By his own admission, Texas gunfighter John Wesley Hardin killed more than 40 men during his lifetime. That's a lot of blood on his hands, especially for the namesake of the founder of the Methodist Church, whose father was a Methodist preacher himself. Possessed of what seems to have been a borderline psychotic need to inject himself into feuds, racially-motivated disputes, manhunts, and other violent situations, the infamous outlaw was a controversial and charismatic character for the tumultuous times in which he lived, and remains a fascinating figure today.

Ironically, one of the most famous six-gun standoffs Hardin got himself into was one in which not a single shot was fired. His opponent was another of the West's top guns — Wild Bill Hickok. Hardin rode into Abilene, Kansas in 1871 as an 18-year-old cowboy who had just killed five Mexicans in a confrontation on the trail up from Texas. Carrying a revolver was against the law in Abilene; Hardin ignored the ordinance and flaunted his pair of six-shooters as he caroused from saloon to saloon. Hickok, who just happened to be the town marshal, was well-informed of Hardin's reputation and was not amused. Confronting Hardin on the street, he drew his own sixguns and demanded Hardin surrender his pistols and submit to arrest. According to his autobiography, The Life of John Wesley Hardin, Hardin slid his revolvers from their holsters butts first. Then, as Hickok reached for the guns, Hardin executed what was known as a "border roll," twirling them over so that Hickok found himself with the muzzles of Hardin's revolvers in his face. "I cursed him for a long-haired scoundrel," wrote Hardin, "that would shoot a boy in the back." Hickok quickly countered that Hardin had "been misinformed" and called him "the gamest and quickest boy I ever saw." Then the two gunfighters retired to a nearby saloon to discuss matters further over some liquid refreshment.

That's how Hardin tells it anyway. But over the years, western historians have drawn a line in the sand, arguing long and hard over the incident in Abilene. There are those who say it never happened. Wild Bill Hickok's ardent fans are generally supportive of this view, using the logic that Hardin couldn't have gotten the drop on Hickok because nobody was capable of doing so. They say Hardin wrote his autobiography after Hickok was dead, and therefore unable to dispute Hardin's braggadocio.

With no other contemporary accounts of the incident to provide evidence one way or another, the issue was largely a matter of conjecture and hotly contested opinions. A few years ago, while researching Hardin and the Abilene incident for an Old West documentary broadcast on the Disney Channel, I was thrown into the frontlines of the battle. I consulted many of the top names in western history and came away scorched and battered by the experience, caught in the crossfire between dueling history posses.

During the height of the confusion, author Chuck Parsons, who was one of our more cool-headed consultants, came to my rescue. Parsons sent me some excerpts from the unpublished memoirs of a Texas cowboy named Alfred "Babe" Moye. Arriving with a herd of cattle in Abilene at the same time as Hardin, Moye witnessed an incident in which Hardin was showing off his gun-twirling prowess in an Abilene saloon right under Hickok's nose. Moye says Hickok eventually told Hardin to cut it out before one of his guns accidentally went off and killed someone (which would happen later on, but that incident was no accident); apparently Hardin complied without protest.

Moye's modestly written memoir doesn't describe the same incident Hardin recounted but it is a smoking gun nevertheless, the point being that Hickok not only allowed Hardin to wear his weapons in town but that there was some kind of truce or relationship between the two men — likely one that was based on a kind of mutual respect. Therefore, the border roll incident very well could have happened, and because there's no compelling evidence to the contrary, it probably did.

While working on the Disney documentary, I also learned that another of my consultants, El Paso author Leon Metz, was working on a new biography of Hardin. Hoping to make my own small contribution to wild west history, I cheerfully forwarded Metz the Moye memoir excerpts.

A writer with a garrulous way with words and a novelist's sense of the dramatic, Metz is without a doubt the best and most exciting living writer of wild west history. He's also appeared in scores of documentaries, and is a much sought-after lecturer on western history. Metz did include Moye's version of Hardin's shenanigans in Abilene in his fine book, John Wesley Hardin: Dark Angel of Texas, and concluded that, yes, the border roll incident must have happened. What's more, Metz's book will probably stand as the definitive Hardin biography for many years to come.

John Wesley Hardin was not a good man. But he led a wild and adventurous life during some of Texas' formative years. His experiences and his skewed view of events make him a figure of compelling interest that is sure to keep producing a flood of entertaining books, documentaries, web sites, and debates.

(4/15/98)

"John Wesley Hardin: The Fortysomething Killer" by Jesse Sublett

Visit Hardin's grave

"Richland Crossing" by Walter C. Dixson

Order "Dark Angel."

Order "The Last Gunfighter," a fascinating Hardin bio by Richard Mahron

Read previous installments of Texana Ranger.