GUNS Magazine April 1956

a gun barrel and was a partisan in the bloody
Kansas-Missouri border war before he was
old enough to vote.
His father, William Alonzo Hickok, had
studied for the ministry, but ill health forced
him to migrate west in 1834. The Hickoks
were Vermont pioneers, and descended from
patriots who fought in the Revolution with
Ethan Allen.
Wild Bill of the frontier was born James
Butler Hickok on May 27, 1837, at Troy
Grove, Illinois. It is said that he owned a
flintlock pistol when he was eight years old,
and at 18 had defeated all the crack shots in
the district with a percussion revolver. He
killed wolves for the bounty to help out his
widowed mother.
In 1855 he set out on foot for the western
frontier and landed in the middle of the
Kansas-Missouri border war which was brew-
ing over the slavery question. In 1856 he was
a member of General Lane's Free State
Army or Kansas "Red Legs" organized to
combat raids by the Missourians into Frce-
State territory. As General Lane's bodyguard
he was active in all the major operations of
the Free State militia. In this deadly guerilla
warfare, young Wild Bill's nerve and courage
was tempered to a steel-like hardness, and his
gun-speed sharpened in the wind of whistling
bullets. Accuracy on the frontier was an
absolute necessity, not a fad or a hobby.
But Wild Bill was never a ruthless killer
or the brawling bully as some of his critics
pictured him. He was soft-spoken and fond
of fine clothes which fit his well-proportioned,
six-foot one-inch frame admirably. Though
he deserved his Wild Bill nickname he never
liked it and most of his friends called him
Jim, and these numbered many high ranking
army officers from General Sheridan and
Custer on down.
In 1857 Hickok had taken up a homestead
in Monticello Township, Johnson County,
Kansas, and was elected constable there the
next year. His letters home proved he had an
earnest desire to make good as a farmer. For
excitement he drove stage part-time, and
bossed wagon freight outfits down the Santa
Fe Trail.
Wild Bill always did his shooting on the
side of right and justice. As an active Aboli-
tionist when the Civil War broke out, he was
soon in the Union lines as a volunteer for
scouting, sharpshooting, patrol duty, spying
missions inside the Confederate lines and
guarding valuable supply trains.
He served under General John C. Fremont
and General Samuel R. Curtis. The latter
put him on his personal staff after the Battle
of Pea Ridge on March 6-8, 1862, where Hic-
kok was credited with killing 35 Confederates,
including the rebel General McCulloch, as
a sharpshooter.
He shot his way out of so many tight spots
when chased by Confederate patrols that he
and his fast mare, Black Nell, were widely
known along the Union lines in the western
campaigns. Had he been an enlisted man he
would certainly came out of the war with a
chest full of medals. But as it turned out,
he was given the dubious reward of becoming
a deputy marshal1 at Ft. Riley, Kansas, to
combat stealing of cavalry horses and deser-
tion by troops.
In 1867, General Sheridan picked him as a
dispatch rider in his campaign to break up
the hostile Indian forces which were raiding
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