"Wild Bill" was a "road agent" (a highwayman) long before the Black Hills stampede and frequently entertained a crowd with descriptions of the raids he and his pals made upon the Mormon emigrants when they were enroute from Nauvoo, Ill., to Salt Lake. According to his own stories he was a heartless brute. Many deeds, however, that have been laid at his door, and others that he bragged about, were never committed. It has been estimated that he murdered all the way from fifteen to thirty men, but most of these were killed while he was marshal.
One story that used to be told in Cheyenne, but which was not authenticated, was that on one occasion at Abilene he entered a restaurant for breakfast and ordered ham and eggs "turned over." The waiter returned with the eggs fried on one side and "Bill" angrily said:
"I told you to have them eggs turned over!"
Whereupon the waiter playfully gave the dish a flip and turned them over. This so angered "Bill" that he shot the waiter dead, and then finished his meal, the poor waiter's body lying at his feet.
There was so much garroting of men who came to Cheyenne to join the rush into the hills that some of the wiser ones slipped outside the town at night and slept on the prairie, while others, armed to the teeth, either walked the streets or formed companies with guards for protection. It was a condition of affairs that gave the authorities more than they could handle at the start. However, after the first few months of excitement Cheyenne began to be good, and soon the civilization and order of older communities was apparent on every hand.
The railroad shortened the distance between the frontier and "God's Country," and before one could realize it Cheyenne was as orderly and well behaved as Worcester, Mass. So it is today. "Wild Bill," "Texas Jack," "Canada Bill" and the thieves and gamblers, with their guns and daggers, are forgotten; and if some of them could come back and tramp the streets again they would be as great curiosities as they would be on Broadway, New York, or State Street, Chicago—and they would land in jail or get out of town unless they walked a chalk-mark.
Cheyenne has long been in "God's country," although at the time discussed it was a long way over the line.