by Tom Clavin
Hickok appeared to consider this. It was fun to find a remuda of Indian ponies, chase off a couple of sentries, and steal the horses. They could be brought to the nearest fort and sold. But he shook his head. Hickok suspected his friend’s motives, and he was not leaving Deadwood because there might be danger. Plus, this was not a good time to go stirring up some Indians.
“Those fellows over across the creek have laid it out to kill me,” he told Utter, “and they’re going to do it or they ain’t. Anyway, I don’t stir out of here unless I’m carried out.”
According to several accounts, one day in Deadwood, Hickok was approached by six men who said they had business with the man expected to be marshal. Even in his best days, Wild Bill would have had a tough go of it in a shoot-out with six men, but now, with the shape his eyes were in …
He did not hesitate. In an instant, his Colt pistols were out of their holsters and aimed at the figures before him. “I understand that you cheap, would-be gunfighters from Montana have been making remarks about me,” Hickok said with a firm voice, his hands steady, fingers on the triggers. “I want you to understand unless they are stopped there will shortly be a number of cheap funerals in Deadwood. I have come to this town not to court notoriety but to live in peace and do not propose to stand for insults.”
The strategy worked—it dawned on the six men that not only did someone have the drop on them, but that someone was the legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok. The way he could shoot with both hands, he could kill all six of them and still have six bullets left. The Montana men moved on. After word of the confrontation spread through Deadwood, there were no more plots to kill Hickok.
But there was by now in Deadwood a man named Jack McCall.
Sometimes known as Crooked Nose Jack, McCall had been born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, twenty-four years earlier. As a teenager, he worked various jobs as he wended his way west, and in 1869, he was with a buffalo-hunting outfit on the Kansas-Nebraska border. McCall spent some time in Wyoming, and in Deadwood in 1876, he was going by the name of Bill Sutherland. Some people glanced twice at him on the street—not because of his short sandy-brown hair and spare mustache but for his crossed eyes.
In what is believed to be the last letter Hickok wrote—and certainly the last one to his wife—he expressed a very dim view of his immediate future: “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.”
Did Hickok indeed have a premonition? J. W. Buel, who as a young reporter had known Hickok, wrote years later, “The very few intimate friends Bill had were well acquainted with his peculiar belief in spiritualism. He claimed to be clairvoyant, especially when danger threatened, and the narrow escapes he had gave some evidence of the reality of his spiritual sight.”
So his actual sight was fading, but his “spiritual sight” was intact and may have become sharper. At the end of July, once again Hickok said to his friend, “Charley, I feel this is going to be my last camp, and I won’t leave it alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
DEAD MAN’S HAND
When August began, Wild Bill Hickok had not only forgotten prospecting in the Black Hills but had to recognize his path to riches did not lie in gambling, either. In the three weeks since he arrived in the Deadwood area, he had lost more money than he’d won. However, he kept returning to the familiar confines of Nuttall and Mann’s No. 10 saloon. There he was often surrounded by friends, and he felt less exposed to dangers he might not be able to see until it was too late. It was not just being prudent—for the first time in his life, Hickok felt fear, or something close to it.
The somber pronouncements he offered about his life ending soon indicated that fear. But by remaining stuck in a saloon, and especially losing money, he was breaking his promise to his wife. Agnes was no longer on the road with the circus; she was waiting faithfully, and with increasing trepidation, in Cincinnati to hear from her husband. Hickok was in a difficult position of being unable to move forward but too ashamed to go backward. Thus, he dithered in Deadwood, perhaps waiting for fate to intervene.
Joseph Rosa in The West of Wild Bill Hickok offers an interesting view, contending that the events in Deadwood were like the final moves in a chess match, and he echoes what Hickok had just written to Agnes: “That Hickok knew his enemies were determined to get him is no longer disputed, yet his coolness while awaiting their move was remarkable. His friends tried to persuade him to leave town for a while and join California Joe on a buffalo hunt. But he refused. To Wild Bill that would have been tantamount to admitting fear, or worse, cowardice.”
On the night of August 1, Hickok was in his usual spot, a chair against the wall, playing cards at the No. 10 saloon. One of the participants in the poker game was Jack McCall, who had been drinking steadily that evening. Hickok may have thought his luck was turning because there were enough winning hands to pretty much clean McCall out. Feeling bad for McCall, who seemed stupid but harmless, Hickok gave him money to buy breakfast and advised him not to play cards again until he could cover his losses. At first, McCall refused the handout, but Hickok insisted.
The following day, Wednesday, August 2, Hickok entered Nuttall and Mann’s No. 10 saloon at 3 P.M. dressed in his longtime favorite outfit, which included the Prince Albert frock coat, calfskin boots, and black sombrero. As usual, he had bathed, then had a noonish breakfast with Colorado Charley, and when he entered the saloon, he was easily the best-dressed and most presentable man in the place. He wore his gun belt the usual way, with the pistols up near his hips, handles out.
Hickok chatted with Harry Young at the bar and downed a shot of whiskey. He saw a poker game already in progress that included Carl Mann, Charles Rich (only seventeen years old), and Captain William Massie. The latter was a forty-five-year-old former captain of steamboats that plied the Missouri River who had contracted gold fever, then discovered he preferred poker to prospecting. Rich was in the seat against the wall. Usually, Hickok did not even have to ask, the man in the wall chair would immediately give it up, but in this instance, Rich did not. Reluctantly, Hickok sat in a chair on one side of the poker table. At least it gave him an unobstructed view of the saloon’s front door, and he was aware that a few steps behind him there was a rear exit.
The game continued for close to an hour. None of the men apparently had any other pressing business, and playing poker in the cool and dark confines of the saloon was as good a way as any to pass the sultry summer afternoon. The only sour note was that several times Hickok asked the teenager Rich to exchange seats with him, and the latter refused—he was either being unnecessarily obstinate or was having a run of good luck and did not want to change a thing. Mann and Massie, who was opposite Hickok at the table, noticed the plainsman’s unease, but they did not have the coveted chair against the wall to offer. It didn’t help Hickok’s mood that the cards were going against him.
Lady Luck continued to defy him. Hickok called to Young for a loan of fifty dollars, as he was almost cleaned out. The bartender brought that amount in chips over to the table. Referring to Massie, Hickok remarked, “The old duffer broke me on the last hand.” Those would turn out to be Wild Bill Hickok’s last words.
Jack McCall entered the No. 10 saloon. For his purpose, it paid to be a somewhat small and nondescript man, and little notice was taken of him. He stood at the bar and over time worked his way along it, toward the poker table with Hickok and his companions. If Hickok had spotted him entering the front door, he dismissed McCall … or that is one explanation. Surely, he would have recognized McCall from only the night before and regarded him for a few moments, still viewing him as stupid and harmless. However, it is possible that Hickok did not see him well enough to recognize him.
In any case, McCall loitered at the bar. There were no sudden movements, as the man did nothing to attract attention. For once, it
seems, the sixth sense Hickok had always had about danger was not working that afternoon.
Quietly and unobtrusively, McCall eased himself behind Hickok. Rich dealt cards to the three other men. Hickok held in his hands a pair of aces, a pair of eights, and a queen. At about 4:10, McCall stepped forward and placed the muzzle of a .45-caliber revolver against the back of Hickok’s head and pulled the trigger. There was the sudden loud sound of a shot, and McCall cried out, “Damn you, take that!” Hickok jerked forward. He was motionless for a few moments, then fell sideways out of the chair.
Massie was startled by the sudden commotion and confused by a numbness he felt in his left arm. Such was Hickok’s reputation that at first Massie thought that the gunfighter, angry at losing money to him, had shot him. But as soon as Hickok fell to the floor, Massie saw McCall and his smoking gun standing there. He would soon learn that the bullet fired into Hickok’s skull had exited below his right cheekbone and then became lodged in Massie’s wrist.1
McCall waved his pistol at others in the saloon and shouted, “Come on, you sons of bitches!” There was an abrupt rush for the front door. McCall, after attempting to fire the gun at Harry Young, tossed it aside and ran out the exit door. A saddled horse was there, but McCall fell off it because the saddle had been loosened. He resumed running. He paused to try to hide in a butcher shop. McCall could hear out on the street one, two, then many voices yelling, “Wild Bill has been shot!” and “Wild Bill is dead!”
There was, alas, no doubt about that. Hearing the shouts, Colorado Charley rushed to the No. 10 saloon, where he met Ellis Peirce, a Deadwood barber, who determined that Hickok had “bled out quickly.” Doc Peirce was the closest the town had to a coroner.2 Hickok had died immediately … and he never saw it coming. In one hand were the cards he had been dealt, to be forever known as a Dead Man’s Hand. It was also found that of the six bullets in McCall’s pistol, five were defective, meaning the only “good” bullet in the gun was the one shot into Hickok’s head.
Obviously, McCall had not planned an escape because he left his hiding spot and simply ran down the main street, kicking up dust as he went like a frightened rabbit. Harry Young, after recovering from the initial shock of seeing Hickok shot, was giving chase, and by ones and twos, others on the street joined in. Most people, however, fled, seeking shelter. It was being shouted along the street that it was Wild Bill Hickok who was doing the shooting, taking revenge on Deadwood for his bad luck at cards.
McCall was apprehended before he got too much farther. The August 5 edition of The Deadwood Pioneer-Times would report matter-of-factly, “The murderer Jack McCall was captured after a chase by many citizens and a guard placed over him.”
Never one to miss an opportunity, and especially now that her “lover” was dead, Calamity Jane offered that when she heard about the killing, “I at once started to look for the assassin and found him at Shurdy’s butcher shop and grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up his hands.”
The actual whereabouts of Calamity Jane that afternoon are unknown, but she definitely was not in Nuttall and Mann’s No. 10 saloon, before or after Hickok’s murder. Thus, also untrue is her tale of sorrowfully cradling his body.
Now that the mob had McCall, the question was what to do with him. This was debated at a public meeting held the next day, Thursday, August 3, at the Bella Union Theater. A few voices suggested that they lynch the killer and be done with it. Deadwood did not have a jail nor a court, certainly no sitting judge, so lynching was at least an expedient solution. But the one settled upon was to convene a miner’s court, which had become a standard practice on the far reaches of the frontier when there was no practical legal alternative.
At first blush, the murder of Wild Bill Hickok looked like an easy prosecution. There were several witnesses who testified to McCall’s shooting the victim.3 And since McCall had crept up from behind and shot Hickok in the back of the head, any claim of self-defense would be ludicrous. McCall may have been disgruntled about Hickok wiping him out during a poker game and then lecturing him about it, but that did not justify cold-blooded murder.
When the trial began, McCall’s defense was that he had shot Hickok as revenge for killing his brother back in Abilene and that if he could, he’d shoot him again. This explanation was completely untrue—Hickok had killed no one related to McCall in Abilene, plus McCall had three sisters and no brother. However, the ad hoc jury had no way of knowing this. Avenging a family member was an acceptable motive for shooting someone, but it was still a surprise when two hours after the trial concluded, the jury returned a not guilty verdict. The Black Hills Pioneer commented, “Should it ever be our misfortune to kill a man, we would simply ask that our trial take place in some of the mining camps in these hills.”
The New North-West publication in Montana intoned about the murder and acquittal, “Numerous other crimes of a like nature have been committed. All go unpunished, leaving us in a state of chaos.”
Whatever the actual reason for McCall’s act, the result was the same. Colorado Charley, with some assistance from Doc Peirce, took charge of the funeral arrangements. In a notice in The Black Hills Pioneer, he announced the funeral would also be that Thursday, at the Whitewater Springs camp. Those who wished to could visit Wild Bill lying in repose before the burial.
For several hours, miners and shopkeepers and saloon girls and others filed past the coffin to pay their respects. Peirce clipped a lock of Hickok’s hair and gave it to Colorado Charley, who in turn gave it to the reporter Leander Richardson. He would keep it for thirty-one years; then it was presented to Agnes.4
Even in death, Wild Bill’s appearance impressed others. A reporter for The Chicago Inter Ocean wrote, “His long chestnut hair, evenly parted over his marble brow, hung in waving ringlets over the broad shoulders; his face was cleanly shaved excepting the drooping mustache, which shaded a mouth which in death almost seemed to smile.” He couldn’t help but add that Hickok’s heart, now stilled, “had beat with regular pulsation amid the most startling scenes of blood and violence.”
Wisely wasting no time, Jack McCall left Deadwood. But the law was not finished with him. McCall lit out for Wyoming and probably thought he was safe there. As word spread that he was the man who had killed Wild Bill Hickok, many who encountered him must have been shocked. This was the man who had gunned down a legend? And gotten away with it?
He did not wind up getting away with it. Thanks to the badgering of Colorado Charley, Wyoming authorities determined that McCall’s trial was not legal because Deadwood was in Indian Territory, not in a state or territory officially part of the United States. An arrest warrant was issued, and on August 29, McCall was apprehended by a deputy U.S. marshal in Laramie. His second, and legal, trial would take place in Yankton, South Dakota.
The jury at that trial, which began on December 4 of that same year, was not as gullible. Looking on during the proceedings was Lorenzo Hickok, who had traveled from Troy Grove in Illinois to represent the grieving Polly and the rest of the family. There was some satisfaction this time when McCall was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
The sentence was carried out on March 1, 1877. That morning, McCall was marched up the stairs of the hanging platform, where a priest awaited. The two kneeled and prayed. Then McCall’s arms and legs were tied. A black hood was pulled down over his head. McCall, now standing, was granted one more prayer. After the noose was placed around his neck, McCall’s last words were, “Draw it tighter, Marshal.” The trap was sprung, and McCall became the first man to be legally executed in Dakota Territory.
The killer was interred in a Catholic cemetery in Yankton. Fourteen years later, when the cemetery was being moved to make room for an insane asylum, McCall’s body was exhumed. The noose was still around his neck. He was reburied, but the location remains unknown.
Wild Bill Hickok was buried in the Deadwood cemetery on Friday. Colorado Charley had a marker created that read: “Wild Bill, J.B. Hickok killed by the assassin
Jack McCall in Deadwood, Black Hills, August 2d, 1876. Pard, we will meet again in the happy hunting ground to part no more. Good bye, Colorado Charlie, C.H. Utter.”
The two did meet again, in a way, and not in a happy hunting ground. In 1879, Utter traveled from Colorado to Deadwood to supervise the relocation of Hickok’s body to its present location, in the Mount Moriah Cemetery. Because of previous problems with vandals and souvenir hunters, the grave is surrounded by a cast-iron fence, with a U.S. flag flying nearby.
Agnes Lake Hickok may not have known about her husband’s death until an article on the killing in Deadwood appeared in a Cincinnati newspaper. Perhaps it struck her that both of her husbands had been murdered by guns fired at point-blank range and in the month of August.
She could not leave home to go to Deadwood because her daughter Emma was about to give birth. On August 15, she became a grandmother when Agnes Emma Robinson was born. Both her grief and her desire to visit Hickok’s grave were strong; however, Emma had a slow recovery, the baby was especially fussy, and Gil Robinson was traveling with his circus. In November, Agnes wrote a letter to the Hickok family that informed, “I can see him day and night before me. The longer he is dead, the worse I feel.”
It would not be until September 1877 that Agnes made the journey to Deadwood. She was accompanied by two western acquaintances, Buckskin Charley Dalton and Texas George Carson. She sat at her husband’s grave for several hours, then made arrangements for a headstone before departing Deadwood. She went to Cheyenne, where on the twenty-seventh, the fifty-one-year-old Agnes married the twenty-eight-year-old Carson.
It may seem no more than an odd coincidence that within six weeks of each other in 1876, and with the nation’s centennial in between, the American West had lost its two most famous and legendary figures in George Armstrong Custer and Wild Bill Hickok, and both still only in their thirties. With the former, a rousing victory at Little Bighorn could have catapulted him to the White House that fall, or possibly no later than 1880, when James Garfield, another young Civil War general, was elected. At the least, if Custer had escaped death, chances are his popularity would only have increased.