Читать книгу The Plainsman - Frank Jenners Wilstach - Страница 5

Table of Contents

Ames Butler Hickok, known to fame as Wild Bill, did not indite sonnets. His penchant did not lie in that direction. His conversation, so far as is known, was not a Kimberley which flashed epigrammatic diamonds. He was withal a reticent man. As for letters, there are but few extant. Yet his fame, after his body has rested for nearly fifty years in the little cemetery at Deadwood, South Dakota, is as glowing as on the day he was lowered into the grave by a few devoted friends. And when the history of those lurid times finally is written, Wild Bill and his forthright pistols will supply material for many a thrilling and astounding page.

Fully to understand such a character, it is necessary to be acquainted somewhat with the environment in which he was born. In the middie of the 19th Century, that vast territory comprising hundreds of thousands of square miles, extending westward from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, from the Mexican border on the south to the Canadian line on the north was, in the language of the times, a howling wilderness. The howling was done, in the main, by prowling Indians, ravenous wild animals and their victims. It has been computed that, as late as 1869, there were ten million roving buffalo as well as sixty thousand hostile Indians on the plains. For a white man to venture alone into that vast area was a perilous adventure.

The change from wilderness to the present calm began with the discovery of gold in California. Immediately there followed long and hazardous journeys of wagon trains across the plains; the coming of vast herds of long-horned cattle from Texas in search of new grazing fields; the hurried building of the Southern and the Central Pacific transcontinental railroads; the swift annihilation of the immense herds of buffalo, and finally the subjugation of the hostile Indians. All these stirring events were crowded into a period of thirty years.

During that chaotic time, wherever white men were to be found in the newly inhabited territory—especially at such jumping-off places as railroad terminals, like Dodge City, Abilene, Hays City, and Cheyenne—there thrived a particularly evil assortment of gun-toting gamblers; merry and reckless cowboys in from the vast unfenced ranges for a few days of untrammelled fun and frolic; a plentiful supply of deplorably wanton ladies of dance-hall and bagnio, and the everpresent bad man, whether cowboy, gambler, or outlaw, with his flashing pistols.

There was no such thing as civilized order at the beginning; every man, with his smoking hardware, was judge, jury, and executioner. The quickest and deadliest shot survived the longest. Out of this welter of lawlessness came such good men and bad men as Wild Bill Hickok, John Wesley Hardin, Bill Longley, Bat Masterson, Sam Bass, Doc Holliday, Buffalo Bill Cody, Billy the Kid, Texas Jack Omohundro, Virgil and Wyatt Earp, Soapey Smith, Pat Garrett, John Selman, Gyp and Mannen Clements, Dick Ware, George Scarborough, and others of lesser note. All of this merry crew, with the exception of Wyatt Earp, have been called in by the Great Spirit. Each provided, according to Owen P. White, a halo of six-shooter smoke of his own manufacture. It was truly an era of hilarious tragedy.

Clark Alberti, at this writing an editor in California, was a schoolboy friend of Wild Bill. He wrote lately that “ Wild Bill was one of the greatest men that ever lived.” The present scrivener would hardly go so far as that; his enthusiasm does not mount so high. But looking this way and that, much might be said in favour of Clark Alberti’s far-encircling proclamation. If greatness consists of an unswerving courage, an unquestioned honesty, a gentle and generous spirit, as well as a willingness at all times to endanger one’s life for the sake of public order or to save a friend, then Wild Bill Hickok has a considerable claim to fame. He was, in his time and in his environment, this country’s greatest peace officer. He stood for law and order when there was neither. And as a pistoleer in the presence of bad men running wild, he was the ne plus ultra perfecto.

So much attention has been given to the hectic adventures of this cavalier of the border that little or none has been devoted to his genealogy: as to the why and the wherefore of the man. Acquainted with his stubborn and well-nigh foolhardy courage, none need be surprised to discover that he came of sterling stock. Before making this discovery, the writer felt certain that something of a tonic nature would be revealed when the facts were unearthed. Men of Wild Bill’s verve do not spring from lean and hungry back-alley ancestry.

So, when it was developed that his father, William Alonzo Hickok, was a deacon in the Presbyterian Church, a worthy man of Scotch-Irish ancestry, all our fondest expectations were realized. At once we discovered where Wild Bill inherited his unmitigated devotion to law and order, even to the point of shooting up a town and planting a few worthless carcasses in his own private cemetery.

In the presence of the disorderly, his two ivory-handled Colt’s-45s, resting handily in their holsters, spelled a short-cut to the tomb to any one who revealed disturbing intentions of breaking the peace. While it is not disclosed that the son of the worthy deacon was attentive to his religious duties, we shall see later on that when he assumed the marshalship of any heretofore lawless town he ran it like a church.

We shall now have a little closer look at Wild Bill’s forbears. His father, the worthy William Alonzo Hickok, was born at North Hero, Grand Isle County, Vermont, on December 5,1801. The latter’s father, Otis Hickok, is mentioned as one of the heroes of the battle of Plattsburg during the War of 1812. Otis was one of five brothers who came to America from the north of Ireland.

Young William Alonzo, of a pious rather than a warlike nature, was given a sound education, his parents having designed him for the ministry. Through overwork—although a powerful man—after graduation he was prostrated with brain fever. His recovery was slow and his illness left his mind so impaired that the past was forgotten. Finally his amnesia left him and his memory was restored. Regaining his health he gave up the idea of entering the ministry. In 1827 he married Polly Butler of his native county.

The young couple moved to Broome County, New York, in 1831, where William kept a store. Not thriving according to his expectations he moved in 1834 to Bailey’s Point, Illinois. From there he went to Putnam County, and finally in 1837, to Homer, later called Troy Grove, La Salle County. This hamlet is about seventy miles southwest of Chicago. William Alonzo here opened the first general store at Troy Grove, but the financial crash of 1837 ruined his business prospects. He became a farmer. This worthy and kindly man died in 1852 when his son James was in his fifteenth year.

William A. and his wife, Polly, had six children—four sons and two daughters. Mrs. Louise Hickok, of Troy Grove, has kindly copied from the family Bible the record there set down:

Oliver O. Hickok, b. 1830, d. 1899.

Lorenzo Butler Hickok, b. 1832, d. 1913.

Horace Dewey, b. 1834, d. 1916.

James Butler Hickok [Wild Bill] b. 1837, d. 1876

Celinda, b. 1839, d. 1916.

Lydia, b. 1842, d. 1916.

Wild Bill’s mother, Polly, born in 1804, died in 1878 at Troy Grove, two years after her celebrated son had been assassinated.

In his early youth, Wild Bill disclosed a marked fondness for firearms. It is revealed by those who knew him in his childhood, that when he was eight years old he traded some cherished possessions for a single-barrelled pistol, the fondest desire of his heart. It was a flint-lock, and regarded by him as priceless. He somehow obtained powder and bullets and then began his first experience in marksmanship, in which he finally attained an amazing proficiency.

When he was fourteen years old, he secured an excellent pistol and a short time thereafter his father presented him with a first-class rifle. From that day he spent the greater part of his time in the woods. At this period the neighbourhood was greatly annoyed by the ravages of wolves, to such an extrent, in fact, that the state offered a premium for the scalps. The boy became a hunter of wolves, with the result that each evening he returned home with a belt full of scalps which were converted into cash at the end of each month.

Some surprise has been expressed by certain worthy folks that young Bill now decided to fare forth into the wilds, imagining that his failure to stay at Troy Grove was owing to some perversity of character. Any man child who does not understand the absurdity of this supposition proves that he has never been a Boy Scout and knows naught of the lure of the woods. Bill’s father had travelled by wagon more than a thousand miles to seek a home on the prairie, and why should his son not do likewise?

The magic of the setting sun in that day was in the blood of every man and boy. Those who remained behind longed to be on the move. That a boy with an adventurous spirit should meditate hanging up his hat for good in Troy Grove is not at all likely.

The question of what to do and where to go must have tormented our hero not a little. Every village boy, even at this day, is confronted by a similar problem, and if he has romance ana adventure in him, he will find a way of escape. If Wild Bill had had any notion of gaining a settled, humdrum living in a town—a clerkship, or something equally moilsome—he might well have set his heart on Chicago, only a short distance away, and then a thriving town which had been incorporated two years before he obtained his first firearms.

We learn from Wild Bill’s school friends that the boys of Troy Grove were much the same as others of that period. Mark Twain was a boy of the same era, living at no great distance away in Missouri. All the boys of that day were agog with stories of the plains, of shooting and trapping, of Indians, of free life in the open, something that has ever appealed to youth.

For such a lad as Wild Bill, Troy Grove must have been deplorably irksome. His brother, Lorenzo, did go on the plains for a time, but returned to become a surveyor; Oliver was a famous owner and driver of trotting horses—the trainer and driver of the greatest trotter of his day, St. Julian; Horace was a justice of the peace, while James, without disclosing any particular accomplishments, sallied forth to develop into the frontier’s most famous celebrity.

The opportunities for gaining an education in rural Illinois at that period were meagre. Yet, with such schooling as he was able to acquire, and under his mother’s own tutelage, the boy managed to gain, according to all accounts, a rudimentary education. Horace A. Hickok, the son of Wild Bill’s brother Horace, states that his father had told him that “his brother James never started a quarrel; was always good-tempered; was a bright and apt pupil and never behind his schoolmates.”

There were not many books to be obtained in those parts, but we are told that he managed, at the age of fifteen, to lay hands on copies of Peters’s “Life of Kit Carson” and of “The Trapper’s Guide.” These books made such a profound impression on his mind that, in later years, he told a friend he then and there said to his brothers, “One day I’ll beat anything that Kit Carson ever did or attempted.”

Wild Bill’s first employment was as tow-path driver on the Illinois and Michigan canal. It appears that he did not long remain away from home, and the reason for this was that he had had a difference with a man named Hudson. The two engaged in a fist fight which lasted more than an hour. The battle began on the tow-path, the fighters finally rolling into the water. Then followed efforts on the part of each to drown the other. Young Bill, despite the fact that Hudson was a powerful fellow, overcame this advantage by his extraordinary agility and finally won a decided victory. Hudson was taken from the water in an almost lifeless state, and it was only by the greatest exertion that he was resuscitated. This is the first exploit of his career which illustrates the truth of the saying long current along the border: “Wild Bill is a bad man to fool with.”

In 1855, when camped on the sunshine side of twenty, he decided that the time had arrived for him to venture forth into the world. From what he had read and heard, he knew that the territory west of Missouri was the habitation of Indian tribes; a vast area destined to become the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, etc. The Indians in that immense stretch of country comprised the Shawnese, Delawares, Kickapoos, Osages, and other tribes; but Kansas was wild enough in those days to satisfy all his longings. It was, however, neither freedom nor Indians that had attracted his attention, but rather the struggles between more or less law-abiding factions in Missouri and Kansas. Here was a theatre of action that must have had a strong appeal to so venturesome a spirit. Wild Bill was an ardent Unionist and he probably sensed, as has been said, that the great need of that section was heroes. Somehow, during all his life he always headed for that point where the largest amount of trouble existed; and it was his ardent purpose, backed by his flaming hardware, to put it down and restore the peace.

So, gathering his pistol, hunting-knife, and rifle, he bade adieu to his mother, brothers, and sisters, and headed on foot for St. Louis. He reached his destination after a weary march of many days. To him the city was a marvel, but it was not altogether to his liking. After a few days of sightseeing he longed to tread the road of adventure, and so engaged passage on a steamer bound for Leavenworth. Arriving at that haven he discovered to his dismay that the town was in a tumult and that for political reasons no passengers were permitted to land from the boat.

That didn’t bother him any; he had started for Leavenworth and that was where he was going to stop, mob or no mob. He resorted to the expedient of disguising himself as a roustabout and began to unload freight. In this manner he succeeded in frustrating the angry and suspicious citizenry. He then learned that Jim Lane, the recognized leader of the Red Legs, an anti-slavery organization in Kansas, had recently arrived in Leavenworth from Indiana with a contingent of two to three hundred men.

Within a few days he had joined the forces of Lane, but to become a Red Leg it was necessary that the recruit demonstrate his proficiency as a marksman—which he did in the spectacular fashion already recounted.

For several months he was identified with the Red Legs and came to be recognized by Lane, according to the fable, as “the most effective man in his command.”

The records show that in 1857 he filed a claim for one hundred and sixty acres in Monticello Township, Johnson County, Kansas. Although he was not yet of age, his reputation as a fighter and dead shot had been heralded far and wide, with the result that he was elected constable. This was Wild Bill’s first post as peace officer. He buckled on his pistols and announced that he proposed that peace and order should reign in his bailiwick, and it did.

We now come upon a piece of information which has not found its way into the records. During this period Wild Bill married a young squaw after the Indian fashion, which was not regarded as binding. This knowledge I have from William E. Connelley, the present secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society,of Topeka, Kansas. Mr. Connelley says on the subject:

“There is no record of Wild Bill’s life among the Shawnee Indians. The old settlers of Johnson County, Kansas, whom I interviewed a good many years ago, and who are all now on the other side, gave me what information I have.”

This alleged Indian marriage was never mentioned, so far as I can discover, by Wild Bill in after years; but there are other beautiful Indian maidens who will be heard of later on, and of whom there is ample evidence.

But, squaw or no squaw, Bill was not allowed to live in peace on his Kansas homestead. As a member of Jim Lane’s Red Legs, he had administered a severe chastisement to the Border Ruffians of Missouri. They bore him a particular grudge, and this they set about to pay back inkind. In one of their predatory incursions on Kansas soil they burned his cabin. Wild Bill was absent at the time. What might have been written on the ample pages of history, had Bill been on hand, it is unnecessary to cogitate. A new cabin was built and this one also, while Constable Hickok was away from home, was laid in ashes.

Wild Bill now decided that he had had enough of Johnson County, Kansas. A new field of operations was opened to him by the offer of a position as driver for the Overland Stage Company. In this capacity he crossed the plains several times, operating from Missouri and Colorado and points in Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Salt Lake City. That was a lively life for a youth who only a short time before was killing wolves in La Salle County, Illinois, or fishing in Vermilion Creek at Troy Grove.

While he was apparently reckless, his friend J. W. Buel tells us that no man ever covered his routes with fewer accidents than Bill. And we are likewise informed that when nearing his destination it was his habit to treat the passengers “to a shaking up,” as he styled it, in “order to jolt the cricks out of their backs.” The particular stretch of road that interested him was that entering Santa Fe, New Mexico. There was a slight decline, and so Wild Bill invariably turned the horses loose and gave them the lash. So it was that the big coach bounded along “lurching the passengers from side to side, dishing up dyspeptics, phlegmatics, and rollicking dispositions indiscriminately, and bowling into the town finally the centre of a dust bank and the object of excited interest to everyone in the ancient Mexican city.”

Driving a stagecoach in those days was nothing like a cross-country motor journey of to-day. To get away with the job called for a steady nerve and an ability at all times to defend one’s self either with fists or pistols. Every station was located near a saloon and every stage employee was practically an animated skinful of fighting whisky. Desperate rows were as common as waxweed flowers on the prairie in springtime, and the man that had failed to snuff out a life was as a bashful fellow at a country dance—woefully out of place.

Such a condition of affairs did not daunt Wild Bill. It suited him to a dot. And that he was left pretty much alone is ample proof that even then, although a youth under age, he was a dangerous individual to meddle with. But this happy state of peace was arrived at only after several rough encounters in all of which he came off best; and, furthermore, at this time he was considered the best pistol shot on the plains.

But something far more menacing than the ruffians along the stage route now hove into view: the Indians of the Sweetwater broke out of their reservation and started on a rampage. They took to massacring settlers, killing Pony Express riders and, to bring matters to a handsome head, began to attack the stagecoaches. Having succeeded in this adventure—killing the driver and two passengers—they took to running off the stock of the company. That put an end to the stagecoach business in those parts for the time being.

Then it was that the officers of the stage company sent for Bill. He promptly reported at St. Joseph for a council of war. Nobody knew what to do until he spoke up and, according to the record, delivered himself of the following brief but pointed speech:

“You have enough men here, if they are turned loose right, to clean out all the red devils along the route, and all the men now idle would consider it a frolic to go into Indian service for a short time.”

That settled it. Wild Bill was told to go ahead and see what he could do, and when he was getting ready for a fight he was an ardent party. He called the men together and told them what was wanted. Fifty men enlisted with a hearty good will, all promising implicit obedience with Bill as leader. This well-equipped band, under a commander just twenty-one years of age, started away from St. Joseph, Missouri, on the 29th of September, 1858. Arriving at Powder River, where they expected to find the Indians encamped, they found nothing but dead ashes and tracks that pointed westward. They followed and in three days came upon the Indians at Crazy Woman’s Fork. The original band had meanwhile doubled in number and all were painted up and ready to go anywhere they might cause trouble.

Discovering the extent of the camp, some of the band suggested that they return to St. Joseph. Bill told them that he would shoot the first man who turned his back on the enterprise. Here was a force of four to one against them, but that didn’t bother the young leader. He had with him a crowd of young dare-devils who, one picturesque chronicler remarked, could be depended upon to fight a ten-acre field full of grizzly bears with only a toothpick for a weapon.

At some little distance smoke in the tree-tops was discovered. That meant an Indian camp. Bill ordered his men to halt, to give him a chance to locate the game. Alone he made a broad circuit to reach high ground, in order to ascertain the extent of the camp and learn where the horses were tethered.

This was done and a plan of battle devised. Bill ordered his men to rest till nightfall and to light no fires that would serve to attract the foe. At ten p. m. Bill called his men to saddle and gave his instructions. Each man was ordered to follow him into the Indian camp and each to fight only with his pistol; to make for the stock which, being in a corral, would be easily stampeded and run out, and then collected and secured.

These commands, according to the best information, were strictly obeyed. A dash was made for the corral by a dozen of the men, while the other rode en masse into the Indian camp. The amazed savages dashed out of their tents in order to learn what the racket was about, and were shot down before they could lay hands on their arms.

One of the young scamps who followed Bill in this high emprise was young Will Cody, afterward known as Buffalo Bill. The party returned to St. Joseph with all the horses which had been stolen from the stage company, and with upward of one hundred more belonging to the Indians. Bill had taught the redskins a lesson they never forgot. An end was written to stagecoach massacres.

Next year, 1859, Bill left the employ of the Overland Stage Company, and engaged as driver with the famous freighters, Majors and Russell, for a long and hazardous trip between Independence, Missouri, and Sante Fe, New Mexico. It was at this time that he had his famous fight with a bear, to which so many references have been made by writers of frontier literature.

While passing through the Soccoro range with his team, travelling two miles ahead of his companion, Matt Farley, he encountered a big cinnamon bear in the road. Having two cubs with her, the bear betrayed not the slightest intention of getting out of the way; instead, she showed fight. Bill, provided with his brace of pistols and a good hunting knife, was not much concerned. Instead of staying on his wagon, which would have been the better part of valour, he sprang to the ground, imagining that it was an easy job to kill a bear.

But not this mother bear. When she had snarlingly approached within a short distance from him, Bill let fly with one of his pistols and caught the cinnamon between the eyes. It appears, as Bill subsequently discovered, that in the case of a bear of her size and family, the spot was ill-chosen. The bullet merely glanced off the skull and resulted only in making the animal more truculent.

She charged.

Bill was too far away from the wagon to gain its security, so nothing was left for him to do but fight. And when man or bear put it up to Wild Bill to have a fight, a good brand of tumult was generally provided.

His next shot injured the animal's left fore leg. The bear reared on her haunches and grappled with her foe. Bill resorted to his knife and thrust it into the animal’s body again and again, and into stomach and throat, but the infuriated beast fought on.

Bill had suffered several frightful lacerations. The ground was wet with blood, and still he was unable to escape the embrace of the infuriated bear. Finally the two antagonists slipped to the ground, Bill underneath with his left arm in the bear’s mouth. In this position he found that he could use his knife with greater effectiveness.

In the end, Bill literally disembowelled his antagonist. At the finish it was difficult to say which presented the more horrible spectacle, Bill or the bear. But Bill was alive and the bear dead. That is the way it always happened when Bill got into a fight. But this time he was badly wounded and when Farley drove up he took him to Santa Fe, where he was placed in the care of a capable surgeon. It was several months before he was able to do any active work.

It was two years prior to this time that Bill cut into the trail of Buffalo Bill Cody, and as a result of that meeting they remained fast friends throughout their lives. Wild Bill was then twenty and Will Cody but eleven years of age. In his various biographies, and in his oft-quoted reminiscences, Buffalo Bill made much of this incident. Having lost his father, young Cody had joined an expedition over the Salt Lake trail, and having been transferred to Lew Simpson's wagon train, he unexpectedly encountered Wild Bill. One day the men were treating the Cody youth rather roughly. Suddenly there came out from under a wagon a young giant.

“What are you fellows trying to do with that boy?” he asked.

One of the men told the interloper to attend to his own business.

“Well, if you fellows really want to fight, tackle me and let that boy alone,” Bill replied to this.

The man who came to young Cody’s assistance was Wild Bill.

All along in this record, James Butler Hickok has been referred to as Wild Bill. How he gained this sobriquet is in doubt. Lifelong friends have expressed themselves as being in the dark in the matter. How the mistake was made of substituting William for James is open to conjecture. When Bill Cody first met him on the plains, he tells us, Wild Bill was called Jim Hickok.'

In an effort to supply a reason for the nickname, Buffalo Bill said his friend acquired it through a misunderstanding or mistaken identity. He said that young Jim Hickok at the time above referred to had an elder brother named Bill Hickok, who for several years had been a celebrated plainsman, and famed as being one of the best wagon-masters in charge of the great government trains, with all their responsibilities. He became famous for his courage, ability to command men, to defend the interests of his employees, to stand off the Indians and bandits that preyed on the wagon trains, and for his control of the dare-devil spirits who drove the teams. His younger brother, James, according to this account, rose so rapidly that rumour soon identified him with his elder brother, William—the result being that he was known throughout the West as Wild Bill Hickok.

This is a fairly good story, but the chief fault with it is that Wild Bill had no brother named William. And yet Buffalo Bill’s explanation is true in every particular, except as to the name. Mrs. Louis Hickok informs the writer that Wild Bill’s brother, Lorenzo, who was a plainsman duplicating Buffalo Bill’s description, acquired the nickname Billy Barnes as a child and that name followed him on the plains. Lorenzo then was the original “Wild Bill” Hickok, the sobriquet subsequently acquired by his younger brother James Butler.

With the exception of Buffalo Bill, all other writers—none seemingly aware that Lorenzo Hickok was called Bill on the plains—have claimed that James Butler Hickok was not called Wild Bill until after the famous “subjugation of the McCanles gang,” which we shall now consider.