The Savannah morning news., 1900-08-24
IRE OF A WESTERN BAD MAN.
ADVENTURES OF JOHN
WESLEY HARDIN.

From Serving "a Warrant-Escaped
and Turned Up in Gainesville, Fla,
Whore He Killed One or Two Ne
oroes Who Were Trying to Arrest
H,m-His Final determination by
q Man He Threatened to Kill.
From the Chicago Tribune.
historians have traced the origin and
u.resis of the desperate of the American
order as a type, novelists and story
r,t+ars have exploited him in fiction,
reUsDaper writer's have chronicled with
| ware OF. less accuracy his bloody and ex-
- ,orIinary deeds, exaggerating his
,ehievements, clarifying his meanness
and pslliating his crimes. And yet the
ruth about him, framed as it is with the
real growth and civilization of the west
ern and southwestern states and terri
tories, is so much a part of present-day
affairs, so near to the annals of every
state. county and town west of the Mis-
ssspi river, that its telling needs no
false coloring, no deviation from the
truth, no straining heroics, to make it
one Of the most Fascinating as well as in
| sructive chapters in the history of the
| Southwest and West.
The real bad man. of the West has no
place in criminal annals. He and the law
seldom came together. He was not a
rain robber, a highwayman nor a pro-
icssionaI thief. To his contemporaries he
WAS best known as a good man-With
gun Always he was a gambler, some
tines drunkard, and in few cases he de-
vended to the strenuous outlawry of cat
he rustling Fighting was both pastime
and a passion with him, and he asked
10 better sport, no more welcome under
/ aking, than the chance to get into "a gun
@hght with SONS redoubtable frontiersman
Of his own stripe whose reputation with
a pistol or rife made him a rival and
worthy antagonist.
This being both the business and the
pleasure of his usually nomadic life it is
not strange that he seldom failed to find
al last a better man and paid the penalty
OF his deeds
John Wesley Hardin, whose death at
the hands of Constable John Sellman, of
FL PasO. is yet within the memory of
newspaper readers, affords striking type
Of the border bad man both in the story
Of his life and in the manner of his death.
He was the son of a Baptist preacher, but
in spite OF his home advantages he grew
10 he an unruly, shiftless and skulking
member of the community before he was
Is years old. He was born in 1851 near the
town of Comanche, Tex, and began his
wild career before he was u years old by
riding to death the only two horses his
father had
He refused to go to school, was caught
cheating at cards when he was Is years
Old and in the same year put out the eye
Of neighbours son in a quarrel over
cock fight. Preacher Hardin died soon af-
terWard, and 1t is a tradition in Conan
che county that he died of broken heart
over the wickednes of his favorite son.
In 1872 being q years old, John Wesley,
or Yves. Hardin esta blshed himself on
part of his fathers farm and began to
a assemble about his cabin a COM
nany of the widest young
N men in the county None of
them had means; none of them seemed to
q work and yet after a few months of mid
n night rides into adjoining counties their
corrals were crowded with cattle aud the
townsfolk of Comanche began to fear
3nd suspect Hardin and his gang. Not sat
isfed with ranch solitude and led by Yves
Hardin, the desperadoes soon began to
make midnight raids upon the town. 1t
became their practice to gallOp into Main
street every night at 500 o'clock, "shoot
in the shape of liquor and supplies and
tefrlfy into silence the protesting store
Keepers 1t is current history in Conan
enc TO this day that Yves Hardin and his
men held the town almost in bondage
during the greater part of the year 1873
Many farmers who had suffered at the
hands of rustlers then began to assem-
bic in Comanche for the purpose of in
yestigating'' Hardin's layout. Whether
vic Nd
MS departure or whether store looting and
ranch life became too dull is not known
ont in August, 1873, he left home and iden-
uned himself with the Comanche county
gang of Taylors, then engaged in a feud
war of four years standing, with the
sons and friends of a man named SUIT
'on, who was killed by one of the Taylor
family in De Witt county in 1868 Hardin
had no personal interest in the feud,
but he was chosen leader of the Conan
che Taylors, and during the short period
OF his leadership got credit" for staying
three of the Sutton faction. To show
how ineffective was the machinery of
the law in Furnishing the perpetrators of
these border crimes, it is said that thir-
weight men, participants in the Taylor
sutton feud, were killed within six years
in Gonzales, De Witt and Comanche
counties and their slayers were neither
punished nor positively identified. Report
gives Hardin credit for shooting many
of the Sutton party, but he boosted al
ways of having got three, and as he
was proud and jealous of his man-killing
record, it is probable that he killed no
more of the Suttons.
Feb. Is, 1874 Hardin reappeared sudden
- in Comanche with a crowd of his fol-
lowers who Immediately captured the
principal saloon of the town, barred the
front door and proceeded to carouse af-
ter the manner of their class. Some time
that afternoon Deputy Sheriff Charley
Webb of Brown county arrived in Conan
che with a warrant for one of Hardin 5
gang who was accused of cattle stealing.
He soon learned that the desperate and
his fellows were embattled in the saloon,
huS, nothing daunted, tied. his horse and
entered the back door, which was open.
Hardin knew him and the moment he put
his face in the doorway shouted:
Hello. Webb! What do you want
tere?"
I've a warrant for Cal Shelby" the
deputy was saying as he pulled che docu-
ment half out of his pocket. But Har-
an shot him through the heart, adding
Il CUES you won't serve It'll" In the
party with Yves Hardin when Webb was
shof was Joe Hardin, younger brother
OF Wes then posing as a lawyer, but
Following closely in the footsteps of his
lawless brother and with a growing rep
utatiqn in Comanche as a desperate and
crook. News of the shooting of Webb
spread quickly over the town, and be-
fore dark tho aa1aou WAS ettrr0nndpd nv