Wild Bill Hickok--_The Beau Ideal of the Western Bad Man; Chivalric,
Daring, Generous, and Game_--_A Type of the Early Western Frontier
Officer_.
As has been shown in preceding chapters, the Western plains were passed
over and left unsettled until the advent of the railroads, which began
to cross the plains coincident with the arrival of the great cattle
herds which came up from the South after a market. This market did not
wait for the completion of the railroads, but met the railroads more
than half way; indeed, followed them quite across the plains. The
frontier sheriff now came upon the Western stage as he had never done
before. The bad man also sprang into sudden popular recognition, the
more so because he was now accessible to view and within reach of the
tourist and tenderfoot investigator of the Western fauna. These were
palmy days for the wild West.
Unless it be a placer camp in the mountains, there is no harder
collection of human beings to be found than that which gathers in tents
and shanties at a temporary railway terminus of the frontier. Yet such
were all the capitals of civilization in the earliest days. One town was
like another. The history of Wichita and Newton and Fort Dodge was the
history of Abilene and Ellsworth and Hays City and all the towns at the
head of the advancing rails. The bad men and women of one moved on to
the next, just as they did in the stampedes of placer days.
To recount the history of one after another of these wild towns would be
endless and perhaps wearisome. But this history has one peculiar feature
not yet noted in our investigations. All these cow camps meant to be
real towns some day. They meant to take the social compact. There came
to each of these camps men bent upon making homes, and these men began
to establish a law and order spirit and to set up a government. Indeed,
the regular system of American government was there as soon as the
railroad was there, and this law was strong on its legislative and
executive sides. The frontier sheriff or town marshal was there, the man
for the place, as bold and hardy as the bold and hardy men he was to
meet and subdue, as skilled with weapons, as willing to die; and upheld,
moreover, with that sense of duty and of moral courage which is granted
even to the most courageous of men when he feels that he has the
sentiment of the majority of good people at his back.
To describe the life of one Western town marshal, himself the best and
most picturesque of them all, is to cover all this field sufficiently.
There is but one man who can thus be chosen, and that is Wild Bill
Hickok, better known for a generation as "Wild Bill," and properly
accorded an honorable place in American history.
The real name of Wild Bill was James Butler Hickok, and he was born in
May, 1837, in La Salle county, Illinois. This brought his youth into the
days of Western exploration and conquest, and the boy read of Carson and
Frémont, then popular idols, with the result that he proposed a life of
adventure for himself. He was eighteen years of age when he first saw
the West as a fighting man under Jim Lane, of Free Soil fame, in the
guerrilla days of Kansas before the civil war. He made his mark, and
was elected a constable in that dangerous country before he was twenty
years of age. He was then a tall, "gangling" youth, six feet one in
height, with yellow hair and blue eyes. He later developed into as
splendid looking a man as ever trod on leather, muscular and agile as he
was powerful and enduring. His features were clean-cut and expressive,
his carriage erect and dignified, and no one ever looked less the
conventional part of the bad man assigned in popular imagination. He was
not a quarrelsome man, although a dangerous one, and his voice was low
and even, showing a nervous system like that of Daniel Boone--"not
agitated." It might have been supposed that he would be a natural master
of weapons, and such was the case. The use of rifle and revolver was
born in him, and perhaps no man of the frontier ever surpassed him in
quick and accurate use of the heavy six-shooter. The religion of the
frontier was not to miss, and rarely ever did he shoot except he knew
that he would not miss. The tale of his killings in single combat is the
longest authentically assigned to any man in American history.
After many experiences with the pro-slavery folk from the border, Bill,
or "Shanghai Bill," as he was then known--a nickname which clung for
years--went stage driving for the Overland, and incidentally did some
effective Indian fighting for his employers, finally, in the year 1861,
settling down as station agent for the Overland at Rock Creek station,
about fifty miles west of Topeka. He was really there as guard for the
horse band, for all that region was full of horse thieves and
cutthroats, and robberies and killings were common enough. It was here
that there occurred his greatest fight, the greatest fight of one man
against odds at close range that is mentioned in any history of any part
of the world. There was never a battle like it known, nor is the West
apt again to produce one matching it.
The borderland of Kansas was at that time, as may be remembered, ground
debated by the anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions, who still waged
bitter war against one another, killing, burning, and pillaging without
mercy. The civil war was then raging, and Confederates from Missouri
were frequent visitors in eastern Kansas under one pretext or another,
of which horse lifting was the one most common, it being held legitimate
to prey upon the enemy as opportunity offered. Two border outlaws by
the name of the McCandlas boys led a gang of hard men in enterprises of
this nature, and these intended to run off the stage company's horses
when they found they could not seduce Bill to join their number. He told
them to come and take the horses if they could; and on the afternoon of
December 16, 1861, ten of them, led by the McCandlas brothers, rode up
to his dugout to do so. Bill was alone, his stableman being away
hunting. He retreated to the dark interior of his dugout and got ready
his weapons, a rifle, two six-shooters, and a knife.
The assailants proceeded to batter in the door with a log, and as it
fell in, Jim McCandlas, who must have been a brave man to undertake so
foolhardy a thing against a man already known as a killer, sprang in at
the opening. He, of course, was killed at once. This exhausted the
rifle, and Bill picked up the six-shooters from the table and in three
quick shots killed three more of the gang as they rushed in at the door.
Four men were dead in less than that many seconds; but there were still
six others left, all inside the dugout now, and all firing at him at a
range of three feet. It was almost a miracle that, under such
surroundings, the man was not killed. Bill now was crowded too much
to use his firearms, and took to the bowie, thrusting at one man and
another as best he might. It is known among knife-fighters that a man
will stand up under a lot of flesh-cutting and blood-letting until the
blade strikes a bone. Then he seems to drop quickly if it be a deep and
severe thrust. In this chance medley, the knife wounds inflicted on each
other by Bill and his swarming foes did not at first drop their men; so
that it must have been several minutes that all seven of them were mixed
in a mass of shooting, thrusting, panting, and gasping humanity. Then
Jack McCandlas swung his rifle barrel and struck Bill over the head,
springing upon him with his knife as well. Bill got his hand on a
six-shooter and killed him just as he would have struck. After that no
one knows what happened, not even Bill himself, who got his name then
and there. "I just got sort of wild," he said, describing it. "I thought
my heart was on fire. I went out to the pump then to get a drink, and I
was all cut and shot to pieces."
[Illustration: From a painting by John W. Norton
WILD BILL HICKOK'S DESPERATE FIGHT IN THE DUGOUT--ONE MAN AGAINST TEN]
They called him Wild Bill after that, and he had earned the name. There
were six dead men on the floor of the dugout. He had fairly whipped the
ten of them, and the four remaining had enough and fled from that awful
hole in the ground. Two of these were badly wounded. Bill followed them
to the door. His own weapons were exhausted or not at hand by this time,
but his stableman came up just then with a rifle in his hands. Bill
caught it from him, and, cut up as he was, fired and killed one of the
wounded desperadoes as he tried to mount his horse. The other wounded
man later died of his wounds. Eight men were killed by the one. The two
who got to their horses and escaped were perhaps never in the dugout at
all, for it was hardly large enough to hold another man had any wanted
to get in.
There is no record of any fighting man to equal this. It took Bill a
year to recover from his wounds. The life of the open air and hard work
brought many Western men through injuries which would be fatal in the
States. The pure air of the plains had much to do with this. Bill now
took service as wagon-master under General Frémont and managed to get
attacked by a force of Confederates while on his way to Sedalia, the war
being now in full swing. He fled and was pursued; but, shooting back
with six-shooters, killed four men. It will be seen that he had now in
single fight killed twelve men, and he was very young. This tally did
not cover Indians, of whom he had slain several. Although he did not
enlist, he went into the army as an independent sharpshooter, just
because the fighting was good, and his work at this was very deadly. In
four hours at the Pea Ridge battle, where he lay behind a log, on a hill
commanding the flat where the Confederates were formed, he is said to
have killed thirty-five men, one of them the Confederate General
McCullough. It was like shooting buffalo for him. He was charged by a
company of the enemy, but was rescued by his own men.
Not yet enlisting, Bill went in as a spy for General Curtis, and took
the dangerous work of going into "Pap" Price's lines, among the
touch-and-go Missourians and Arkansans, in search of information useful
to the Union forces. Bill enlisted for business purposes in a company of
Price's mounted rangers, got the knowledge desired, and fled, killing a
Confederate sergeant by name of Lawson in his escape. Curtis sent him
back again, this time into the forces of Kirby Smith, then in Texas, but
reported soon to move up into Arkansas. Bill enlisted again, and again
showed his skill in the saddle, killing two men as he fled. Count up all
his known victims to this time, and the tally would be at least
sixty-two men; and Bill was then but twenty-five.
A third time Curtis sent Bill back into the Confederate lines, this time
into another part of Price's army. Here he was detected and arrested as
a spy. Bound hand and foot in his death watch, he killed his captor
after he had torn his hands free, and once more escaped. After that, he
dared not go back again, for he was too well known and too difficult to
disguise. He could not keep out of the fighting, however, and went as a
scout and free lance with General Davis, during Price's second invasion
of Missouri. He was not an enlisted man, and seems to have done pretty
much as he liked. One day he rode out on his own hook, and was stopped
by three men, who ordered him to halt and dismount. All three men had
their hands on their revolvers; but, to show the difference between
average men and a specialist, Bill killed two of them and fatally shot
the other before they could get into action. His tally was now sixty-six
men at least.
Curtis now sent Bill out into Kansas to look into a report that some
Indians were about to join the Confederate forces. Bill got the news,
and also engaged in a knife duel with the Sioux, Conquering Bear, whom
he accused of trying to ambush him. It was a fair and desperate fight,
with knives, and although Bill finally killed his man, he himself was so
badly cut up that he came near dying, his arm being ripped from shoulder
to elbow, a wound which it took years to mend. It is doubtful if any man
ever survived such injuries as he did, for by this time he was a mass of
scars from pistol and knife wounds. He had probably been in danger of
his life more than a hundred times in personal difficulties; for the man
with a reputation as a bad man has a reputation which needs continual
defending.
After the war, Bill lived from hand to mouth, like most frontier
dwellers. It was at Springfield, Missouri, that another duel of his long
list occurred, in which he killed Dave Tutt, a fine pistol shot and a
man with social ambitions in badness. It was a fair fight in the town
square by appointment. Bill killed his man and wheeled so quickly on
Tutt's followers that Tutt had not had time to fall before Bill's
six-shooter was turned the opposite way, and he was asking Tutt's
friends if they wanted any of it themselves. They did not. This fight
was forced on Bill, and his quiet attempts to avoid it and his stern way
of accepting it, when inevitable, won him high estimation on the border.
Indeed, he was now known all over the country, and his like has not
since been seen. He was still a splendid looking man, and as cool and
quiet and modest as ever he had been.
Bill now went to trapping in the less settled parts of Nebraska, and for
a while he lived in peace, until he fell into a saloon row over some
trivial matter and invited four of his opponents outside to fight him
with pistols; the four were to fire at the word, and Bill to do the
same--his pistol against their four. In this fight he killed one man at
first fire, but he himself was shot through the shoulder and disabled in
his right arm. He killed two more with his left hand and badly wounded
the other. This was a fair fight also, and the only wonder is he was not
killed; but he seemed never to consider odds, and literally he knew
nothing but fight.
His score was now seventy-two men, not counting Indians. He himself
never reported how many Indians he and Buffalo Bill killed as scouts in
the Black Kettle campaign under Carr and Primrose, but the killing of
Black Kettle himself was sometimes attributed to Wild Bill. The latter
was badly wounded in the thigh with a lance, and it took a long time for
this wound to heal. To give this hurt and others better opportunity for
mending, Bill now took a trip back East to his home in Illinois. While
East he found that he had a reputation, and he undertook to use it. He
found no way of making a living, however, and he returned to the West,
where he could better market his qualifications.
At that time Hays City, Kansas, was one of the hardest towns on the
frontier. It had more than a hundred gambling dives and saloons to its
two thousand population, and murder was an ordinary thing. Hays needed a
town marshal, and one who could shoot. Wild Bill was unanimously
selected, and in six weeks he was obliged to kill Jack Strawhan for
trying to shoot him. This he did by reason of his superior quickness
with the six-shooter, for Strawhan was drawing first. Another bad man,
Mulvey, started to run Hays, in whose peace and dignity Bill now felt a
personal ownership. Covered by Mulvey's two revolvers, Bill found room
for the lightning flash of time, which is all that is needed by the
real revolver genius, and killed Mulvey on the spot. His tally was now
seventy-five men. He made it seventy-eight in a fight with a bunch of
private soldiers, who called him a "long-hair"--a term very accurate, by
the way, for Bill was proud of his long, blond hair, as was General
Custer and many another man of the West at that time. In this fight,
Bill was struck by seven pistol balls and barely escaped alive by flight
to a ranch on the prairie near by. He lay there three weeks, while
General Phil Sheridan had details out with orders to get him dead or
alive. He later escaped in a box-car to another town, and his days as
marshal of Hays were over.
Bill now tried his hand at Wild West theatricals, seeing that already
many Easterners were "daffy," as he called it, about the West; but he
failed at this, and went back once more to the plains where he belonged.
He was chosen marshal of Abilene, then the cow camp par excellence of
the middle plains, and as tough a community as Hays had been.
The wild men from the lower plains, fighting men, mad from whiskey and
contact with the settlements' possibilities of long-denied indulgence,
swarmed in the streets and dives, mingling with desperadoes and toughs
from all parts of the frontier. Those who have never lived in such a
community will never be able by any description to understand its
phenomena. It seems almost unbelievable that sober, steady-going America
ever knew such days; but there they were, and not so long ago, for this
was only 1870.
Two days after Bill was elected marshal of Abilene, he killed a
desperado who was "whooping-up" the town in customary fashion. That same
night, he was on the street, in a dim light, when all at once he saw a
man whisk around a corner, and saw something shine, as he thought, with
the gleam of a weapon. As showing how quick were the hand and eye of the
typical gun-man of the day, it may be stated that Bill killed this man
in a flash, only to find later that it was a friend, and one of his own
deputies. The man was only pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. Bill
knew that he was watched every moment by men who wanted to kill him. He
had his life in his hands all the time. For instance, he had next to
kill the friend of the desperado whom he had shot. By this time, Abilene
respected its new marshal; indeed, was rather proud of him. The reign
of the bad man of the plains was at its height, and the professional
man-killer, the specialist with firearms, was a figure here and there
over wide regions. Among all these none compared with this unique
specimen. He was generous, too, as he was deadly, for even yet he was
supporting a McCandlas widow, and he always furnished funerals for his
corpses. He had one more to furnish soon. Enemies down the range among
the cow men made up a purse of five thousand dollars, and hired eight
men to kill the town marshal and bring his heart back South. Bill heard
of it, and literally made all of them jump off the railroad train where
he met them. One was killed in the jump. His list of homicides was now
eighty-one. He had never yet been arrested for murder, and his killing
was in fair open fight, his life usually against large odds. He was a
strange favorite of fortune, who seemed certainly to shield him
round-about.
Bill now went East for another try at theatricals, in which, happily, he
was unsuccessful, and for which he felt a strong distaste. He was
scared--on the stage; and when he saw what was expected of him he quit
and went back once more to the West. He appeared at Cheyenne, in the
Black Hills, wandering thus from one point to another after the fashion
of the frontier, where a man did many things and in many places. He had
a little brush with a band of Indians, and killed four of them with four
shots from his six-shooter, bringing his list in red and white to
eighty-five men. He got away alive from the Black Hills with difficulty;
but in 1876 he was back again at Deadwood, married now, and, one would
have thought, ready to settle down.
But the life of turbulence ends in turbulence. He who lives by the sword
dies by the sword. Deadwood was as bad a place as any that could be
found in the mining regions, and Bill was not an officer here, as he had
been in Kansas towns. As marshal of Hays and Abilene and United States
marshal later at Hays City, he had been a national character. He was at
Deadwood for the time only plain Wild Bill, handsome, quiet, but ready
for anything.
Ready for anything but treachery! He himself had always fought fair and
in the open. His men were shot in front. Not such was to be his fate. On
the day of August 2, 1876, while he was sitting at a game of cards in a
saloon, a hard citizen by name of Jack McCall slipped up behind him,
placed a pistol to the back of his head, and shot him dead before he
knew he had an enemy near. The ball passed through Bill's head and out
at the cheek, lodging in the arm of a man across the table.
Bill had won a little money from McCall earlier in the day, and won it
fairly, but the latter had a grudge, and was no doubt one of those
disgruntled souls who "had it in" for all the rest of the world. He got
away with the killing at the time, for a miners' court let him go. A few
days later, he began to boast about his act, seeing what fame was his
for ending so famous a life; but at Yankton they arrested him, tried him
before a real court, convicted him, and hanged him promptly.
Wild Bill's body was buried at Deadwood, and his grave, surrounded by a
neat railing and marked by a monument, long remained one of the features
of Deadwood. The monument and fence were disfigured by vandals who
sought some memento of the greatest bad man ever in all likelihood seen
upon the earth. His tally of eighty-five men seems large, but in fair
probability it is not large enough. His main encounters are known
historically. He killed a great many Indians at different times, but of
these no accurate estimate can be claimed. Nor is his list of victims
as a sharpshooter in the army legitimately to be added to his record.
Cutting out all doubtful instances, however, there remains no doubt that
he killed between twenty and thirty men in personal combat in the open,
and that never once was he tried in any court on a charge even of
manslaughter.
This record is not approached by that of any other known bad man. Many
of them are credited with twenty men, a dozen men, and so forth; but
when the records are sifted the list dwindles. It is doubted whether any
other bad man in America ever actually killed twenty men in fair
personal combat. Bill was not killed in fair fight, nor could McCall
have hurt him had Bill suspected his intent.
Hickok was about thirty-nine years old when killed, and he had averaged
a little more than two men for each year of his entire life. He was
well-known among army officers, and esteemed as a scout and a man, never
regarded as a tough in any sense. He was a man of singular personal
beauty. Of him General Custer, soon thereafter to fall a victim himself
upon the plains, said: "He was a plainsman in every sense of the word,
yet unlike any other of his class. Whether on foot or on horseback, he
was one of the most perfect types of physical manhood I ever saw. His
manner was entirely free from all bluster and bravado. He never spoke of
himself unless requested to do so. His influence among the frontiersmen
was unbounded; his word was law. Wild Bill was anything but a
quarrelsome man, yet none but himself could enumerate the many conflicts
in which he had been engaged."
These are the words of one fighting man about another, and both men are
entitled to good rank in the annals of the West. The praise of an army
general for a man of no rank or wealth leaves us feeling that, after
all, it was a possible thing for a bad man to be a good man, and worthy
of respect and admiration, utterly unmingled with maudlin sentiment or
weak love for the melodramatic.