Returning at the end of this one visit to the golden shores, he managed to land in the Platte Valley of the eastern Rockies in the very year when gold was being discovered in that region. The following two years he spent in odd jobs around Denver and on the high plains to the east of that new city. During all this time, however, it seemed as if his heart were hungering for the lower country. He let his drifting carry him slowly back into Kansas where, at the beginning of the Civil War, he managed a station for Hinckley’s Overland Express Company, which was then staging from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Denver and into Central City.
All these adventures gave ample opportunity for any young man of spleen to entangle himself a dozen times over in killings, brawls, and assorted rough businesses, but through this entire period James Hickok gave evidence of being nothing but a stalwart and well-intentioned individual.
The harmlessness of his pursuits, though, came to an explosive end after one year in this genial work, when he indulged in pistolry with a certain McCanles gang. One version of the Wild Bill legend states that the “gang” were cutthroats, and that Hickok was only defending his company’s property. Another version, equally trustworthy, has it that the McCanleses were Confederate sympathizers, attempting to raise a cavalry unit in the region and thus offending Hickok with his Unionist leanings. Whatever the reason, the outcome was bloody. No one today knows for certain how many men were killed, for eyewitness accounts have included reports ranging all the way from one to six, all of them presumably slain by Hickok.
The doughty station manager, his helper, and another stage company employee were speedily brought to trial for the affair, and just as speedily acquitted of any crime. Shortly after that Hickok resigned his express company affiliation and joined the Union army, fighting the war out as a trusted though undistinguished scout.
After his discharge in 1865, he seems to have forsaken forever his once peaceful way of life, and thereafter blood was more than occasionally to be found upon his hands. His first postwar killing took place in Springfield, Missouri, in a duel with a gambler; and later that same year he was reported to have mortally wounded another card player in Julesburg, Colorado Territory. In the next year another report, unofficial like all the rest, had him killing three more men in Missouri, and in 1867—this was official—he went to the booming cow town of Hays City, Kansas, where he was shortly offered the post of marshal.
That his reputation, whether truthful or legendary, was growing there can be no question. By 1867 he was accounted to be one of the best gunmen of his time and place, quite possibly for the simple reason that he had survived so many fights. For all the shadowy overtones of his story, he was also reputed to be a devotee of righteousness and order, although this facet of his character may or may not actually have existed. He was well known to be a gambler, and his victims were all (except the McCanleses) supposed to be cheaters at cards. Whether his vivacity with Mr. Colt’s revolver was intended to rid the earth of dishonest men or merely to avenge a lost hand is beside the point, for his acceptance of the position of marshal of Hays City indicates that for a time, at least, his inclinations lay in the direction of law and order.
From Hays City he went to a similar post in Abilene, where he bore the star until 1872. During all this time he was forced to kill but a bare minimum of unworthy citizens, his ever growing repute as a dangerous man with a gun apparently frightening would-be desperadoes out of his orbit. Three notches were all that he placed upon his weapon during his service in those two hell cities of the prairies—definitely a world’s record in reverse.
One of the Black Hills’ many streams
