by Tom Clavin
By nineteen, he was a fur trapper, going back and forth to California, journeys that took him through the Rocky Mountains and over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Carson became familiar with Indian tribes, and his first two wives were an Arapaho and a Cheyenne, Singing Grass and Making-Out-Road. And among trappers and explorers (often, one and the same), he earned a reputation for courage and honesty. “Clean as a hound’s tooth” was one of the appraisals of him.
A significant turn in his life came in 1842 when he met John C. Frémont on a Missouri riverboat. Frémont, who would be dubbed “Pathfinder,” was about to launch his first mapping expedition to the Pacific Ocean, and he hired Carson as his guide. His collaboration with Frémont would make both figures of national renown as mountain men and explorers when their experiences were written up (mostly ghostwritten by Frémont’s wife, Jessie) and published in books devoured by a public eager for tales of the mysterious and fabulous American West.
When he was not blazing and mapping trails, Carson called Taos in New Mexico Territory home. His third wife was Maria Josefa Jaramillo, from a prominent family in the town. From their marriage in 1843—he was thirty-three, she was fourteen—to his death twenty-five years later, Carson made enough visits home to sire eight children. Away from Taos, his adventures included aiding Frémont in the Bear Flag Revolt in California in 1846, helping General Stephen Kearny to wrest that territory from Mexico in the subsequent war, and blazing more trails, sometimes as a federal Indian agent. In 1856, Carson stayed still long enough to write a book that was to be titled simply Memoirs. On its way to a potential publisher in New York City, the manuscript was lost; it was discovered in a trunk in Paris in 1905 and finally printed.
It was while acting as an Indian agent and trail guide that he met Hickok, probably in 1859, at the end of the trail in Santa Fe. Carson, who knew it very well, gave the man almost thirty years his junior a tour of the town’s saloons and advised him against consorting with any of the Mexican women there. William Connelley, though he mistakenly mentions that Carson and Hickok “became good friends,” offers a description of what the two men encountered at the United States Hotel: “In the bar-room there was a cosmopolitan crowd: Santa Fe traders and their customers, engaged in animated bargaining; trappers and hunters from the south ranges of the Rockies beyond Taos, armed with Bowies and Hawkins rifles, and wearing fringed buckskin; teamsters, freighters, travelers, and native greasers. There was a din of conversation, a jargon of tongues, and snatches of songs. There was constant serving of liquor and the clink of glasses.”
After a night on the town, which included a good dose of gambling, as a parting gift, Carson presented Hickok with a Colt Dragoon pistol, which he kept for the rest of his life.
Though both men fought on the Union side in the Civil War, Carson’s battles were farther west, in New Mexico and Texas, including the Battle of Adobe Walls against the Comanche.
Hickok and Carson may not have met again after their Santa Fe bacchanal. In 1868, an exhausted Maria Josefa expired while giving birth to her and Carson’s eighth child, a loss the fifty-eight-year-old frontiersman found too great to bear. Soon afterward, in May, Carson died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm.
Given that Bill Hickok was just one of hundreds of men crisscrossing the country on the rough trails, there was no reason he would have attracted any notice from the press. But there have been backward glances to this time in his life. In March 1931, The Denver Post published a reminiscence by Truman Blancett. More than seventy years earlier, he and his father and brothers maintained a station at Ash Point, Kansas, 125 miles west of Leavenworth. They kept mules there, and when a mail coach arrived, the driver exchanged the six or eight mules that pulled it. Every week for several months, Hickok, one of the drivers, was at the station while the rotation of mules was under way, and “we would exchange stories,” Blancett recalled. The visitor would also demonstrate skills of the future gunfighter.
“Hickok handled a pistol with the speed of lightning. When he wished to emphasize something he had a way of throwing his right hand or left hand towards you with the trigger finger pointed straight at you. His hands moved with incredible swiftness and I believe he practiced this mannerism with such purpose that it became part of his nature, and probably resulted in making him the fastest two-gun man of his day.” Blancett concluded his account: “Anyone who wanted to make the acquaintance of Hickok and would mind their own business and not get too inquisitive would find him a perfect gentleman in every way. In those days he was not known as ‘Wild Bill.’”
The James Butler Hickok of 1859 was not known at all outside his family, coworkers, a handful of Jayhawkers, the Owens, and a few acquaintances like Billy Cody. He was simply a young, adventurous man like many others on the American frontier, some of whom had ambitions while others just lived from day to day, content enough with survival and the bare necessities and the occasional pleasures. Hickok seems to have been generally well liked, with no hint of the legendary and even tragic figure he would become in American history. He wrote home to his mother and siblings, was guarded but could make friends when he wanted to, possessed skills with guns, and had a sense of humor. Connelley writes about Hickok as a stagecoach driver, “When he drove into Santa Fe, he entered with a flourish, and raised as much dust as he could. He took a mischievous delight in sending the lazy inhabitants scurrying out of his way.”
Late that year, Hickok was a guest at the Cody house, along with Lew Simpson and two other men. Cody’s mother and sister were quite taken by the young frontiersman. Buffalo Bill, decades later, recalled that because he had “become greatly attached to [Hickok], I asked him to come and make a visit at our house” in Leavenworth. “My mother and sisters, who had heard so much about him from me, were delighted to see him and he spent several weeks at our place. They did everything possible to repay him for his kindness to me.” Cody added that Hickok, having become something like the older brother he had lost years before, frequented the Cody residence when he was in the area: “He used to call our house his home, as he did not have one of his own.”
A Hickok legend that may well be fact is that around this time, after the stay at the Cody residence, he had an encounter with a bear that went badly for him. (One is reminded of the scene early in the film The Revenant when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character barely survives a mauling.) A few researchers have disputed that the encounter ever took place. However, there are accounts of Hickok in 1860 into 1861 that make mention of him recovering from serious injuries. Given the harsh nature of life driving wagons on butt-bruising trails, there were any number of ways to be injured. Yet there is a mention in the Kansas paper The Fort Scott Monitor of a man identified as “Wild Bill” who “has proved himself a tight customer in a bear fight.” Connelley claims Hickok killed a “huge grizzly bear” with his bowie knife after a furious fight, and that when he was found, he was barely alive, and that, among other injuries, “his left arm was crushed and still in the bear’s mouth.”
As Hickok himself told it, he was driving a freight team that had originated in Independence and was bound for Santa Fe. During an isolated stretch in a range of short hills, he found a bear blocking the road. She was a cinnamon bear—a subspecies of the American black bear, with red-brown fur—with two cubs. Hickok got down off the wagon, and obviously not inclined to entice the bear out of the way and knowing how ruthlessly violent a bear protecting cubs could be, he ran up to her and shot her in the head.
Whatever ammunition he was using, it wasn’t enough. The bullet ricocheted off the cinnamon bear’s skull. Being shot made her very angry. She attacked, crushing Hickok against her. He fired his gun again, and this time the bullet struck one of the bear’s paws. In response, she shoved Hickok’s left arm in her mouth and began to bite. His right hand found his bowie knife. He yanked it out of his belt and slashed the bear’s throat. After several vicious thrusts, the bear fell dead.
Somehow, Hickok, in what must have been an excruciatingly painful jo
urney, steered the freight wagon to the next town. There he was treated for broken bones in his chest, shoulder, and arm.
Three or four months later, in early 1861, because of his injuries and the slow recovery, the Overland Stage Company transferred Hickok from being a driver and guard on wagon trains to lighter duties at the Rock Creek Station in the Nebraska Territory. (More about this shortly.) Even Joseph Rosa, surely a doubting Thomas about so many of the tales told about Hickok, wrote about his posting at Rock Creek: “The effects of his recent battle showed in the clumsy way he walked, and his left arm was still useless.”
Another legend is that Hickok was a founder of the Pony Express. This one is not quite true. The Russell, Majors, and Waddell company, which included Hickok as an employee, did initiate the mail-carrying service in April 1860. On the third, one rider left Sacramento heading east and one left St. Joseph, Missouri, heading west, with the intent of carrying mail on horseback across two thousand miles in eight days. Hickok, however, was not one of the riders, then or ever. He was soon to turn twenty-three—not old by any means, but most of the riders, like Billy Cody, were under twenty-one and shorter and thinner than Hickok, who had filled out from years of steady labor.
Jack Slade deserves a detour here. For a time, until he was swept into the dustbin of history, he was a much-talked-about man whose legend grew as writers from the East, such as Bret Harte and Mark Twain, began to roam the frontier and send back dispatches in between making notes in their journals. Depending on the account, Slade was the epitome of villainy or a rough but decent fellow in a brutal business.
Joseph Alfred Slade was another Illinois product, born in Carlyle in January 1831. He was only sixteen when he enlisted in the army and went off to fight in the war with Mexico, though he got no farther than Santa Fe, where his regiment did mostly guard duty. Sometime in the 1850s, Slade worked as a freighting teamster and wagon master along the Overland Trail. This passage west had been used by explorers and trappers beginning in the 1820s, but it was in the 1850s that it began to see a steady traffic of gold-seekers and then stagecoaches carrying mail and adventurous passengers. The Overland Trail originated in Atchison, Kansas, and went into Colorado, then swung up to southern Wyoming, where, at Fort Bridger (named for the explorer and scout Jim Bridger), it intersected with the Oregon Trail, which would take travelers to the West Coast. It would become extinct in 1869, when the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed. A year or two later, Slade was in Texas and then moved around working for a succession of stage companies. Along the way, he was one of the founders of the Pony Express.
In 1859, he went to work for the Overland Stage Company, which would result in him encountering both Bill Hickok and the teenaged William Cody. Before long, Slade was in charge of a six-hundred-mile-long corridor of the country, and the freight had to get through no matter what. He acquired a ruthless reputation, inspiring fear among thieves and other outlaws, some of whom didn’t have to wait for a judge and jury to stretch a rope. One incident involved one of his own employees, Andrew Ferrin, whom Slade shot when the worker was hindering the progress of a wagon train.
Another story that circulated about Slade was that when he tracked down a man named Jules Beni, who had previously shot him and robbed one of the Overland wagon trains, Slade tied him to a stake. He then occupied much of the day by shooting him bit by bit, none of the wounds immediately fatal, then cutting off his ears, before finally finishing Beni off. (One ear was always kept in his pocket, to display as a conversation piece or a warning to outlaws.) The only actual truth to this story was that Slade did kill a hiding Jules Beni after tracking him down in Wyoming, but the embellished tale—and subsequent accounts, including one by Mark Twain in Roughing It that he had killed at least twenty-six men—was useful in sometimes deterring mischief against the Overland Stage.
There are no reports of Hickok and Slade at odds. In the one event where they were known to be together, it was a festive occasion. Plant’s Station was one of the stage company’s transfer sites, this one in northeast Wyoming. One day, there was a potential disaster when Indians attacked and took all the horses and mules at the station. The value of the animals aside, mail-carrying and other activity on the trails would be at a standstill until they were replaced. Maybe the stock could be recovered.
A posse was put together—probably only as many men as there were horses left—led by Hickok. The would-be rescuers followed the raiding party’s tracks to the Powder River, then beyond Crazy Woman’s Fork to Clear Creek, and there they found the Indian camp. More importantly, they also found the stolen stock and about a hundred ponies belonging to the Indians, who were most likely Oglala Sioux whose head man was Red Cloud, the most powerful leader of the High Plains tribes. Hickok and the others waited until dark, then attacked. Their shouting and shooting set the Indians to running one way, and the attackers rounded up the horses and ponies and got them going the other way. The Indians had too few ponies remaining to give chase … even if they were of a mind to, not knowing how many armed banshees had suddenly appeared in the night.
Hickok herded the posse and the horses and ponies to the Sweetwater Bridge Station, where the successful mission was celebrated. Slade was there leading the cheers of congratulation.
Billy Cody saw only one side of Slade: “Although rough at times and always a dangerous character—having killed many a man—he was always kind to me. During the two years that I worked for him as pony express-rider and stage-driver, he never spoke an angry word to me.”
The young Cody’s impression was more a minority one as the years passed. Finally, it turned out to be a hard end for a hard man. Slade may have done his job the only way it could be done to keep the Overland Stage Company functioning and profitable, but he had made a lot of enemies along the way, and not just among outlaws. A decreasing ability to hold his liquor and a succession of drunken brawls because of boorish behavior didn’t endear him to others, either. In November 1862, Slade was sacked by the Overland Stage Company for rampant drunkenness; one damaging incident was firing bullets at the Fort Halleck canteen.
This did not turn out to be a wake-up call. In March 1864, he was in Virginia City, Montana, indulging in an alcohol-fueled, violent tantrum. In the absence of any effective law enforcement, Slade was taken into custody by an ad hoc group of peacemakers. The “charge” was only disturbing the peace, but Slade had disturbed it so thoroughly that a resentful local citizenry decided to hang him. Without delay, Slade was marched down the main street and soon was swinging from the beam of a corral gate. Fittingly, his body was preserved in alcohol until the snows had melted and it could be transported to Salt Lake City for burial.1
* * *
The seemingly harmless position of assistant stock tender that the Overland Stage Company gave Hickok led to him killing a man for the first time. According to more colorful accounts, he killed several in a burst of brutality while working at the Rock Creek Station. And more than one account has Hickok dueling with and dispatching up to ten men, including via hand-to-hand combat. As Joseph Rosa remarks in They Called Him Wild Bill, “No single gunfight, with the possible exception of the Earp-Clanton fight in October 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona, has caused so much controversy as the Hickok-McCanles affair at Rock Creek on the afternoon of Friday, July 12, 1861.”
The station site had the advantage of being on both the Oregon Trail and the California Trail six miles from Fairbury, Nebraska. The company had rented the station from the owner, David McCanles, a North Carolina native. By April 1861, Overland Stage ascertained that business was brisk enough that it would be a good investment to purchase the Rock Creek property.
A man named S. C. Glenn had established the small compound as a cabin, barn, and makeshift supply store. In 1859, he was visited by the brothers David and James McCanles, who aimed to find gold in Colorado. David changed his mind, though, and bought the property from Glenn. He sent for his wife, Mary. Their fifth child, Charles, would be born that year.
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David McCanles turned out to be a pretty good entrepreneur. He added items to his store’s inventory and constructed a toll bridge across Rock Creek. For ten to fifty cents, depending on what the driver could pay, wagons traversed the rough wooden bridge in a couple of minutes rather than having to spend hours hoisting and lowering their wagon into the creek and hoisting it back up on the other side. McCanles put up a cabin and dug a well on the other side of the creek, which he called, sensibly, East Ranch, with the original compound becoming the West Ranch. It was the east-side site, in 1860, that became the Rock Creek Station when the Overland Stage Company leased it.
Continuing to wheel and deal, McCanles sold and resold and sold again the toll bridge. Each buyer had the misfortune of not meeting one of the myriad stipulations in the sales contract, with ownership reverting to McCanles. He also sold the West Ranch at a good profit and moved his family to a new structure three miles away. The future for this frontier businessman looked bright, especially when the Overland Stage Company offered a new deal.
To buy the Rock Creek Station, the company promised to give McCanles one-third of the price down and the remaining payment or payments made within four months. Horace Wellman was appointed to supervise operations at the station, and Bill Hickok, who turned twenty-four that May, was hired as the assistant stock tender, mostly to take care of the horses.
Months went by, and there was no further payment. Wellman was apologetic, but he personally could not produce the money. The nonpayment became a burr under the saddle for McCanles, who reached the point where he told Wellman he was going to shut the station down. The owner had already acquired the reputation of being a hothead and a bully. One of his frequent targets was the young stock tender, whom McCanles referred to as “Duck Bill” because of his long nose and slightly protruding lips. Also causing friction was his support of the South’s recent declaration of independence and its taking of Fort Sumter that April.
