Wild Bill Read online

  Hickok, though, seems to have sensed that the American West was passing him by. The two-gun lawing he had employed in Hays City and Abilene was being replaced by peace officers, with the emphasis on “peace.” The Old West that the Wild Bill Hickok legend had popularized was already receding into history. As Joseph Rosa put it, “It might be said that Wild Bill’s death was a destiny fulfilled, that McCall’s pistol was an instrument of fate. It might also be said, with truth, that Wild Bill had outlived his time and had to die.”

  Hickok had died with his era. And he had seen it coming.

  EPILOGUE

  “Poor Bill was afterwards killed at Deadwood, in the Black Hills, in a cowardly manner,” wrote Buffalo Bill Cody toward the end of his first memoir. “Thus ended the career of a life-long friend of mine who, in spite of his many faults, was a noble man, ever brave and generous hearted.”

  Though he traveled far and wide on the American frontier, meeting many people along the way, and many of those he met knew who he was, Wild Bill Hickok had very few good friends. Cody qualifies as one of them. From pre–Civil War days when Cody was still an adolescent to their last meeting in July 1876, Hickok and Cody genuinely liked and respected each other. With the exception of Hickok’s strong distaste for acting, when the paths of the two friends crossed, they enjoyed each other’s company and the adventures they shared on the frontier.

  In a way, they were connected after Hickok’s death, too. With him and Custer gone and lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson yet to become legends, Buffalo Bill became the most famous American West figure. Over time, he paid less attention to the frontier and more to cultivating a larger-than-life image—and making lots of money—on his touring Wild West shows. They became hugely popular, in both the United States and Europe. The first edition was the circus-like production titled Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, founded in North Platte, Nebraska, in 1883. A later incarnation featured Sitting Bull with a band of twenty (former) warriors. The plentiful profits allowed Bill and Louisa Cody to construct the Scout’s Rest Ranch, an eighteen-room mansion on a four-thousand-acre ranch outside North Platte.

  Restless again, Buffalo Bill founded Cody, Wyoming, in 1895 and opened the Hotel Irma there, named after his daughter. Between his productions and three autobiographies, for a time Cody was considered the most recognizable celebrity in the world. This did not stop him from some bad decisions or spare him some bad luck that almost broke him financially, but he survived to a ripe old age for the time. Buffalo Bill Cody was a month shy of his seventy-first birthday when he passed away in January 1917.

  For over a century, there has been an angry dispute about where his grave belongs. Louisa had him buried on top of Lookout Mountain, west of Denver, though Cody, Wyoming, lays claim to him and for decades threatened to steal the corpse and take it north. Such renewed threats in 1948 were taken so seriously that the Colorado National Guard was called out to surround the burial site. At present, Buffalo Bill and Louisa remain atop Lookout Mountain.

  Another very good friend was Colorado Charley Utter. He was in Deadwood in September 1879 when a fire destroyed much of the town, his possessions included. Some of the town was rebuilt; the rest, left where it was. By then, many miners had moved on, new bouts of gold fever taking them to Colorado, Idaho, and New Mexico. The following year, Utter left his wife and lived in Durango, Colorado, then Socorro, New Mexico, where he operated a saloon and fell in love with Minnie Fowler, a faro dealer.

  His wanderings were not over, however. By 1888, Utter was living in Panama in Central America. He was a doctor and pharmacist, practicing medicine among the local Indian population, which included delivering babies. The last reported sighting of him was at age seventy-two, blind and sitting in a rocking chair outside his pharmacy in Panama City.

  And there was California Joe Milner. Hickok was once reported to have said when reunited with him in Deadwood, “I have but two trusty friends: one is my six-shooter and the other is California Joe.” On the day of Hickok’s murder, California Joe was out hunting. When he returned to town, he immediately prepared to set off again, this time to hunt the killer. He was assured that Jack McCall was in custody, so like many others, he repaired to a saloon to toast the memory of Wild Bill.

  After the funeral, California Joe returned to his main occupation: guiding military and civilian outfits in and around the Black Hills and across the Plains. One day in late October, at Fort Robinson, he got into a scuffle with Tom Newcomb, who worked in the post’s butcher shop. Guns were drawn, but California Joe suggested they have a drink instead of fighting. Newcomb thought that was a good idea. However, later that afternoon, as California Joe stood talking to friends in the sutler’s store, Newcomb entered with a rifle and shot him in the back. California Joe died at age forty-seven. The killer was not charged with a crime, and after being released from custody at Fort Robinson, he disappeared.

  After her visit to Deadwood, Wild Bill’s only true wife, Agnes Lake Hickok, returned to the Midwest—shedding Texas George Carson along the way—and doted on her family. Sadly, the daughter Emma gave birth to in June 1878 lived only eleven days. Emma returned to performing, and Agnes cared for her surviving granddaughter, who was called Daisy. The following year, Emma was one of the featured equestrians in P. T. Barnum’s New and Greatest Show on Earth and was often billed as “America’s Side Saddle Queen.”

  Emma and Gil Robinson divorced in 1883, and she and her mother and daughter relocated to New Jersey. Four years later, Emma was performing with Annie Oakley in the traveling Buffalo Bill Cody production. When it traveled to London, she was accompanied by Agnes and Daisy. Billed as Emma Hickok, she was a big hit, and her performances included one for Queen Victoria. Back home, in 1893, Emma remarried Gil Robinson.

  Agnes’s remaining years were quiet ones. She lived with Emma, Gil, and Daisy. The latter married, and then Agnes became a great-grandmother when another Emma was born. The family was living in Somers Point, New Jersey, in 1907 when Agnes’s health began to fail. Like her first two husbands, she died in August, three days before she would have turned eighty-one.

  Obituaries of the once-famous circus impresario appeared in newspapers around the country. They referred to Agnes as either “Circus Queen” or “Wild Bill’s Widow.” After her body remained in a public vault for two months, it was transported to Cincinnati, where Agnes was buried next to her first husband, Bill Lake.

  It would be Calamity Jane who would spend eternity with Wild Bill Hickok. She remained in Deadwood after Hickok’s death. Calamity Jane was credited with nursing victims of a smallpox epidemic in the area in 1878. This was now home for her, even as the town’s prospects declined. She did eventually move on, though, living on a ranch in Montana, then heading south. In Texas, she met and married Clinton Burk (or Burke), and in 1887, she gave birth to a daughter named Jane, who was raised by foster parents after Calamity Jane returned to her wandering ways. These included a stay in Boulder, Colorado, and starring in Buffalo Bill’s productions and making other appearances to give sharpshooting exhibitions and tell tall tales, including the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901.

  While she was with the traveling Kohl & Middleton’s Dime Museum as a performer and storyteller, a booklet was created to sell to audiences. It purported to be Calamity Jane’s autobiography, though the author is given as Marthy Cannary. Much of the narrative is fiction, but the booklet served its purpose of connecting the audience with an authentic “legendary” figure of the Old West … and providing supporting “evidence” for the tales she told while wearing buckskin and brandishing a rifle.

  Calamity Jane’s love of whiskey became a severe addiction, to the point where she could not earn a living as a performer—or as anything else—anymore. In the spring of 1903, she was back in the Black Hills, making some money doing cooking and laundry in a brothel. That summer, while on a train to Terry, South Dakota, and drinking heavily, she collapsed. When the train arrived, she was carried to the Calloway Hotel. Th
ere she died, on August 1, of pneumonia and inflammation of the bowels.

  She was buried next to Wild Bill Hickok in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood. One account contends that this was Calamity Jane’s dying wish, carried out by the Society of Black Hills Pioneers. Another explanation is that several men who had planned the funeral thought that burying Calamity Jane there would be an amusing posthumous joke on Wild Bill. In any case, that day, as the hearse carried her body up to the cemetery, it was followed by those who had packed into the First Methodist Church for the funeral service, giving Calamity Jane a send-off she would have appreciated.

  A postscript to the Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane “romance” involves Jean Hickok McCormick, the daughter of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane—or so she claimed.

  She was born on September 25, 1873, in Montana, the result of an affair Calamity Jane had with Hickok while she was employed as an army scout. Calamity Jane gave the child up for adoption, and Jean was raised by a couple named O’Neil. At the age of sixty-eight, in 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare granted old-age assistance to Jean Hickok McCormick after being presented evidence that not only had Hickok and Calamity Jane had a liaison, but they’d been married at Benson’s Landing in Montana Territory (now Livingston, Montana) in September 1873. Several years later, Jean published a book that included letters written to her by her mother, Calamity Jane—somehow overlooking that Calamity Jane was illiterate. Jean died in February 1951 in Billings, Montana, still claiming to be the couple’s daughter.

  One more postscript: The tale of the romance claimed by Calamity Jane would have died a natural death as her memoir faded from memory. However, in 1936, sixty years after Wild Bill Hickok’s death, the film The Plainsman was released. The plot has President Abraham Lincoln, before leaving for Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, personally assigning Hickok on a mission to track down who was illegally selling guns to hostile Indians on the frontier. Arriving in Hays City, Hickok encounters the newly married and dandified Buffalo Bill Cody. He also finds Calamity Jane, who has been pining away for Wild Bill’s return to the frontier. All three become involved in the mission, and it is later, when he and Calamity Jane are facing a gruesome death at the hands of Painted Horse and his gun-toting savages, that Hickok reveals his true love for her.

  In the screenplay, facts are mixed in with embellishments and fabrications (even Jack McCall makes an appearance, eleven years before shooting Hickok), but audiences cared most about the combined talents of Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur and the director, Cecil B. DeMille. The Plainsman was boffo at the box office and is still considered a classic western epic, and over the decades, it has continued to impress on the public mind that the saga of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane was one of great love stories in American history … as has the fact, not the legend, that the two lie next to each other for eternity.

  A letter written by Jim Hickok to his mother, Polly, on September 28, 1856, describes his teenage adventures in Missouri and Kansas. (Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society)

  In Santa Fe, Kit Carson befriended Jim Hickok, who as a boy had read pulp stories about Carson’s adventures … only a few of them being true. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Titled “The Struggle for Life,” this illustration published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine offers a much-exaggerated depiction of Hickok taking on the McCanles “gang.” (Courtesy of the Nebraska State Historical Society)

  The abolitionist John Brown and his sons were responsible for the Pottawatomie Massacre during the “Bleeding Kansas” years. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  The fiery James H. Lane rose through the ranks of the Free State movement to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  William Quantrill was the most notorious of the leaders of guerilla groups who brutally murdered and plundered settlements in Kansas. (Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society)

  A raid by an army led by William Quantrill in 1863 killed close to 150 people and left Lawrence, Kansas, in ruins. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  “For Life or Death,” also published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, purportedly illustrates one of Hickok’s many daring escapes during the Civil War. (Courtesy of Nebraska State Historical Society)

  Another Harper’s New Monthly Magazine illustration shows the poker confrontation between Hickok and Davis Tutt that led to their gunfight in Independence, Missouri. (Courtesy of the Nebraska State Historical Society)

  Stanley met Livingstone several years after Henry Stanley met Wild Bill Hickok. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Both George and Elizabeth Custer were mightily impressed by the fine features of frontiersman Bill Hickok. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  During his Army scout days, Wild Bill (at left, in white hat) was a frequent visitor to Fort Harker, as shown in 1867. (Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society)

  An idealized portrait of Buffalo Bill in 1872. He and Wild Bill shared a long friendship and many adventures on the frontier and the stage. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  The stockyards built by the McCoy brothers in Abilene became a centerpiece of a town growing faster than law enforcement. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Drovers Cottage was not only a symbol of Abilene’s prosperity but a favorite meeting place for local and visiting businessmen. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Joseph McCoy and his two brothers brought prosperity to Abilene by making it the intersection of the railroad and cattle drives up from Texas. (Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society)

  John Wesley Hardin and Wild Bill worked out an uneasy truce during the young gunman’s short visit to Abilene. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Ben Thompson, shown here as a peace officer in Austin, ran afoul of Marshal Hickok in Abilene. (Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society)

  Agnes Lake Thatcher Hickok, the only woman Wild Bill married, was a circus pioneer and impresario. (Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society)

  California Joe Milner, one of Hickok’s best friends, shown here in the Black Hills in 1875. (Courtesy of the South Dakota State Historical Society)

  It is believed that this photograph of “five plainsmen” was taken in 1875 and includes, in addition to Hickok (second from left), Colorado Charley Utter, and Texas Jack Omohundro. (Courtesy of the South Dakota State Historical Society)

  Calamity Jane during the time she claimed to be serving as a scout for Gen. George Crook on his Indian-fighting expeditions. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  The rough-and-tumble Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876, when Wild Bill came to town. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  “The Trial of Jack McCall” became a popular production on the frontier, depicting the conviction of the cowardly assassin. (Courtesy of the South Dakota State Historical Society)

  Calamity Jane at Wild Bill Hickok’s grave in Deadwood in 1903, not long before she died and was buried next to him. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Acknowledgments

  As usual, I owe a large thank-you to the curators, librarians, archivists, and others whose diligent work, too often unsung, allows writers like me to have a career. Their passion for accuracy and thoroughness keeps us all honest. With Wild Bill, I am especially grateful to staffers at the Kansas State Historical Society (where the Hickok Family Collection can be found), and Nancy Sherbert in particular; the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming; the Kansas Heritage Center; the Abilene Preservation League; the Dickinson County Heritage Center; the South Dakota State Historical Society; the Nebraska State Historical Society; the Denver Public Library; the Library of Congress; the National Archives and Records Administration; and the Wilstach Collection, housed in the New York Public Library. Thanks also to the libraries and other repositories where the archives of newspapers can be found. Most are no longer publishing, but while they may be gone, they certainly are n
ot forgotten. Other researchers and curators who should be acknowledged are Patricia Andersen, Dell Darling, Laurie Langland, Martha Miller, Matthew Reitzel, Michael Runge, and Janice Scott. And I must recognize the expertise and courtesy of Virgil Dean of Lawrence, Kansas, who was kind enough to give the manuscript a good read and alert me to errors. Whatever mistakes still managed to slip through are totally my responsibility.

  Wild Bill would not exist without the initial suggestion and subsequent enthusiasm and support of Marc Resnick, my editor at St. Martin’s Press. Others there who have been wonderful to know and work with include Steve Cohen, Sally Richardson, Rebecca Lang, Tracey Guest, Danielle Prielipp, Hannah O’Grady, Sara Ensey, and Jaime Coyne. Another big reason why this book exists is the long-standing guidance and friendship of Scott Gould at RLR Associates.

  My dear friends continue to … well, tolerate me, and for that, I am very grateful. And my children, Kathryn Clavin Vun Kannon and Brendan Clavin, continue to be even more important to me than … well, anything else.