutton's friend Gabriel Slaughter, a man who had nothing to do with anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Slaughter noticed Jim and Billy Taylor walking up the dock and were drawing their pistols, and Slaughter yelled out to Sutton, Billy, look out! To which Billy Taylor said back to him, Look out yourself, you son of a bitch. And as Sutton and Slaughter were reaching for their guns, Jim killed Sutton and Billy killed Slaughter. Both men were shot in the head. Jim and Billy then ran down the dock, jumped back on their horses, and rode away, and caught up with Hardin in Cuero, Texas. By April, Hardin, Jim Taylor, and the Manning boys were all fixing to take another herd up to Kansas. Jim Taylor didn't want to be in DeWitt County by himself for too long, considering that there was a$500 bounty on his head. His cousin Billy had been arrested in Indianola and was sentenced to Galveston prison before Hardin and the boys had a chance to save him. Billy eventually got out and fled to Florida, where he married Polly Ganey Alford in 1881. They soon moved to Oklahoma where Billy became a lawman and was killed in 1893 in a gunfight with Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. While all this is going on, a large amount of the Harden family, including John's wife, his parents, his brother Joe, and an assortment of other siblings and cousins, had moved to Comanche, Texas around 1873. And Harden had popped in and out from time to time, but he was very busy with his cattle driving business. He was never there long. But in May 1874, Hardin decided to pit stop in Texas on his way up to Kansas to meet up with his wife and other family members. John had recently purchased a new racehorse named Rondo, which is doing very well and making him a lot of money. By May, everything was starting to get interesting. On May 5th, Harden and Jim Taylor, along with a bunch of others, had gone into Brown County to retrieve some of Joe's cattle. On their way back, it started to get dark, so they stopped in at the Waldrup's Ranch in Logan's Gap, about 10 miles southwest of Comanche to pen their cattle. Harden's party consisted of himself, his brother Joe, Bill Cunningham, Jim Milligan, Jim Taylor, and Hardin's cousins Jim and Ham Anderson, Alec Barrickman, and Tom and Bud Dixon. While they were eating supper at the Waldrups, Mrs. Waldrup told them about Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb. Waldrup told them that Webb had arrested his son Jim Buck Waldrup and had cursed her out and abused her. She told them that no man would curse out a woman, and all of the men at the table agreed with her. That was the first time that they had heard of this man Webb. We'll come back to this conversation in a few minutes. Let's fast forward three weeks to May 26, 1874, which is, you guessed it, John Wesley Harden's 21st birthday. And he spent it in Comanche with all of his friends drinking and gambling and horse racing and all that good stuff. Now you might be wondering, who did they leave in charge of the herd while they were all partying in Comanche? I'm so glad you did. Harden refers to this man as JB Brochus, and according to the history books, this man is a bit of a mystery. Now, I don't know what the JB stands for, but I think this might be Curly Bill Brochus, you know, from Tombstone. But Curly Bill didn't wind up in Arizona until 1878, four years later. Curly Bill Brochus was also known as William Bresnahan, who was accused of arm robbery in El Paso in 1878. I'm just saying, they both sound like scoundrels. Maybe they are one and the same. Anyway, when they found out that Deputy Sheriff Webb was going to be attending the Big Day, they weren't surprised. John had set up these horse races weeks ago for the Big Day and had promoted the hell out of it. And why wouldn't he? He had the fastest horse around. He was ready to clean up. The only problem was that even though Webb and Harden had never met, there was a lot of tension building between them with rumors floating around that Webb was saying that if John Carnes, the sheriff of Comanche County, wouldn't arrest Harden, then he would. This was magnified on the day of the races by the rumor that Webb had showed up with 15 deputies to kill Harden and capture Jim Taylor. There's no evidence that any of this is true other than Harden saying so in his book. Needless to say, Harden and his gang were keeping an eye on Webb and his posse all day. Harden was having a great day, cleaning up the track, and between him, his brother Joe, and Bud Dixon's horses all winning, they had won$3,000 cash, 50 head of cattle, a couple of wagons, and 15 saddle horses. So they were having a great time, and hooting and hollering and firing their guns in the air, and afterwards started going from bar to bar drinking and generally making people nervous. At one point, Harden had put a$20 gold coin on the bar top and basically said, drinks on me! One of his buddies told him to put his money away and cool it, and that if he got too drunk, he wouldn't be able to defend himself if anything came up. They finally found their way to the Jack Wright Saloon at 101 Grand Ave on the northeast corner of Comanche Square, where the J.W. Hardin Wine Company is today, which is a much more fitting business for this location than the last two businesses that share this location before this, which were Tiffany's Tanning and Boutique and the Take a Break Snackery, which I'm sure were great places in their own right. Anyway, Harden is getting good and drunk when Deputy Sheriff Frank Wilson pulled him aside and basically said, Look, John, take it easy. The people of Comanche have been very good to you. Just pay your tab and go home. We don't want any trouble. At this, John was like, Yeah man, no sweat. My little brother Jeff is grabbing my ride and I'm gonna get out of here. Wilson also told him that he couldn't carry a weapon, and Hardin then threw open his coat and showed that he was unarmed. Or at least it looked like that. He had a pistol under his vest, which couldn't be seen. As John's brother Jeff was returning with the horse and buggy, and everything seemed to be starting to calm down, Dave Karnes, Sheriff Carnes' brother, said, Here comes that damn Brown County Sheriff. Harden turned around, and sure enough, a man was walking towards the saloon, head down with two six-shooters hanging off his belt, Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb. Harden went back into the saloon to pay his tab, but made it back outside by the time Webb had made it to the saloon. This time with Jim Taylor on his left and Bud Dixon on his right. By the time Webb was about five feet away, Harden asked him if he was the sheriff, to which Charles said no, he was the deputy sheriff. Harden asked him if he was there to arrest him, and Webb said that he didn't even know him. Harden then boastfully told him that he was the notorious outlaw John Wesley Harden. Webb seemed unfazed by this claim, so Harden continued to poke by accusing Webb of talking poorly about the sheriff of Comanche County, John Carnes, and that the people of Brown County said that Carnes was no sheriff and no man. At this point, it was obvious that Webb was getting irritated and said, I know nothing about that talk, and I am not responsible for what the people of Brown County are saying. After this, Webb's friend, a lawyer named P. H. Thurman, came possibly to break up the tension and asked Webb to dinner, but Hardin wasn't having this and told Thurman that he should just run along and that he wasn't done with Webb yet. At this, Webb tried to leave, and Hardin grabbed him by the arm and said, You can't go off and leave me this way. They exchanged a few more words and Webb said that he wasn't afraid of him, stepped back and reached for his gun. At the same moment, Hardin, Dixon, and Taylor came up with their guns too. Both Harden and Webb fired at the same time. The only difference was that Webb's gun was new and had a hair trigger that he wasn't used to, so he fired early and his barrel was still pointing at a 45 degree angle and shot Harden in the leg. But Hardin's gun was not new, so when he pulled the trigger, he shot Webb right in the head. Dixon and Taylor shot Webb as well. As Webb fell down to one knee, he fired one more shot in an attempt to kill Hardin, but his shot went wide. Webb slumped against the wall of the building for a moment before falling to the ground. Dead. After this, all hell breaks loose and people start to scatter. Frank Wilson drew his gun to arrest Harden, but Harden and his boys had him covered first. Then Hardin told his gang, fill up, boys, and hold the house. And him, Jim Taylor, Ham Anderson, and Alec Berrickman ran back into the saloon where they apparently had more guns, and the standoff began. Now, herein lies the problem. Up until now, Hardin was considered a man of the people. Sure, he killed people, but who didn't? He was misunderstood, dealt a bad hand, and the people in the area ultimately sympathized with him. But people liked Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb. He was a good guy, and the second that John Wesley Hardin killed him, public opinion changed on Hardin in a split second. People were collecting in the square, calling for Hardin's head. His father Gip and his brother Joseph raced to the scene to support John, but they were intercepted by deputies who were trying to keep the peace. People were trying to break into the building. They wanted blood. Harden and his crew knew that they needed to get out of there. The situation was not gonna last. So they made a break for it out the side door and made it to their horses and sped out of there, all the while an angry mob chased them, calling for their heads, as Carnes and his deputies desperately tried to restore order, knowing that if they were caught, they were definitely gonna be hanged. John and his crew made their way northwest and hid in Round Mountain, about eight miles outside of Comanche. But they had no supplies. They couldn't go back into town and were at the mercy of when Joseph could visit them, which involved having to shake people following him. They would have to stay hidden until everyone in town calmed down, but when Joe finally visited, bringing food and some fresh horses, he also came with the unfortunate news that the climate in town had not gotten any better. They were monitoring everyone who knew Harden. At one point, the women in the Harden household were heading out of town to bring linens to a washwoman when they were stopped. When the linens were searched, they found guns and supplies in them. Shortly after Joe and the Dixon brothers had visited John on Round Mountain, they were put on technical arrest and confined to a jailhouse. I also read in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1963 journal that one of the reasons that Joe was arrested was because he was involved in some shady real estate and was selling people bogus land deeds. The heat was on for sure, and John knew that he had to do something. He wanted to know if his wife and daughter were safe and what was happening to his cattle. He finally decided that they had to make a move. So they made their way to Harden's cabin in the middle of the night only to see that the cabin was crawling with 30 men. And when one of the horses lost its footing, the rustling alerted the men, and Harden and the boys had to make a break for it. Now, after they left the house, it is unclear where they went, but legend has it that they may have made their way to a cabin about 8 miles outside of Comanche. At this point, there were a lot of people looking for Harden and the gang, including two Ranger Battalions and a slew of posse. One day, a posse from Brown County and one from Comanche County both descended on this cabin on the same day. Only one got there a little bit earlier. And while the first posse was inside questioning the family who lived there, the other posse arrived and thought that the horses out front belonged to the Harden gang, and they got into a firefight with the posse that was inside the house. Finally, the misunderstanding was cleared up before anyone got hurt, and they all went their separate ways. As the story goes, while this whole thing was happening, Harden and his gang were hiding in the cellar with a rug over the trapdoor. There is not a lot of evidence of this happening, other than the owner of the cabin in the early 1900s, a man named Please Couch, claimed it happened. Hey, that's all I need to hear. So by this time, Hardin and Taylor were pretty aware of the sticky situation that they were in, but they couldn't seem to get it through Anderson and Barrickman's head about the heat that was coming down on them. One night when they made camp, Anderson and Barrickman didn't tie up their horses, and the horses roamed off in the middle of the night for anyone to see. When they went looking for them, they found a search party of about 150 men about 600 yards away. So they knew it wasn't safe to stay at camp any longer, and they took off in the middle of the night. After that, Harden was like, listen, Jim and I are making a break from Mexico. You guys should come. And Anderson and Barrickman told them that they were going back to Comanche to see their families. And Harden was like, I don't think you get what's going on here. John was fixing to get out of the country, stopping Gonzalez to scoop up his wife and daughter and make their way to Mexico. But Anderson and Barrickman had other plans and they headed to Jim Stone's ranch in what is now Proctor, Texas. The next morning, John and Jim headed out alone, but had to take the road less traveled since the other way was crawling with Rangers led by Captain Bill Waller, who was out to make a name for himself and wanted to make an example of Harden and Taylor. They finally made it to fancy Jim Taylor's place in Austin around June 7th, not to be confused with regular Jim Taylor, where they were told that the Rangers had arrested the cattle hands tending his herd. That was just the first of the bad news. Cam Anderson and Alec Berrickman were tracked down at Bill Stone's place and shot to death. They were both brought back to Comanche and buried in an unmarked grave. But that wasn't the worst thing that happened. Around the 1st of June, an angry mob of about 150 men broke into the jail where Joe Hardin and his cousins Bud and Tom Dixon were being held, overpowered the guards, captured Joe, Tom, and Bud, dragged them out of the jail cell and down the road barefoot and had them hang. The bodies were then left there to hang long after they were dead. John knew that the walls were closing in on him and that he had to get out of Dodge, but Jim Taylor was sick and could not make the trip. So on June 8th, they said their goodbyes by the Colorado River, never to see each other again. Jim Taylor was later gunned down by a Sutton posse on December 27, 1875. After that, the Taylor-Sutton feud finally came to an end. So Hardin set off with a man named Rogers back to Comanche and went to his father's place, where he ran into a man named Dick Wade, who confirmed everything about the murders of his family members and brought John to his brother's grave, where John swore vengeance on anyone who had anything to do with Joe's death. But he soon found out that Captain Waller was on the warpath and would kill his other brother, Jeff, and his father if he was even seen in the county and would even find his wife and daughter. He also found out that some of his cattle hands were arrested and brought down to Chilton. My man JB Brocius, two guys named Tuggle and White, and Rufus P. Taylor, aka Scrap. That's a dope nickname. That dude sounds absolutely crazy. All of them were found innocent, but were turned over to an angry mob and hanged, all except Brocius who escaped. I'm telling you, this is Curly Bill. So anyway, Harden knew that the jig was up and it was time to get out of there. But according to him, not because he was an outlaw, but because mob law had become supreme in Texas, as the hanging of my relatives and friends amply proved. Not because he was a psycho murderer or anything like that. So he made his way to Brenham to meet up with his wife and daughter and arranged to travel by land with his friend Mac Young, while his wife and daughter were escorted to New Orleans by Henry Swain, who was the Marshal of Brenham. Henry's wife Jenny was John's cousin, which is why he agreed to the favor. Once they were reunited in New Orleans, they took him the sights for about a week and then made their way to Gainesville, Florida, where he got into the saloon business and almost immediately ran into some cattle hands from Texas that he knew, but they agreed to keep it a secret. He took the alias Swain in honor of Henry Swain for his help. So he bounced around Florida for a while working in the saloon business, horse selling, wrestling, maybe a little of both, in the cattle business. He got a sweet contract to sell 150 cattle to Haddock and Company butchers, but after he bought the cattle and before he could sell them to Haddock and Company, Bill Haddock died, and the rest of the company backed out of the deal, so Hardin was left with 150 cattle and basically forced to become a butcher. Hardin was also not without his episodes with the law through his time down there. He was arrested once for having marked cards and wounded a man who got between him and another man in a fight. Now, while this is going on, in January 1875, a$4,000 reward was authorized by the Texas legislature for Hardin's arrest, so now everyone is starting to comb the desert, as it were. This spawned 2nd Lieutenant John B. Armstrong to request a commission to set up an operation to capture Harden and hired a Dallas detective named Jack Duncan to go undercover to snoop around John's in-law's place and had become chummy with his father-in-law Neil and bought a store from him as a cover. Around the same time, John's brother-in-law came down to Pullard, Alabama, where John and Jane were staying to visit, and wrote back to his father mentioning Jane's name, saying that she'd join him in sending their love back home. Through Duncan's operation, he ended up finding out about the letter. When Neil wrote back, he bought the envelope he used from Jack's store, and the two of them went to the post office together. After Neil mailed the letter and went outside to buy supplies from another store, Duncan asked the postmaster if he could see the letter that he had just mailed, saying that he forgot to write something on it. When he got it, he saw that it was addressed to J. H. Swain in Pullard, Alabama. So the police knew they had him, and Hardin was finally tracked down on July 23rd, 1877, in Pensacola, Florida, on a train headed for Pullard, Alabama, while John was minding his business in the smoker car of the train after a poker game. Rangers came up behind him and yelled, Surrender, hold up your hands, and they grabbed him. To which Harden was like, What is the meaning of this? And then yelled, Robbers, protect me. Then Hardin was thrown into the aisle with two men grabbing his arms and another man grabbing his feet as he struggled until Lieutenant John Armstrong came in and put a gun to Harden's head and told him that he would blow his brains out. To which Harden said, Blow away. You will never blow a more innocent man out, or one that will care less. Now, that is what John said happened in his autobiography. What really happened was John was confronted by Rangers on the train, and when Hardin went to draw his pistol, it got caught in his suspenders, giving the Rangers time to rush him and knock him out. I would probably lie about that in my autobiography too. While John was transferred back to Comanche, Armstrong and Duncan were especially vigilant, knowing that he was a cunning criminal. One time they stopped for dinner, and Harden had convinced them to unshackle him. And as Armstrong turned around, his pistol was exposed, and right before Harden had a chance to reach for it, Duncan pulled his pistol and covered Harden and reminded Armstrong that this guy would kill them without a second thought. That was the opening Harden was looking for, and he didn't get it. They stopped to rest in Memphis, Little Rock, and Austin on their way back to Comanche, and every time the jail the Harden was kept in was mobbed with people who had read in the papers and heard the news and wanted a chance to meet the notorious John Wesley Harden, but he was so heavily guarded that few got a chance to see him. He finally was returned to Comanche under the care of Lieutenant N.O. Reynolds, where they were informed that there was an angry mob of about 200 people about two miles away who wanted to hang him and wrote him letters saying that if he tried anything funny to delay the trial, they would demand his hanging. Needless to say, that Hardin was tried and convicted for the killing of Charles Webb on June 5, 1878, and sentenced to 25 years in Huntsville Penitentiary. Oh yeah, you remember the night that Harden and his gang had dinner with Mrs. Waldripp right before his birthday, where he first learned about Webb? Turns out that in his trial, Bill Cunningham, Harden's so-called friend, testified that Joe Harden said that they would kill Webb, a claim that Harden vehemently denied ever happening. John appealed the trial and went back to Austin to wait for the results of the trial, and while in Austin jail, he met an alumnus of the stolen goods, Mr. Johnny Ringo, who he claimed was crazy. Now, if John Wesley Harden is calling you crazy, you are nuts. Needless to say, his appeal was denied and he was sent to Huntsville on October 5th, 1878. Early in the sentence, he was not exactly a model prisoner and tried to escape multiple times, including digging a tunnel under the prison to reach the armory about 25 feet from the wheelwright shop where he had gotten a job. He assembled a ragtag team of about 75 men, but it would appear some of them ratted him out. He also tried making keys for all the cells, but was busted in that attempt as well. Each time he tried to escape and got caught, he ended up in solitary or some sort of whipping, according to him. So finally, after attempting to escape and failing multiple times, he was broken down and started to toe the line and became a model prisoner and went to Sunday school and joined the debate club, and in 1889 he decided to study law. And that is abruptly where his autobiography ends. He started studying a bunch of books that he asked the superintendent to get for him, and he put his autobiography on the back burner. I can't really say anything. I've been working on this episode for the last two years. Sadly, while he was still in prison on November 6th, 1892, his beloved wife Jane had died, leaving behind three children, Mary Elizabeth Harden, John Wesley Harden Jr., and Jenny Callie Harden. Staying loyal to her husband until the very end. John was released from prison early on good behavior on February 17, 1894, after completing 17 years and five months of his 25-year sentence. When he got out of jail, he went to Gonzalez to meet up with his kids, passed the bar, and moved to junction to set up his law practice. By Christmas, the now 41-year-old Harden met a young woman at a Christmas social that he fell in love with, and she fell in love with him back. No, when I say young, I mean young. Her name was Carol Jane Callie Lewis, and she was only 15 years old. Things were different back then, apparently. But the marriage didn't last long, and within weeks of the honeymoon, Callie left John. My guess is that the young innocent girl was given a crash course in how psycho this guy was and was like, I'm out of here. Needless to say, things are going okay for John at this point. I mean, there is no storage of petty criminals who are willing to hire an inexperienced convict murderer as their consul. The crown jewel of this procession of criminals that hired Hardin for their legal affairs was none other than the stolen good alumnus, killer Jim Miller, who was on trial for the attempted murder of Pecos Sheriff George Bud Fraser. This case took Hardin to Pecos and eventually to El Paso before the case ended in a hung jury. But all the while that he's hanging out with Miller and his entourage of model citizens, Harden is slipping back into his old ways, drinking, gambling, women of accommodation, and all that good stuff. And in that environment, Hardin is a legend and is treated by this crowd like a god. So when the Miller case ends in a hung jury and Miller and his gang go back to Pecos for the retrial, Hardin's like, you know what? I'm good. And he stays in El Paso and continues his less than clean living ways and meets an absolute ticking time bomb of a woman there named Helen Eugenia Beula Williams Morose. That's a name. Helen was the wife of Martin Morose, the man who was bonding out John Denson, the star witness of the Miller-Fraser case. Needless to say, that while this was going on, John and Helen started having an affair. It didn't help that Martin was kind of a shady guy and had to flee to Mexico to avoid the police, but before he did, he split up the money and gave half of it to Helen while he was gone. He clearly didn't know that she was sleeping with Harden behind his back. Either that or he was just excessively chill. Like, hey, take care of my lady while I'm gone. You know how she likes it, you know what I mean? Well, later, while Martin was trying to cross the border back into Texas, he was killed by lawmen that were escorting him back. So now Helen and Harden can take their relationship to the next level and drink and party their hearts out. It is also said that she was only with him because of his book that he still planned to finish. A book by the most notorious gunslinger in modern times would be a massive bestseller. Needless to say, that their relationship was crazy, and they got into fights all the time, and apparently Harden forced her to write her own suicide note before planning on shooting her in the head, but he got too drunk and passed out before he could follow through with it. Helen took this opportunity to push him down a flight of stairs. Ah love. But as time wore on, the reality started to set in that the only law business that Harden was going to get were shady criminals. No upstanding citizens were interested in having a reformed criminal represent them. He started to slip further into his old ways, and his relationship with Helen didn't help and would ultimately be what led to his demise. One night, while Harden was out of town, Helen apparently pulled out a pistol in a saloon and was arrested by a local lawman named John Selman Jr. When Harden got back into town, he heard about this and was pissed and got up in Selman's face and was like, Look, she may be a crazy broad, but she's my crazy broad. Some accounts say that he even pistol whipped Selman. This tracks, considering Harden did love himself a good pistol whipping. After hearing this, John Selman Jr.'s dad, John Selman Sr. went on a hunt for Harden, and when he found him, they had some heated words and Harden was challenged to a duel. Harden was injured at the time, probably from one of his and Helen's world-famous knockdown drag outs, and declined the duel then and there, and it would have to be rescheduled. But Selman couldn't wait that long and wanted to protect his son. So that night, August 19, 1895, while Harden was shooting dice at the Acme Saloon next to Wily Coyote, apparently, Selman entered the saloon. Harden was clearly slipping because it was not in his nature to face away from the door. And an undetected John Selman walked right up behind Harden and shot him in the back of the head. Harden's last words were, Four sixes to beat. After Harden fell to the floor dead, Selman shot three more bullets into him just for good measure. His hand was on his cult 45 when he died, as if to imply that at the last second he knew something was up and didn't act fast enough to get the drop on whoever was behind him. Others believe that he secretly wanted this to happen. He was getting into trouble in El Paso and reverting to his old ways and tempting fate as if he was just waiting for someone to put him out of his misery. And it makes sense. His wife was dead, his kids were estranged, his law practice was failing, and he was released 17 and a half years later back into a world that had changed so drastically in that time that he didn't even know the world he lived in anymore. He did talk to his landlady, Mrs. Williams, about finishing his book, so he did have some reason to live, but he also told her that the human heart was rotten and that everything living was deceitful. The once most notorious man in America had become a negative of a picture of the man he once was. John was buried the next day on August 20th, 1895, in Concordia Cemetery. He was 42 years old, and it sounds like the most relaxing time of his life was when he was hanging out with the ticks. And that sucks. Well, there you go. There you have it. That is the story of John Wesley Harden, and uh that was a long one. Um, you know, mainly because I just so much information, I didn't know what. Keep and what to leave out, and believe me, I left a lot of stuff out. If you really wanted to go and uh research this guy and find out some more interesting factoids about this guy, maybe find some stuff that I got wrong. I mean, I did my best, you know me, but I had a lot of fun doing this, and again, we're gonna stick with the Lancy Land C thing. So, up next time it's gonna be a pirate, and I'm looking forward to it. I don't know when it's gonna come out. I'm not gonna promise any time frame because I'm gonna work on it as I can, as I said before. This is just a hobby of mine that I do want to turn into something more as time goes on, but I'm gonna let it happen naturally because that is the best way to do things. So, anyway, I hope you all enjoyed that. I enjoyed doing it, and we will meet again for the next episode. So, until then, I hope you have a great week, month, whatever it is, and I will talk to you later.