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The inscrutable enigma in Wild Bill’s life is the astounding tale in which it has been set forth, time and again, in innumerable publications, that single-handed he snuffed out the lives of the outlaw, David C. McCanles, and nine of his gang.1 The fact that it endured, unchallenged, for upward of sixty years is in itself an astonishing circumstance. And yet during all those years there were several eyewitnesses of the battle, one of whom is alive to this day, and still the grim, gory, and unplausible story never was denied, nor even the approximate truth revealed.

During the fifteen years that he lived subsequent to the tragedy, Wild Bill never gave what can credibly be accepted as his version of it—neither affirming nor denying such reports as may have come to his attention. Others who had knowledge of the facts only recently have made known their recollections of what happened. A period, then, of more than threescore years has elapsed, during which time border fictioneers have run riot and never halted.

To get at the facts, therefore, meant a careful sifting of the ancient stories, as well as recent verbal and epistolary disclosures. But before presenting the late discoveries pertaining to this classic pistol fight of the last frontier—one man against ten—let us glance at what has been accepted as the actual occurrence:

On the afternoon of July 12, 1861, ten members of the McCanles gang of horse-thieves and outlaws discovered Wild Bill at Rock Springs, Nebraska, and set about to accomplish his destruction. A woman, the wife of a friend, was in the cabin with him. She thrust her husband’s loaded rifle into his hands, and he had, besides, his six-shooter and a bowie knife. Bill closed the door and the outlaws began to batter it down. When the door fell, David C. McCanles burst into the cabin; whereupon Bill shot him through the heart. The death of their leader did not discourage the gang, for the remaining nine rushed to the open door. It was to be a fight to the death. Bill quickly disposed of four of these; the remaining five grappled with him. He was soon badly wounded, but, bowie knife in hand, he slashed and stabbed with all his enormous strength and energy. Up and down the room Bill dragged his murderous assailants, plunging his knife into them at every opportunity. All fell in a heap and when Bill struggled to his feet he discovered that there was not a man left alive to oppose him.

It was not until an article by George Ward Nichols of Boston appeared in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, of February, 1867, that the tale got well under way. Reports of this titanic encounter with ten outlaws, and their summary destruction, spread over the country like the notorious wild fire. Nichols explained that he visited Springfield, Missouri, several months after the war, and there met Wild Bill and had a long talk with him on the subject of his exploits. That portion of the article which relates to the fight with the “McCanles outlaws” follows:

“I was especially desirous of hearing him relate the history of a sanguinary fight which he had with a party of ruffians in the early part of the war, when, single-handed, he fought and killed ten men. I had heard the story as it came from an officer of the regular army, who, an hour after the affair, saw Bill and the ten dead men— some killed with bullets, others hacked and slashed to death with a knife.”

Here it will be seen that Mr. Nichols had the story from an alleged eye-witness of the event, and it would appear to lend extra corroboration to the tale as it came from Bill himself.

“As I write,” continued Mr. Nichols, “the details of this terrible tale which I took as the words fell from the scout’s own lips, I am conscious of its extreme improbability; but while I listened to the story of the Bible where we are told that Samson ‘with the jawbone of an ass slew a thousand men,’ and as I looked upon this magnificent example of human strength and daring, he appeared to me to realize the powers of Samson and Hercules combined, and I should not have been likely to place any limit on his achievements. Besides, one who has lived for four years in the presence of such great heroism and deeds of prowess as were seen during the war, is in what might be called a ‘receptive’ mood. Be the story true or not, in part, or in whole, I believed then every word Wild Bill uttered, and I believe it to-day.”

We now come to Wild Bill’s own words, as reported by Mr. Nichols:

“You see this M’Kandlas was the captain of a gang of desperadoes, horse-thieves, murderers, regular cut-throats, who were the terror of everybody on the border, and who kept us in the mountains in hot water whenever they were around. I knew them all in the mountains where they pretended to be trapping, but they were hiding from the hangman. M’Kandlas was the biggest scoundrel and bully of them all, and was allers a-braggin’ of what he could do. One day I beat him shooting at a mark, and threw him at the back-holt. And I didn’t drop him as soft as you would a baby, you may be sure. Well, he got savage mad about it and swore he would have his revenge on me some time.

“This was just before the war broke out and we were already taking sides in the mountains either for the South or the Union. M’Kandlas and his gang were border ruffians in the Kansas row, and, of course, they went with the rebs. Bimeby he clar’d out and I shouldn’t have thought of the feller ag’in ef he hadn’t crossed my path. It ’pears he didn’t forget me.

“It was in ’61, when I guided a detachment of cavalry who were cornin’ in from Camp Floyd. We had nearly reached the Kansas line and were in southern Nebraska when one afternoon I went out of camp tago to the cabin of an old friend of mine, a Mrs. Waltman. I took only one of my revolvers with me, for although the war had broke out I didn’t think it necessary to carry both my pistols, and, in an or’nary scrimmage, one is better than a dozen, ef you shoot straight. I saw some wild turkeys on the road as I was goin’ down and popped one of ’em over.

“Well, I rode up to Mrs. Waltman’s, jumped off my horse, and went into the cabin, which is like most of the cabins on the prarer, with only one room and that had two doors, one opening in front and t’other onto a yard, like.

“‘How are you, Mrs. Waltman?’ I said, feeling as jolly as you please.

“The minute she saw me she turned as white as a sheet and screamed: ‘Is that you, Bill? Oh, my God! They will kill you! Run! run! They will kill you!’

“‘Who’s a-goin’ to kill me?’ said I. ‘There’s two can play at that game.’

“‘It’s M’Kandlas and his gang. There’s ten of them and you have no chance. They’ve jes gone down the road to the corn-rack. They came up here only five minutes ago. M’Kandlas was draggin’ poor Parson Shipley on the ground with a lariat round his neck. The preacher was ’most dead with choking and the horse stamping on him. M’Kandlas knows yer brings in that party of Yankee cavalry and he swears he’ll cut your heart out. Run, Bill, run!—But it’s too late; they are coming up the lane.’

“While she was a-talkin’ I remembered I had but one revolver, and a load gone out of that. On the table there was a horn of powder and some little bars of lead. I poured the powder into the empty chamber and rammed the lead after it by hammering the barrel on the table, and had just capped the pistol when I heard M’Kandlas shout, ‘There’s that d—d Yankee Wild Bill’s horse; he’s here and we’ll skin him alive!’”

The scout stopped in his story, Nichols records at this point, rose from his seat, and strode back and forward in a state of great excitement.

“I tell you what it is, Kernal,” [Wild Bill is reported to have resumed, after a while] “I don’t mind a scrimmage with the fellers round here. Shoot one or two of them and the rest run away. But all the M’Kandlas gang were reckless, blood-thirsty devils who would fight as long as they had strength to pull a trigger. I have been in tight places, but that’s one of the few times when I said my prayers.

“‘Surround the house and give him no quarter,’ yelled M’Kandlas. When I heard that I felt as quiet and cool as if I was a-goin’ to church. I looked around the room and saw a Hawkins rifle hangin’ over the bed.

“‘Is that loaded?’ said I to Mrs. Waltman.

“‘Yes,’ the poor thing whispered. She was so frightened she couldn’t speak out loud.

“‘Are you sure?’ said I, as I jumped onto the bed and caught it from its hooks. Although my eye did not leave the door, yet I could see she nodded ‘yes’ again. I put the revolver on the bed, but just then M’Karidlas poked his head inside the doorway, but jumped back when he saw me with the rifle in my hand.

“‘Come in here, you cowardly dog,’ I shouted. Tome in here and fight me!’

“M’Kandlas was no coward, even if he was a bully. He jumped inside the door with his gun level to shoot, but he was not quick enough. My rifle-ball went through his heart. He fell back outside the door, where he was found afterwards holding tight to his rifle which had fallen over his head.

“His disappearance was followed by a yell from his gang and then there was dead silence. I put down the rifle and took the revolver, and I said to myself: ‘Only six shots and only nine men to kill. Save your powder, Bill, for the death-hug’s a-comm’!’ I don’t know why it was, Kernal,” continued Bill, lookin’ at me inquiringly, “but at that moment things seemed clear and sharp. I could think sharp. I could think strong.

“There was a few seconds of that awful stillness and then the ruffians came rushing in at both doors. How they looked with their red, drunken faces and inflamed eyes, shouting and cussin’. But I never aimed more deliberately in my life.

“One—two—three—four; and four men fell dead.

“That didn’t stop the rest. Two of them fired their bird-guns at me and then I felt a sting run all over me. The room was full of smoke. Two got in close to me, their eyes glaring out of the clouds. One I knocked down with my fist. ‘You are out of my way for a while,’ I thought. The second I shot dead. The other three clutched and crowded me on to the bed. I fought hard. I broke with my hand one man’s arm. He had his fingers round my throat. Before I could get to my feet I was struck across my breast with the stock of a rifle and I felt the blood rushing out of my nose and mouth. Then I got ugly and I remember that I got hold of a knife, and then it was all cloudy-like and I was wild and I struck savage blows, following the devils up from one side to the other of the room and into the corners striking and slashing until I knew that every one was dead.

“All of a sudden it seemed as if my heart was on fire. I was bleeding everywhere. I rushed out to the well and drank from the bucket and then tumbled down in a faint.”

Thus Wild Bill ends the story put in his mouth by Nichols.

Anybody would call it a pretty fine tale; but, examined closely, one would say either that Wild Bill was spoofing the Boston man, or else, which is more likely, the Bostonian had the entire story from the “officer of the regular army,” and pinned it on to Bill as a first-hand interview. The “officer of the regular army” turns up later on.

The next most important account of this event appears in J. W. Bud's sketch of Wild Bill in his “Heroes of the Plains,” 1881. In his preface he claimed that he had the main facts of his life from Wild Bill himself, and, more curious still, that he gleaned the main points from Bill’s diary, which he had borrowed from Bill’s wife, when she was residing in Cincinnati with her son-in-law, Gilbert S. Robinson. Mr. Robinson asserts, however, that if Wild Bill had a diary, as described by Mr. Buel, he would have heard of it; but he never did.

Mr. Buel describes Rock Springs as being at “a point on the Old Platte route fifty miles from Topeka.” The Rock Springs in question is one hundred miles distant from Topeka, and was on the Oregon Trail, a few miles from Beatrice, in southeastern Nebraska. Mr. Buel made two mistakes in McCanles’s name, since he calls him Bill, while as a matter of fact his name was David C., and his name was not McCandlas, as he spells it, but McCanles. The substance of Mr. Buel’s account is as follows:

Wild Bill, following his fight with the bear, became the manager of the Rock Creek Station of the Overland Stage Company. It was a relay post and provided accommodations for twenty-five horses. Bill’s chief employment was to guard the stock, owing to the depredations of horse-thieves, numerous in that section. Bill and his assistant, a young Irishman named Doc Mills, occupied a small log hut. McCanles and his followers are depicted as being desperate horse-thieves, highway robbers, and murderers. Mr. Buel also mentions the ill-usage of Parson Shapley, whom Mr. Nichols calls Shipley. McCanles, according to the Buel story, demanded the horses of Bill for the Confederate service, and it was on account of this that the fight occurred. Doc Mills was away at the time, leaving Bill alone. Bill, in this account, is provided with a Mississippi Yager rifle, two revolvers, and a bowie knife. Bill barricaded the door and McCanles ordered his men to batter it down with a log. The fight which followed in the cabin, accords with Mr. Nichols’s account. At the conclusion of the tremendous encounter the McCanles gang had been wiped out root and branch.

Buel, strangely enough, had corroborating evidence, as did Nichols. According to the former, about one hour after the fight the western stage rolled up, containing six passengers among whom “was one Capt. E. W. Kingsbury, who is now [1881] a resident of Kansas City, holding the position of U. S. Chief Storekeeper for the Western District of Missouri. The sight that presented itself to the gaze of the stage passengers, all of whom entered the cabin to view the havoc which one man had wrought, was most distressing to ordinary sensibilities. Bill was frightfully injured, suffering a fracture of the skull—the frontal bone; three terrible gashes in the breast; his forearm cut through to the bone; four bullets in his body, one in his hip and two in the fleshy part of his right leg; his right cheek cut open and the skin of his forehead cut so deeply that a large portion of the scalp dropped down so far over his eyes as almost to blind him. A surgeon was sent for and a Mrs. Watkins was called in to nurse the wounded hero through his dangerous extremity. By the following June he was able to walk about and he was removed to Denver and in about a year was fully recovered.

“This combat,” adds Buel, “of one man fairly whipping ten acknowledged desperadoes, has no parallel, I make bold to say, in any authentic history. The particulars as here recorded are unquestionably correct, for they were obtained from Captain Kingsbury, who heard Bill's first recital of the facts right on the battle ground. Jolly, the man who died a few days afterward at Manhattan, corroborated the facts and Dr. Joshua Thorne, who attended upon and was one of Bill’s confidants, repeated to me the same story as he himself had heard his parents relate it. These direct and most reliable sources, each affirming the same facts, leave no room for doubting the correctness of this account.”

We shall see presently, however, that there is considerable room for doubting Captain Kingsbury’s story as related by Buel.

Emerson Hough found in Wild Bill a favourite subject; but, judging from what he wrote of him, it is apparent that he got all his data from the Harper’s Magazine story by Nichols, and from Buel’s sketch. He certainly could not have made any personal investigation of the McCanles affair, for he repeated all the old fables of the incident. In Mr. Hough’s “The Story of the Outlaw,” 1907, he follows the Nichols and Buel yarns of the killing of the “border outlaw Jim McCanles” and nine of his men. Mr. Hough locates the scene of the incident as having been “at the Rock Creek station, about fifty miles west of Topeka.” Rock Creek, Kansas, is a short, distance to the east of Topeka, while the fight occurred at Rock Creek, Nebraska, one hundred miles to the northwest of Topeka. Finally, Mr. Hough repeats Captain Kingsbury's gory story of Bill’s injuries, saying:

“It took Bill a year to recover from his wounds.”

In point of fact, Bill did not receive a scratch in the actual encounter.

What, then, is the conclusion that one must naturally reach? It is the opinion of the writer that while George Ward Nichols saw Wild Bill at Springfield, Missouri, after the war, the alleged conversation had with him as to the McCanles affair, and as published by him in Harper’s, was a gauzy fabrication. That Captain Kingsbury was the Munchausen of the narrative is self-evident. He invented the story and deceived both Nichols and Buel. Nichols let the cat out of the bag when he stated: “I had heard the story as it came from an officer of the regular army, who, an hour after that affair, saw Bill and the ten dead men.” This officer of the regular army must have been Captain Kingsbury, who is also Bud's authority, for he tells the same story of seeing the ten dead men an hour after the killing.

Let us now have a look at “Beadle’s Dime Library,” No. 168, of January n, 1882, the number being devoted to:

“WILD BILL, The Pistol Deadshot:

or, Dagger Don’s Double.”

By Colonel Prentiss Ingraham.

In a note, Ingraham states that the Harper’s story of the McCanles killings was undoubtedly correct for “the particulars were obtained from Captain Kingsbury.” Every time you turn around in this story you bump against the Captain. It is remarkable that up to date no one has dragged him into the daylight and introduced him as a fanciful fabricator, the like of which could not be found in a day’s hunt. And, furthermore, it appears that he had an able assistant in a certain Dr. Joshua Thorne, of Kansas City, Missouri. Doctor Thorne, a “great friend of Captain Kingsbury,” told Buel that “he removed eleven bullets from the person of Wild Bill, nearly all of which were planted within him at the Rock Creek fight, but during all the painful operation Bill gave expression only to sympathetic words for the ferocious enemies he had slain in that memorable encounter.”

As Wild Bill was not fired upon during the fight at Rock Creek, one may naturally suspect that Doctor Thorne was an ally of the Captain in perpetrating this hoax. Even Emerson Hough was deluded, for he stated that when Wild Bill's body was being prepared for burial, it was found to be covered with the scars of many bullet and knife wounds. But Doc Peirce, the amateur undertaker, informs the writer that he did not undress Bill when he prepared him for burial, and so did not see the many scars in question.

1. Fred E. Sutton, writing in the Saturday Evening Post as recently as April 10, 1926, repeats this story.