Gunfighter: The Autobiography of John Wesley Hardin

NO REMORSE Texas, 1868. Outlawed by his first kill at age fifteen, John Wesley Hardin assumed the life of an itinerant cattle drover, gambler, and exterminator of men. His bloody trespass through Southern states ravaged by the American Civil War found him pursued by lynch mobs, bounty hunters and assassins. Hardin became the archetypal wanted man. 'I turned my Colt 45 on him and knocked him off his mule my first shot ... saw him sprawling on the floor, with a bullet through his head quivering with blood' In the only authentic autobiography of a gunfighter Hardin reveals the mesh of psychology and circumstance that made him the most dreaded killer in Texas, admitting to at least 40 fatal shootings during his homicidal trajectory from Fannin County to Huntsville Prison, where the manuscript ends. "Gunfighter" is a unique, gripping evocation of an American frontier stalked by vengeance and sudden death. it remains one of the earliest recorded confessions of a serial killer, a testament to the origins of gun culture and the prime first-person account of a man made renegade by his own fearless code of honour. which stills holds sway in modern-day America.