Wild Bill

by Tom Clavin

  Trying to stay out of the fray, Hickok worked whatever jobs he could find. Having a strong constitution and years of farmwork on his résumé helped, as did a willingness to take on whatever was offered. When he wrote his brother Horace in November, he had not made any progress toward finding a site for the Hickok homestead, but there had been no lack of experiences and observations: “You wanted to no what was going on in Cansas. I looked ahead of me to where the roads crossed and saw about 500 soldiers agoing on and I looked down the river and saw some nice steamers and they were all agoing on and that is the way with all the people in Cansas, they are all agoing on. I guess they are going to hell so you see I have told you what is going on in Cansas.”

  The wide-open albeit dangerous atmosphere of Leavenworth could be catnip for a handsome young man. The end of that letter to Horace implies that Bill was no stranger to alcohol or other vices, and Leavenworth may have offered plenty more opportunity: “Now I will tell you a few lyes. I have quit swearing now. I have quit drinking but tell Bill [Lorenzo] I have quit dancing etc. I have quit chewing tobacco and don’t touch any lager beer and I don’t speak to the girls at all. I am getting to be the perfect hermit.”

  As an aside, Hickok had mentioned to his brother, “Thare is 29 of our company in custody at Lacompton yet. I have been out to see them once. I had as good as a horse and as good a gun as thare was in our company.”

  There has long been a murkiness to Hickok’s history concerning his activities with James Lane and the Free-Staters. This is understandable because many of these activities were clandestine, and there was no reason to take any special notice of the newcomer from Illinois. Also, Hickok is discreet in his letters so as not to worry his family, especially his mother. However, references like “our company” imply he took up arms with the Free-Staters. His mention of Lecompton most likely refers to the engagements that took place in August and September of that year, 1856.

  First, Lane led an army to Lecompton to oppose a force led by David Atchison, which had again marched across the border from Missouri. What could have been a bloody battle and Hickok’s first significant military action was prevented by Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, commanding a contingent of army troops from Fort Leavenworth. The second week in September, yet another governor, John Geary, ordered both sides to disband. He probably would have been laughed out of the state, but Colonel Cooke and his troops backed Geary up. After the two-day Battle of Hickory Point, where Lane was in command of the Jayhawkers, the army arrived and order was restored. Arrests of about a hundred of Lane’s men followed, but the men were later released. By this time, Hickok was a scout for Lane yet managed not to get caught in any roundup.

  This had to be a heady time for a strapping young man who was finding some of the adventure he had sought. What could make life better for Bill Hickok? Falling in love.

  This experience actually began when he met John Owen, who would have an impact on Hickok’s life beyond having a fetching daughter. Owen, born in Tennessee, was forty-three or forty-four when he met Hickok in Kansas. He had moved there from Missouri in 1836 to work for the American Fur Company. During his travels trading among the Indian tribes, he fell in love with a Shawnee woman, Patinuxa. They had one child, named Mary Jane. Owen was adopted into the tribe, then kicked out when his active support of the Free State movement called unwanted attention to the Shawnee. He became a farmer, and he and his family settled on a tract of land on Mill Creek. It was there that Owen encountered Bill Hickok. Despite the age difference, they took a liking to each other.

  They also went to work for Lane. Up to this point, Hickok may have been no more than an occasional follower and scout who could come in handy because of his marksmanship and comfort handling weapons. Owen was more of a participant in the Free State movement and knew Lane. He vouched for Hickok to Lane, and the two men became Lane’s bodyguards. It was reported that when Lane made a speech in Highland, Kansas, in 1857—by then, he had become a fiery speaker quick to insult Missourians—Owen and Hickok were his armed guards.

  Such proximity to Owen and to his farmhouse allowed a relationship to blossom between Hickok and Mary Jane Owen. While as a teenager Hickok had had a few flirtations back in Illinois, this appears to have been his first real romance. In a letter to his family, signed James Hickok, he refers to Mary as “my gall,” and in another, signed James Butler Hickok: “I went to see my gall yesterday and eat 25 ears of Corn to fill up with. You ought to be here and eat some of hur buiskits. She is the only one I ever Saw that could beat mother making buiskits.” And in a letter dated August 23, 1858, he reports that Mary had cut off a lock of his hair and that he should send it to his mother and sisters.

  While the work with Owen and romance with his daughter continued, Hickok met another man who would play an important role in his life. Actually, it was a boy he met—an eleven-year-old named Cody, whom everyone called Billy. The person who would achieve fame as Buffalo Bill was part of a wagon train in October when he met a handsome stranger who saved him from a severe beating.

  William Frederick Cody had been born in February 1846 in Scott County, Iowa, the youngest of four children and the second son. His father was a farmer until Cody was seven, when he moved the family to LeClaire on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River and he operated a stage line between Davenport and Chicago. After an aborted attempt to go west to seek gold, Isaac Cody moved the family again, this time to return to farming. The youngest Cody attended school when he had to but otherwise trapped quails and small game and explored his surroundings. “Many a jolly ride I had and many a boyish prank was perpetrated after getting well away from and out of sight of home with the horse,” Cody recalled in Buffalo Bill’s Life Story, published in 1879. This was the first of three autobiographies he wrote and the one considered the most reliable, though in the very first sentence he gives an incorrect date of birth. Over the years, in the other two stories of his life, Cody remembered less about what actually transpired and put more stock in what had been said and written about him.

  When Cody’s brother, Samuel, died in a horse-riding accident, the family’s grief resulted in a desire to leave Iowa. They loaded up wagons of possessions and traveled to Missouri, and after catching their breath with Isaac’s brother Elijah, they pushed on into Kansas, arriving in 1852. Isaac combined farming with trading goods with the Kickapoo. After the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, that summer “was an exciting period in the history of the new territory,” according to Cody. “Thousands and thousands of people, seeking new homes, flocked thither, a large number of the emigrants coming over from adjoining states. The Missourians, some of them, would come laden with bottles of whiskey, and after drinking the liquor would drive the bottles into the ground to mark their land claims, not waiting to put up any buildings.”

  Without wanting to, Isaac Cody was caught up in the free state versus slavery violence. Unlike Hickok, he was not antislavery … but he was not for slavery, either. In the middle of the rabid Kansas controversy was the Free Soil movement, and Isaac Cody adhered to some of its beliefs. One of them proposed a territory free of black men altogether, meaning slavery, pro or con, wouldn’t be an issue in Kansas. Isaac did have some interest in the politics of the new territory and was known as a good speaker. Having a brother living in Missouri, it was believed that Isaac was not a free-state supporter.

  One day, there was a gathering of about a hundred Missouri men and allies, and Isaac was asked to address them. When he revealed his leanings that Kansas should not be a slave or a free state, but a sort of neutral one, one of the enraged proslavery listeners attacked him. Isaac was stabbed twice with a bowie knife. He was severely wounded, but survived. However, the Cody family in Kansas now had a reputation as being Free-Staters.

  For the rest of Billy’s childhood and adolescence, there were verbal and some physical assaults, and Isaac at times had to go into hiding when a group bent on lynching him approached the property. In his autobiography, Cody recalls sever
al harrowing escapes, including one when the youngster had to outride a gang of armed men to warn his father that they were on their way to murder him. Isaac Cody defiantly worked with Lane and others to make Kansas a free state until, never having completely recovered from his wounds, he died when his son was only eleven.

  At a very tender age, Billy Cody became the man of the family, and he took whatever work he could find, which was how he met Bill Hickok. One job in the summer of 1857 was helping teamsters headed by Lewis Simpson, a friend of the Cody family, drive a wagon train across the prairie and High Plains to Utah. His mother was very much opposed because, as Cody understates, “owing to the Indians, a journey over the plains in those days was a perilous undertaking.” She relented when Simpson promised to keep a close eye on the boy. However, the danger came not from Indians but from within the ranks of teamsters.

  As the trek progressed, Cody met one of the drivers, who identified himself as James B. Hickok, “a tall, handsome, magnificently built and powerful young fellow, who could out-run, out-jump and out-fight any man in the train.” One evening, Cody ran afoul of “a surly, overbearing” teamster twice his size, who knocked the boy down with one swat. Cody got up holding a pot of coffee, and he threw the scalding contents in the face of the man, who in turn “sprang at me with the ferocity of a tiger, and undoubtedly would have torn me to pieces.”

  What prevented this was the appearance of Hickok, who knocked the teamster down. He warned, “If you ever again lay a hand on that boy—little Billy there—I’ll give you such a pounding that you won’t get over it for a month of Sundays.” Hickok may have saved Cody’s life—an act that would be reciprocated a decade later.

  Most likely, this journey west was the only one Hickok undertook in 1857 because of his occasional employment with the Free-Staters and a new job he soon secured. At that time, Hickok called the small community of Monticello in Johnson County home. Probably because of his association with Lane, in March 1858, though only twenty years old, Hickok was elected the town constable. Also elected, as supervisor, was John Owen. This would be Hickok’s first posting as a lawman.

  Constable was not, however, much of an occupation, and if there was any pay, it had to be a pittance. With the intentions of settling down, perhaps with Mary Owen, and returning to the original plan of founding a new Hickok homestead, he traveled less and farmed more. He had purchased some land, and he wrote to his family that he was hard at work on it, also informing his mother and siblings—this time, he wasn’t kidding—that he had given up drinking and gambling. Kansas offered opportunity: “I would like to have for us fore brothers” acquire another section of land “and the great butiful prairie cant be beat in the country.”

  Back in Homer, the news about James being a disciplined farmer was good, but not so much the probability that he would marry Mary. Polly in particular did not want a half-Indian daughter-in-law and heathen grandchildren. While it was common on the frontier for white men to have children and even marry women from the tribes, that did not fly in Illinois, and certainly not with the Hickoks, who were probably thinking about preserving that Saxon blood. And apparently, the family’s caring for people with black skin did not extend to those with red skin. Lorenzo was dispatched to talk some sense into the youngest son.

  He arrived in Monticello to find his brother Jim virtually homeless. A disadvantage to being a close associate of James Lane was also being a target for proslavery militants. One night, a group of them set fire to the modest cabin Hickok had built, and crops that were soon to be harvested were also put to the torch. Moving to Monticello had not been enough for Hickok to escape the partisan violence and destruction.

  He should have realized that nowhere in eastern Kansas was safe. Only a few months earlier, the Marais des Cygnes Massacre had occurred. Proslavery Bushwhackers had killed five men in a rural area. After the massacre, John Brown constructed a fortified cabin on the site. However, this act of defiance did not bring the dead men back or protect future victims.

  The sudden, surprise attack on his future homestead left Hickok angry and distraught. Lorenzo’s arrival and the affection of his older brother could not have come at a better time. The same can’t be said for the relationship with Mary, however. Part of the comfort Lorenzo offered was persuading his brother to give up farming, at least for now, and look for a more promising occupation.

  Blood was thicker than the feelings for his girlfriend. Hickok waved good-bye to what was left of his farm and to a life with Mary Owen (who later married a doctor), and he and Lorenzo set off for Leavenworth.

  Chapter Three

  DEATH AT ROCK CREEK STATION

  Quitting Monticello and Mary Owen began a pattern of Wild Bill Hickok leaving discarded women in his wake as he set off for the next adventure. For him and Lorenzo in the latter part of 1858, that meant heading to Leavenworth to seek employment. The brothers were offered jobs with the Overland Stage Company, which had begun as the Russell, Majors, and Waddell partnership. Bill would work as a teamster for the company off and on, while the steadier and less restless Lorenzo would be in the Overland Stage’s employ through the Civil War years.

  Around this time, Bill had a photograph taken in Lawrence. He wears a dark wide-brimmed hat and a white shirt under a plaid shirt under a dark vest. His eyes gaze steadily at the camera, and there is no expression on his face except maybe a bit of apprehensiveness being that he was a twenty-one-year-old having his image captured for the first time. He has a long, slender nose and seemingly smooth skin, slightly protruding lips and ears, a thin mustache, and a sparse goatee. A distinguishing feature, though not uncommon on the frontier in the late 1850s, is long brown hair whose tendrils touch his shoulders.

  While being a teamster and fulfilling other duties on wagon trains traversing hundreds of miles west did offer adventure, it was very hard work. The wagons set off at sunup and jostled along on trails that twisted or went monotonously straight depending on the topography, and they were filled with rocks and half-formed ruts. Axles broke, horses and mules died, travelers were harassed by clouds of insects, many days the sun beat down incessantly, water could become scarce, there was the ever-present fear of attacks by hostile Indians (stories circulated of the gruesome fates of those taken alive), and a welcome rainstorm could suddenly turn into a gully washer.

  Adding to the teamsters’ woes were outbreaks of smallpox and cholera and diseases that remained a mystery but whose fatal outcome was the same. For many, there was homesickness for who and what were left behind or the grinding misgivings of what a mistake this was to be out in the middle of nowhere. Not for nothing was this midsection of the country often ominously referred to and labeled on crude maps as the Great American Desert.

  A wagon train employee had to have a hardy constitution, and apparently Bill Hickok did because this was the life he led for the rest of 1858 and for at least a year after that. He was a quick learner and very good with horses and other animals. If he drank, he must have held his liquor well because there are no reports of angry disputes. It probably helped that the wiser wagon masters banned alcohol, and high-proof watering holes were few and far between on the prairie, though that would change with the westward expansion of white settlement.

  It was not uncommon—with Dodge City being just one example—that the first structure of what would become a settlement was a saloon. More than a few towns got their start as simply being an oasis for thirsty travelers. “Saloons,” such as they were, might be within riding distance of U.S. Army forts or share a place on the prairie with way stations that held horses for stagecoaches. A makeshift saloon—some were made of wood, most from sod—was nothing more than a tent or dugout, and the interior contained little else than a wooden plank supported by two beer kegs. Whiskey and beer were poured from jugs and tapped barrels into glasses that, with luck, had been swiped with a rag since the last use. During the cold-weather months, they offered some shelter from the wind, though were always in danger of being blown do
wn. Even a solid shelter was of dubious advantage, as the interiors kept contained an almost combustible mixture of odors of wet furs, unwashed bodies, cigar smoke, and the vapors coming out of a stove that burned wood, sod, or kerosene.

  Sometime during his travels on the rudimentary, dust-choked trails, Bill Hickok encountered one of his boyhood heroes. He had read about the trailblazing career of Kit Carson. He had no way of knowing how much of what he read was actually true, and to a youngster with imagination, it didn’t matter. An irony was that the tales of Carson’s exploits had been embellished—and some were outright fabrications—and a few years later, Hickok would receive the same treatment from writers.

  But what was true about the legendary frontiersman was impressive enough. Christopher Carson was born on Christmas Eve 1809 in Madison County, Kentucky. Soon after, the Carson family, which would eventually include fourteen children, relocated to Boone’s Lick, Missouri. As would be experienced by Hickok and Cody, Carson had to grow up fast because of a father’s premature death. At age nine, Chris Carson found whatever work he could. And like those other two teenagers, he was restless and had a curiosity about what lay to the west. When he was fifteen, Carson hopped on a wagon that was part of one of the early trains on the Santa Fe Trail.