Wild Bill

by Tom Clavin

  With paying customers still scarce when the war ended, Agnes Lake left the American circuit for the arenas of Europe. There, heading a production titled Mazeppa, a show featuring amazing feats of horse-riding skill, Agnes became a star. She performed in Prussia and Germany and elsewhere, and when she returned to the States, Mazeppa was in great demand. At forty, married for over two decades, and more or less having raised three children, Agnes Lake was one of America’s most popular performers.

  She also suffered a series of tragedies. Two younger brothers died, one from alcoholism and the other from tuberculosis. Late in 1867, her oldest daughter, Alice, who was emerging on her own as an equestrian, was married to John Wilson, who had once worked for her parents’ circus. The honeymoon trip included taking a steamer from Mobile to New Orleans. During the trip, Alice fell overboard and drowned. An especially devastating event took place in 1869: Bill Lake was killed. Such was the couple’s stature by then that the news was carried by publications around the country.

  It happened in Granby, Missouri, on August 21. The Lakes’ Hippo-Olympiad was in the midst of a successful summer tour, with newspapers proclaiming Bill Lake the “Napoleon of Showmen.” After that evening’s performance, a man named Jacob Killian was found hiding inside a tent, apparently hoping to not pay to see a minstrel show. He argued with ushers, and Lake was summoned. When he arrived, he grabbed Killian and went to throw him out of the tent. The man pulled out a revolver, which Lake wrenched from him. A cursing and threatening Killian was deposited outside.

  A few minutes later, Killian reappeared. Having possessed or obtained another revolver, he approached Lake and fired. The bullet struck Lake in the upper right chest. “My God, boys, I am killed!” he exclaimed. “Carry me home.” Lake was brought to his room at a nearby hotel, where, a few minutes after a distraught Agnes arrived, he died.

  The killer, described in newspaper articles as a “drunken ruffian,” escaped. A reward, which included a contribution from the governor of Missouri, was raised, and a manhunt ensued. He was captured several weeks later, outside St. Louis. However, it would not be until five years after that Killian would go on trial. By then, some witnesses had drifted away, and Agnes herself did not attend the proceedings. Still, the prosecution’s presentation and a handful of remaining witnesses were enough to produce a guilty verdict. Agnes and her family were shocked when the sentence was less than four years in prison.

  Killian served his time and was released. Soon after, while in Short Creek, Kansas, Killian was murdered. In the subsequent trial the defendant, A. S. Norton, was acquitted by the jury.

  Though left a grieving widow at forty-three in 1869 with two children still under her care, Agnes Lake determined to carry on. She had no choice—the circus was her entire life, and it was an all-consuming one.

  “Following the White Tops” was the phrase describing people who were with the circus. The first equestrian display dubbed a “circus” in the United States was held in 1793 in Philadelphia, and one of the impressed patrons was President George Washington. By the 1860s, there were as many as two dozen or more large companies crisscrossing the United States and the western territories. Most of them set off in the spring, worked their way north and west through the summer, retreated south in the fall, and spent the winter resting up and preparing for the next season. The circus was also known as a “wagon show” because the nomadic troupes traveled in wooden wagons, and some of them were transformed into stages featuring performers who did not require much space. With the so-called freak shows, for example, the “acts” simply had to sit or stand on a platform and be ogled by amused or horrified patrons.

  In 1871, there were twenty-six such traveling shows active in America. They included John Robinson’s Circus, Menagerie, and Museum; Frederic H. Bailey’s Circus and Menagerie; P. T. Barnum’s Circus, Menagerie, and Museum; Mrs. Agnes Lake’s Hippo-Olympiad and Mammoth Circus; and Adam Forepaugh’s Circus and Menagerie. Many of the owners and managers and performers had worked for or with one another in previous circus incarnations. While inevitably there were rivalries and competitive conflicts, circus people were something of a society unto themselves.

  Gil Robinson, a third-generation circus proprietor, remarked in his memoir Old Wagon Show Days that “circus people fairly earned the association of roughness which has always clung to them. But they were not a rude lot; under the skin they were, and have always remained, gentle and tender-hearted.” One example he pointed to was that when a traveling show came to a town “where a circus man of any prominence is buried, memorial services are held at his grave between the matinee and the night show. Every trouper with the show attends, as well as a large number of the citizens of the town, who are attracted by the rather [strong] display of sentiment.”

  Many of the circuses were alike in having riding exhibitions, trampoline and trapeze acrobats, lion and tiger tamers, freak shows, elephants and hippos, fire-eaters, and of course clowns. The most prominent clown of the nineteenth century was Dan Rice. He joined the Robinson family’s show in 1840 and traveled with its extended branches for fifty-three years. At the peak of his career, he earned one thousand dollars a week and thus was one of the highest-paid entertainers in the country.

  The occupation the Robinsons, the Lakes, and vigorous entrepreneurs like Barnum and Bailey chose was often not a comfortable one, especially for the everyday performers who often doubled as the road crew. They did not eat in restaurants or sleep in hotels. They made camp on the outskirts of towns, ate what was cooked over open fires, and slept in or under their wagons. Only the worst weather stopped them, because if there was no show, there was no income. Treacherous and just plain poor traveling conditions had to be overcome. In the South, for example, for years after the Civil War, Gil Robinson recalled, “it was necessary to send out a brigade of workmen with pickaxes and shovels to repair the highways before it was possible for the show to move.” Where bridges had been destroyed and not replaced, the traveling shows had to figure out ways to ford streams and rivers, which could involve “the use of block and tackle.”

  The expansion of the railroads west meant fewer long wagon trains and new opportunities. As settlements grew, so, too, did the potential audiences, especially in areas that had few if any forms of entertainment other than singing and dancing girls in saloons, places not frequented by women and children. The wagon shows working their way west could cover thousands of miles in long, circuitous routes in a single season. They usually found grateful audiences. According to Linda A. Fisher and Carrie Bowers, in their biography of Agnes Lake, “The performances, however brief, gave isolated communities a break from the monotony of pioneer life and fueled the imaginations of individuals far from America’s bustling cities.”

  When Mrs. Agnes Lake’s Hippo-Olympiad arrived in Abilene on July 31, 1871, its pioneering proprietor—she was the first woman in America to own a circus—was still mourning the shocking loss of her husband. And about to turn forty-five, with a family to raise and a cumbersome business to run, Agnes may not even have been thinking of a romantic involvement. Then she met the eleven-years-younger Wild Bill Hickok.

  Her circus troupe and animals had notched thousands of miles on the rails that season, going as far west as Salt Lake City. The local press had been trumpeting the impending arrival of the circus, and people couldn’t wait to pay for tickets. Watching clowns, horses, hippos, and such disembark at the train station was a show unto itself, as was the parade down the main street. As work crews set up just to the west of the city, Agnes went to the marshal’s office to secure the necessary performance permits. Without going into any detail, Fisher and Bowers report that when Agnes encountered Hickok “their meeting left a marked impression on them both.”

  It was probably more than that, because what began in Abilene would continue for the next five years.

  Most likely, Hickok attended at least one of the two or three circus performances to provide the required security as well as to see what kind
of operation Mrs. Lake was taking all over the country. He had a lot of company. According to The Abilene Chronicle of August 3, “The attendance was large at each performance.” There would be no lingering to get better acquainted, though. Agnes was a very self-disciplined businesswoman, and she had a lot of mouths to feed. The show must go on. After the final performance, the Hippo-Olympiad packed onto an eastbound train for a weeklong gig in St. Louis.

  The Lake circus season ended in late October in her former hometown of Cincinnati. From there, Agnes traveled to a farm in Kentucky she had purchased after her husband’s death. There, waiting out the winter, she tried to reconcile the lurid tales readily available in the dime-store novels and pulp publications about or featuring Wild Bill Hickok with the charming, soft-spoken lawman who had taken at least a piece of her heart.

  The appearance of the circus in Abilene and of Agnes Lake in Hickok’s heart did not do anything to improve the situation with Ben Thompson and Phil Coe. Thompson left town to bring his family back to Texas, and injuries from a buggy accident there prevented him from returning to Abilene. Coe would have to harbor the resentment against Hickok all by himself in the coming weeks. Finally, on October 5, that resentment boiled over.

  The first week of that month was something of a climax to another profitable cattle drive season, and many of the Texans in town wanted to have one last hurrah before returning south. The festivities began at the Applejack Saloon, and then the expanding group of cowboys worked their way to other saloons, plucking local people off the street to buy them drinks. Hickok was in a nearby boardinghouse eating supper, and when the crowd approached, he stepped outside. However, he saw no guns were involved, just some mischief, so he gave them enough money for drinks at their next stop, the Novelty Theatre.

  Sometime later, around 9 P.M., Hickok and his friend Deputy Mike Williams were outside the theater, but the crowd of cowboys had already moved on. The lawmen heard a shot coming from Cedar Street. “Be right back,” Hickok said, and he walked away. He found the crowd outside the Alamo, and the only one displaying a gun was Phil Coe, who contended he had just shot at a dog. The marshal was about to turn away when Coe turned the gun on him.

  The Bull’s Head co-owner was not fast enough. In an instant, Hickok drew and fired both of his Colts, with one witness reporting that “he fired with marvelous rapidity and characteristic accuracy.” Simultaneously, Coe got off a couple of shots, which went astray. He was hit twice in the stomach. After being in agony for four days, he died.

  There was another death seconds later. Hearing the flurry of gunshots, Williams had rushed to help Hickok. When, with gun drawn, he abruptly appeared at the corner of Hickok’s vision, the marshal wheeled and fired each pistol. Both bullets hit their mark, and Williams was dead by the time he met the street.

  “If any of you want the rest of these pills, come and get them,” Hickok told the crowd, which began to back away. To the cowboys: “Now, every one of you mount your horses and ride for camp damn quick.”

  As they were complying, Hickok fully realized he had shot and killed Williams, not a Coe accomplice. At that moment, Wild Bill began to change inside. For much of his adult life, he had adhered to the philosophy that he’d killed only those worth killing, meaning Confederates and related enemies during the Civil War, people who intended to do him harm after the war, and Indians anytime. Coe, obviously, would have mercilessly gunned him down if he hadn’t reacted fast enough. But Mike Williams was a different matter. He was a good man, a good deputy, and a good friend, and he sure didn’t deserve killing. Certainly, not at Hickok’s hands.

  This was not an event that Hickok spoke or wrote letters to family back in Illinois about, so it can only be surmised what he was thinking. Wild Bill, probably for the first time, felt regret. He had reacted too quickly and with deadly force. Hickok, the most famous and feared lawman on the frontier, began to doubt himself.

  But the night’s events were not over. Hickok managed to disperse the cowboys and others in the crowd. Noting that Coe was still alive, he sent for a preacher to attend to him. He picked up Williams’s body and carried him into the saloon, laying him out on the largest poker table. Then, making sure he replaced the bullets in his pistols, and with a fully loaded shotgun, Hickok went back out into the cool autumn night.

  He went from one saloon to another, telling the Texans to get out of Abilene or die right there. Word spread faster than Wild Bill could walk, and the last saloons he visited were pretty much deserted. Every cowboy was cleared out. It would be several days before thirsty men left their camps and ventured back into town, hoping the hotheaded Hickok had cooled off.

  The day after the shootings, Hickok wired Williams’s mother in Kansas City with the tragic news and also sent money for her travel to Abilene. He purchased a fine casket, and after Mrs. Williams arrived, Hickok arranged for a service. He paid all the bills for mother and son to be sent back to Kansas City.

  When Ben Thompson got word of Coe’s death at the hands of the frontier’s most famous gunfighter, he realized chance had allowed him to escape the same fate. This changed him, too. Though he continued to have the reputation as a quick-on-the-draw gunman, Thompson mostly acted on the right side of the law. He encountered Wyatt Earp, who was then a young deputy, in Ellsworth, where Ben and his brother, Billy, accidentally killed a marshal. (Ben was not charged, and Billy was later acquitted.) Ben sort of redeemed himself by saving Bat Masterson’s life in a shoot-out in Mobeetie, Texas, and went on to live a reasonably lawful life as a gambler, killing just a couple of men in what were ruled self-defense actions, and he even spent some time as a peace officer in Austin. He was forty-one when he was killed in a gunfight in a vaudeville theater in San Antonio. Ben Thompson’s body was returned to Austin, and his grave can be found in the Oakwood Cemetery there.

  Hickok may have hoped that the killings of Coe and Williams would have been even more of a deterrent to would-be assassins. A few weeks later, that hope was dashed. Three men arrived in Abilene and let it be known their purpose was to kill Wild Bill. They claimed to have been hired by the mother of a man whom Hickok had killed—some accounts having her being Phil Coe’s mother in Texas—and the price on Hickok’s head was ten thousand dollars.

  When the marshal heard this, he had a decision to make. It was quite possible that in a shoot-out in the middle of the street, Hickok could have prevailed over all three. And issuing such a challenge to the trio would be smarter than risking an ambush. But he was the law, and it wouldn’t do right by Abilene to have its peace officer provoking a shoot-out. Innocent people could be killed, and when word spread of such a dramatic event, even more men with ambitions or dollar signs in their eyes might want to take a turn. Hickok said he was leaving town on the next train to Topeka.

  The three men had not come to Abilene to rid it of its marshal. They couldn’t have cared less about the city. They wanted to kill Hickok and collect the ten grand. If he got away, they got nothing, so when that train to Topeka left, they were on it. They sat in one of the coaches, waiting to make their move. They waited too long. Hickok and his sawed-off shotgun surprised them. He forced them between cars and, with the train going at a good clip, convinced them to jump. They never reappeared.

  Hickok had made the right move, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being a marked man, not just in the streets of Abilene but throughout the frontier. At just thirty-four, he was already beginning to feel tired of being a legend. There was no hiding out for such a man. Outlaws and assassins and bogus bounty hunters like the three men he had just outwitted would find him easily enough, especially if he stayed in Abilene. Maybe being a roaming plainsman again was a good idea … though no amount of travel would distance him from his sorrow over killing Mike Williams.

  Hickok may have sensed his lawman days were coming to a close only weeks before they actually ended. This coincided with the beginning of the end of Abilene as a thriving cow town. More of the city’s population, tired of the Texans and t
he havoc they caused, wanted Abilene to pursue other businesses. Farmers and their farmland took up more space than grazing lands. A group called the Farmers’ Protective Association objected to cattle tromping on agricultural tracts. The railroad had moved on, and towns farther west were closer destinations for the herds shuffling north from Texas. The city council considered a proposal to ban Texas cattle altogether. And there were objections to the high taxes caused by the law-enforcement budget.

  In Abilene, anyway, Hickok had become obsolete. On December 13, 1871, after only eight months in office, the marshal was let go. “Where Abilene’s star went into a decline, its Cowtown era a memory, Wild Bill’s was on the ascent,” comments Joseph Rosa. “Abilene did much for Hickok. His brief period as the city’s marshal had spread his legend down the trail to Texas and to other places. Come what may, his fame was now assured.”

  There was no need for Abilene lawmakers to hand Hickok a pink slip—he had already gone, on his way to the final act of Wild Bill’s life.

  ACT III

  An older Wild Bill, in 1875, the year before his fateful journey to Deadwood.

  (COURTESY OF THE KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY)

  A reputation always changed slower than a man.

  —PETE DEXTER, DEADWOOD

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS

  With the town fathers concluding that Abilene was safe enough that it did not need a marshal, Wild Bill Hickok was suddenly out of a job. With his experiences in Hays City and Abilene as well as being a frontier federal marshal, lawman had become his primary occupation. By the end of 1871, his fame was as much as a lawman as a gunfighter. With Wild Bill, the two occupations were intertwined. Smith may have been the more peace-loving peace officer by keeping his guns concealed and relying more on his fists, but Hickok was more the prototype for an effective sheriff or marshal—be the toughest and the quickest, and kill those who need killing.