Dead Man’s Hand

When news hit the airwaves about my late brother back in 2005, the reporters got everything wrong. They weren’t interested in making corrections either. Bad reporters have been around for centuries. There are very few Woodward and Bernstein style journalists. Newspapers and television news report rumors, facts are not important. Some of the worst reporters in the world work at KMBC-TV in Kansas City, Missouri. Wild Bill Hickok battled with Missouri reporters too, but he was able to convince them to make the necessary corrections. Amid widespread reports that he had been shot to death at Fort Dodge, Kansas, in 1873, quick-draw lawman Wild Bill Hickok wrote this letter to the St. Louis Missouri-Democrat: “Wishing to correct an error in your paper of the 12th, I will state that no Texan has, nor ever will ‘corral William.’ I wish you to correct your statement, on account of my people. -P.S. I have brought your paper in preference to all other since 1857.” Stories about James Butler Hickok were legendary in his own time. As a deputy U.S. marshal over much of the Plains territory, Hickok developed such a reputation as a fast shooter that other men would follow him around looking for a showdown. Hickok, a tall, a broad-shoulder man who carried two pistols in his vest and a pair of .36-caliber Colt revolvers around his waist, took to walking down the middle of the street and avoiding open windows. The former Union spy even sat in the barber’s chair with his shotgun in his lap. Still, Hickok relished his dangerous job. In fact, some say he used his deputy’s badge simply as a license to get involved in gunfights. He once advised, “Young man, never run away from a gun. Bullets can travel faster than you can. Besides, if you’re going to be hit, you had better get it in the front than in the back. It looks better.” As the frontier grew more settled and hired their own lawmen, Hickok was called on less and less. He performed in some of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West stage shows, but mainly he wandered the West in search of some action. In 1876, Hickok was in Deadwood Gulch, where gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. He had gotten married that March and hoped to strike enough gold to settle down. But meanwhile Hickok pursued his passion for gambling. On August 2, Hickok walked into the Number 10 Saloon just after noon to join a poker game. He always sat at the table with his back to the wall. But this time when he asked one player to get up and give him that stool, the other players just laughed it off, and Hickok finally took a seat that faced the front door but didn’t give him a full view of the barroom. At about 3 p.m. Jack McCall entered the saloon and walked to the end of the bar behind Hickok. Hickok had played against McCall the day before, and had even given him money for dinner after McCall went broke, so the former deputy continued to concentrate on his cards. Suddenly, McCall pulled a pistol, fired and a bullet struck Hickok in the back of his head, exited through his right cheek, and then lodged in the wrist of the card player across from him. Hickok, killed instantly, fell off his stool and slumped on his side on the floor. McCall, who said later he shot Hickok for killing his brother, ran out of the saloon and jumped on a horse. But he was caught when the saddle fell over, and he later hanged. Hickok, meanwhile, left part of his legend on the poker table. The cards he was holding – a pair of aces and a pair of eights – are known as the “dead man’s hand.”