Legends of the Old West - OUTLAWS Ep. 2 | John Wesley Hardin: “Trouble on the Trail”

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

After a slew of murders in Texas, John Wesley Hardin flees the state. He joins a cattle drive to Kansas and lands in Abilene where Wild Bill Hickok is the marshal. Hardin allegedly kills vaqueros and Native American warriors along the way, and then kills a man in town who reportedly snored too loud. But Hardin also finds true love and appears to settle down in Gonzales, Texas. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email [e-mail] For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ou allez sur rakuten.ca pour en avoir plus pour votre argent. C'est R-A-K-U-T-E-N. By the time John Wesley Harden reached the age of 18, he claimed credit for a dozen killings. He was building a reputation as a fearless and dangerously gifted gunslinger, and he was no longer a fresh-faced teenager. At that age, Harden was described as being about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing just over 150 pounds with a somewhat slight build. He had light brown hair and blue eyes, although others described his eyes as hazel or even brown. Most agreed Harden was a good-looking young man, and by his own admission, he'd murdered Union soldiers, Texas lawmen, and at least one civilian.

Union soldiers, Texas lawmen, and at least one civilian. The first arrest warrant was issued after he killed his sixth victim, a man named Jim Bradley, whom he killed after a card game gone wrong. In late 1871, just shy of his 18th birthday, Hardin's luck ran out in East Texas. He was finally captured by a relatively new law enforcement agency called the Texas State Police. But it was a long ride from East Texas to Waco in Central Texas, where Hardin was supposed to stand trial for the murder of Jim Bradley. Hardin was able to kill one of the men who were transporting him for trial, and he fled back to his father's home, as always. And his father thought there was only one course

of action available, run to Mexico. Father and son began the long journey, but Hardin's father returned home after just a couple days on the trail. When Hardin reached Gonzales County, one of the critical regions of the Texas Revolution 40 years earlier, he stopped to visit some cousins. The Clements family ran a

cattle operation, and in the spring of 1871, they were preparing to take a herd north to market. That market was Kansas, and specifically the current king of the cow towns, Abilene. The Clements family persuaded Hardin to join the cattle drive. They said it would be a good way to hide and move through the territory and then out of reach of Texas lawmen. Hardin thought it sounded like a good idea. He scrapped his plan to hide in Mexico and stayed with the Clements. He was bound for Abilene, a town that had just hired legendary lawman and gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok to be the marshal.

Harden's goal was to lay low and hide, but that appeared to be impossible for the 18-year-old killer. Everywhere he went, trouble followed, and he created the vast majority of it. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch. And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Thank you. got you covered. With the internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here,

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From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season, we're telling the stories of two outlaws, John Wesley Harden and Henry Plummer. This is Episode 2, John Wesley Harden, Trouble on the Trail. On March 1, 1871, Harden, his cousin Jim Clements, and several other men set out for Kansas with a herd of 1,200 freshly branded cattle. Two other cousins would follow behind with another herd. cattle. Two other cousins would follow behind with another herd. Each man would earn $150 a month,

and the journey was expected to take about three months. It was roughly 650 miles from Gonzales to Abilene, and they would follow the Chisholm Trail the whole way. The trail was roughly 800 miles long and was a well-traveled road for cattle and cowboys. Down there in South Texas, there were two forks in the trail, the west and the east. The eastern fork started in Cuero and then continued up through Gonzalez until it reached Austin. It's basically the path of Highway 183 today. The western fork started in San Antonio and ran straight up to Austin. Today's Interstate 35 that connects San Antonio and Austin was basically built on top of the old Chisholm Trail. In Austin, the two forks merged and ran straight north to Kansas. The year of Hardin's cattle drive, it was estimated that over 160,000 head of cattle had made the journey. But despite it

being a busy highway, the Chisholm Trail was not without its dangers. And if there was trouble to find, John Wesley Hardin would find it. In northwest Texas, there were still bands of Kiowa and Comanche who roamed free and could attack cattle drives. And when a drive crossed the Red River, it was in Indian territory, which eventually became the state of Oklahoma. According to Hardin's autobiography, he had a run-in with a warrior just after their herd crossed the Red River. While Hardin was out alone hunting wild turkey, he claimed the warrior shot an arrow at him but missed. Harden claimed he shot back with his pistol and didn't miss.

And in true Harden fashion, he boasted that he was an incredible shot. He said, Harden said he buried the warrior with his bow and arrow as a show of respect. Later, a band of Osage attacked the cow camp and stole some cattle, along with Harden's prized silver bridle. Harden is alleged to have followed them back to their camp and confronted them. When the person in possession of Harden's silver bridle refused to give it back, Hardin did what came pretty naturally to him by this point and shot him dead. After leaving Indian territory and entering Kansas, it looked like Hardin, Clements, and their herd might reach Abilene without any further violence, but no such luck. When a group of Mexican vaqueros drove their herd too close to Hardin's herd,

Hardin warned them to back off. They refused, and things got even more heated when the Mexican herd boss shot Harden's hat off his head and grazed his scalp. A half a dozen or more vaqueros began firing at Harden and Clements, who threw up their arms and called for a truce. The firing stopped and the parties went their separate ways, but the truce lasted only long enough for Harden to go back to camp and get a better gun. Harden went back to the scene and let the Vaqueros know the truce was over by killing the boss who'd shot his hat off. Then Harden shot and killed four more of the men. His cousin, Jim Clements, killed one. The crowding problem between the two

herds was solved, but six men died as a result. Harden had now killed 19 men, one for every year he'd been alive, plus one for good measure. Blessedly, there were no more killings between Indian Territory and Abilene, and the herd arrived right on time. The trip was supposed to take three months, and it took exactly three months. The Texas Cowboys made it to the Abilene area on June 1, 1871. It was near the peak of the cattle season, and the town was swamped with cowboys. Marshall Hickok already had his hands full with the Cowboys and the owners of their favorite saloon, the Bull's Head Tavern. It was owned and operated by two Texans with reputations as gunfighters, Phil Coe and Ben Thompson. And now a new Texas killer, John Wesley Harden, joined the party.

Here's how Harden described Abilene. I've seen many fast towns, but I think Abilene beat them all. The town was filled with sporting men and women, gamblers, cowboys, desperados, and the like. It was well supplied with bar rooms, hotels, barber shops, and gambling houses, and everything was open. Before I got to Abilene, I had heard much talk about Wild Bill. He had a reputation as a killer. Harden and Wild Bill didn't meet right away, but it's believed Hickok had heard about the trigger-happy young man and planned to keep an eye on him. Harden had friends from Texas who were living in Abilene, and on his first night in town, he met up with one of them, a man who went by the name Columbus Carroll. Carroll and Harden visited a brothel,

and Carroll got into an argument with one of Hickok's deputies, Tom Carson. What the argument was about, nobody really knows, but it ended with Deputy Carson pulling his gun on Carroll and then Hardin pulling his gun on Carson. Hardin warned the deputy to back away from his friend. Hardin claimed he told the deputy to go get Wild Bill and they would treat him the same way. But when the deputy left, he never returned. And then the owners of the Bull's Head Tavern, Phil Coe and Ben Thompson,

started recruiting Harden to kill Marshall Hickok. Coe and Thompson had been butting heads with Hickok for two months, and they saw an opportunity in the young killer from Central Texas. Hickok seemed to be tailor-made as a person Hardin would hate. Hickok was a Yankee. He was born in New England and raised in Illinois. He fought for the Union in the Civil War. And for the past couple years, he'd made a living cleaning up Kansas cow towns, which meant primarily busting the heads of Texans like Hardin. But Hardin, despite his young age, busting the heads of Texans like Hardin.

But Hardin, despite his young age, didn't take the bait. He made it clear that he had no intention of fighting Coe and Thompson's battle for them. Even though Hickok had lots of qualities that Hardin would typically hate, Hardin greatly admired Wild Bill and was anxious to meet him. Hardin wrote of Hickok, Wild Bill was a man six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. He was light-complexioned, blue-eyed, and his hair hung down his shoulders in yellow curls. He was a brave, handsome fellow, but somewhat overbearing. He had a fine sense and was a splendid judge of character. In Abilene, it was forbidden for anyone, and especially Texas cowboys, to wear their guns in town.

Hickok knew better than most that whiskey and pistols were often a deadly combination. But Harden was not a young man who liked being told what to do, and he definitely didn't want to be separated from his guns. So when Hickok walked into a saloon one night and found Hardin drinking and gambling and still wearing his guns, the marshal reminded the newcomer of the city ordinance. Hickok instructed Hardin to surrender his weapons. According to Hardin, the encounter went like this. Wild Bill came in and said we were making too much noise and told me to pull off my pistols until I got ready to go out of town. I told him I was ready to go now, but did not propose to put up my pistols, go or no go.

Then, according to Harden, Wild Bill told him to step outside. When they exited the saloon, Hickok pulled his guns and told Harden to give up his pistols, or he would be arrested. Harden began to do as he was told, but then he said he pulled a fast one on the marshal. Harden pulled out his pistols and offered them to Hickok with the butts of the guns facing the marshal. When Hickok reached for the guns, Harden did this. I reversed them and whirled them over on him with the muzzles in his face, springing back at the same time. I told him to put his pistols up, which he did. I cursed him for a long-haired scoundrel that would shoot a boy in his back, as I had been told he intended to do to me. So Harden is saying that he held the pistols out to Hickok, then flipped them around and pointed them at the marshal and got the drop on one of the fastest gunmen who ever lived.

A gunman who was 15 years older than Harden and who had lifetimes more experience. The move was called a border roll or a road agent spin, and the details of the encounter are highly debated. But Harden's version certainly made him sound good. A witness to the encounter, a man named George Coulter, who knew Hickok well, supported at least some of Harden's story, though he said Harden left out one important detail. According to Coulter, the only reason Wild Bill didn't shoot Harden when Harden spun his pistols around was that they weren't cocked.

If Wild Bill had seen Harden rack back the hammers while twirling his guns, Bill would have shot him dead. Another curious part of the story is that Harden had previously gushed about how much he admired Hickok and wanted to meet him. But then Harden called Hickok a scoundrel and a back shooter. At least Harden was consistent with his inconsistencies. And then he really laid it on thick. Here's how Harden finished the story. Bill said, You are the gamest and quickest boy I ever saw. Let us compromise this matter, and I will be your friend. Let us go in here and have a drink, as I want to talk to you and give you some advice. At first, I thought he might be trying to get the drop on me, but he finally convinced me of his good

intentions, and we went in and took a drink, and I had a long talk with him, and we came out friends. a long talk with him, and we came out friends. The part about being friends, or at least friendly, seems to be true. Most accounts say that Hickok either ignored the warrant for Harden's arrest or didn't know about it, or a combination of both. The two of them drank and played poker and caroused together occasionally. But most of that would have happened after Harden returned to Abilene. He left abruptly because of an altercation that supposedly happened later on the night that Hickok and Harden met. Harden claimed he got into it with a group of men in a restaurant who were bad-mouthing Texans and Texans. Harden approached the table and declared, I'm a Texan. In Harden's telling of

the story, one of the men threatened to beat him up, at which point Harden pulled his pistol. The man then pulled his own gun and fired. He missed Harden, but hit Harden's friend in the arm. Harden then fired and hit the man in the mouth. The bullet knocked out several of the man's teeth and then exited behind his left ear. Knowing that gunplay was not going to sit well with his new friend, Marshall Hickok, Harden jumped on his horse, galloped out of town, and rode 35 miles to a cow camp called Cottonwood. He waited to see how Hickok would respond. Harden believed he'd killed the man, but the incident is absent from other accounts, so it's hard to know how much truth is in it. If Harden killed a man in Abilene so soon after meeting Hickok, it's hard to believe that it would be missing from other narratives. But when Harden arrived at the Cottonwood camp, he was greeted with bad news.

A good friend had been shot and killed. The cattlemen at the camp who saw it happen told Harden that a vaquero was responsible for the murder. They encouraged Harden to find the vaquero and avenge the murder. In a surprising change from his usual approach, Harden agreed to do it only if the men rode into Abilene and asked Marshal Hickok for an arrest warrant. Allegedly, Hickok not only agreed to the warrant, but he deputized Hardin and provided him with a letter of introduction that he could show to other cattlemen along the way. At the end of June or early July 1871, Hardin and a cowboy named Jim Rogers set out after the Vaquero. Along the way, they stopped to notify the dead man's brother of the passing, and the brother joined the hunt. They were also joined by a man named Anderson. Now they were a posse of four, and they headed

toward Wichita. The Vaquero had been seen riding in that direction, but after the posse tracked the fugitive for two days, they determined he was staying in a little town called Bluff. In Bluff, they were told that a man fitting the Vaquero's description was presently in a restaurant having lunch. According to Harden, he gave the Vaquero a chance to surrender. Harden said he found the man at a table and approached him with his pistol drawn. Harden told the Vaquero to raise his hands and he wouldn't be harmed. But the Vaquero put down his knife and fork and reached for his gun, at which point Harden shot him dead. But a newspaper account paints a picture that's probably more accurate.

but a newspaper account paints a picture that's probably more accurate. The paper said the vaquero was in the dining room of the Southwestern Hotel in Sumner City, not Bluff. It was around noon when a stranger walked into the restaurant and, without warning, shot the vaquero in the forehead and killed him. That sounded much more like Hardin's style. Hardin returned to Abilene with his three companions, and he claimed he was scared that Wild Bill would react harshly to the killing of the Vaquero. But then, to Hardin's surprise, Hickok welcomed him back to town with open arms and congratulated him on the success of his mission.

The truth, as usual with Harden, was probably somewhere in the middle. And Harden's troubles in Abilene weren't over yet. He wasn't in town long before one of the most infamous events of his life happened. For those who heard the series on Wild Bill, this is the Snoring Man incident. Harden claimed he was sleeping in his room at the American House Hotel when an intruder unlocked his door with the intent to either kill him or rob him. Harden reached for his pistol and fired at the man once, and then three or four more times until the alleged intruder fell dead on the floor.

Because he had now emptied his pistol, and because the intruder had inexplicably tried to make off with Hardin's pants, he had no choice but to climb out the window and hide on the roof of the portico. Hardin claimed that when he saw some of Hickok's men arrive at the hotel, he jumped off the roof, then hid in a haystack until morning, then stole a horse and rode back to the cattleman's camp at Cottonwood, in his underwear. But that's probably the most blatant cover story of Hardin's life. The facts, as close as anyone can tell, are that a man was shot and killed in his own room at the hotel on the night of August 6, 1871.

The gunshots came from the room next door, and they killed the man while he sat in his bed with the newspaper in his lap. The speculation has always been that the man, Charles Cougar, had been snoring during the night. Harden and possibly his cousin were asleep in the room next door. They shouted at him to stop, at which point he woke up and started reading his newspaper. Then he drifted back to sleep and started snoring again. At that point, Harden and maybe his cousin also pulled his gun and fired through the wall

to force the man to stop. Harden had been drinking heavily and ended up killing Charles Cougar. Harden escaped out the window and eventually made it back to the Cottonwood camp. There are several variations of exactly what happened after he went out the window, but regardless of which one is correct, he made it out of Abilene before Wild Bill caught him. That was the end of Harden's time in Kansas. He returned to Texas and laid low at his

cousin's cattle ranch outside Gonzales. And between the second half of 1871 and early 1872, Hardin is said to have killed another Union soldier who was trying to arrest him at a grocery store. When he came across two black soldiers he felt were harassing two white women, he confronted them about it. When they drew their weapons, he shot both, although one of the men survived. If the stories are true, then Harden now claimed 24 victims. But even cold-blooded killers still maintained social lives. In fact, while he was away from Texas, his reputation as a courageous gunslinger had grown, and now he was admired by many Texans. And it was during this period of time when Hardin fell head over heels for a local girl named Jane Bowen of Gonzales County.

He called her one of the prettiest and sweetest girls in the country. And on February 29, 1872, a leap year, John Wesley and Jane were married. They settled in Gonzales, but in April, just weeks after their wedding, Harden left home to pursue some sort of business deal. The nature of the business deal isn't clear, but Harden was away until May. He returned to Gonzales, and although he wrote glowingly of Jane and how much he missed her when they were apart, his restless spirit remained. He had been on the run since he was 15 years old, and he wasn't used to staying in one place for very long. After being home with Jane for only a couple weeks, he was ready to hit the road again, this time to herd some horses to Louisiana. The trip was a success, and after he sold his herd of horses, Hardin started back for Gonzalez. But he decided to stop to visit his uncle Barnett near Livingston, Texas around the end of July.

It had been four years since his last visit to the place where his life as a fugitive began. Harden stayed with his uncle for about a week, then traveled with a cousin to Trinity City to enjoy some drinking and gambling. It was a decision Harden would live to regret, but just barely. Next time on Legends of the Old West, John Wesley Harden finds himself at the wrong end of a double-barrel shotgun, and Harden's fear of an angry lynch mob taking justice into its own hands prompts him to offer his surrender to the authorities for protection,

but with a few conditions. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month.

This series was researched and written by Michael Byrne. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin's World, Once Upon a Crime, and many more. Thanks for listening.