John Wesley Hardin Slept Here. (original) (raw)

You marry someone, you marry their family.

So Joseph Denson didn�t mind it when a cousin of his wife Mary�s late first husband Will Clements, who had been killed during the Civil War, showed up at their place in rural Karnes County and asked if he could spend the night. Putting up young Wes seemed no great imposition.

That hospitable act in the early 1870s would, however, provide Denson with an engaging tale he would tell with relish for the rest of his life. His descendants kept the story alive.

Wes had ridden up to their farm late one afternoon, tired and hungry. Mary got supper ready and the young man partook both heartily and appreciatively. After the big meal, Wes said he needed to call it a day and turned in early.

While Wes sawed figurative logs, Denson sat in his rocker on the porch, enjoying the winding down of another day of hard work. About dark, he noticed that Wes had gotten up � he must have left through the back door -- and walked out into the pasture. The young man soon reappeared in front of the house leading Denson�s saddle horse, which he tied to the gate.

Providing food and a place to spend the night was a simple act of kindness, but such courtesies normally did not include a man being free to help himself to his host�s ride. Of course, maybe his wife and said Wes could borrow the pony.

As Denson chewed on that, Wes came up on the porch and set him at ease about the horse. Well, kind of.

�Uncle Joe,� he began, �I�ve brought your horse up and tied him to the gate.�

That much was clear enough.

�I�m going back to bed because I�ve just got to get some rest,� he continued. �But if the cock crows before midnight, I�m not going to stay here.�

Denson understood that Wes wasn�t saying that just because he didn�t want to be disturbed by a loud-mouthed rooster. For centuries, the crowing of a rooster before its regular daybreak cacophony had been accepted as a portent of bad luck. While some said it only meant it was going to rain, the more standard supersitition held that a rooster�s premature crowing meant someone was going to die or at minimum experience something unfortunate.

While Wes didn�t have to explain the significance of a cock crowing before midnight, he did fill Denson in on what he would do if that happened: He would be departing immediately for another acquaintance�s house (Wes named the person but that name has not survived the family re-telling of the story) to spend the rest of the night there.

�After I�m gone,� Wes went on, �if someone comes here looking for me�after they�re gone, I want you to ride over to [the unnamed neighbor�s] house and let me know.�

So that was why Wes had brought his uncle�s horse up to the house.

Wes went back to bed, and before long Denson hit the hay. But sure enough, before midnight, the Denson�s rooster cut loose with a noctural call that sent their nervous guest quickly scurrying to the other house about a mile away.

About 10 minutes later, a party of armed horsemen arrived and inquired if there might be someone by the name of Wes at the Denson home. Standing before the men in his nightshirt, Denson truthfully told the riders that no one was there other than he and his wife. The leader of the group seemed satisfied that Denson wasn�t lying and the men rode off.

Denson waited until they had been gone for a while and then, still wearing his nightclothes, he jumped bareback on his horse and galloped to the other house to warn Wes that some gentlemen who seemed to have urgent business with him had been looking for him.

Hearing that, Wes didn�t have to be told twice to get gone.

Unfortunately for Denson, he soon stood charged with haboring a fugitive, said wanted man being outlaw John Wesley Hardin � Texas� most prolific killer of the 19th century. But the law wanted Hardin more than it did his kinfolks, so the case against Denson never proceeded.

But according to his great-granddaughter Josephine White, who wrote about it in her self-published book �Sunbonnet Angels: Hitch Your Wagon to a Star,� the incident was the highlight of Denson�s life.

Finally having fled his native Texas, Hardin was arrested by Texas Rangers in Florida in 1877 for the murder of a deputy sheriff in Comanche County. Sentenced to 25 years in prison, he did 17 years in Huntsville.

With plenty of time on his hands, Hardin studied law behind bars. Following a gubernatorial pardon in 1894, he moved west to El Paso to pursue his new legal career.

Old habits are hard to break. While he never killed anyone following his release from prison, he drank too much and gambled. On Aug. 19, 1895, hanging out in El Paso�s Acme Saloon, he threw a set of dice about the time Constable John Selman threw down on him with his sixshooter and put a bullet in his head.

Surely somewhere in town, a cock had crowed prematurely.

�

Mike Cox - April 12, 2012 column
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