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 The
first meeting
Wild Bill
met Jack McCall the
night before the killing
By
Thadd Turner
It was cool, windy night in Deadwood City, unusual
weather for the first day of August in this Centennial Year of 1876. But
it had not been a normal year on the Northern Plains.
George Custer and his immediate command of the 7th
Cavalry had been killed along the Little Big Horn River just six weeks
earlier. The Sioux,
Northern Cheyenne, and Crow Indians were at war with the United States
Military and it was not safe to travel into the Black Hills.
The Black Hills were still a part of the Sioux Indian
Reservation granted the Indians in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The
Indians were furious that white men dared trespass on their sacred Paha
Sapa, looking for the precious yellow rock. They wanted the white man
out of their lands and made it clear they would kill all whites that
dared desecrate these holy mountains.
James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok had arrived in the hills a few weeks
earlier with his good friend “Colorado Charlie” Utter. They left
Cheyenne the latter part of June with a large wagon train, driving north
to Fort Laramie, where “Calamity Jane” Cannary asked to join them.
She’d recently worn out her welcome in Cheyenne and the mining boom in
the Hills seemed “like a darn good chance to get square again.”
Wild Bill had been thinking similar thoughts. The boom in Deadwood might
be his chance to hook up with some mining speculators, freighting
contractors, or even help Charlie run his new pony express mail service.
There would also be need for civilian law enforcement and Hickok had
plenty of experience in this profession from his days down in Kansas,
working tough cow towns during the early cattle trail drives north out
of Texas. Controlling a bunch of gold crazy miners would be easy
business for a man who had spent so many dark nights facing armed,
drunken, fearless Texas cowboys. This new gold rush could indeed be a
great opportunity, he reasoned.
Wild Bill liked the little gaming and drinking place called the No. 10
Saloon. Located on the lower end of Deadwood City’s rapidly growing
Main Street, this simple, rough-sawed wood structure was easily accessed
from Charlie Utter’s camp across Whitewood Creek and enabled Bill to
avoid unwanted exposure on the heaviest part of the bustling street.
Everyone knew Wild Bill was in town; his reputation had preceded him
into the new little mining camp. Wild Bill could hold his own when it
came to trouble, and he had been in many life and death situations, but
those damn dime novel publications back East were turning him into some
type of immortal man that couldn’t be killed. He was now forced to
constantly be aware of his surroundings, at all times and in every
situation. It had become a tiring and endless job for him.
There were actually two gulches here, containing about half a dozen little
mining camps clustered upon each other. The busiest of them all was
Deadwood City, located right in the middle of where the gulches and
their creeks, Deadwood and Whitewood, converged on their northward path
out of the hills. Wild Bill could see the potential here and knew he
would somehow make his mark in this place. In the meantime, there was
gambling to keep him occupied; the card tables always seemed to be full
of eager players.
Most of the prospectors were anything but miners. They were former
Confederate and Union soldiers, cavalry scouts, freighters and ranchers,
common laborers, recent immigrants, cowboys and lawmen, soiled doves,
settlers, and the inevitable outlaw road agents. The most experienced
prospectors had followed rushes to the Montana gold fields a decade
earlier. Bannick, Alder Gulch, Anaconda, Helena -- all had run their
course and were established now. The Black Hills rush was right in the
middle of the frontier country, yet it seemed no one had even noticed
the darn place before!
Even Wild Bill, who had scouted for the U. S. Cavalry south of this region
with his old pards “Texas Jack” Omohundro and “Buffalo Bill”
Cody, had never been in the area. The Black Hills were considered just
another obstacle in the way to somewhere else. Now his two old scouting
friends were busy playing to the dandies and their sweethearts, back
East on theater stages.
Bill heard that Cody had come out west again this summer to scout for the
5th Cavalry, and got himself in an Indian fight down near Hat Creek, a
little crossing just south of the Black Hills near the Nebraska and
Wyoming borders. Hat Creek, or Sage Creek as some called it, was on the
main wagon trail above Fort Laramie. Apparently Cody came out of that
scrap with a small Indian trophy, something else with which to entertain
Eastern audiences.
Hickok was beginning to feel there was something almost too “easy”
about this Black Hills mining boom, as if it was predetermined to be the
most successful gold rush yet. There were already a lot of professional
businessmen in town looking to make some quick money.
The night of August 1 was a slow one in the No.10 Saloon. Bill had his
customary table seat next to the west wall, a seat that allowed him to
“keep his back covered” while offering him a complete view of the
entire saloon floor. Carl Mann, one of the saloon owners, sat in to play
cards earlier in the evening, primarily just to keep a game going.
The two other men now playing at the table were new faces to Wild Bill.
The tallest one had just completed his enlistment with the 3rd Cavalry
out of Fort McPherson, Nebraska, and barely spoke English. The former
horse soldier was from one of those old countries on the European
continent and smelled of black powder and pickled eggs. The other player
at the table was a young fellow who looked to be in his early twenties
and had an awkward way about him that made Bill cautious, but more
curious than alarmed.
He said his name was Bill Sutherland. Probably wasn’t his real name. He
seemed to be running from something uncomfortable, maybe not the law,
but something he was afraid of facing. Perhaps a bad family or a rotten
marriage or some other situation he didn’t want to deal with. There
were many of those stories after the Great War left so many people
desperate and destitute -- it was a tough time just to be alive for some
folks.
This young Sutherland fellow wasn’t a good card player. He had no idea
how to bluff a good hand, let alone a bad one. His eyes jumped around,
darting from side to side like little fireflies whenever he was dealt a
good hand. The sweat that formed on his thin brown mustache above the
coarse goatee covering his shallow face was almost humorous. You could
read this kid like a book.
Bill would almost have felt guilty taking his money, except he was so hard
up for steady cash. He had to remind himself he was extended over his
credit limit with most of the saloons around town. Charlie Utter and
Bill’s other old friend, “California Joe” Milner, whom he had ran
into the first day the wagon train had arrived in the gulch, were
probably tired of loaning him cash. They were good friends that would
never question Bill’s loyalty and honest intentions to pay them back,
but Bill knew he was pushing further than he ought to with both of them.
He couldn’t bring himself to write to his wife Agnes for expense
money. After all, he was supposed to be making their fortune
here in the hills.
Wild Bill kept looking for Sutherland to give away his hands, then calmly
and deliberately would bluff the young man into folding, after building
up the pot. Carl Mann knew what was going on, but that’s what gambling
was about. A simple game of chance you either win or lose, but you
always play only what you can afford to part with. Besides, these young
men would probably leave the mining camp soon anyway. There was only so
much gold to be found and odds were that it wasn’t going to be them
who would find it. The real money was in the business operations that
always paid off in gold rush camps.
If Bill Sutherland was annoyed that Wild Bill was beating him, he sure
didn’t show it. He just
kept playing, no matter how obvious it was that he didn’t have a
chance against the experienced and older gambler. Wild Bill Hickok was
39 years of age and had probably started gambling before this kid was
even out of cloth wraps. The kid apparently felt he had to show the
great Wild Bill he wasn’t afraid of him, even if it meant going broke
to do it.
Bill didn’t care. “Bring ‘em all in, line ‘em up, and sit ‘em
down.” He needed the easy cash. There sure didn’t seem to be any
fight in the young man. Wild Bill felt comfortable and relaxed.
Finally the young gambler just plain ran out of money. The former 3rd
Cavalry horse soldier had quit about 30 minutes earlier. Carl Mann
stayed in only to keep Wild Bill in the saloon; he was good for
business. Sutherland had thrown his purse full of gold dust into the
final pot, but when George Shingle, one of Carl Mann’s employees,
weighed it out on the scales at the end of the bar top, the sack was
short about $16.
The young miner said he would make it right with gold dust he had at his
camp tent. He left for a few minutes, then returned with some more dust
that, when weighed out, was just enough to clear his gambling debt.
Hickok could tell the young fellow was completely out of cash after
paying him off. “You
spent it all on cards?” he asked the inexperienced gambler who
admitted he was. “Well then, here’s a dollar for your supper, pard,”
Bill offered. “And don’t spend it at the tables.”
Sutherland declined the generous gift and shuffled out the front
door of the No. 10 Saloon.
“Well, we probably won’t see him for a while,” said Wild Bill to no
one in particular as he headed out the front door onto Deadwood City’s
main street. He knew he was an open target on this busy street and must
always be conscious of danger. The street didn’t offer him the safety
and security of the west wall in the No. 10 Saloon.
On the following afternoon--Wednesday, August 2, 1876--Bill Sutherland, an
alias for the 25-year-old miner whose real name was Jack McCall, went
back to Mann, Lewis and Nuttall’s No.
10 Saloon.
Engaged in a draw poker game with three other players, Wild Bill was not
sitting in his usual secure wall seat; his back was partially exposed
to the rear of the saloon. McCall walked up behind Hickok, pulled out
a single action pistol and fired one round. The bullet entered the
back of Wild Bill’s head, exiting through his lower right cheek.
Death was instantaneous.
Editor’s note: Adapted from
his book, Wild Bill Hickok:
Deadwood City—End of Trail, Thadd Turner’s First
Meeting also appears in the August edition of True West magazine.
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