John Wesley Hardin & The Shootist Archetype – Legends of America

On August 19, 1895, American frontier gunman and outlaw, John Wesley Hardin was shot and killed by John Selman Sr. in a saloon in El Paso, Texas. An excerpt from the article:

"On the afternoon of August 19, 1895, John Wesley Hardin was in the midst of rolling dice at the Acme saloon bar – standing uncharacteristically with his back exposed to anyone stepping through its louvered swinging doors. An agitated Constable Selman had barely entered the room before blasting the preeminent shootist of all time in the back of the head. He then pumped two more rounds into his target’s chest and arm, as he lay motionless on his back in a spreading puddle of blood and gore.

It could be said that Hardin was weary, but that’s not the same as either indifferent nor oblivious. Our man was well aware of the many dangers he faced, and had only a short time before had a major row with Old Man Selman and his son John Jr. It was something more than alcohol induced laxness that predetermined his attitude and posture on that fateful day.

Hardly a month goes by that we don’t read in some newspaper or hear on the radio about another case of what is now called “suicide by cop:” someone at the end of their emotional rope ignoring the repeated calls by the police to drop their weapon, orchestrating the situation so that the police have no option but to shoot. They no doubt prefer this to putting a gun to their own head– but there may also be the added satisfaction of being killed while facing a real or imaginary oppressor, with an enabling gun in hand.

But as much as he must have suffered at that point, Hardin’s death was no form of suicide, nor was it Hardin’s wish to die. More than anything else he was gambling that fateful afternoon– with not only his money, but with his life. He was upping the ante, increasing the severity of the test, and calling the opposition’s bluff! He was ready to rake in the winner’s chips, to break the bank with the next throw of dice…. as well as to pay what has always been the highest price. The last sounds he likely heard were the shuffling of the constable’s feet some six or eight feet behind where he stood, and the rattle of dancing ivories on the bar’s polished wood.

John Wesley Hardin Dead
John Wesley Hardin Dead

And it’s not hard to see why the wizened Selman carried out his ignoble plan with such stealth and haste. A split second before the two-hundred and fifty grain slug roared in his direction, Hardin began instinctively reaching for the gun long at home at his waist.

Indeed, even as his world was collapsing around him, firearms were something he felt he could count on– and thus he never went anywhere without them. They were more than a means for defense, more than a strategy for the attainment of deference and respect. Guns became the buddies that would never let him down, the girlfriend that would never leave, the wife that would never be taken away from him by disaster or disease. They came to represent for the aging shootist the possibility of a love, of a code, a way of being, thinking and acting that might never die. At home not so much beneath the oil or gas lamps of a raucous saloon as on the open range…. making the passage from birth to death beneath an unfenced Western sky."