by David Fisher
Only weeks later, a drunken teamster named Sam Strawhun and about eighteen of his buddies began shooting up John Bittles Beer Saloon. Strawhun had been chased out of town several weeks earlier after attacking a member of the town’s Vigilance Committee, a group of citizens trying to bring order to Hays City. He’d come back with vengeance on his mind and was heard to promise, “I shall kill someone tonight, just for luck.” Hickok managed to get Strawhun and his men out into the street, then collected their beer mugs, which he brought back inside. Strawhun followed, looking for a fight; he threatened to tear up the place. “Do it,” Hickok was said to warn, “and they will carry you out.”
Martha Cannary, the fabled Calamity Jane, circa 1895
Strawhun went for his gun. Hickok was faster, drawing his Colts and putting two bullets into Strawhun’s head before he could pull the trigger. At the inquest, a jury determined that Hickok had been trying to restore peace and that his actions were justifiable. Although the local newspaper wrote, “Hays City under the guardian care of Wild Bill is quiet and doing well,” two killings in only a few months stirred the town, and in the next election Hickok was defeated by his own deputy, Peter Lanihan. Some questions about misconduct and irregularities were raised during the election.
After that, Wild Bill drifted in and out of Hays City, sometimes working with Lanihan to enforce the law. From all reports, Hickok enjoyed all the delights of the place and could often be found sitting back against the wall at a poker table in one of its many saloons. He was also known to enjoy the company of the dance-hall girls, although stories that he dallied there with Martha Jane Cannary, who gained her own fame as the sharpshooting Calamity Jane, probably aren’t true. The two legends crossed paths in Hays City, but there is no evidence they ever were involved romantically.
Hickok’s stay in Hays City ended abruptly in July 1870, when he was confronted by Jeremiah Lonergan and John Kyle, two privates from Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. Animosity between Hickok and the troopers from Fort Hays had been building for a long time. Some of the veterans still resented the fact that Hickok had been paid as much as five dollars a day as a scout during the war while they were doing tougher duty and earning substantially less. More recently, it seemed as if every time they rode into town to blow off some steam, Hickok was waiting there to restrain them. With Lonergan, though, it was personal. His military career had been marked by both desertions and courage, and at some point he’d lost a tussle to Hickok. Lonergan and Kyle reportedly had been drinking the night they decided it was high time to deal with Wild Bill. Witnesses say Hickok was leaning against Tommy Drum’s bar, quite probably having enjoyed several whiskeys himself. The saloon was filled with other troops from Custer’s command when the two soldiers came in. Lonergan apparently came up behind him and, without one word of warning, grabbed hold of his arms and slammed him down to the floor. The two men wrestled, and when the fight turned in Hickok’s favor, Kyle pulled his .44 Remington pistol, put the barrel into Hickok’s ear, and squeezed the trigger.
Longhorn cattle drive from Texas to Abilene, Kansas
The gun misfired.
Before Kyle could load a dry charge, Hickok managed to get one hand free, pulled out his Colt, and fired it, his first shot hitting Kyle in the wrist. Kyle’s gun clattered to the floor. Hickok fired again, this time striking Kyle in the stomach. As Kyle fell, mortally wounded, Wild Bill got off another shot, his bullet smashing into Lonergan’s knee; Lonergan screamed and rolled off Hickok. Wild Bill knew he had only seconds before other cavalrymen in the area heard about the fight and came to settle the score, so he scrambled to his feet and dived through the saloon’s glass window. He went back to his rented room to retrieve his Winchester rifle and at least one hundred rounds of ammunition. If a fight was coming, he was going to be ready for it. He walked up to Boot Hill, the cemetery and the highest point in the town, and took his position, waiting for them to come.
Fate had smiled on Wild Bill Hickok. This was the closest he had come to being killed in his career, and his life had been saved only because the black powder cartridges used by Kyle’s Remington were notorious for absorbing moisture, causing them to jam. Kyle was considerably less fortunate; he died in the post hospital the next day, joining the growing list of outlaws and troublemakers brought to final justice by Wild Bill Hickok. History records no legal hearings held about this matter, but clearly Wild Bill understood that Hays City was no longer a safe place for him.
Each of these tales was reported in the newspapers back east, where readers were riveted by the adventures of brave Americans taming the Wild West. The stories piled up as competing newspapers and the publishers of the popular dime novels fought for readers, and as a result Wild Bill Hickok became one of the best-known men in America. Some said he was even more famous than the president of the United States.
Hickok’s celebrity brought him to the attention of the town elders in Abilene, Kansas, known to be the rowdiest cow town in the West. Abilene had suddenly and unexpectedly found itself in need of a new marshal when Tom “Bear River” Smith was shot and nearly decapitated with an ax during a dispute with a local cattle rancher. For Hickok, Hays City was fine preparation for Abilene.
Abilene was the railhead at the end of the Chisholm Trail. Cowboys drove their herds all the way up from San Antonio, and from there the cattle were shipped back east. But it was a difficult place to pursue a civilized life. The citizens lived in fear each time a large herd arrived. The Texas cowboys, after months on the trail and with a payoff in their pockets, intended to have fun—and there were plenty of disreputable men and fancy women anxious to help them do it. Neither side was about to let the honest citizens stop them. So in April 1871, Abilene mayor Joseph G. McCoy offered Hickok a badge and $150 a month, plus 25 percent of the fines received from the people Hickok arrested.
Hickok began by offering some strong advice to potential troublemakers: “Leave town on the eastbound train, the westbound train, or go North in the morning”—“North” meaning Boot Hill, and no one doubted his words. Hickok and his three deputies began cleaning up the town by closing down the houses of ill repute and warning the saloon keepers against employing card sharks and con men. He stood up to the bullies and the drunkards and enforced ordinances against carrying guns in town. He employed all the legal powers given to him, and if at times he found it necessary to exceed those boundaries, nobody much objected—and it didn’t seem that anyone defied him twice. Mayor McCoy once said, “He was the squarest [most honest] man I ever saw.”
As always, Hickok backed down from no man. Among the gunslingers who came to town was the outlaw John Wesley Hardin. While working along the Chisholm Trail, he supposedly killed seven men, and then between one and three more in Abilene, before Hickok pinned on the badge. Hickok finally confronted the eighteen-year-old Hardin—although at that time the marshal had no knowledge that he was a wanted man—and ordered him to hand over his guns for the duration of his stay in town. Many years later, Hardin bragged in his autobiography that he’d offered them to Hickok butt-end first and then, as the marshal moved to take them, employed the “road agents spin,” in which he twirled the guns in his own hands, ready to fire them. That statement is tough to believe, as that’s an old trick and Hickok certainly would have known about it, and Hardin never made the claim until long after Hickok’s death. The more likely story is that he simply handed them over.
At some point much later, while trying to get some shut-eye in his apartment at the American House Hotel, Hardin became irate because his roommate’s loud snoring was making that impossible—so he fired several shots through the wall into the next room to get the man’s attention. Unfortunately, one of those bullets hit the man in the head, killing him instantly. When Hickok responded to reports of gunfire in town, Hardin climbed out a window and hid in a haystack, later writing, “I believed that if Wild Bill found me in a defenseless condition he would take no explanation, but would kill me to add to his reputation.” Instead of sta
nding up to the marshal, Hardin stole a horse and hightailed it out of town.
Hickok also found time to do some courting. Only a few months after he moved to Abilene, “the Hippo-Olympiad and Mammoth Circus,” starring the beautiful Agnes Thatcher Lake, came to town, and Hickok took up with the leading lady. Agnes Lake was a well-known dancer, tightrope walker, lion tamer, and horsewoman, who had toured Europe and even spoke several languages. Wild Bill was smitten but was convinced that she would eventually return to the East Coast.
Until that time, another gal, Jessie Hazell, the proprietor of a popular brothel, had held his attention. But the “Veritable Vixen,” as the successful businesswoman was known in Abilene, instead had returned the affection of another suitor, Phil Coe. Coe was a gambler who coowned the Bull’s Head Tavern with gunfighter Ben Thompson. Even before their romantic competition, Hickok and Coe had built a strong dislike for each other. Not only had Hickok’s rules been bad for Coe’s business, but the marshal had embarrassed Coe by personally taking a paintbrush and covering the Bull’s Head’s finest advertisement: a painting of a bull with a large erect penis that adorned the side of the building. In response, Coe reportedly promised that he was going to kill Hickok “before the frost,” claiming that he was such a sure shot that he could “kill a crow on the wing.”
The famous story goes that when Hickok heard that, he replied, “Did the crow have a pistol? Was he shooting back? I will be.”
This feud finally erupted into gunplay on the cool night of October 5. It is generally agreed that Coe, who might have been drunk, announced his intentions by firing several shots into the air, in violation of the law. Hearing the shots, Hickok told his close friend and deputy, Mike Williams, to stay put while he investigated. Wild Bill found Coe and a large number of his supporters waiting for him in front of the Alamo Saloon. Coe told the marshal he’d fired at a stray dog. Hickok responded by ordering Coe and his men to hand over their guns and get out of town.
This was the moment Coe had been waiting for. Hickok was alone on a dark street, completely surrounded by men who hated him and his laws. Coe fired twice; both shots missed. Hickok returned the fire and he did not miss. Both shots hit Coe in the stomach.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, Wild Bill saw another man with a revolver charging at him out of the shadows. He whirled and fired twice more. The man went down in the dirt. It was probably only seconds later that Hickok realized that he’d killed his deputy, Mike Williams, who had heard the four shots and come running to stand with him.
Hickok turned on the mob, reportedly warning, “Do any of you fellows want the rest of these bullets?” They saw the anguish and the anger on his face and drifted away. Williams’s body was carried into the Alamo and laid on a billiard table. It was said that Hickok wept.
After that night, he was a changed man. He’d spent his life killing men who had deserved it, but this was different. He had reacted too quickly and his friend had paid the ultimate price. There were so many things Wild Bill Hickok was good at, but finding a way to forgive himself was not among them. His anger had been unleashed; it seemed like he was out of control. Within months the town had turned on him; a newspaper editorial declared that “gallows and penitentiary are the places to tame such blood thirsty wretches as ‘Wild Bill.’” In December, Abilene relieved him of his duties, and Wild Bill Hickok rode out of town.
His prospects were limited. Because of his work, and that of others like him, the West had become considerably less wild. He’d worked his way out of a job. He returned to Springfield and set out to earn his keep gambling. Historians report that he drank too much and won too little. It was there that Buffalo Bill found him.
The one thing Hickok had left was his reputation. People would pay to see him—pay a lot. He had dipped his toe into show business earlier, partnering with Colonel Sidney Barnett of Niagara Falls, New York, to produce a show called The Daring Buffalo Chase of the Plains, but the buffalo did not like being roped and the show had failed. Meanwhile, the showbiz bug had bitten Buffalo Bill Cody, who was producing Scouts of the Plains; or, On the Trail, a precursor to his famous Wild West Show. He offered Hickok a fair salary to star in the show. Hickok had little choice but to accept the offer.
Legends (from left) Wild Bill Hickok, Texas Jack Omohundro, and Buffalo Bill Cody in an 1874 promotional photo for Cody’s show Scouts of the Plains
Hickok spent one winter performing in Cody’s show, and when he went back out west, Cody and Texas Jack Omohundro each gave him five hundred dollars and a pistol, urging him to “make good use of it among the Reds.”
Hickok apparently was terrible onstage. Worse, he knew it and was said to spend much of his time between performances presiding over a card game and a stream of liquor bottles. Legend has it that while the show was playing in New York City he walked into a poolroom to find a fair game. The players didn’t recognize him and began making fun of his long hair and western clothes. There was no one left standing when he walked out the door. Later he explained, “I got lost among the hostiles.”
Few doubt that Hickok could have spent the rest of his days trading on his fame, earning a living simply by showing up and telling his stories to awed crowds in the concert saloons and variety halls of the new entertainment called vaudeville. But that wasn’t right for him; he never quite embraced or fully accepted his celebrity. Perhaps that was due to his personality, which always chose action over words, or to his knowledge that so many of the tales written about him had been exaggerated or simply made up. He had accomplished a great deal, but no one could have done all the things with which he was credited.
Finally he could take it no more and left Cody’s show, going back out west where he belonged, eventually settling in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1876. His reasons for landing in Cheyenne aren’t known, but one may have been that Agnes Lake was staying there with friends. It was the first time they’d seen each other since Abilene, though they had continued to correspond through the years. They took up quickly, though, and were married within months. The local newspaper noted, “Wild Bill of western fame has conquered numerous Indians, outlaws, bears and buffalos, but a charming widow has stolen the magic wand … he has shuffled off the coil of bachelorhood.”
Hickok still needed to figure out how to earn a living. His once-legendary eyesight appeared to be diminished and his bankroll was thin. Two years earlier, an expedition led by General Custer had discovered gold in the Dakotas, setting off a gold rush. Shortly after his marriage, Hickok gathered a group of men and set out for the Black Hills. Although people generally believe that he was going there to prospect, there also is the possibility that he was hoping to be hired on as marshal of the boomtown of Deadwood, giving him a chance to relive the great days of his life and to tame one last town.
Deadwood was no different than all the other towns that sprang up to support gold strikes. Money came hard, and the law was whatever the toughest men in town decided it was. Hickok mined during the day and played cards at night, trying to win enough of a stake to bring Agnes out there. He wrote to his new wife often, promising her, “We will have a home yet, then we will be so happy.” But there were also signs that he sensed real danger around him, and in his last letter to her he promised, “Agnes darling, if such should be we never meet again, while firing my last shot, I will gently breathe the name of my wife, Agnes, and with wishes even for my enemies I will make the plunge and try to swim to the other shore.”
Some historians believe Hickok was resigned to his fate and had even predicted it, supposedly telling a friend, “I have a hunch that I am in my last camp and will never leave this gulch alive … something tells me my time is up. But where it is coming from I do not know.”
On August 2, 1876, Hickok strolled into Nutter and Mann’s Saloon, looking for a game of poker. Historians have speculated that he went to the saloon directly from a local opium den. Three men he knew were seated around a table, the only empty chair facing a wall. Hickok never sat with his bac
k to a door; he wanted to see trouble when it walked in. Sitting in the available seat made it impossible for him to watch the rear entrance. He twice asked the other players to change seats with him, but both requests were refused. That these men felt comfortable turning down the great Hickok is an indication of how far his stock had fallen. Only a few years earlier, almost everyone would gladly have given up his seat for an opportunity to play cards with the famous Wild Bill Hickok. Reluctantly Hickok sat down in that chair and put his chips on the table.
The night before, he had played poker with a former buffalo hunter and gambler, Jack McCall, known as Crooked Nose Jack; Hickok had cleaned him out, then offered him some money for breakfast. Some saw that as an insult. But McCall was back the next day, standing at the bar when Hickok walked into Nutter and Mann’s. If they acknowledged each other at all, no one ever spoke of it. Wild Bill’s game of five-card draw had been in progress for some time when McCall got up from his bar stool and walked past Hickok toward the back door—then stopped suddenly about three feet away from him and turned. Hickok had been winning and had just been dealt a pleasing hand—black aces and black eights. He had discarded his fifth card and was waiting for his next card—legend claims it was the jack of diamonds—when McCall suddenly pulled out his double-action Colt .45 six-shooter, shouted, “Damn you! Take that!” and fired one shot into the back of Hickok’s head at point-blank range. The bullet tore through his skull, emerging from his cheek and striking another player in the wrist. Wild Bill Hickok died instantly.
