4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
as you bend a twig, so will it grow, January 3, 2011
This review is from: Gunfighter: An Autobiography (Paperback)
This is the book that John Wesley Hardin and his lover, the wild, drunken Beulah M'Rose, were laboring to write during Hardin's final weeks of life in El Paso, 1895. M'Rose was apparently an educated woman, and Hardin was no idiot- he was a kind of jack leg lawyer when he was killed- but neither of them are Tolstoy. The writing is labored, workmanlike. But it is still the story of John Wesley Hardin, told in his own words and it is fascinating and instructive. "As you bend a twig, it will grow," Hardin writes, "and so I grew up a rebel."
And what a rebel he was, at least for a few short years. Growing to manhood in central Texas in the years follwoing the Civil War, Hardin was among a group of people who were truly oppressed, even if, by some standards, they deserved to be. Federal law ruled, enforced by recently freed slaves given arms and authority, and encouraged to use both by federal officals who still burned for vengeance. Texas citizens had no representation, no hope of justice for any grievances. Self-defense meant battle.
And Hardin was very good at that.
There are stories told here that truly make you understand how a man like Hardin is made and forged. At age eight, Hardin witnesses his frst murder- a poor old man hounded by a younger wealthier man for a debt he could not pay, fights his way through a crowd, draws a Bowie, and slashes his tormentor's throat. Honor fulfilled. Debts paid in blood. At 13, Hardin repeatedly stabs Charles Sloter at school, after Sloter chalked some offensive graffiti on the wall and accused Hardin of the deed. Sloter almost dies, and the teachers agree that Hardin did the right thing. "I proved it up on him..." writes Hardin.
And on alot of others. In Hardin's words, it was all justifiable, if, at times, rendered a bit extreme, even for him, (as he confesses) by too much pride and way, way too much liquor.
The history is a wild one, truly. Most of it is here, in this short book. The killing of the ex-slave Mage, and the pursuit by the federals that left four of them dead. The spree of killing- wilder than any movie- on the cattledrive to Abilene, and the face off with Wild Bill Hickok, and the murder of Charlie Cougar, the bounty killings, the unfortunate circus strongman at the bonfire. The Sutton- Taylor Feud. Lynchings, shootings, weeks on the run in every weather, always ready, often drunk, exhausted, still ready.
As was the way of books of the time, it's both a celebration of violence and a cautionary morality tale- for his few years of fighting and killing and obstinacy, Hardin spends decades in prison, flogged for escape attempts, tortured by old wounds and illness. He lost his wife, his health, and all that remained of his youth.
The real miracle is that this book was ever written at all. And it helps, if the reader is imaginative, to understand how it was written, and under what type of duress. Hardin and M'Rose were holed up in hotel rooms in El Paso, drinking and fighting incessantly. Beulah was married to a local badman, who was, conveniently, found murdered over the bridge in Juarez. Beulah often wandered the streets drunk after nights in the saloons with Hardin, who had quit practicing law and was living on gambling, and bar tabs, and writing in the afternoons, drinking and causing trouble all night. Beulah, raving drunk one morning, was confronted by El Paso lawman, young John Selman, Jr, and disarmed, relieved of two Colt .41 revolvers, an action that led to a feud between Selman, Jr. and Hardin. And that, of course, was the reason that John Selman, Sr.- a hard as nails lawman in his fifties who had been both a raider, an outlaw, and a Texas Ranger in his day- tracked Hardin down at the Acme Saloon and shot him to death before he could make good on his threats to John, Jr.
Selman was in turn murdered by his fellow lawman George Scarborough, who was in turn murdered by Wild Bunch member Harvey Logan a few years later.
Want to understand a wild time, a wild man, and a wild place? Read this book. You'll come away with a wide range of new things to think about.
Hal Herring
author of Famous Firearms of the Old West: From Wild Bill Hickok's Colt Revolvers to Geronimo's Winchester, Twelve Guns That Shaped Our History
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