Wild Bill Hickok, was the most notorious gunfighter to emerge from the Wild West. His reputation and fame as a ruthless killer spread far beyond the shores of the United States. He acquired the soubriquet Wild Bill not for his antics, but for an extravagantly flat upper-lip that had earlier in life caused him to be called Duck Bill. He was later to hide this physical peculiarity by growing an equally extravagant moustache, hence the nickname Wild. Yet for all his fame as a killer he actually started life on the side of the angels.

He was born James Butler Hickok, on 27 May, 1837, in Homer, Illinois, he came from a respectable stable family background and was in no respects a troublesome child. His father was an active anti-slaver and the family farm was a stopover on the underground railway (the route used by abolitionists to spirit runaway slaves to freedom in the North). it has been suggested that Wild Bill learned his skill as a marksmen protecting his father from slave hunters.

It wasn’t until 1855, when he was aged 18, that Wild Bill first found himself in trouble, and it was an incident that was to change his life. During an argument that quickly escalated into a furious fist fight, Wild Bill knocked his opponent unconscious. Fearing that he had killed him, Bill took what he thought was the lifeless body and threw it into the canal. He then mounted his horse and fled to Kansas where he joined the vigilante Free State (anti-slavery) Army. He fought with distinction in the bitter struggle against pro-slavery men that was to earn the State the name Bleeding Kansas. Indeed, so admired was he for his work with the vigilantes that he was elected Constable in the town of Monticello, and it was here in a dispute over an unpaid debt that he shot dead one David McCanless and his son. They were to be his first recorded victims.

In the Civil War of 1861-65 he served as a scout in the Union Army in the fratricidal war that tore apart the Border States of Kansas and Missouri. Serving alongside him was another scout, Buffalo Bill Cody, and they were to become lifelong friends.

Following the conclusion of the war Wild Bill moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he was to meet another lifelong friend and sometime lover, the 17 year old Martha Jane Canary, Calamity Jane. On 21 July, 1865, he got into an argument with an ex-Confederate soldier Davis Tutt, whom he had earlier befriended. In truth Hickok had been leeching off Tutt for sometime and did by this time owe him a great deal of money, now Tutt wanted his money back. The argument over his unpaid debt soon spilled out onto the street and in the first ever recorded gunfight, Hickok drew first and shot Tutt dead. He was arrested and charged with murder but the Jury acquitted him in what they deemed a fair fight.

Even so, Hickok thought it wise to leave Springfield and in what was becoming an increasingly itinerant lifestyle moved on to Dakota, where for a time he served as a scout in Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Unable to settle to any degree in Dakota he moved back to Hays, Kansas, but his stay there was to be brief when he killed two men in separate gunfights. After spending the Winter buffalo hunting in July, 1870, he got into an argument with some soldiers. In the ensuing fight he beat one to death and seriously injured several others.

By now, Wild Bill Hickok was at the height of his fame. His name was rarely out of the newspapers and dime novels telling of his antics sold by the thousands. In interviews he told of killing hundreds of men, in photographs he posed in buckskin with six guns tucked into his belt and an unsheathed Bowie knife. 

On 5 April, 1871, he was appointed Marshal of Abilene where he was, temporarily at least, befriended by the braggart and pyschotic killer, John Wesley Hardin. Despite their apparent friendship the likelihood of a showdown between the ex-Union man and the Confederate sympathiser was always high. When Hardin shot dead a man for snoring, he decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and fled rather than confront his hero.

During his time in Abilene, Hickok fell out badly with Saloon Bar owner, Bill Coe, and to say they were antagonistic toward one another would be an understatement. One day, boasting of his own prowess with a pistol, Coe remarked to Hickok, ” I can kill a crow on a wing.” To which Hickok famously replied, ” Did the crow have a pistol? Was he shooting back? I will be.” It was only a matter of time before there was a confrontation. Not long after these words were exchanged Coe opened fire on Hickok in a crowded street and a confused gunfight quickly ensued.  Coe fired several times at Hickok but missed; Wild Bill did not miss and shot Coe dead. In the process though he had also shot dead his friend and Deputy Marshal Mike Williams, who had rushed to the scene to assist him. It was the only thing he ever admitted to regretting.

Although the killing of Williams was an accident, Hickok felt obliged to move away from Abilene. Having no particular destination in mind he wandered aimlessly around the West from one town to another playing poker to make ends meet. On his travels, however, he met and married a 50 year old circus entertainer, Agnes Lake Thatcher. Even though, it was widely rumoured that he was already married to Calamity Jane, and that she had borne him a child. But it would appear that Bill was genuinely in love with Agnes for not long before his death he wrote her, ” If it should be that we never meet again, while firing my last shot, I will gently breathe your name.” It would indeed be that they would never meet again.

On 2 August, 1876, Wild Bill Hickok was playing poker in a saloon in the town of Deadwood situated deep in the Black Hills of Dakota.  He would always sit in the corner of a saloon with his back up against a wall so his rear was protected and he could see who was entering and leaving. On this day, however, with no such seats available he took a place by the door. It was to be a fatal mistake. For a reason no one has been able to adequately ascertain, a fellow gambler, Jack McCall, walked up behind Wild Bill and without any preamble shot him in the back of the head. At his subsequent trial McCall was aquitted of murder, it being assumed that such a notorious gunfighter as Wild Bill Hickok must have brought such dire retribution upon himself. But this wasn’t good enough for McCall who wanted the fame and notoriety that came with the deed. He boasted of his deed, loudly and regularly to anyone who was willing to listen. Such a great play did he make of it that it led to his arrest and re-trial. This time he wasn’t to be so fortunate and he was found guilty of murder and hanged. It was said that even as he stood upon the scaffold he was still boasting of what he had done.

By the time of his demise Wild Bill’s life had already taken a turn for the worse. His eyesight was failing, his reactions had slowed, and his judgement increasingly flawed. He was too often drunk and had been arrested numerous times for vagrancy. That once fine physique had become dessicated and frail, and he may have been suffering from liver failure. No longer wanted as a Town Marshal money was short and he was constantly in debt. Gambling was his only means of making a living. On the night of his murder he had been holding in his hands two Aces, two Eights, and an unturned Queen lay upon the table. It was a winning combination, and has been known ever since, as Dead Man’s Hand.