01705cam a2200289 4500 264306574 TxAuBib 20160119120000.0 950725s1995||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 95198015 9780425147825 0425147827 (OCoLC)32869528 TxAuBib Blake, James Carlos. The Pistoleer : A Novel / James Carlos Blake. New York : Berkley Books, 1995. 352 p. ; 24 cm. Some called him a Texas hero. Some called him the Devil himself. But on one point they all agreed. While he was alive, John Wesley Hardin was the deadliest man in Texas. A killer at fifteen, in the next few years he became skilled enough with his pistols to back down Wild Bill Hickok in the street. The law finally caught up with him when he was twenty-five. By then, he had killed as many as forty men and been shot so many times that, it was said, he carried a pound of lead in his flesh. In jail he became a scholar, studying law books until he won himself freedom, and afterwards he tried to lead an upright life. It was not to be. By the time he was killed in 1895, Hardin was an anachronism—the last true gunfighter of the Old West. With each chapter told from a different character’s perspective, The Pistoleer is “a genuine tour-de-force” of Western historical fiction. 20000801. Hardin, John Wesley 1853-1895 Fiction. Outlaws Fiction. Biographical fiction. Western stories. Texas Fiction. TXHAM