John Wesley Hardin was twenty years old when he killed a man by accident through a hotel wall, and the story of that drunken August night in Abilene, Kansas, in 1871 would cement his reputation across the West. The bullet that struck his friend Charles Cougar in the heart as he lay snoring in the next room was fired not in a gunfight or a robbery, but in a moment of irritation. Cougar had been disturbing Hardin’s sleep, and after shouting at him to roll over without effect, Hardin fired several rounds through the shared wall. One of them killed the man instantly.
Half-dressed and still drunk, Hardin and his cousin Gip Clements fled through a second-story window and onto the hotel roof, where they watched the town marshal, the legendary Wild Bill Hickok, arrive with four policemen. The local newspaper reported simply that a desperado called Arkansas had committed his sixth murder and escaped. Hardin himself believed that if Hickok found him defenseless, the famous lawman would kill him to add to his reputation. He dropped from the roof, hid in a haystack through the night, stole a horse, and rode thirty-five miles to a remote cow camp.
The next day he left for Texas, never to return to Abilene. The Abilene incident was only one chapter in a violent life that began early and ended violently. Hardin was born in 1853 near Bonham, Texas, the second surviving son of ten children. His father was a Methodist preacher and circuit rider who traveled central Texas before settling the family in Sumter, Trinity County, where he established a school.
The family was Southern and politically connected, with relatives who had served in the Continental Congress, the U. S. Congress, and as generals on opposing sides of the Civil War. During the war, Hardin’s father was elected a Confederate captain, and at the age of nine, Hardin tried to run away from home to join the Confederate Army.
His first killing came in November 1868, when he was fifteen. Hardin claimed that a man named Mage, a former slave of his uncle, ambushed him as he rode past, shouting and waving a stick. Hardin drew his revolver and shot him five times. Mage died three days later.
Hardin’s father, believing his son would not receive a fair hearing in the Union-occupied state, ordered him into hiding. When authorities found his location, three soldiers were sent to arrest him. Hardin claimed he killed two of them with a shotgun and a third with a pistol, justifying the ambush as a matter of survival. By the end of 1868, he said, he had killed four men.
From then on, Hardin lived as a fugitive. He traveled with outlaws, briefly taught school, and accumulated a string of killings across Texas. In January 1870, he shot a man named Benjamin Bradley in a dispute over a card game, using a distinctive technique: his holsters were sewn into his vest so the pistol butts pointed inward across his chest, allowing him to draw by crossing his arms. He practiced this method daily and claimed it was the fastest draw in the West.
Months later, he killed a man after a circus argument, then shot a pimp who tried to rob him in Kosse, Texas. In early 1871, Hardin was arrested for the murder of Waco City Marshal Laban Hoffman, a crime he denied committing. While being escorted by two Texas state policemen to stand trial, he escaped. According to his account, the younger officer began taunting and beating him with a pistol butt.
Hardin pretended to cry and huddled against his pony’s flank, and hidden by the animal, he drew a gun and shot the officer dead. He then claimed that three other men captured him in Bell County, but he killed them with their own guns after they became drunk and careless. Hardin’s path then took him to Abilene, Kansas, the railhead town where cattle drives ended and where Wild Bill Hickok served as marshal. Hardin arrived under the alias Wesley Clements, known to townspeople as Little Arkansas.
He and Hickok developed a wary relationship. On one occasion, Hickok ordered Hardin to hand over his guns, and Hardin complied by offering the revolvers butts-first, then flipping them in his hands so quickly that Hickok suddenly stared into their muzzles. Both men backed down, and Hickok, unaware that Hardin was a wanted man, advised him to stay out of trouble. On a later cattle drive, Hickok allowed Hardin to carry his pistols into town, a privilege he granted almost no one.
Hardin also claimed that Hickok helped arrange the escape of his cousin Mannen Clements from jail after Clements killed two cowhands. The accidental killing in the Abilene hotel ended that association for good. The incident added to Hardin’s growing legend, and the story spread that he was a man so dangerous he once shot a man simply for snoring. After fleeing Kansas, Hardin settled in south-central Texas around Gonzales County.
In early 1872, he married Jane Bowen and became closely tied to the Taylor family, who were locked in a bitter feud with the rival Sutton faction that had been ongoing for years. In August 1872, Hardin was wounded by a shotgun blast during a gambling dispute in Trinity, Texas, when a man named Phil Sublett shot him after losing money in a poker game. While recovering, Hardin decided he wanted to settle down and surrendered to a sheriff, asking to be tried for his past crimes so he could clear the slate. But when he learned the extent of the murder charges being prepared against him, he changed his mind.
A relative smuggled a hacksaw into his cell, and Hardin escaped by cutting through the bars. His notoriety in the Sutton-Taylor feud grew through two killings in July 1873. In Cuero, Texas, he killed Deputy Sheriff J. B.
Morgan, who served under Sheriff Jack Helm, a former Texas State Police captain and the leader of the Sutton forces. Later that same day, Hardin killed Helm himself. In March 1874, he acknowledged involvement, along with his brother and members of the Taylor family, in the killing of Billy Sutton and Gabriel Slaughter as they waited on a steamboat platform in Indianola, intending to leave the feud and the region forever. On May 26, 1874, Hardin marked his twenty-first birthday by gathering with his gang in a saloon in Comanche, Texas.
During the celebration, Brown County Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb entered. Hardin asked if Webb had come to arrest him, and when Webb said he had not, Hardin invited him for a drink. As Webb followed him into the hotel, Hardin claimed Webb drew his gun. In the gunfight that followed, Webb was shot dead.
The killing of the popular deputy sparked the rapid formation of a lynch mob. Hardin’s parents and wife were taken into protective custody, his brother and two cousins were arrested, and a group of local men later broke into the jail and seized them. Hardin and the Taylors parted ways for good. In January 1875, the Texas legislature authorized a $4,000 reward for Hardin’s arrest.
An undercover Texas Ranger intercepted a letter revealing that Hardin was hiding at a lumber yard on the Alabama-Florida border under the name John W. Swain. In mid-1877, two former slaves of his father attempted to capture him in Gainesville, Florida. Hardin killed one and blinded the other.
On August 24, 1877, Rangers and local authorities confronted him on a train in Pensacola. He tried to draw his pistol, but it caught in his suspenders. The officers knocked him unconscious, and a Ranger killed one of his companions. Hardin was finally in custody.
He was tried for the killing of Charles Webb and, on June 5, 1878, sentenced to twenty-five years at Huntsville Prison. During his incarceration, he read theological books, became superintendent of the prison Sunday school, and studied law. He also composed an autobiography, though he was known for fabricating and embellishing stories, often claiming credit for murders he may never have committed. The wound from the 1872 shooting became re-infected in 1883, leaving him bedridden for nearly two years.
In 1892, while he was still imprisoned, his first wife, Jane, died. On February 17, 1894, after serving seventeen years of his sentence, Hardin was released. He was forty years old. He was pardoned in March, and in July he passed the bar examination and obtained a license to practice law.
He married a fifteen-year-old girl in January 1895, but the marriage ended quickly. He moved to El Paso, Texas. Hardin’s death came in El Paso on August 19, 1895. Earlier that day, he had argued with a young lawman, John Selman Jr.
, over the arrest of a woman. Selman’s father, Constable John Selman Sr. , a notorious gunman and former outlaw himself, confronted Hardin, and the two exchanged heated words. That evening, Hardin was playing dice at the Acme Saloon.
His final words were, Four sixes to beat. Shortly before midnight, Selman Sr. entered the saloon, approached Hardin from behind, and shot him in the head, killing him instantly. He fired three more rounds into Hardin’s body as it lay on the floor.
Selman Sr. was arrested for murder and claimed self-defense, saying he saw Hardin reaching for his pistol. The jury could not reach a verdict, and Selman was released on bail. Before a retrial could be held, he was killed in a shootout with a U.
S. Marshal in April 1896. John Wesley Hardin was buried in Concordia Cemetery in El Paso. At the time of his sentencing in 1878, he claimed responsibility for forty-two deaths, while contemporary newspaper accounts attributed twenty-seven to him.
The exact number remains uncertain, as does much of his life story, which he told and retold with embellishment. What is certain is that he was one of the most feared gunmen of the American West, a man who began killing at fifteen and was killed in a saloon at forty-two, undone by the same violence he had practiced his entire life.