Wild Bill

Tom Clavin, the author of Dodge City, turns his attention to James Butler Hickok, the frontier figure better known as Wild Bill. The book opens in July 1865, when Hickok killed Davis Tutt in a street showdown in Springfield, Missouri, an early quick-draw duel on the frontier. That encounter launched a reputation that turned him into a target for every gunman hoping to build a name in the American West.

Hickok's career covered many roles: Union spy, scout, soldier, lawman, gunfighter, gambler, showman, and actor. Clavin shows him crossing paths with General George Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Ben Thompson, along with a crowd of young men eager to challenge the fastest gun west of the Mississippi. The book also follows Hickok's romantic life, including several early infatuations and his eventual marriage to Agnes Lake, who ran a traveling circus.

Much of Wild Bill's fame grew from stories that often strayed from what happened. One well-known account describes a barroom fight in Nebraska where four men confronted him and three died. A widely read Harper's Magazine article gave him a far higher body count for a single day, and by the 1870s rumors put his lifetime total at around 100 killings. Clavin separates these tales from the documented record as he traces the legend's growth during Hickok's lifetime and after his death in 1876, when Jack McCall shot him in the back of the head during a card game. Hickok was later buried beside the frontierswoman Calamity Jane.