Legends of the Old West - WILD BILL HICKOK Ep. 3 | “The Outlaws of Hays City”

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

Hickok becomes the marshal of Hays City after Texas cowboys scare off the previous lawmen. The small Kansas town has never seen a marshal like Wild Bill. His unique appearance and routine cause the townsfolk to marvel, but nothing will stop outlaws from challenging him in the streets and the saloons. And then, the granddaddy of the Kansas cowtowns, Abilene, comes calling… Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fortnite created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. When Bill Hickok walked the streets of Hays City, Kansas, he must have been a sight to see.

He was tall and thin with broad shoulders. He was impeccably dressed, much nicer than your average frontier marshal. He had his two Navy Colt pistols, of course, but they weren't strapped to his hips like most men did. His guns were wedged into his belt with the handle spacing forward for a cross draw. And now, to complete the picture, he cradled a shotgun in his arms. When he patrolled Hay City, he walked right down the middle of the street. He believed it gave him a better chance to see any would-be assassins. If he strolled along the boardwalk next to buildings, someone could easily jump out of a dark alley and shoot him or stab him before he could react.

On this day, he patrolled the rough part of town. He was walking down the middle of the street with the shotgun in his arms when a short man known as Sullivan rushed into his path. Sullivan pointed a pistol at Bill and shouted triumphantly that he had Wild Bill Hickok dead to rights. But like others before him, Sullivan made the worst mistake of his life. He did indeed have the drop on Wild Bill Hickok. If he would have fired immediately, he would have killed one of the most famous men in the West. But he didn't. Instead, he did the thing that is so annoying when you see it in movies. He started talking. He talked and talked and talked, and he lost the advantage. He basically started writing a newspaper article out loud in the middle of the street.

Sullivan narrated the article that would surely be in all the papers the next day, about how he'd killed the famous scout and gunfighter. But just like in the movies, when the bad guy spends five minutes talking to the hero instead of finishing him off, Sullivan gave Bill the chance to turn the tables. As Sullivan rambled, Bill slowly lowered his right hand to his gun. He jerked the pistol and fired, and Sullivan died in the middle of his speech in the middle of the street. Then Bill reportedly turned to the crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle and uttered a one-liner, just like you'd see in the movies.

Bill said he talked his life away. Sullivan wasn't the first man Hickok killed in the line of duty in Hayes City, and he wouldn't be the last. And all that was just a preview of Bill's time as the Marshal of Abilene. And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system,

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and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash R-E-A-L-M now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash R-E-A-L-M. Now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash Realm. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season, we're telling the story of legendary lawmen and gunfighter, Wild Bill Hickok.

This is Episode 3, The Outlaws of Hayes City. In the summer of 1869, Wild Bill Hickok was newly recovered from a serious leg wound. After the Civil War, he'd spent four years as a scout and a messenger for the Army on the frontier. He had several run-ins with Native American war parties, and the most recent was almost the last. A group of seven Cheyenne warriors caught him on the plains between western Kansas and eastern Colorado. In the fight that followed, he wounded or killed six of the seven, which caused the last man to run for his life. But Bill had also been stabbed in the leg with a lance. When the doctor at Fort Lyon in Colorado couldn't get the spearhead out of Bill's leg, Bill traveled home to Illinois to find a more competent surgeon.

The second doctor successfully removed the object, and Bill spent the last couple months of the spring recovering at his family's house in Troy Grove. When the summer rolled around, he headed west again. He ended up in Hayes City at a point in time when city leaders desperately needed law and order. They'd lost three county sheriffs in 18 months. They couldn't elect a new one until November, and they needed someone to step in and fill the void. Hickok arrived in July 1869 and found the town in turmoil. The most recent county sheriff had just disappeared. He'd probably had enough of the thankless job and just walked away. The year had begun with three lynchings and had not gotten any better. Like many frontier towns, the citizens banded together and formed a vigilance committee.

A vigilance committee was like an informal militia that was supposed to support the local marshal or sheriff or take the place of the lawman if he was weak. But more often than not, vigilance committees turned out to be wild animals that were uncontrollable and did more harm than good. You'll hear about the infamous Montana vigilantes in an upcoming series. In Hayes City, the townspeople petitioned the governor to appoint a new sheriff, but the governor refused.

He said the people needed to hold an election. But it was midsummer, and the traditional election day wasn't until November. They needed a man who was willing to work under very dubious circumstances, and that man was Wild Bill Hickok. The Vigilance Committee appointed Hickok to the post of town marshal, even though the committee didn't really have the authority to do so. But it was all right for Hickok, so they just rolled with it until they could hold a special election. It couldn't have been more than a week before the first killing happened. On July 23rd, a man named Samuel Strawn met with a deputy U.S. Marshal and

walked into a store. They ran into the man who organized the vigilance committee. Some type of heated confrontation happened. The details still aren't known, but the committee organizer pulled his pistol and shot and killed the deputy U.S. marshal. Samuel ran out of the store and fled the town. The committee organizer, whose name was Alonzo Webster, quickly rounded up other members of the committee in case Samuel came back with friends. Samuel stayed away for two months, but there was plenty of action in his absence. Wild Bill patrolled the streets as an unofficial town marshal, and he had three courses of action when he encountered serious lawbreakers. One was to get out of town on the next eastbound

train. Two was to get out of town on the next westbound train. And three was one of those great expressions of the old west. If the lawbreaker didn't want to leave town going east or west on a train, he could, quote, go north in the morning. The cemetery was north of town. If a lawbreaker didn't take one of the traveling options, the next option could involve shooting. In September, about six weeks after Bill became the town marshal, the number of shootings went through the roof. At the end of August, Bill was elected county sheriff, but the governor refused to recognize it as a legitimate election. So Bill was on shaky ground, legally speaking, when he found himself in four potentially fatal situations. Three did not end well for others, and one was

another close call for Bill. September was another wild month in Hayes City. It began with an Old West bar crawl by a Missouri ruffian named Bill Mulvey. He didn't hold with law and order anyway, and one night he got rip-roaring drunk and shot up several saloons. He blasted whiskey bottles, mirrors, and lamps, pretty much anything that could explode in satisfying fashion. When he was warned that the marshal was on his way, Mulvey responded that he was there to kill Wild Bill. When Bill walked into the street, Mulvey was on his horse with his rifle at the ready. Bill tried a little deception. He pretended there was a person behind Mulvey who was about to shoot Mulvey in the back. Bill shouted at the imaginary stranger, which caused Mulvey to turn and look.

As Mulvey turned back, Bill pulled one of his pistols and fired. The bullet hit Mulvey in the temple and killed him instantly. Shortly after that incident, Bill faced the bizarre confrontation with a man named Sullivan. It could have ended badly for Bill, but Sullivan was a blowhard who enjoyed talking more than acting. After Sullivan threatened Bill at gunpoint, Bill shot him dead in the street. But obviously Bill's time wasn't entirely spent shooting outlaws in the street, no matter how he was portrayed in dime novels or magazine articles. While Bill was in Hayes City, he met two men who factored into his life in interesting ways. The first was a young man named Harry Young.

Harry drifted into town with $40 in his pockets, and after one evening of merriment in Hayes City, he had just $1.50 left. He bumped into Hickok and lamented his lost wages. He said he hoped to find work in Hayes, and Bill said he might be able to help. The next day, Bill and Harry rode out to Fort Hayes, and Bill recommended Harry for a job hauling freight. Harry passed a few simple tests, with some instruction from Bill, and got the job.

For the next six months, Harry drove wagons and made his money back and never forgot Wild Bill Hickok, as if anyone could. They would meet again a couple times in the future, including on a fateful day in August, seven years from now. The second new acquaintance was Texas Jack Omohundro. Texas Jack met Wild Bill through a mutual friend named California Joe Milner. Texas Jack met Wild Bill through a mutual friend named California Joe Milner. The three guys with fun nicknames had good times in the saloons of Hayes City when Bill wasn't squaring off with lawbreakers. But there was no shortage of work for Hickok. He'd brought a strict law to town, and it was received with mixed feelings.

It certainly wasn't received well by notorious outlaws like Jim Curry. Curry had terrorized Hayes City in its early days when there was no law. He killed black men out of simple racism. He killed a 19-year-old young man in the street because he thought the kid flirted with a girl whom Curry liked. By the summer of 1869, Curry ran a saloon in town. One day, a friend walked in, and the two men decided to go to a different saloon for lunch. When they walked in, they saw Hickok in the back of the bar playing cards. Curry had some kind of grudge against Hickok, or maybe he just hated all lawmen, because he walked up behind Hickok, cocked a pistol, and put it to the back of Hickok's head. Curry threatened Hickok, but Hickok sat there for a few

seconds as if he were unaffected. They exchanged some tense words as Hickok tried to figure out what to do next. Then he arrived at a solution. He offered to buy bottles of champagne for the whole bar. Curry thought the idea was hilarious, and he burst out laughing. And Bill made good on his idea. He bought champagne, he and Curry shook hands, and they avoided bloodshed. But the final confrontation of Hickok's time in Hayes City did not have such a peaceful outcome. At the end of September, Samuel Strawn returned to town with 18 friends. The men went to a saloon and drank heavily and then started tearing up the joint. By 1 a.m., they were all drunk, glasses were shattering, people were screaming, it was general mayhem. And that's when

Hickok arrived. He picked up a few glasses that had been thrown out of the bar by Samuel. When he brought them inside and stared down the rowdies, Samuel threatened to take the glasses from Hickok and throw them back outside. Hickok said, do and they will carry you out. eye. Hickok said, do and they will carry you out. Samuel made a move in response. He reached for his glass or his gun and Hickok didn't wait to see which. He drew and fired and shot Samuel in the neck. With both guns out, he waited for Samuel's friends to try something. Wisely, they chose not to engage Wild Bill in a gunfight. There were mixed reviews of Bill's tactics in Hayes City. He certainly brought more law and order than existed previously, but he also killed three men in three months and bashed several heads in between. Not everyone was happy with his style of law enforcement.

But Bill wasn't going to change. And when the official election took place in November, Bill was ousted from his job. Hayes City elected Bill's deputy, Rattlesnake Pete Lanahan. Bill spent just 10 or 11 weeks as the Marshal of Hayes City, but it was an eventful time. And incidentally, Rattlesnake Pete only held the job for a year and a half. He was ambushed and killed in July 1871. By that time, Bill was three months into his second job as a town marshal, and that one turned out to be his last. Abilene, Kansas hired Bill to bring his fast guns and hard-edged philosophy to a town that was finishing its glory days as the number

one destination for Texas cattle. Abilene wasn't the first Kansas cow town, but it was the first big one. It's the one that's most associated with the first wave of Texas cattle, before Ellsworth, Wichita, and Dodge City. The credit for turning Abilene into a cow town goes to Joseph McCoy and his two brothers. In 1867, McCoy led the group in pitching an idea to the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Texas cattlemen were already driving small herds north along the Chisholm Trail. McCoy led the group in pitching an idea to the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Texas cattlemen were already driving small herds north along the Chisholm Trail. But the Kansas Pacific Railroad used Sedalia, Missouri as its stockyards.

So if Texas cattlemen wanted to drive their herds straight to the stockyards, they had to go hundreds of miles north and then veer hundreds of miles to the east. McCoy encouraged the railroad to move its stockyard to a town in Kansas on the new line it was laying across the state. It would be a shorter, easier trip, and it would help cut down on the thieves and extortionists who prowled southern Kansas. But the railroad rejected McCoy's idea. So McCoy and his brothers decided to do it themselves. They took the train to Kansas

and persuaded the engineer to let them off at Abilene. Abilene was just a tiny hamlet at that time, and it didn't have a stop on the line. Here's how McCoy described it in his memoir. Abilene in 1867 was a very small, dead place, consisting of about a dozen log huts, low, small, rude affairs, four-fifths of which were covered with dirt for roofing. Indeed, but one shingle roof could be seen in the whole city. shingle roof could be seen in the whole city. The business of the Burg was conducted in two small rooms, mere log huts, and of course the inevitable saloon, also in a log hut, was to be found. But McCoy saw the potential of the area. The lack of civilization was a blessing. It meant

there was plenty of room to construct his dream. There were acres of land for stockyards and buildings. There was grass for grazing as far as the eye could see. There was fresh water from the nearby Smoky Hill River. In July 1867, the McCoy brothers bought land outside Abilene and put their plan into motion. Joseph brought in lumber from Missouri and supervised construction of the stockyard and the business headquarters, a huge building called the Drover's Cottage. His brothers James and William rushed down to Texas to start the marketing campaign. They handed out circulars and bought ads in newspapers and personally met with ranchers

to tell them about the new hub for their cattle. Texas cattlemen signed up immediately. In fact, they arrived so quickly that Joseph McCoy had not completed any of his structures. When the first herds trudged into town later that summer, the cattle were housed in crude pens, and business was conducted in tents. But by September, the full operation was up and running. Cattle buyers wined and dined ranchers in the fancy drover's cottage. The stockyard funneled thousands of head of cattle onto train cars, and the McCoys started getting rich.

They had built the best cattle hub in Kansas from nothing. 35,000 head moved through Abilene in those short few months after it opened. The next year, it more than doubled. In 1869, it was 160,000 head. The population of Abilene exploded. In the space of two months, from July 1867 to September 1867, it went from a sleepy village of a few huts to a bustling marketplace for cattle. Over the next three years, it grew into a raucous and rowdy town with laundries, kitchens, hotels, brothels, and more saloons than you could shake a stick at. The Texas Cowboys were nearly uncontrollable.

After weeks on the trail eating dust from a herd of stinky cows, they ran wild when they hit town. Abilene couldn't keep good lawmen, but that changed with the hiring of Tom Smith. He was the third town marshal, and the man who immediately preceded Wild Bill Hickok. The first two marshals were chased out of town by cowboys. But when Tom Smith showed up in the spring of 1870, it was clear he was different. He'd been a New York City policeman who patrolled the Bowery section of the city. That area made the rowdy part of a Kansas cow town look quaint by comparison. Smith was a bare-knuckle boxer who preferred fists to guns, and he used them right away in Abilene.

The new marshal was a slender, soft-spoken Irishman who was 30 years old. He initially refused to carry a gun, but the city leaders told him it was imperative. They compromised, and he kept a gun concealed under his coat. He immediately reposted the signs that said guns were not allowed in town limits. They'd been torn down and disregarded by cowboys. He had no deputies, so he asked saloon keepers to collect guns from their patrons. That was a tricky task, but the people of Abilene soon learned that Tom Smith was not messing around.

Smith confronted a cowboy nicknamed Big Hank. Hank was 6'2 and carried two guns. Smith told Hank to give up the weapons. Hank replied belligerently as expected. Smith started swinging, and within seconds, Big Hank was flat on the dusty street. After that display, Hank's friends readily gave up their guns. When Big Hank was able to stand again, he climbed onto his horse and rode out of town. During the cattle season of 1870, Tom Smith did a hell of a job without firing a shot. His boxing abilities gave him a serious

edge over any cowboy who didn't shoot first. But in November 1870, he bit off more than he could chew. Like lots of lawmen in the Old West, he held multiple jobs at once. Just like Hickok and the Earps and many others, he was a town marshal and a deputy U.S. marshal at the same time. That November, the county sheriff asked Smith to help serve a warrant in his capacity as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. Smith and the sheriff, James McDonald, rode to the home of two Scottish farmers. The farmers saw the lawmen coming and locked themselves in the dugout that was their home. McDonald shouted for the men to come out,

but as time dragged by, Smith grew impatient. He charged up to the door and knocked it down. MacDonald followed him inside, and the two lawmen started brawling with the two Scottish farmers. Smith was perfectly suited for that kind of fight, but MacDonald wasn't. He ran away after a few seconds. Now, Smith was outnumbered. The farmer who was now free of the fight grabbed a rifle and shot

Smith in the chest. But the bullet didn't kill the marshal. So the farmer grabbed an axe and swung it at Smith's neck. The blade nearly decapitated the marshal. Tom Smith fell down dead on the dirt floor, and the two farmers fled the area. A posse eventually caught them and they went to prison, but Tom Smith died a bad death, and now Abilene needed another new marshal. But the cattle season was done, and winter had arrived, and the city leaders didn't feel the need to hire a new marshal right away. The bone-chilling cold, the whipping wind, and the frequent blizzards kept the lawlessness to a minimum. But when the weather warmed in the spring, everyone knew what would happen. The cattle would arrive, and so would the cowboys.

The loud nights full of shouting and shooting and brawling would commence. Wild Bill Hickok had been unemployed for a year and a half, and while he could survive on gambling and shooting exhibitions, the lure of a steady paycheck was strong. Tom Smith had been paid well, so when the city fathers, led by Joseph McCoy, who was now the mayor, offered the job to Hickok in April 1871, Hickok accepted. He was sworn in as the 4th Marshal of Abilene on April 15th, and he used the same routine that had worked in Hayes City. He walked right down the middle of the street with his pistols on display, the bowie

knife hanging from his belt, and a shotgun in his arms. And he needed all the tools of the trade. As one person said, the cowboys were wilder this year than they had ever been in the short history Hickok set up shop at the Alamo Saloon, which rankled some people in town. Even if he wasn't drinking or gambling, it looked weird for the town marshal to use a saloon as his headquarters. There was a perfectly good marshal's office down the street, but Hickok wouldn't use it. One of the big advantages he had over his predecessor Tom Smith was that he had deputies, and he assigned one of those young men to work out of the office. His deputies were Jack Norton, Mike Williams, Tom Carson, the nephew of Kit Carson, and James Gainsford. Gainsford was held in particular esteem in Abilene because he was

one of the men who tracked down the Scottish farmers who'd killed Tom Smith. But despite Hickok's support staff, he handled the first big test on his own. It was probably sometime in May of 1871, not long after Hickok was hired, but before the cattle season kicked into high gear. There were still plenty of Texas cowboys in town, and on that night, they started a brawl in the Last Chance Saloon. The Last Chance Saloon was a popular watering hole

in the rough part of town that was known as Texas Street. Texas Street was an actual street, but as the town grew, people just started calling the whole entertainment district Texas Street. The noise of the fight drew Hickok to the scene. He jumped into the brawl and started throwing the cowboys out into the street. The Texans rode out of town, but by the time they made it to their camp, they decided they needed to teach the Marshal a lesson.

The next day, they rode back to town with a plan to hang Hickok from a tree on Main Street. But Hickok had been tipped to their movements. He found out that 20 or so cowboys were on their way to finish him off. He exchanged his shotgun for a Winchester rifle and walked out into the middle of the street to meet them. He stood in front of the Last Chance Saloon and issued an ultimatum that fit the name of the joint. Wild Bill leveled his Winchester at the men in the center of the group and said, hide out, you sons of bitches. Two dozen Texas cowboys sat on their horses

and stared in surprise at the audacity of the lone lawman. Bill was heavily armed, yes, but he was totally outnumbered and outgunned. Now the cowboys were in a classic dilemma. Collectively, they could win the fight. It was physically impossible for Bill to shoot all of them. He didn't have enough bullets. But the guys in the center who had the Winchester pointed at them would absolutely

die. And while Bill Hickok was one of the fastest gunmen in the West, there was no telling how many he might get before he finally fell. So the cowboys had to ask themselves, were they really willing to die today? After a minute of tense silence, as they all stared at each other, the answer was no. They drifted away in small groups and lived to drink another day. But the bloodless standoff was just an early highlight of the eight months that Wild Bill Hickok was the Marshal of Abilene. highlight of the eight months that Wild Bill Hickok was the Marshal of Abilene. That summer, one of the genuine killers of the Old West came to town, and two more notorious characters opened a bar that created all kinds of problems. As the summer progressed and tempers flared, murder and gunfights and tragedy struck Abilene.

Next time on Legends of the Old West, infamous outlaw John Wesley Harden makes his mark on Abilene, and the cattle season ends with a dramatic shootout that leads to a low point in Wild Bill's life. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month.

Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your writer, host, and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details. And join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great shows

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