John Wesley Hardin was one of the most interesting’ gunslingers in Texas-maybe the entire West. Strange enough; he was born to a Methodist minister but that didn’t seem to stop him none when it came to gettin’ in trouble. When he wasn’t but 14, he stabbed another fella over a gal and a year later he had done made his first kill. He had gotten into a fight with another boy and to hear him tell it, the boy just wouldn’t let it go. Hardin said he didn’t want to kill the other fella, but he just kept comin’ so “I kept shootin’, till I shot him down.”
Well, that put him on the run from the law. Turns out he killed a former slave and since the War Between the States had just ended, the Union Army was hot on his trail to bring him in for murder. Hardin hole up at his brothers house a few miles away, hopin’ things would die down soon.

The Union Army had other ideas and had set a handful of soldiers on his trail. Young Hardin was plenty smart and figured out what was goin’ on. Before the soldiers could bring him in, Hardin ambushed ‘em and killed all three. Less than a year later he killed another soldier who was still trying to root him out. Not even sixteen years old yet, and he had already taken five lives.

Interestingly enough, when Hardin was finally brought in at the age of 17, it wasn’t for the five murders he did commit but for one he didn’t commit. The law hauled him into jail and had him coolin’ his heels while he waited to be transferred to another prison. Somehow, Hardin managed to outwit them and get a gun smuggled to him. Before the day was up, he had made his sixth kill and escaped from the guard who was supposed to be keepin’ watch over him.

Well, he managed to elude the law for the next few years but still stayed on the wrong side of it. He killed at least six more men, including one who he shot through a wall because the man was snoring. He got picked up once but broke out of jail within just a few weeks and finally hotfooted it Florida, where he spent a couple of years.

A Pinkerton detective finally managed to track ‘im down and bring him in on charges of murder. The State of Texas was determined to have Hardin do time for his crimes and do time he did-this time for 15 years before he was finally pardoned.

Seems he put the time in the hoosegow to good use, though-he spent it studying law and when he finally got out at the ripe old age of 42 he set hisself up a law practice.

It weren’t long before he got back in trouble-seems he just couldn’t stay out of it. After he mouthed off about an El Paso lawman, he found himself facing the wrong end of a gun and this time he didn’t live to tell about it.