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| Henry M. Stanley interviewing Wild Bill |
Henry M. Stanley interviewed Wild Bill for a series of articles
published in the St. Louis Democrat
in April 1867. He wrote, Wild Bill “stands six foot one inch in his moccasins,
and is as handsome a specimen of man as could be found.” He “held himself
straight, and had broad compact, shoulders, was large chested, with small
waist, and well-formed muscular limbs.”
Stanley
asked, “I say, Mr. Hickok, how many men
have you killed to your certain knowledge?”
“After
a little deliberation, he replied, ‘I suppose I have killed considerable over a
hundred.’”
“What
made you kill all those men? Did you kill them without cause or provocation?”
“No,
by heaven, I have never killed one man without good cause.”
Later
in the interview, Wild Bill described his first kill to Stanley.
He
was lying in bed in a hotel room in Leavenworth, Kansas, when he heard a
commotion outside his door. Bill grabbed his six-shooter and a Bowie knife and remained under his covers. “The door was opened, and five men entered the room. I
kept perfectly still until just as the knife touched my breast; I sprang aside
and buried mine in his heart and used my revolver on the others right and
left.” As soon as the shooting stopped, Bill ran out of the room and didn’t stop until he reached Fort
Leavenworth.
Wild Bill facing down Davis McCandles
Hickok earned the moniker “Wild Bill” in an 1862 showdown with Davis McCandles, his brother William, and several of their hired hands. The story is that the boys caught up with Wild Bill at the stage station and demanded he pay up on a debt he owed them. The talk soon turned to gunplay, and when it was over, the two McCandles brothers and one of their accomplices lay dead in the street.
The
Atchison Daily Champion reported,
“Wild Bill...shot McKandles through the heart with a rifle, and then stepping
out of doors, revolver in hand shot
another one of the gang dead; severely wounded a third...and slightly wounded the fourth.”
When
the fighting was over, and Bill had
finished nursing his wounds, he told friends, “I just got wild and slashed
about like a bear with a death wound.” The next thing you know, James Butler
Hickok became known everywhere as Wild
Bill.
After
the McCandles fight, Bill made his way to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he became
a Brigade Wagon Master for General John Charles Fremont, trucking supplies out
of Fort Leavenworth. In 1863, he worked as a Union spy, gathering information
behind the Confederate lines.
At
the end of the Civil War, Wild Bill drifted into Missouri and faced down Davis Tutt in the town square of
Springfield, Missouri, on July 21, 1865. It was one of the classic gunfights
pictured in every western film since the beginning of time. The two men stood
fifteen paces apart, staring each other down in the hot sun. They reached for
their guns. One man fell dead in the street. The other walked away.
Here’s
how it started.
Wild Bill playing cards in Deadwood
Wild Bill and Tutt sat across from each other, engaged in a high-stakes card game. Bill won a big hand, and Tutt reminded him that he owed him some money. Bill paid up. A few moments later, Tutt brought up another debt Hickok owed him. After a quarrel over the amount owed, Tutt grabbed Wild Bill’s gold pocket watch and said he’d hang on to it until Bill settled the debt.
Wild
Bill challenged Tutt to a duel in the town square. According to an account
published in the February 1867 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, “Tutt
then showed his pistol. Bill kept a sharp eye on him, and before Tutt could
Pint it, Bill had his’n out.
“At
that moment, you could have heard a pin drop in that squar. Both Tutt and Bill
fired, but one discharge followed the other so quick that it’s hard to say
which went off first. Tutt was a famous shot, but he missed this time; the ball
from the pistol went over Bill’s head. The instant Bill fired, without waiting
ter see of he had hit Tutt, he wheeled on his heels and pointed his pistol at
Tutt’s friends, who had already drawn their weapons.”
Wild
Bill earned his reputation as a fast-gun that day.
Bill
entered a country saloon in Jefferson County, Missouri, in 1867. Five cowboys picked a fight with him. One boy snuck
up behind Bill, gave him a shove that made him spill his beer, and almost sent
him tumbling to the ground. Bill wheeled around, bloodied the cowboy’s nose,
and sent him crashing to the floor.
Then
he challenged four of them to a duel outside. Bill shot one of them right off but took a ball in his arm. Then, in an instant, he shifted his gun to the other hand and dropped the other three. Four men lay
dead in the street, another severely wounded.
On
September 8, 1869, Bill was elected city marshal of Hays City, Kansas, one of
the toughest towns on the frontier. Not long after that, Sam Strangham
approached Wild Bill at a local saloon
and pulled his Navy Colt. Bill got off the first shot and fired his derringer into Strangham’s left eye. “The man
was stone dead on his feet, falling forward onto his face without even a twitch
of the muscles.”
Later,
in December 1869, a bully named Bill Mulvey went on a wild, drunken bender,
terrorizing the town—breaking windows with a club, threatening the townspeople,
and reportedly chasing two constables to the city limits. After that, Mulvey
got the drop on Wild Bill, holding two pistols to his head. Bill faked him out
by telling an imaginary constable behind him not to kill him. Mulvey turned to
look, and Wild Bill blew his brains out.
On
February 12, 1870, Wild Bill had a tussle with some soldiers from the Seventh
Cavalry at Paddy Welch’s Saloon. He killed several of the soldiers and wounded a few more. During the
fight, Bill took seven balls in his arms and legs before he could hightail it
out of town. After his recovery, Wild Bill was forced to lie low because
General Sheridan had put out an order to bring him in “dead or alive.” Several
months later, after the Seventh Cavalry pulled out of Fort Hays, Bill returned
to Kansas and was appointed marshal of
Abilene.
On
October 7, 1871, the Junction City Union
reported a gunfight in the Alamo, “a gambling hell.” City Marshal Wild Bill “fired with marvelous
rapidity and characteristic accuracy.” Several men were shot and killed,
including Phil Cole and Jack Harvey. A policeman, Jim McWilliams, rushed in to
help, and by accident, Bill shot and killed him.
After
the accidental killing of McWilliams, Bill hung up his guns and turned to acting. In the fall of 1872, he joined Buffalo
Bill and Texas Jack in a series of western reenactments staged by dime-novelist
Ned Buntline. Then, in 1873—1874 he joined Buffalo Bill to perform in his
“Scouts of the Plains.” But Buffalo Bill said Wild Bill wasn’t much of an
actor, either. Every time he “went up on the stage before an audience, it was
almost impossible for him to utter a word.”
Kack McCall shot Wild Bill in the back at Nuttal & Mann's Saloon in Deadwood
In 1876, Bill tried his luck at mining in the Black Hills. Eventually, he wound up in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, where he spent much of his time gambling in Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon.
Sometime
around 3:00 p.m. on August 2, 1876, Bill played poker with his back to the
door, something he rarely did. Jack McCall sidled up behind Wild Bill, and
before anyone could see what he was doing, McCall pulled out a large pistol.
“The
ball went crashing through the back of Bill’s head
and came out at the center of his right cheek...Wild Bill dropped his head forward; the cards fell from his relaxing grip,
and, in a succession of slow movements, he slipped out of the chair and fell
prone upon the floor.”
The
man who claimed to have killed over one hundred men lay dead on the floor. His
last hand, a pair of aces and eights, became known as the “dead man’s hand.”
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