Guest Author - Vance Rowe

Described as the “meanest man from Texas”, John Wesley Hardin is alleged to have killed more than forty men starting at the young age of fifteen. Of all the men he is alleged to have killed, he is most famous for killing a man who snored too loud and of all of the gunfights he was in, of all the men he killed while he was an outlaw, Hardin didn’t meet his demise until he was on the right side of the law.

John Wesley Hardin is reported to have committed his first killing at age fifteen. He was horse playing with a slave and it got out of hand. Hardin bloodied the boy’s face and a full out brawl ensued until it was broken up. The slave wanted revenge and one day was hiding with a club. When Hardin came by, the boy jumped out and attempted to hit Hardin with the club. Hardin pulled his pistol from its holster and shot the boy several times in his chest, killing him. Although it was self-defense, John Wesley Hardin fled. The Texas Rangers pursued him for fleeing and it is reported that he would kill anyone who tried to capture him. It is also alleged that he killed several Rangers and Union soldiers during an ambush. By the time he was seventeen, Hardin was a reputed gunfighter and gambler.

In 1871, at the age of eighteen, John Wesley Hardin was arrested for killing Waco, Texas City Marshal, L.J. Hoffman, a killing that he vehemently denied. He was caught in Marshall, Texas and while he was being taken back to Waco to stand trial, he escaped. From there he went to Gonzales, Texas where he met up with some relatives to run cattle up to Abilene, Kansas. During this run, Hardin got into an argument with some Mexican vaqueros who were bringing their own herd up and got too close to Hardin’s. A fight ensued and when it was all said and done, Hardin had killed five of the six vaqueros that were killed. In Abilene, Hardin made friends with Wild Bill Hickok, who was the law there at that time. Their friendship ended when Hardin killed a man for snoring too loud. He fired his pistol at the wall and into the next room where the man was sleeping and snoring. A bullet struck the man and killed him. Only wearing his nightshirt, Hardin climbed out of his hotel room window and up to the roof when he was alerted that Hickok and four policemen were coming to arrest him. He hid in a haystack for the night and escaped around dawn.

Hardin was finally caught after a few years on a train in Pensacola, Florida while traveling under an assumed name. He was tried for killing a deputy and sentenced to twenty-five years in Huntsville prison. After serving sixteen years, he was released and passed the bar to become a lawyer. He was killed in 1895 when he was playing a dice game and was shot in the back of the head by a constable in El Paso after Hardin got into an argument with the constable’s son. When Hardin fell to the floor, the constable fired three more shots into Hardin’s body. The constable was arrested and tried but was acquitted of the murder. He is buried in Concordia cemetery in El Paso, Texas.