The Badlands: Desolate, empty, and seared
Apparently the inactivity came to bore him, for he soon gave up police work to return to the army for two years as a scout. This harsh calling also failed to satisfy whatever inner wants were making themselves felt, and in 1874 he resigned to join a traveling show with Buffalo Bill.
In 1875, however, he was to be found no longer behind the chemical lights, but idling his time away in Cheyenne. During this restless interlude he married a circus rider named Agnes Lake. Shortly after the ceremony, which took place in 1876, he followed the trail to Deadwood, arriving in April and setting up camp with another ex-army scout. The motives which drew him to that thriving boom town were, in all probability, those which drew the thousands of others—mere curiosity and the hope that something might turn up. Indeed, during the four months of his Deadwood hiatus he did very little but play poker in the famed saloon known as Number Ten. That he was as accomplished a gambler as he was a gunman was doubted by no one, and through his ability with the pasteboards he apparently kept himself in such funds as he needed. He did not attempt to look for gold, nor did he seek any official post in the town. He merely played the long hours away at cards.
One might expect such a man as Wild Bill Hickok to meet his nemesis in open battle with a murderous cutthroat seeking to pay off an old score. Western legend is filled with such fitting come-uppances. But in this rare case our hero was killed in a peaceful moment by a total stranger and for reasons which nobody was ever thereafter able to discern.
On the fateful day of August 2, 1876, he entered Number Ten shortly after the lunch hour to take up his everlasting hand of cards. Normally, being a prudent man, he insisted on a seat with its back to a wall, from which vantage point he could keep his eye cocked for trouble; but on this day, for some reason, he arrived just too late to take his customary position and had to accept a chair with its back to the door. The game proceeded amiably enough for a while, and there was nothing in the afternoon air to suggest violence of any sort. At last a normally inoffensive deadbeat, one Jack McCall, turned from the bar where he had been enjoying a quiet drink and, passing the gaming table on his way to the door, suddenly and without a word pulled his revolver from his vest and put a shot through Wild Bill’s skull.
The effect was instantaneous. When the news spread that Wild Bill had been killed, all work stopped in the city and men streamed in from every corner, expecting at the very least to find a major battle in progress. When finally the crowds were quieted down and it was learned that the killing was nothing more than a mere murder, the populace speedily hunted up the terrified McCall, whom they found huddled in a near-by stable, and arranged a formal trial. The facts that Deadwood was at that time still out of bounds to American citizens and therefore under no legitimate civil jurisdiction and that the judge, jury, and prosecuting attorney were elected on the spot by a show of hands, having therefore no official standing, did not dampen the ardor of the crowd. A trial was a trial, and its results would presumably be fair and honest.
As a matter of fact, Jack McCall must have been the most surprised individual of all at the ultimate fairness of the legal machinery which had been set up in his honor. With the acceptance of his fumbling plea that Hickok had, at a place unnamed and at a time unnamed, killed his brother, McCall was acquitted and turned free, and Wild Bill was sorrowfully buried by the admiring populace.
As soon as he was freed, McCall hurried back to Cheyenne to escape the reach of any of Hickok’s friends. Unfortunately the story of the killing followed him there, and under the mistaken impression that he had undergone a legitimate trial and was therefore no longer subject to additional jeopardy, McCall took no pains to deny the murder. This was a most foolish tactic on his part, for he was speedily rearrested and shipped to Yankton, the capital of South Dakota Territory, where he was held for a session of the proper court. Inasmuch as he had admitted before witnesses not only that he had killed Wild Bill, but also that his earlier plea had been fabricated from whole cloth, he had a very slender defense indeed, and was quickly found guilty and banged.
To the very end no clue could be found to any sort of sound reason for his having fired the fatal shot. It was quite definitely proved that he had never had any dealings with his victim and had never been in any way offended by him, and that he no more than knew vaguely who he was. It was apparently a completely aimless killing, the unhappy inspiration of the moment.
On the other hand, Justice seems forever determined to get to the bottom of the matter, for The Trial of Jack McCall has become an institution of the Black Hills, played, like Ten Nights in a Barroom, all the summers long in a popular tavern. Where audiences elsewhere hiss their Legrees and other purely fictional villains, the proud residents of Deadwood have their very own and very real scoundrel for the target of their malisons—the miserable McCall. Tourists are cordially invited to join in the fun and thereby to spread ever farther the legend of Wild Bill Hickok.