Wild Bill

by Tom Clavin

  A recuperating Smith was appointed marshal of the Bear River settlement. The following year found him as marshal of a town named after Kit Carson in Colorado. What he had learned from his previous experience was that pistols provoked more violence than they prevented, so he no longer wore a gun, but the former pugilist did his policing with his fists.

  It is not known how Smith came to stop in at Abilene in 1870. He may have visited remaining family back in New York the previous fall and was moseying west when he heard of Abilene’s troubles and applied for the job of peace officer. Smith seemed to be a man who relished a challenge.

  That he was not immediately appointed marshal demonstrated the city’s dysfunction. Going from east to west, Smith had spent the winter in St. Louis, then in Kansas City. His aim was to continue west and discover more of what the Great American Desert was all about. But in Abilene, he walked inside Henry’s office and applied for the job. He then met with the board of trustees. They liked him a lot … which was a big reason why Smith was rejected. Mayor Henry explained that with the short life expectancy of Abilene marshals—which would be even shorter for one who didn’t carry a gun—they didn’t want him to get killed. Best he continue on his journey west and stay healthy.

  Smith replied he was on his way to visit friends in Ellis, and he could be reached there if the trustees changed their minds. It did not take them long to do so. The simple version of a convoluted tale is that optimistic lawmakers in Abilene had a jail erected. It was just a stone-walled single cell with two barred windows, but to the cowboys, it still was like waving a red towel in front of a bull. Soon after construction finished, cowboys gathered and tore it down. To further emphasize their displeasure, they distributed the stones all over town. After this happened again to a second jail, Mayor Henry sent a wire to Ellis.

  Smith returned, to a hefty salary of $150 a month plus bonuses for the convictions of men he had arrested for serious crimes. The citizens of Abilene found their new marshal to be a thirty-year-old, soft-spoken, slender man just under six feet tall, whose speech reflected the Ireland his parents had emigrated from. He had auburn hair, a thick mustache, and strong shoulders and hands from his recent years of labor and being a good boxer. Smith was a devout Catholic and did not curse or drink alcohol. And he still wouldn’t display a gun, though he agreed to keep one concealed under his coat. Some of those citizens wagered on how long Smith would last, with the shortest tenure getting the best odds.

  His first act was to repost signs the cowboys had taken down declaring no firearms were allowed within the Abilene city limits. Next, he climbed on one of his two gray horses and rode to the Texas Street section. Watching him go, Mayor Henry, Joseph McCoy, and others wondered if Smith would even last until sundown. But the new marshal had a new strategy—given that he had no staff, he would sort of deputize the saloonkeepers. He persuaded them, and hotel managers, to put up signs telling patrons to deposit their guns with the proprietors. Cowboys and other customers might still get drunk and rowdy, but gunplay would not be involved. Surprisingly, everyone agreed to the new system.

  However, it wasn’t long before it was challenged. J. B. Edwards, an Abilene resident until his death at 106,3 recorded in his diaries a confrontation that took place in 1870. A cowboy known as Big Hank, wearing two six-shooters and backed “by a gang of gun-swinging, smirking cronies,” accosted Smith on the street, with Big Hank boasting that no one could ever disarm him.

  “Look, mister,” Smith responded, “I am employed as marshal and shall try to maintain order and enforce the law. Be sensible about this and don’t make any trouble.” He added, “I must trouble you to hand me your gun.”

  “The hell you say,” Big Hank said. “No redheaded SOB wearing a tin badge is going to take my gun!”

  Seconds later, the big Texan was crumpled in the street. At first, he was unaware that he had been introduced to Smith’s pugilistic prowess. When he came to, he needed little persuasion to get on his horse and ride away. His “cronies” were allowed to stay, after they turned in their guns. The marshal explained his philosophy of policing to Mayor Henry: “Anyone can bring in a dead man, but to my way of thinking a good officer is one who brings them in alive.”

  The felling of Big Hank did not stop the challenges; in fact, it led to another within a couple of days. The “unfair” treatment the visitor to Abilene had received was discussed at the cowboy camps, and deciding to do something about it was a fellow known as Wyoming Frank. Wearing his guns for all to see, Frank paraded up and down the main street until Marshal Smith appeared and walked toward him.

  The intensity of Smith’s gaze had Frank stepping backward, but he did refuse the request to hand over his six-shooters. Smith kept backing him up until Frank felt the doors of a saloon behind him. A crowd gathered around, a few covering their ears as Frank used a few choice words to refuse another request. Smith punched him in the face twice, then took Frank’s guns and beat him over the head with them. After being told to leave town, with a return to Wyoming being a good option, Frank staggered to his feet, found his horse, and was woozily on his way.

  Awed by the dynamic display, the crowd was in stunned silence. Suddenly, the saloonkeeper emerged and said to Smith, “That was the nerviest act I ever saw. Here is my gun. I reckon I’ll not need it so long as you are marshal of this town.”

  According to Edwards’s diaries, Smith practiced this peacekeeping technique in other confrontations almost identical to the ones with Big Hank and Wyoming Frank. “Smith was the master,” the Abilene historian Henry Jameson declared. “He became popular with the merchants, gamblers, citizens, saloonkeepers, and even most of the cowboys. Now and then he had to clip a newcomer—once slugging a guy so hard it cut his tongue in half.”

  So how was it there was an opening for Wild Bill Hickok in Abilene? Marshal Smith did some moonlighting as a deputy U.S. marshal, and on November 2, 1870, he was asked by James McDonald, the sheriff of Dickinson County, to help serve a warrant on Andrew McConnell and Moses Miles. The Scottish farmers were not known for their hospitality, and McConnell’s record included being tried for murder, though being acquitted for self-defense. McDonald had once been Smith’s deputy, and he asked the Abilene marshal to go along on the job in his capacity as a federal officer.

  McConnell and Miles saw the two men riding their way, and instead of waiting to hear the charge (it was a minor one), they barricaded themselves in the dugout that was their residence. McDonald kept asking them to come out. Finally, an impatient Smith grabbed the warrant and busted the door open. McDonald followed him in, and soon there was a brawl involving all four men. The sheriff was not nearly the fighter Smith was, and at the first opportunity, he fled the dugout. Miles, now free, grabbed a rifle and shot Smith in the chest. This did not kill him, and he and McConnell continued to struggle. Miles exchanged the rifle for an ax and brought it down on Smith, nearly decapitating him. The two Scotsmen left the dead marshal where he was, and they took off even faster than McDonald had done.

  A posse eventually found McConnell and Miles. They were tried and convicted and sent to prison. Smith was buried in a small cemetery. In 1904, the grave was relocated and a large granite boulder was erected that proclaimed Tom Smith a “Fearless Hero of the Frontier Days.”4

  Abilene was not quick to replace its marshal. This probably had to do with the time of year. Smith died at the time when the cattle trade was winding down. With policing not a priority and business in general slow during the winter months when whiteout blizzards burst out of the Plains, the local government preferred to save the $150 a month. As spring of 1871 approached, though, saving salary was not as important.

  Given the grisly fate of his predecessor, why did Hickok take the job? Boredom was one reason. As dangerous as the Hays City position had been, it was also exciting. Gambling and dalliances with dancing girls were fine, but they weren’t occupations; they were interludes between more interesting and meaningful pursuits. They also did not provide a stea
dy income. Hickok calculated, correctly, that an overture from a troubled town like Abilene would be backed up by some good pay. Hence, he would again wear a peace officer’s badge, for the same salary as Smith received.

  One more reason: by the spring of 1871, Wild Bill had grown accustomed to being the most famous figure on the American frontier. True, being a target of ambitious or simply psychotic gunslingers came with that, but Hickok was used to this by now. He took the proper precautions, and no one had gunned him down yet. Taming a town that was becoming infamous for violence and debauchery would be a huge achievement for any lawman, but if he did it—and survived, unlike the unfortunate Tom Smith—the legend of Wild Bill would eclipse all others. Add a dash of ego: after Smith, the next marshal of Abilene had a lot to live up to, and only Wild Bill Hickok was the man for the job.

  That spring, Joseph McCoy was elected mayor to replace T. C. Henry. The sordid scenario that had played out in the city before Tom Smith arrived was still vivid in McCoy’s mind. “We were used to seeing men killed because someone disliked their looks, the color of their eyes, the cut of their clothes, or the refusal of a drink, or because they danced too much with one girl,” he wrote in Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade.

  So, on April 15, the new mayor swore Hickok in as the new marshal. In addition to his salary, Hickok would earn 25 percent of all fines collected. Before long, the pot was sweetened when the new top peace officer was paid an additional fifty cents for every stray dog deemed worthy of execution.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE STREETS OF ABILENE

  As the few existing photographs attest, Wild Bill Hickok’s appearance had changed little from the first descriptions of him. Henry Jameson, using J. B. Edwards’s diaries as a source, reported that Hickok’s appearance in Abilene was “striking and impressive. He stood six feet, one inch, weighed 175 pounds and his graceful, straight figure, brown, wavy hair down to his shoulders, piercing gray blue eyes, fair complexion, aquiline nose, flowing mustache and always expensive dress, made him a figure to attract attention.” His in-town attire of a Prince Albert coat, checked trousers, an embroidered waistcoat, and sometimes a cape lined with scarlet silk was topped off by a low-crowned, wide black hat.

  Citizens of Abilene immediately noticed that not only did Hickok openly wear guns, but did so in a peculiar way. The Colts were fitted in smooth open holsters that were not worn low or tied down on the thigh but were positioned around the waist with the butts leaning forward. This allowed Hickok to cross draw or use a reverse draw with either hand. This worked well when the gunfighter wore a coat, which Hickok routinely did. In a cross draw, the hand brushes the coat away during the movement of jerking the pistol out of the holster. Also causing comment was that from time to time when the marshal put on exhibitions, onlookers marveled at his accuracy with both hands.

  As marshal, Hickok returned to familiar habits. In a saloon or restaurant, his back was to the wall, and he sat or stood facing the door. When he slept, a pistol was within easy reach. Whenever he entered a building, one hand was on a gun. On the street, he used the same caution he had in Hays City. And he often had a shotgun to complement his Colt six-shooters, derringer, and bowie knife.

  A man named John Conkie was employed as the city jailer. Though this was certainly not a full-time occupation given the size of the calaboose in Abilene—it had been built a third time during Tom Smith’s tenure—Conkie did get to know the marshal. One of his recollections was spotting Hickok “sitting in a barber’s chair getting shaved, with his shotgun in hand and his eyes open.”

  Hickok found in Abilene a small but vibrant city surrounded by vast swaths of brown cattle. Stewart Verckler writes, “Wherever anyone looked, tremendous herds of longhorn dotted the spacious plains. Cattle covered every available acre of grazing land.” In what would turn out to be Abilene’s last year as a booming cow town before it gave way to Dodge City to the west and south, close to 121,000 head would be shipped out. One result: “The cowboys were wilder this year than they had ever been in the short history of Abilene.”

  The Texas Street area saloons stayed open all day and night and never lacked for business. They offered a steady diet of whiskey and beer and gambling and women, and a few saloons provided musical entertainment. Wisely, Hickok continued to enforce Smith’s ban on weapons within the city limits, so gunplay was rare. Hickok may not have been quite the boxer Smith was, but he was quick and strong, and most of the men who wound up in the small jail had the imprint of Hickok’s knuckles on their chins or gun barrel on the top of their heads. Unlike Smith, Hickok did not hesitate to display his ivory-handled Colts, and his demeanor clearly indicated he would use them at any sign of serious trouble. Abilene, for a time, was relatively peaceful, with the cowboy rowdiness kept at a manageable level.

  But there were those who continued to resist the rule of law—especially the Texans, who didn’t like the former Yankee scout who was now a marshal, anyway. One night in a saloon, several cowboys began a brawl. Hickok came in and finished it, tossing the bruised Texans out into the street. Back at their camp outside of town, the reports of the marshal’s rude behavior angered their fellow cowboys. They vowed to enter Abilene the next day, subdue and handcuff Hickok, and hang him from the tallest tree on the main street.

  The marshal was tipped off that about two dozen Texans were riding in, and it was easy to guess their intentions. The cowboys were surprised to encounter Hickok waiting for them in the middle of the street, outside the Last Chance Saloon—the same establishment several of them had been evicted from the night before. His usual array of weapons included a Winchester, the repeating rifle first manufactured and distributed five years earlier.

  Hickok aimed it at the men at the front and center of the group and said, “Hide out, you sons of bitches.”

  Clearly, the cowboys had the odds. Even if Hickok emptied the rifle and both his six-shooters, there were more Texans than bullets that would find their mark in a chaotic gun battle. But the apparently fearless marshal had an almost hypnotic effect on them. And it was also clear that the men who led the hanging party would be the first to taste lead. There was a minute of tense silence as Hickok’s cold-steel eyes gazed at the mounted men. Then, in twos and threes, they turned their horses and rode back out of Abilene to their camp. Time to return to Texas, where it was a lot safer.

  The mayor and city council may not have considered that hiring Hickok, a legendary man-killer, could attract other shootists looking to gain a reputation. Every so often, there was a rumor of such a gunman coming to town, but no one seriously challenged Wild Bill. According to Henry Jameson, “At least eight gunners from the south were known to have come to Abilene on a specific assignment to get him. To bump him off would have added to the prestige of any man who would get away with it. Bill knew most of the eight gunmen and would greet them cockily. ‘Sure am glad to see you, damn glad,’ he would say. ‘But hand me those guns.’ They lost their courage and did.”

  The lawmakers also may not have considered that the marshal would enforce the law on them, too. His job description included attending city council meetings. If Hickok had to waste his time being there discussing his budget and the conduct of his deputies—one of whom was Tom Carson, a nephew of his old hero Kit Carson—the council members had damn well better be there, too. One day when the meeting time came and there was not a quorum, Hickok set out to find the missing lawmaker, S. A. Burroughs. The marshal returned with Burroughs, who promptly left again rather than remain for an important vote. Hickok set off once more. With delight, the local press reported on the outcome—the strong-shouldered marshal carrying Burroughs out of his place of business and to the council chamber, his head bouncing off Hickok’s back and his feet flailing in protest.

  There were any number of saloons to choose from, but for Hickok, the Alamo was his headquarters. There was an official marshal’s office that Smith had inhabited, but Hickok stationed a deputy there. He preferred to be more in the thick o
f things to keep his eyes on cowboys where they were most likely to congregate. He could also do a little gambling and enjoy the occasional shot of whiskey.

  And the Alamo was the most elaborate of the city’s saloons, which suited the more civilized tastes Hickok had acquired by this time in his life when he was spending less of it as a plainsman. The Alamo had forty feet of frontage on Cedar Street and faced west. The west entrance had three double glass doors. On the south side was the long bar with polished brass rails and fixtures. There was another bar at the rear, and above it was a large mirror. On the walls were paintings that imitated Renaissance nudes. Almost all of the floor space was covered by gaming tables. The saloon had its own orchestra, which performed from the afternoon until well into the night. Marshal Hickok usually sat at one of the tables playing poker, facing the nearest door.

  More than a few residents objected—though only among themselves, certainly not to Hickok—about his use of the Alamo. It was not the appropriate place for the town’s top peace officer, and the marshal might be spending more time there than he should while his deputies did more of the patrolling. That summer, during the peak cattle drive months, they included James Gainsford, who had helped to track down Tom Smith’s killers; Brocky Jack Norton; and Mike Williams, in addition to Tom Carson. Hickok was probably aware of the gossip but didn’t care. Plus, he believed he had fine deputies, especially Williams, who had quickly become a good friend.

  No record was kept of the gunmen who visited Abilene with the notion of taking on Wild Bill Hickok, then thinking better of it and riding on. But on two occasions, the man who had become the most famous lawman on the frontier encountered young men who would go down as some of the most infamous outlaws of the American West.