“And I don’t much respect a man who has to have all these back-shooters to watch over him,” Hardin says.
Bill gives a laugh and said, “Boys, any of you throw down on this desperado, I’ll shoot you myself.” Then he turns up his palms, like he’s saying, “You satisfied?” Hardin gives his Colts a spin and drops them in his hip holsters, then stands there holding easy to his vest flaps in the manner of some rich cotton grower. We all knew why he had his hands up there. We’d heard about that vest.
“Something else I don’t much care for,” Bill says, “is a fucken spy. And I heard you’re spying for McNelly.”
McNelly was a captain of the State Police, and I knew damn well nobody’d told Bill any such thing about Hardin.
“Horseshit,” Hardin says. “If you’re looking for a fight, bubba, you don’t need to tell no lie to get one.” His fingers twitched on his vest. I mean, he was ready.
Later on, Bill admitted to me he’d been cussing himself for saying what he did. An accusation like that was nothing but fighting words, and Bill never was one to pick a fight for no good reason. He was just irritated by all the talk he’d heard about what a hero Hardin was for killing Yank soldiers—and a little jealous too, I figured, though I never said so—and his irritation had got the better of his mouth. Not that he was scared of Hardin, you understand; Bill Longley was never scared of any man alive. But there was no good reason to get to it with the boy and he knew it. Still, he had insulted Hardin, and Hardin couldn’t let it pass, and so the moment was feeling mighty tight.
So Bill says, “Whooooee! You just itching to hunt bear with a switch, ain’t you, boy? Pointing guns at everybody, talking nothing but fight. I don’t call that friendly nor respectful.”
“You’re the one called me a police spy!” Hardin says.
“So I did,” Bill says. “But I see you have too much sand to be a state bootlick, and I am enough man to admit when I am wrong. But if what you want is a fight …” And he gives a big hang-it-all shrug and stands ready.
That was the only time I ever heard Bill Longley even come close to apologizing to anybody about anything—and it was smooth as owl shit the way he was doing it without backing down. He was leaving it up to Hardin to call the play or not. For the next two or three long seconds you didn’t hear a thing but the birds in the trees and horses blowing. Then Hardin says: “I am man enough to admit my mistakes too. I did come to make your acquaintance, and I shouldn’t of let an ignorant jackass goad me into forgetting my own good manners.” Everybody turned to give Ben Hinds a look, but he was staring up at the treetops like there was something of uncommon interest to see up there. Then Hardin and Bill were both grinning, and Bill says, “I hear you like card games,” and Hardin says, “About as much as I hear you do,” and we knew the thing was done with.
A whole lot of breath got let out—but people being the way they are, I’d say more of it was in disappointment than in relief. It wasn’t every day you got to see two pistol fighters of high reputations pull on each other.
Ten minutes later Bill and Hardin were drinking beer and playing poker together in a crib at the far end of the street where they could have at least a little privacy from the crowds that kept following them around. Me and Jim Brown sat in with them, and I can tell you for a fact that they took a true liking to each other.
The last hand of the night is proof of it. They’d been playing pretty even till then, but on the last go-round, after the pot fattens up, Bill raises two hundred and everybody drops out but Hardin. He studies his hand like he’s expecting it to talk to him, then asks Bill how much he’s got left. Bill says about another hundred or so, and Hardin raises him all of it. Bill laughs and says, “Thank you.” Hardin says, “I hope you’re as sure of going to heaven as you are that you got me beat.”
“Beat this,” Bill says, and lays out a full house of aces over tens. He laughs and starts to pull in the pot, but Hardin says, “Hold on. I got two pair.”
“Two pair!” Bill says. “Two pair don’t beat shit!”
“I reckon it does,” Hardin says, “if it’s two pair of jacks.” And he lays them down soft as eggs, the whole jack family.
Bill stares at him a second and says, “You son of a bitch.” Hardin’s face tightened and he watched Bill without blinking. Then Bill grins and’ says, “You smart-ass son of a bitch!”—and leans back in his chair and laughs his head off. And Hardin busts out laughing right along with him. Two of a kind, them two.
They ate steaks at the Den that night and did some drinking and took a few turns at bucking the tiger. The place was so packed you couldn’t of fell to the floor if you’d been shot dead. You had to holler your conversations and the tobacco smoke was thick as a grass fire. Everybody was still hoping they’d go at it and wanted to be there if they did. Bill leaned in close to Hardin and I heard him yell, “Look at ’em! Sorry bastards just hoping we’ll give them something to talk about besides their saddle sores and dripping dicks. I tell you, amigo, sometimes I feel like a fucken circus freak!”
Hardin gave him a funny look and said, “Hell, Bill, it ain’t that bad.” He loved the attention. He wasn’t yet used to having so many strangers smile at him and holler “How doing, Wes!” and buy him drinks—being so friendly because they were afraid of him. It was still new to him, and exciting, and you could see him eating it up with a spoon. Bill gave him a look back and shook his head. He was about as used to it as he cared to be.
Bill invited him to join us at the races the next day, and Hardin said he’d be proud to. He met us at the track next morning, and I’ll be damned for a liar if he didn’t win on just about every race he bet. That sonbitch couldn’t lose at anything he laid his money on. By the time he rode out that afternoon he must of had half of Evergreen’s money in his saddlebags. Most of us weren’t sorry to see him go.
And that’s how it was, the only time Bill Longley and Wes Hardin ever got together. If you’ve heard different, you’ve heard bullshit.
They hung Bill eight years later, in Giddings, over in Lee County, on the eleventh of October, 1878. He’d killed a lot more fellas by then, but the one they got him for was Wilson Anderson, who had killed his cousin Cale. Bill ran Anderson down and killed him with a shotgun, then went off to Louisiana to hide out. He called himself Jim Black and took up farming. After a time he fell in love with some Cajun girl. Sheriff Milt Mast of Nacogdoches tracked him down and got the drop on him and offered to blow his head off or bring him back to Texas in chains to stand trial for murder; Bill went with choice number two. Mast never would of caught him without the help of that coonass bitch. I never did find out why Bill told her who he really was, nor ever knew the reason she betrayed him. I guess a man in love is bound to do foolish things, and to a naturally treacherous woman one reason to betray a man is as good as another.
Giddings made a regular jubilee out of Bill’s hanging. They built a brand-new gallows for the occasion, and people came from everywhere, from Houston, Austin, from far off as San Antone. Four thousand of them, the newspapers said. They were crowded in the streets and up on the roofs. Every window with a view of the gallows had at least one head sticking out of it. Even the trees were full of spectators—men in the low branches and children in the high. There was hawkers of every kind selling to the crowd, and families with picnic baskets, and firecrackers and string bands and dancing. A real jubilee. It wasn’t nothing I wanted to witness with sober eyes, so I spent the better part of that morning as a serious customer in the saloons.