John Wesley Hardin : Dark Angel of Texas

by Metz, Leon C.

• ISBN13: 9780806129952
• ISBN10: 0806129956
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Summary

Thus spoke one lawman about John Wesley Hardin, easily the most feared and fearless of all the gunfighters in the West. Nobody knows the exact number of his victims-perhaps as few as twenty or as many as fifty. In his way of thinking, Hardin never shot a man who did not deserve it. Seeking to gain insight into Hardin's homicidal mind, Leon Metz describes how Hardin's bloody career began in post-Civil War Central Texas, when lawlessness and killings were commonplace, and traces his life of violence until his capture and imprisonment in 1878. After numerous unsuccessful escape attempts, Hardin settled down and received a pardon years later in 1895. He wrote an autobiography but did not live to see it published. Within a few months of his release, John Selman gunned him down in an El Paso saloon.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix	(4)
Prologue	xiii
1 A Boy Named John	1	(7)
2 The Hour of the Gun	8	(7)
3 A Reputation Builds	15	(12)
4 Death Ride	27	(7)
5 A Dead Man Every Mile	34	(6)
6 The Killing Trail	40	(6)
7 Abilene, Kansas	46	(11)
8 Prairie Justice	57	(10)
9 Death By Snoring	67	(5)
10 A Three Gun Man	72	(16)
11 A Bullet for Tom Haldeman	88	(4)
12 The Sutton-Taylor Feud	92	(10)
13 Exit James Cox and Jack Helm	102	(11)
14 Too Mean to Arrest	113	(6)
15 Joe Hardin and the Good Earth	119	(6)
16 Goodby Bill Sutton	125	(6)
17 Charlie Webb Goes Down	131	(10)
18 A Whale Among Little Fishes	141	(17)
19 Capturing the Grand Mogul	158	(15)
20 I Am A Human Being	173	(12)
21 State Prison	185	(24)
22 Tell Wes to be A Good Man	209	(13)
23 El Paso	222	(10)
24 Just Return What I Lost	232	(14)
25 Adios, Martin	246	(7)
26 Autobiography of A Sinner	253	(7)
27 Four Sixes to Beat	260	(6)
28 To A Higher Court	266	(21)
Afterword	287	(10)
Acknowledgments	297	(3)
Appendix A	300	(3)
Appendix B	303	(1)
Appendix C	304	(3)
Appendix D	307	(1)
Appendix E	307	(4)
Notes	311	(16)
Bibliography	327	(4)
Index	331