by David Fisher
McCall reportedly pulled the trigger several more times, but his gun failed to fire. It was later determined that all six chambers were loaded, but only one bullet fired—the shot that killed Hickok. McCall raced outside and jumped on his horse, but his cinch was loose and the saddle slipped. He ran into a butcher’s shop, where he was quickly captured by the sheriff.
A satisfactory explanation for the assassination has never been found. McCall might have been avenging the “insult” from the previous night. But during his trial, he claimed that Hickok had killed his brother and he was avenging that shooting, although there is no evidence that he even had a brother. There were rumors that he had been paid to assassinate Hickok, and there is always the possibility that he simply wanted to kill the famous Wild Bill.
A trial was held in Deadwood the next day, and McCall, claiming he was entitled to avenge his brother’s death, was acquitted. The local newspaper derided the verdict, suggesting, “Should it ever be our misfortune to kill a man … we would simply ask that our trial may take place in some of the mining camps of these hills.”
McCall left town. When he reached Yankton, capital of the Dakota Territory, he was arrested once again. His acquittal in the first trial was set aside because Deadwood was not yet a legally recognized town. McCall was tried a second time—and during this trial it was suggested that he had been hired to commit the killing by gamblers who feared that Hickok, “a champion of law and order,” was about to be appointed town marshal. This time the jury convicted McCall, and he was sentenced to death. He was hanged on March 1, 1877.
The cards Wild Bill Hickok were holding when he was shot, black aces and eights, have been forever immortalized in poker lore as the famed “dead man’s hand.”
Since Hickok’s death almost one hundred fifty years ago, a question has remained unanswered: Why did he agree to take a seat with his back to a door? No one will ever know for sure, but since that fateful day, many have wondered if Hickok was simply tired of life. In many ways, he had become a captive of his fame: Although he no longer was capable of living up to it, the great expectations remained. Wild Bill might well have moved to Deadwood, a wild place where reputations didn’t hold much water and where what mattered was only what happened yesterday, to escape his own legend. But on that fateful August day in 1876, it finally caught up with him.
During the assassin Jack McCall’s first trial, Hickok was described as a “shootist,” who “was quick in using the pistol and never missed his man, and had killed quite a number of persons in different parts of the country.”
At his death, he was credited with thirty-six righteous shootings. And his friend Captain Jack Crawford, who had scouted the trails of the Old West with him, probably described him best when he recalled, “He was loyal in his friendship, generous to a fault, and invariably espoused the cause of the weaker against the stronger one in a quarrel.”
UP AND DOWN TOWNS
As tens of thousands of settlers raced to find their fortunes in the West, countless boomtowns suddenly burst out of the sagebrush. Many of these towns, which usually were dirty, poorly built, and often lawless, existed for only a brief time, until the mines gave out, the cattle drives ended, or the railroad crews set down somewhere else; then they quickly became ghost towns. But whether a town struggled on or ceased to exist, the events that took place there—and their subsequent appearance in numerous movies and TV shows—made the names Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone legendary.
Dodge City, Kansas, came into existence in 1871, when a rancher settled there to run his operation. Originally named Buffalo City, until someone discovered there already was a place by that name, it was perfectly located just a whisker west of Fort Dodge and near the Santa Fe Trail and Arkansas River. It boomed a year later, with the coming of the Santa Fe railroad and the opening of the first saloon. The railhead allowed cowboys to ship buffalo hides and, within a few years, longhorn cattle driven up on the Chisholm Trail from Texas to points north and east. Then they would stay awhile to brush off the trail dust and spend their earnings. “The streets of Dodge were lined with wagons,” wrote one city elder. “I have been to several mining camps where rich strikes had been made, but I never saw any town to equal Dodge.” “The Queen of the Cow Towns,” as it was called, offered a wide choice of saloons—including the famous Long Branch—gambling dens, brothels, and even, for a brief period, a bullring. The hardest men in the West—cowboys off the trail, buffalo hunters, bull whackers, and muleteers—would ride in rich, ready for a good time, and ride out a few days later poor but happy. For a time, Dodge really was as wild as its legend. It welcomed more gunslingers than any other city, and several of the great lawmen tried to calm it down, among them Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman. But it was actually the Kansas state legislature that caused Dodge’s demise, when it extended an existing cattle quarantine across the state in 1886 and shut down the end of the trail. With that, the fast money disappeared, and most of the population realized it was time to “get out of Dodge.”
Dodge City’s Long Branch Saloon, which was built in 1874 and burned down in 1885, probably is best remembered as Miss Kitty’s place, where Marshal Matt Dillon would “set a spell” in the TV series Gunsmoke. The saloon was the center of entertainment in western towns. In addition to serving “firewater,” it might feature professional gamblers playing faro, Brag, three-card monte, poker, and dice games, or dancing, billiards, or even bowling. Many of them never closed, and a few didn’t even have a front door.
Deadwood, South Dakota, sprang up almost overnight after gold was discovered, first by General Custer in the Black Hills, then quickly by a miner in Deadwood Gulch in 1875. Because by treaty this was Indian land, the army tried to keep out the prospectors, so it took tough men to settle it. Fortunes were made, mostly by the saloon keepers, gamblers, opium dealers, and ladies of the evening, who had followed the gold diggers. Its reputation as a lawless town was sealed when Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back of the head there in 1876, and for a while, Deadwood averaged one murder per day. Hickok and Calamity Jane had ridden in together as guards escorting a wagon train bringing prostitutes and gamblers from Cheyenne, and both of them were buried on Deadwood’s Boot Hill. Only three years later, in 1879, a massive fire destroyed almost three hundred buildings; by that time, new gold claims were pretty much played out, people were ready to move on to the next boomtown, and Deadwood settled down.
Miners pulled the modern-day equivalent of almost $1.5 billion in silver from the mines near Tombstone, Arizona, between 1877 and 1890, and within a few years, its population exploded, from about one hundred to fourteen thousand. It got its name because its founder, Ed Schieffelin, had been warned that the Apaches didn’t cotton much to prospectors and that the only thing he’d find in the hills there was his own tombstone. For several years, there were few more dangerous towns on the frontier; “the town too tough to die,” as it was known, was close enough to the Mexican border for rustlers to use as their base of operations. Eventually there were more saloons, gambling houses, and brothels there than in any town in the Southwest. When the Cowboys gang met the Earp brothers at the O.K. Corral, Tombstone’s place in history, and in the movies, was ensured.
After being founded in 1879 when silver was discovered nearby, in less than seven years, the town of Tombstone grew from one hundred people to fourteen thousand. An 1886 fire destroyed the expensive pumping plant, and the population dwindled to a few hundred, turning it into a ghost town. It exists today as a tourist destination, the once-wild city where the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place.
Numerous other violent boomtowns eventually became ghost towns. Canyon Diablo, Arizona, for example, was created when railroad workers had to wait for a bridge to be built, and within months fourteen saloons and ten gambling houses faced one another on Hell Street. The first sheriff was dead five hours after he pinned on his badge, and none of the five men who followed lived more than a month. When the bridge was finall
y completed ten years later, most people got on the train and left.
Gold was discovered in Bodie, California, in the Sierra Nevada in 1859, and before the vein dried up a decade later, the population had grown to ten thousand people. There is a long list of towns that boomed briefly, from Fort Griffin, Texas, to Leadville, Colorado (originally known as Slabville). However, throughout the country, it was believed that “the roughest, toughest town west of Chicago” was Palisades, Nevada, which had more than a thousand showdowns, bank robberies, and Indian raids in about three years in the mid-1870s. Although no one is quite sure how it began, each day as the railroad arrived, townspeople would stage a fake showdown or holdup and getaway for the benefit of the “dudes” from back east. Apparently this was done for entertainment rather than profit, as no money changed hands. The terrified passengers, who were never let in on the joke, would tell stories of their encounters with outlaws to newspapers back home. The stories were printed or otherwise passed along, allowing Palisades to gain its notorious reputation.
BASS REEVES
The Real Lone Ranger
On Monday night, January 30, 1933, racing to the unmistakable beats of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, a new hero rode into American cultural history.
American families struggling through the Great Depression gathered around the radio every night for a few hours of escape and entertainment. On that winter’s night, they were introduced to a remarkable character who would take Americans with him on his adventures into the next century. In a mellifluous voice resonating with awe, the announcer introduced the Superman of the Old West:
A fiery horse, with a speed of light—a cloud of dust, a hearty laugh, The Lone Ranger is perhaps the most attractive figure ever to come out of the West. Through his daring, his riding, and his shooting, this mystery rider won the respect of the entire Golden Coast—the West of the old days, where every man carried his heart on his sleeve and only the fittest remained to make history. Many are the stories that are told by the lights of the Western campfire concerning this romantic figure. Some thought he was on the side of the outlaw, but many knew that he was a lone rider, dealing out justice to the law abiding citizenry. Though the Lone Ranger was known in seven states, he earned his greatest reputation in Texas. None knew where he came from and none knew where he went.
And then, as thunder boomed in the background, the story began: “Old Jeb Langworth lived alone in his small shack just outside the wide open community of Red Rock. One evening as he was watching the coffee boil and the bacon sizzle in the pan, and thinking of how snug his cabin was, with the storm raging outside, there came a knock on the door …”
A masked man riding the range with his trusty sidekick, the Indian brave Tonto, protecting the weak, righting wrongs, and dispensing Old West justice with his blazing guns, the Lone Ranger was the perfect hero. No one knew his real name or where he came from, only that he left his calling card, a silver bullet, when he uttered his famous parting words, “Hi-Yo, Silver—away!” then disappeared into the wilderness until the next episode. The Lone Ranger eventually became one of the most iconic figures in American media, a star of radio, television, movies, novels, and comic books.
But what has been almost completely forgotten is that the character of the Lone Ranger was likely based on the life of a real person, whose true story is even more incredible than the fictitious adventures of the masked man.
Bass Reeves was a black American, born into slavery in Crawford County, Arkansas, in 1838, but came of age in Grayson, Texas. He was the property of William S. Reeves, but apparently early in his life was given to Reeves’s son George. While growing up, Bass Reeves never learned to read or write, but his mother taught him the Bible, and he was known to recite verses from memory. He was such a good marksman that his master entered him in shooting contests. When George Reeves eventually became the county sheriff and tax collector, he undoubtedly was pleased to have his sharpshooting servant at his side. Unfortunately, the history of black men in America around that time is difficult to reconstruct. Reeves would later claim to have fought in the Civil War battles of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge under Colonel George Reeves and earned his freedom on the battlefield, but another story claims that he attacked his master when they argued over a card game and knocked him out, a crime punishable by death in Texas, so he was forced to flee into Indian Territory. Whatever the truth about his early years, Bass was twenty-two years old in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and he became a freeman.
He eventually settled in the Indian Territory, which included present-day Oklahoma, and lived there peacefully among the tribes, the white squatters, and the white criminals escaping justice. He learned to speak the languages of “the five civilized tribes” (the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Creeks, and Cherokees) and gained a reputation as a skilled tracker, horseman, and deadeye shot—both right- and left-handed, and with both pistols and long guns. Bass Reeves was a big man, described as being six feet two and a muscular two hundred pounds, with a big, bushy mustache and piercing eyes that could a freeze a man before he made a foolhardy move. At first, as a freeman, he made his living working on farms, but his knowledge of the Territory “like a cook knows her kitchen,” as he once put it, enabled him to become a trusted guide and interpreter for the US marshals riding that range.
At the time, it was well known that “There is no God west of Fort Smith.” Indian Territory was one of the most dangerous places in the world. The murder rate rivaled that of the worst cities in the country; people were killed over anything from a horse to a coarse word. The outlaw Dick Glass once killed a man in a dispute over an ear of corn. It was once estimated that out of the twenty-two thousand white men living in the Territory, seventeen thousand were criminals on the lam. While tribal courts had jurisdiction over the Indians, white criminals had to be taken to Fort Smith, Arkansas, or Paris, Texas, for trial. The only law enforcement was the few US deputy marshals working out of Fort Smith. There often wasn’t a lawman to be found within two hundred miles, leaving plenty of room for vigilante justice.
The Lone Ranger became one of America’s most popular characters. In addition to 2,956 radio shows, he was the protagonist of motion pictures and animated features, books, a syndicated comic strip and comic books, 221 half-hour television episodes, and even a video game.
It was a good place for a freeman, because it might have been the most racially and ethnically integrated area in the United States. Few people had the time or the inclination for racism. Everybody pretty much lived together and suffered equally. Even the outlaw gangs were integrated. Dick Glass, for example, who ran one of the most vicious gangs in the Territory, was himself half-black and half–Creek Indian, and his gang consisted of five black men, four Indians, and two white men.
Bass Reeves was living on his own farm in Van Buren, Arkansas, with his wife, Jinnie, their three children, his mother, and his sister in 1875, when President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Judge Isaac Parker to bring law and order to the Western District of Arkansas. This included all of western Arkansas and the Indian Territory, seventy-four thousand lawless square miles. It was considered a safe place for every type of criminal on the prairie to hide out: the murderers, rapists, cattle robbers, and thieves; the bootleggers selling to the Indians; and the con men. Parker, who was to gain fame as “the Hanging Judge,” was given permission to hire two hundred new deputies. Having heard that Reeves could speak the Indian languages and had often assisted marshals, he offered him a permanent position as a US deputy marshal. Legend has it that when Reeves was asked by a family member why he was willing to risk his life enforcing “white man’s law,” he replied, “Maybe the law ain’t perfect, but it’s the only one we got, and without it we got nuthin’.”
The United States Marshals Service was founded in 1789, created in the Judiciary Act by the First Congress. It was established to be the law-enforcement arm of the federal judicial system. US marshals, and the deputies they le
gally appointed to assist them, were empowered to serve the subpoenas, summonses, writs, warrants, and other legal documents issued by the federal courts, make all arrests, and handle prisoners anywhere in the country. Unlike local law enforcement, their jurisdiction was not limited by borders. They were paid for the work they did, meaning they earned a fee for each wanted man they brought to justice. But it was incredibly dangerous work. More than 130 deputies were killed in the Territory before Oklahoma became a state in 1907.
Judge Issac Parker appointed Bass Reeves a deputy US marshal in 1879. In the Hanging Judge’s twenty-one years on the bench, he tried 13,490 cases—and saw seventy-nine people hanged.
Although Reeves was not the first black US deputy marshal, he quickly became the best known, and several of his characteristics would later come to be associated with the Lone Ranger. In those days, when a deputy went out on the trail after outlaws, he would take a wagon (in which to bring back the fugitives he caught), a cook, and a posse man (a deputy who would work with him). Reeves’s posse man was often an Indian from the tribal Lighthorse, which is what the five tribes called their mounted police force. Although Reeves worked with many different Indian officers, apparently there was one man that he chose to ride with whenever possible. His name is lost to history, but he in all probability served as the model for the Lone Ranger’s faithful sidekick, Tonto. Also, later in Reeves’s fabled career, he was known for giving a silver dollar to those people who helped him, which obviously is close to the concept of the Lone Ranger leaving a silver bullet.
Among the many virtues the Lone Ranger shared with Reeves was a great sense of fair play and a desire to bring ’em back alive. Almost immediately after accepting the job, Reeves’s respect for the law became clear. According to legend, one afternoon out on the trail he spotted a group of men holding a lynching party and rode over to them. Lost to history is whether the prisoner was a horse thief or a cattle thief, but apparently he’d been caught dead-to-rights and the penalty for that crime was well known. The suspect was sitting on a horse, his hands tied behind his back, a noose around his neck. When Reeves was told what had happened, he showed the group his badge and explained that in this part of the world, he was the law and he intended to take this man back to Fort Smith. Sitting tall on his own horse, showing his two pistols and complete confidence, he presented a figure nobody seemed anxious to challenge. He cut the noose and rode away with the suspect. As far as he was concerned, that man’s fate needed to be in the hands of Judge Parker, not a mob out on the prairie. Nobody dared try to stop him.