Thus spoke one lawman about John Wesley Hardin, easily the most feared and fearless of all the gunfighters in the West. Nobody knows the exact number of his victims-perhaps as few as twenty or as many as fifty. In his way of thinking, Hardin never shot a man who did not deserve it. Seeking to gain insight into Hardin's homicidal mind, Leon Metz describes how Hardin's bloody career began in post-Civil War Central Texas, when lawlessness and killings were commonplace, and traces his life of violence until his capture and imprisonment in 1878. After numerous unsuccessful escape attempts, Hardin settled down and received a pardon years later in 1895. He wrote an autobiography but did not live to see it published. Within a few months of his release, John Selman gunned him down in an El Paso saloon. Foreword ix(4) Prologue xiii 1 A Boy Named John 1(7) 2 The Hour of the Gun 8(7) 3 A Reputation Builds 15(12) 4 Death Ride 27(7) 5 A Dead Man Every Mile 34(6) 6 The Killing Trail 40(6) 7 Abilene, Kansas 46(11) 8 Prairie Justice 57(10) 9 Death By Snoring 67(5) 10 A Three Gun Man 72(16) 11 A Bullet for Tom Haldeman 88(4) 12 The Sutton-Taylor Feud 92(10) 13 Exit James Cox and Jack Helm 102(11) 14 Too Mean to Arrest 113(6) 15 Joe Hardin and the Good Earth 119(6) 16 Goodby Bill Sutton 125(6) 17 Charlie Webb Goes Down 131(10) 18 A Whale Among Little Fishes 141(17) 19 Capturing the Grand Mogul 158(15) 20 I Am A Human Being 173(12) 21 State Prison 185(24) 22 Tell Wes to be A Good Man 209(13) 23 El Paso 222(10) 24 Just Return What I Lost 232(14) 25 Adios, Martin 246(7) 26 Autobiography of A Sinner 253(7) 27 Four Sixes to Beat 260(6) 28 To A Higher Court 266(21) Afterword 287(10) Acknowledgments 297(3) Appendix A 300(3) Appendix B 303(1) Appendix C 304(3) Appendix D 307(1) Appendix E 307(4) Notes 311(16) Bibliography 327(4) Index 331