Ep. 05: John Wesley Hardin: The Texas Psychopath

Join best-selling author Bryan Burrough as he drills deep into the legend of John Wesley Hardin, the teenaged Texas psychopath who may have been the Old West’s deadliest gunfighter. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas tecovas.com. Follow now on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-american-west/id1811365050, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0wrs79YL0Jw2AjQrCBKUUu?si=56a282df832a4bd2, iHeart, and YouTube https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIQv7voZWHy4X3UFECqr3ggFIj9uQJT2O&si=TG3vGnVvFhznWz0g. MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAaa0mleeU128Ad5iM1RFIg, and Youtube Clips https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterClips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters https://store.themeateater.com/products/meateaters-american-history-the-long-hunters.html?lang=en_US&persistUserId=MT777dfccfb5ad885f&_gl=1*1wsssmp*_gcl_au*OTE4NjU0MjA1LjE3NDE4MDEzNTI.*_ga*MTUzMTAxNzcxNC4xNzQwNTEzMzQ0*_ga_J3M86GMH9B*MTc0NjIyMDU5My41MC4wLjE3NDYyMjA2MDAuNTMuMC4w*_ga_VNCSXFY0BW*MTc0NjIyMDU5My41MC4wLjE3NDYyMjA2MDAuMC4wLjA." and "Mountain Men https://store.themeateater.com/products/meateaters-american-history-the-mountain-men.html?lang=en_US" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Shop MeatEater Merch https://store.themeateater.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 1:33Speaker 03

  On October 19th, 1871, out on the flat coastal plains east of San Antonio, the deadliest gunfighter in the history of Texas, and maybe in all the Old West, was hanging out in a general store in the remote settlement of Smiley. This was the beating heart of South Texas cattle country. And the store was a place where cowboys gathered after a long day, drank a few cold ones, spit tobacco juice, and chilled. Suddenly, out of nowhere, because no one saw him arrive, a member of the Texas State Police was pointing a pistol at one cowboy's back.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  Throw up your hands!

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Ordered the policeman, a 25-year-old rookie named Green Paramore. It was Officer Paramore's bad luck to be confronting John Wesley Harden, who was 18 years old that afternoon and had already shot and killed at least 20 men and probably more. That's right, 20. He had just returned from a cattle drive to Kansas, where he had killed seven of them. In like three months, he was already among the most wanted men in all of Texas. Slowly, Harden turned, raised his arms, and in his steady voice told Officer Paramore, "Look out, he'll let that pistol go off, and I don't want to be killed accidentally."

• 2:55Speaker 03

  Paramore, all business and probably very nervous, demanded he turn over his pistols. Harden was wearing two, one on each hip. Carefully, he lifted both guns and presented them butts forward. One imagines Officer Paramore reached out to take one. It was then that Harden attempted one of the more famous maneuvers in gunfighting history. One that every time I tell folks about it, still leaves me shaking my head.

• 3:24Speaker 01

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• 3:37Speaker 03

  Hey y'all, it's Brian. Thanks for dropping in. I'll explain exactly what Harden did here in a minute. But let me properly introduce the man first. Because he's not only the first gunfighter we're going to discuss in detail, he may have been the greatest of them all. And by greatest, let's be clear, I mean deadliest, because I certainly don't mean to compliment the man's character. Because, well, Wes Harden was a racist, multiple murderer, and pretty clearly a psychopath. You can still find Texans of a certain age who think he was just this troubled kid. But I'm telling you, Harden was as close to evil as any man we'll talk about in this whole podcast. I don't think I've said that before, but I do believe it. History has been far too kind to him.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  In the South, he was long portrayed as this crusading last Confederate, a true believer who took the good fight to Yankees and carpetbaggers and people of color. And for a long time, like almost 100 years, that's the image that prevailed. Back in an awful 1953 movie, Rock Hudson played him as a farm boy who turned to violence after the death of his girl. Oh, please. Johnny Cash wrote two rousing songs about him. Bob Dylan named his entire album after him. It's pretty good. Though he did spell the last name Harding with a G. In the title track, Dylan calls Harden, quote, "A friend to the poor, who, quote, 'was never known to hurt an honest man.'"

• 5:06Speaker 03

  None of this is even remotely true. But if the John Wesley Harden of history was not exactly someone you'd invite over for a Sunday barbecue, it's just as true that he's a crucial figure in the story of Old West gunfighters. He's the man who all but invented the archetype of the roving Old West gunman. A black cloud raining death and destruction onto dozens of tiny frontier towns. He was the original rebel without a cause. A troubled soldier in his own private war, ranging the Texas backcountry and as far afield as Kansas and Florida, shooting and killing just about anyone who upset him in any way.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Black men he found disrespectful, white men who beat him at cards or jostled him in a crowd. Most famously, he probably killed a man for snoring. I'm not making that up. He may have been the first great gunfighter, but he was also pretty clearly a maniac. In fact, I think gunfighter is too tame a word for Harden. He was literally a serial killer. He strikes me as a psychopath as well. A man who did what he wanted, unconcerned by the suffering of others. For this, he became infamous in his day. Not Billy the Kid famous, but he had enough of a following, at least in Texas, that he was interviewed a few times about his exploits. And he took the opportunity to spin his own narrative.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  It's dark, I mean really dark, but in many cases, it's the only version of Harden's killings that survive. Researching his career, if that's the word, requires making more than a few judgment calls as to whether to believe him. How many men did Harden really kill? He claimed 42. But much of this happened during the chaotic years after the Civil War, when Texas newspapers, what few there were, had a tough time keeping up with the state's spiraling death toll. The most conservative estimate I've seen is 11. Most put the number closer to 25, which, to give you some perspective, dwarfs the number of men killed by, say, Billy the Kid.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  That would be three. Or Wyatt Earp, that would be probably two, maybe three. Killing people became routine. There are years where he literally shot a man every month on average. I've found no one else like him in the Old West.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  He was born in 1853, just below the Oklahoma border in the little town of Bonham, Texas, which was right at the center of North Texas feuding country. His mother's people were related to the infamous rebel Bob Lee. We talked about the bloody Mr. Lee in the last episode. That's a guy who waged a guerrilla war against black people and Union soldiers and their sympathizers from within a series of remote thickets. From everything we can learn, Harden encountered violence early and often. When he was seven, his family moved to southeast Texas, where he later told of witnessing a fight in which a man bled to death after his opponent severed his jugular vein with a Bowie knife.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  There's a telling story about Harden's reputation even as a boy. A classmate of his named William Teagarden once recalled for a newspaper reporter how Harden had protected him from an angry teacher. Teagarden wrote,

• 8:30Speaker 04

  "John stepped out into the aisle of the large schoolroom with open knife in his hands and met the irate teacher coming with the hickory in hand to whip me unjustly, and told him he would kill him if he struck me with that stick." Everybody in the schoolroom knew that John meant what he said.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  From an early age, it's clear Harden internalized a keen sense of right and wrong, perhaps an influence of his father, who was a Methodist preacher, though his morality easily could turn grotesque. In 1867, when he was 13 or 14, a bully said something about a girl Harden liked, and he took offense. Words were exchanged. The bully walked up and hit Harden, and then pulled a knife. Harden pulled his own knife, and then stabbed the other boy in the chest. In Harden's recollection, the attack was ruled self-defense. That wouldn't surprise me, knowing Texas at the time. The moment that truly set Harden on his path, though, came in November 1868, when he was 15.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  This is documented. Harden was at a family gathering at his uncle's plantation, when he and another boy were egged into a wrestling match with a black man named Mage Holzhousen, who'd once been enslaved by Harden's uncle. In Harden's autobiography years later, he claimed Holzhousen got mad when the boys threw him. Whatever happened, tempers did flare. Holzhousen was ordered home, but that wasn't the end of it. Walking along a wooded road the next day, Harden encountered Holzhousen again. The two traded obscenities, and then Harden drew his Colt and shot Holzhousen five times. He died a few days later.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  The killing was reported to agents of the Federal Freedmen's Bureau, an office whose job was to protect black Southerners after the war, and suddenly Harden found himself a wanted man. In Harden's view, he was not on the run from justice, but as he later wrote, quote, "From the injustice and misrule of the people who had subjugated the South." This theme becomes the dominant aspect of his adult life, this idea that he was being oppressed by dastardly Yankees, black people, the government, and especially the carpetbagger authorities of post-war Texas. For six weeks Harden hid out, probably with an uncle.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Then one day, we're told, he heard that three soldiers had come around searching for him. Armed with a shotgun, he ambushed them at a creek crossing. He killed two of them outright. The third was a black man, who he called on to, quote, "Surrender in the name of the Southern Confederacy." Instead, the soldier fired at Harden, hitting him in the arm. Harden fired back, killing him. This account comes from Harden's autobiography, where he explained, quote, "I had no mercy on men who I knew only wanted to get my body to torture and kill." This is the moment where Harden begins his legendary wanderings. He was technically a fugitive, but there wasn't yet a statewide police force in Texas

• 11:46Speaker 03

  at the time, and so he was rarely under any real danger of arrest. He lived mostly out in the open, sometimes under an alias. First, his father snuck him up into Navarro County, south of Dallas, where one of his aunts taught school in a log cabin. There was talk of him leaving the state, but Harden wanted to stay. For a while, he actually taught children there at the school. Before long, though, he took work as a cowboy, working for another of his uncles. This is where he discovered pastimes like playing cards, betting on horses in cockfights, and drinking liquor. It appears Harden developed a deep love for the bottle. Many of his killings happened after he'd been drinking. Harden spent a year in Navarro County.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  During his stay, he claims he joined one of his rebel cousins in several gunfights with Union soldiers in central Texas. Maybe he did, maybe not. We'll probably never know for sure. What we do know is that in late 1869, his relatives politely suggested it was probably time to move on. Harden was still just 16, 5'9", maybe 140 pounds. He had dark hair, wide-set brown eyes, a cleft chin, and Apache starter mustache. There's no sign he had any kind of plan once he left. He just kind of wandered, mostly playing cards, just roaming through central Texas, sometimes staying with relatives, and, you know, killing people. At least three we know of in his first few months on his own.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  One of them was a gambler in Hill County, who Harden shot while arguing over the results of a card game. Then at a circus in the town of Union Hill, a man jostled Harden, and so Harden killed him too. And then came an incident in the tiny town of Cossey. Actually, no Cossey, my father used to run the bank there. Harden, we're told, was, um, talking with a prostitute. Her pimp turned up and tried to rob him. Harden replied by throwing his money on the floor. When the pimp leaned down to pick up the cash, Harden snatched up his pistol and shot him too. Given the frankly pathetic state of law enforcement in Texas at the time, it's not like any of this turned him into this hugely wanted man.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  So after Christmas, Harden was free to ride east into these Texas pines with a plan to visit family over in Louisiana. But when he stopped along the way in the town of Longview, suddenly, he's arrested. The officers were with the new Texas State Police, newly formed by the state's Republican Governor. To racist Southerners such as Harden, this Governor was a carpetbagger, a traitor to his beloved Southern cause, and these officers, 40% of whom were black, were deeply hated. They were widely known as, let's just say, the N-word police. It's true that these new policemen had little training, and in fact, they'd arrested Harden

• 14:41Speaker 03

  not for any of the murders he'd committed, but for one he hadn't done: the killing of a city marshal over in Waco. They took him to a jail nearby in Marshall. A cellmate had somehow managed to bring a loaded pistol in with him, and Harden bought it from him. The next evening, it was January 21st, 1871, a cold front had blown in, and a very rare snow lay on the ground, as Harden was marched out from the jail for the trip over to Waco. The officers searched him, but Harden was wearing a heavy winter coat, and they failed to find the gun he'd strapped beneath his left armpit. They roped him to a pony, and two officers and a local man led him out of town.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  That night, they camped outside the village of Fairfield. Two of the men left in search of food for the horses, and that's when Harden made his move. He drew his pistol and shot the remaining officer, his name was James Smalley, in the back. Fell dead. Then Harden took a horse and rode off into the night. You'd think the murder of a state policeman would make statewide headlines, but Texas remained in such turmoil after the war that there was only one local news item reprinted in just one other paper, and there's no record at all of Harden's next exploit, so some doubt it really happened. But as Harden told the story years later, he was arrested yet again just a few nights later.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  While he was sleeping, he was surprised by three men who identified themselves as police, but who he came to believe were bounty hunters. Again, as Harden told it, they made camp for a night outside the town of Belton in central Texas. The men took turns watching him, but when one dozed off, Harden grabbed one of their guns. In his book, Harden calls his captors Smith, Jones, and Davis. He writes about this incident, quote, "I picked up Davis's shotgun and Jones's six-shooter. I fired at Smith's head and then turned the other barrel on Jones at once. As Davis began to arise and inquire what was the matter, I began to work on him with the six-shooter.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  He begged and hollered, but I kept on shooting till I was satisfied he was dead." Here you begin to get a sense of Harden's hard shell. This guy was a boring killer. Now officially a wanted man, he decided to flee to Mexico. His plan was to wait there until the carpetbaggers were voted out of office, and he could return and get a favorable trial. He dropped in on his father to say goodbye, then he rode south. East of San Antonio, in Gonzalez County, he stopped to see a set of cousins, the Clements family. It proved to be a fateful decision.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  The four Clements brothers, led by the intense, dark-eyed Mannan Clements, were cattlemen. That spring of 1871, they were planning to join a cattle drive to Kansas. Harden signed up too. Instead of hiding out in Mexico, he could shake loose of the state police up there instead. What ensued is one of the epic killing sprees in the history of the Old West. Along the way, Harden came face to face with the most famous gunman in the country. This is a story so good, I'm gonna wait and tell it all its own in the next episode. Suffice to say for now, that by the time Harden returned to Texas a few months later, he killed at least 17 men, maybe as many as 24.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  All this, and he'd just turned 18. Harden was back in Gonzalez County by the fall of 1871. There, among the Clements family, he more or less made his new home. He began dating a girl named Jane Bowen, the 15-year-old daughter of a rancher. They would go on to get married the following February. It was just about then, that October, that as we described at the top of the episode, that young state policeman, Green Paramore, surprised Harden in a remote country store. To this day, we don't know whether Paramore tracked him there, or whether he just stumbled on him during some random patrol. State police had been combing the area for him for some time, we do know that.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Standing there in the little store, Officer Paramore had John Wesley Harden dead to rights. But as Harden handed his pistols to him butts forward, he suddenly spun one of them in his hand, a rare and difficult maneuver known as the barrel roll, sometimes you hear it called the road agent's spin. Suddenly, Officer Green found the barrel of Harden's pistol pointing straight into his face. Harden fired. Officer Green, a father of three children, fell over dead. There was a second officer outside the store, sitting on a white mule. His name was John Lackey. Startled, Lackey began firing into the store. Harden returned fire. One of his bullets struck Lackey in the mouth.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  He fell from the mule, but he was still alive. He climbed back onto the mule and took off at a full gallop, Harden firing wildly in his wake. A few minutes later, Lackey reaches the shores of Smiley Lake and dives in, his mule running off. Harden searched in vain for him for the longest time, but Officer Lackey, hiding there in the lake, would live to tell his tale.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Now Harden had killed his second state policeman. It's at this point that the governor himself put a bounty on his head. The first one, $400, and his name started turning up in newspapers. And for the first time, Wes Harden becomes a little famous in Texas. For the next several months, Harden ducked the attention by leaving Gonzales County, probably staying at relatives' homes, though we do know he came back for his wedding. Months passed. By May 1872, this is like six months later, the heat on him was beginning to subside, and he'd returned and reunited with his wife Jane, made a home with her, and raised a small herd of horses.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  He was still very much a wanted man, but something you'll note about Harden going forward, even when he was trying to hide, he never stayed very hidden. In this case, he decided to take his horses and sell them over to Louisiana. Along the way, he stopped outside Houston, in the town of Hemsted. In front of the courthouse, he happened to see a little boy arguing with a state policeman whose name was Sonny Spates. In Harden's telling, he saw the officer slap the boy. Harden claims he objected, and Spates threatened to arrest him. The officer drew his gun. Harden whipped out a Derringer, shot him in the shoulder, and rode away. That much at least we know actually happened.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  But it was as if Harden was constitutionally unable to avoid violent confrontations. Just two months later, while he was visiting relatives in nearby Trinity County, he was at a bowling alley when he got into an argument with a man named Philip Sublett. Sublett accused Harden of cheating and stormed off. How you cheated bowling, I don't honestly know, but that's the story. Anyway, Sublett returned with a shotgun, called Harden a goddamn son of a bitch, and then shot him in the stomach. It was a serious wound. We now know Harden nearly died. He spent the next two months recovering, being shuttled between the homes of friends and family, chased by rumors that the state police was finally closing in.

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• 25:34Speaker 03

  There's some debate about what actually happened next. Maybe Harden wanted to put an end to the cat and mouse game and surrender. By now, the state police had gained a reputation for abusing or killing suspects they'd arrested. There's a story or two, he was captured after a shootout, but we don't have full details, so I kind of doubt it. We really don't know how he came to surrender, but he did. However it happened, Harden got a message to one of his father's friends, an East Texas sheriff named Richard B. Reagan, who did take Harden into custody. He was brought to the town of Rusk, still recovering from that gunshot wound, and taken to a hotel to rest. When he was well enough to travel, he was taken to Austin and put in the Travis County

• 26:19Speaker 03

  jail. Harden's arrival to the state capitol made major headlines, the first really prominent reporting on him. One story repeated a claim that he'd killed 28 men in Texas and Kansas and called him, quote, "the most bloody desperado we ever heard of." From Austin, they took him back to Gonzales County to face murder charges, but Harden had friends there, including apparently the sheriff. Someone slipped him a saw. He put it to work on his cell door. The jailbreak is a turning point. Up to now, Harden had essentially been a drifter. His killings had no real plot. Apart from his hatred for black people and union men, there wasn't any real rhyme or reason to his violence.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  He just had, you know, a serious temper and was easily angered. His wife, we're told, tried to talk to him about it, but it was no use. Harden was Harden. But now, after his escape from jail, he found himself for the first time pulled into something new, one of the great feuds that rose in Texas after the Civil War. In fact, the longest running of them all. And let's just say the addition of Wes Harden did not lower the temperature one bit. It's a conflict known as the Sutton-Taylor feud. It was centered in DeWitt County, about 90 miles east of San Antonio, but the killings spilled into neighboring counties across the coastal cattle country. For years, people in Texas viewed it as a classic kind of family feud like the Hatfields

• 27:49Speaker 03

  and McCoys. But while the Sutton and Taylor families were at the center of it, and they really did hate each other, modern scholarship has shown that this was about much more than bad blood. The Taylors ran a vast crime ring, mostly centered on cattle theft, and hated state government and state police. The Suttons allied themselves with a state police apparatus that was quickly veering way off the rails. Both sides committed their share of atrocities. It's one of those deals where it's kind of hard to know who to root for. Nobody can say exactly how it all began. What we know is that after the war, the extended family of an old timer named Creed Taylor

• 28:30Speaker 03

  formed this criminal network that stole livestock and then intimidated or even killed those who objected. The Taylors were rabid Southern partisans, like Harden. They murdered at least four black people we know of. And whether it was over one of these murders or a livestock theft, at some point, they ran up against a determined local deputy named Bill Sutton. Sutton killed his first Taylor, a horse thief, in the town of Bastrop in March 1868. Some date the real start of the feud to the following Christmas Eve, when one of the Taylor cousins, this was Buck Taylor, happened to spot Sutton dozing in a saloon. Buck Taylor approached and whispered in Sutton's ear.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  If the sun goes down on you in DeWitt. County, we'll kill ya. Then Buck turned to leave. The story goes that Sutton opened his eyes and said, Why wait until sundown? At that Sutton, a pal of his and Taylor all drew in fire. Buck Taylor ended up dead on the saloon floor. After that, Bill Sutton brought in some backup from among the rougher elements of this new state police. These men were led by a captain named Jack Helm, one of the fabled killers in Texas history. Helm was a big guy, stocky with jet black hair and eyes, and he had a reputation as a killer.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  In East Texas, he was known for organizing a lynching of five men. Together, Jack Helm and Bill Sutton brought down a real reign of terror on the Taylors. They arrested as many as 20 of them and then shot a number of them after they claimed they tried to escape. In the ensuing scandal, Helm was fired from the state police. His part in the feud might have ended there, but then the people of DeWitt County elected him sheriff, where he remained active on the Sutton side of things. His most notorious act of bloodshed came one night in 1872, when he and a group went to the home of an elder in the Taylor family, Pitkin Taylor.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Outside, they rang a cowbell to draw the old man out from his home and then shot him down. He died not long after. Pitkin Taylor's son Jim swore revenge.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Okay, I know this is gonna get a little tangled, lots of new names, but seriously, stay with me, it's worth it. Among the Taylors' allies were the Clements Brothers. These were Wes Harden's cousins, and it's likely that Jim Taylor is the one who tried to recruit Harden into the fight. Harden supposedly tried to remain neutral at first. There was a sense that the Suttons and their allies up in Austin could maybe make his legal problems go away. But then in December, 1872, Harden's brother-in-law, this was a nutcase named Brown Bowen, shot and killed a sleeping man who he believed was a Sutton spy.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  A few months later, while Bowen was in the Gonzalez jail, Harden rode up alongside 12 Taylor men and gently persuaded the jailer to set Bowen free. By doing this, Harden officially chose a side. He chose up with the Taylors. On the Sutton side, though, there was still some hope that Harden remained a free agent that they could lure to the Sutton cause. So that spring, the sheriff, Jack Helm, apparently made an effort to meet and clear up all of Harden's legal problems. They met, Helm waited for an answer. He got it on April 4th, 1873, when Harden walked into a saloon in the town of Cuero and shot one of Helm's deputies in the eye.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  That's when the feud shifted into overdrive. Jack Helm gathered up a posse and went hard after Harden. At some point, he seems to have paid an inopportune visit to Harden's wife. Well, that did it. Harden recruited every Taylor ally he could find and laid out a detailed plan to wipe out Jack Helm and his three top lieutenants, including Bill Sutton. They spent two months formulating the plan. On July 16th, 1873, they struck. They ambushed a column of Helm's men, killing two of the lieutenants, slicing one's throat. It's then that Harden, out of the blue, offered to make peace.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Two days later, in the tiny town of Albuquerque, Harden found Jack Helm and they met to discuss a truce. A little bit of context, Helm was also something of an inventor. A few months earlier, he'd received a patent for a machine he called a cotton worm destroyer. At the blacksmith shop where he worked on this machine, he often left his guns behind. And so when Harden arrived that day, Helm was armed only with a Bowie knife. According to one version of the story, as Harden and Helm spoke outside the shop, another man, I'm guessing this was Jim Taylor, walked up behind Helm. Taylor pulled a pistol, but the first shot misfired.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Helm turned around, second shot struck him in the chest. Helm lunged at Taylor, and as the two of them fought, Harden pulled a shotgun and shot Helm in the arm. Badly wounded, Helm staggered back into the blacksmith shop, where Taylor finished him off with several more shots.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  After that, the Suttons sued for peace, and amazingly, everyone agreed. Weeks after Helm's killing, 87 men in all formally convened and signed a treaty declaring the feud at an end. But of course, you know, it wasn't. After all this, Jim Taylor still wanted revenge against Bill Sutton for the death of his father. I know it's hard to remember after I've told you about the last 18 murders, but this was the one with the cowbell. The Taylors had already tried at least three times to kill Bill Sutton. Two times, they shot his horse instead. The third time, Jim Taylor ambushed Sutton in a saloon there in Cuero, but only managed to wound him.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  That winter, though, Harden took a tip. They heard Bill Sutton was leaving on a business trip from the port of Indianola on the Texas Gulf Coast. To learn exactly when he'd be traveling, the Taylors sent for Harden's brother Joe, who was an attorney specializing in real estate swindles. The idea was that he might find Sutton in a saloon somewhere and strike up a conversation. And it seems the plan actually worked. On March 11th, 1874, Jim Taylor and a cousin were in Indianola, waiting for Bill Sutton at a ticket booth. Sutton arrived aboard a steamer, joined by his pregnant wife, Laura, and this young guy named Gabriel Slaughter.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  He caught a glimpse of the Taylor men as they approached and drew their guns. Bill Sutton gasped, quote, "Hell is in the door, Gabe. Yonder comes Jim Taylor." The Taylors opened fire. Bill Sutton and Gabriel Slaughter fell dead. Laura Sutton was left wailing. This was a triumphant moment for the Taylors and of course, a crushing blow for the Suttons. It was pretty much the end of the feud. Soon, though, Jim Taylor had a reward on his head. He fled to join up with Harden in the town of Comanche in west central Texas, where he and his family were assembling a cattle herd to drive north.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  May 26th, 1874, was Harden's 21st birthday. Everyone celebrated with a day at the horse races, and Harden won big. He kept the party going that night, hopping from bar to bar. At one point, he threw out 20 gold pieces to buy the house around. At the end of the night, deeply drunk by now, Harden stood waiting with friends and family outside the Jack Wright Saloon. A pair of easygoing local deputies sidled up. One suggested Harden head to bed, but Harden wasn't quite ready. He announced, "Let us go in and get a cigar, then we will go home."

• 36:53Speaker 03

  What unfolded next was a confusing incident of characteristically unnecessary and extreme violence, one that was to change the course of Harden's life. As he and his friends headed back inside the saloon, one of those local deputies in the street recognized a lawman approaching. The deputy said, "Here comes that damn Brown County sheriff." He was in fact, a deputy, not the sheriff, from neighboring Brown County, a 25-year-old named Charles Webb. No one ever figured out why Charles Webb was in Comanche that night. Some said a girl, others the horse races. Later Harden and his supporters insisted that Webb had come to arrest Harden and Jim Taylor,

• 37:38Speaker 03

  but I'm guessing this encounter was purely accidental. In the street, Webb approached the group, his hands clasped behind his back, clearly wearing two pistols. Suddenly Harden asked Webb if he had papers for his arrest. I'm guessing Webb was simply puzzled by this. He said, "No, he didn't know Harden." At that, Harden replied, "Well, I've been informed that the sheriff of Brown County has said that Sheriff Carnes of this county was no sheriff at all, or he would not allow me to stay around Comanche with my murdering pals." For a wanted man, this was not exactly the smartest thing to say. Hoping to avoid trouble, one of the local deputies offered to make introductions. Harden was still suspicious.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  He asked what Webb was holding behind his back. Webb produced a cigar. Now Harden softened a bit. He asked Webb to join them for a drink inside, and Webb said, "Certainly." But as Harden turned to enter the bar, one of his cousins shouted, "Look out." Harden swiveled. Webb was pulling a pistol. We'll never know exactly why. Did he recognize him? Had he been there to kill Harden all along? Whatever the reason, Harden jumped to one side and drew as well. Webb fired, striking Harden in the side. Harden's shot hit Webb in the face, killing him. The sheriff appeared, and Harden, wounded, and his group calmly turned over their guns. And then they were allowed to go free pending some kind of investigation.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  This time, though, was not going to be just another killing Wes Harden could walk away from.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Prior to the Civil War, the Texas Rangers had been disbanded, but that year, in 1874, they were being brought back to replace the troubled Texas state police. These Rangers were creating something not yet seen on the western frontier. They were developing a reputation for professional and deadly efficiency. Charles Webb, before he was a deputy, had briefly served as a Texas Ranger. And so when a squad of Rangers appeared in Comanche, Harden, for once, did the sensible thing. He vanished. I'm Brian Burrow, and this has been episode six of The Gunfighters. Thanks for dropping in. In the next episode, one of my favorites, I'll tell you about Harden's greatest single

• 40:02Speaker 03

  adventure, probably the most murderous cattle drive in American history.

• 40:21Speaker 01

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• 40:49Speaker 06

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• 41:31Speaker 01

  When you're in the backcountry, don't forget your own backcountry. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along Wet Extra Large Dude Wipes. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild soaking your butt. You'd never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better, so ditch the itch and switch from TP to Wet Extra Large Dude Wipes. Dude Wipes, it is the best clean pants down. They're available at Amazon, that's where I usually order mine from, but you can get them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product, proud to be doing ads for these boys at Dude Wipes.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.