The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1898-01-16

THE WAN VINO BEAT ORDER INTO
THE TOU TEST TOWN IN KANsIS.

PROPOSALS TO Erect = monument 10 n Beeperaoo
Whe KILLED panny Men Before neinE siatn
utnseiE-Tho Courage aud Firn,pess re
Euhibtted as Tewu Marshal OF Abilene.
Los ANGELES, Cal, Jan. lit lie surprising"
anid ex.Supcrvisor William =. Ray at Santa
Monica, "how many friends Wild Bill, that
famous and unique character OF tho plains TWEEN.
~ years ago, has among the honest, hardy pio-
peers of the West. Bill-his right name was
Hjckok, you know-was shot dead In q saloon
at Deadwood II In 1882, and ho was buried in that
town.. Now some Of his old.timo friends at
Abilene, Kan. want tho body oxhumed and
taken there for permanent burial. Several hun
dred dollars has also been subscribed by Bills
former friends in Kansas who now live in south
orn California for removing the remains to either
Puente or Falibrook, CAL, where Bill has some
wealthy relatives among the ranchmen. Tho
p,an is to erect o monument to his memory
and keep his grave green. II is neglected up
thore In Doadwood. I knew Bill quito well In
Abilene in 1870, and In oil my experience on the
frontier of civilization, through twenty-five
years, / can safely say i never knew another
man like Wild Bill Hickok. He was a hard
ened, reckless cowpuncher. Ho shot and killed
at Toast fifteen mon in his early manhood, not
counting Indians, and then no was.madc City
Marshal at Abilene to keep the peace among
tho cowboys, who were making life and property
insecure there. From that hour Wild Bill
changed. He became n terror to wrongdoers,
especially to drunken men armed with shooting
irons, and o moro courageous, and at tho same
timo quiet, unassuming peace officer than Bill
Hickok was never known on tho plains. Ho
would walk right into a crowd Of maddened.
fighting cowboys, each gripping 42.ca,ibre pis-
tolls, and demand peace. Scores Of US plainsmcn
used to wonder how any man could take tho
chances week after week of being shot through
and through that Wild Bill did for only S11O
o month salary. That's why all the old fellows
who knew what q courageous, dauntless follow
Wild Bill was respect HIS memory. even know
ing what a taker Of human lifo ho himself had
been. Kit Carson once told me, in his old age
at Santa Fe, that he had never known the equal
Of Bill Hickok for personal fearlessness."
Wild Bills full name was James b. Hickok.
He was born In western Texas about 1S47, and
was rechristencd Wild Bill by the plainsmen.
He was q lad when no began his career as a
cowpunchcr at tho end of the civil war. He
knew nothing of the world but what he saw Of
the toughest frontier life. Troops. scouts, and
border rufnans were the only people he knew In
his youth. From his infancy he was reared
amid the shedding Of human blood, both
white and Indian. and he learned the customs
OF bordorland as naturally as ordinary children
do tho alphabet. Tradition among the cowboys
OF this generationshas 1t that Wild Bill had killed
three men before he was 20 years old, and,
also, so expert was no with firearms as n lad,
that he could drop an apple from a tree by
cutting its stem with a bullet, and then put two
more balls through the apple while 1t was falling
60 the ground. AS no grew to manhood he
showed a strange mixture of frontier probity
and disregard of human life. Twenty years
ago there was no one on the plains better known
than Wild Bill.
The old.timo plainsmen. who have retired to
ranches in the valleys of southern California
after long toll and hardships. say that Wild
Bill became first generally known at Las Vegas.
N. M. That was in 1867, when there was no
railroad west of Topeka. and Now Mexico and
Arizona were alive with bandits. Bill was
about 20 years old. He came along the Santa
F6 trail with a dozen cowboys and a herd of
several thousand steers on the way to La Jun
Ia, Col. While the hcrding outfit stopped in
Las Vegas the Mexican Sheriff and police off.
cers started out to capture two Mexican ban
-Adfts who had committed a series of depreda.
tions in that locality and had eludcd capture
for several years. Bill left the herd to the
other cowboys and went with the Sheriff. He
was a beardless STRIPPING then, but he rode on
ahead, leaving the old and experienced bandit
chasers behind. Then by n reckless dash upon
the camp Of tho outlaws he shot one OF them to
death and wounded and captured tho other.
When the Sheriff and his posse drove up tho
young cowpuncher had his man bound, tied.
and ready for taking to Jail. So tho fame of
Wild Bill began.
From the close of the war until 1876 the cattle
business Of Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado
increased at q wonderful rate, and in the latter
part Of tie sixties there was an almost endless
stream of cattle being prodded along the way
by cowboys from tho Southwest to Abilene,
which was Mt that time the PRINCIPAL town OF
the Western border. All professions of Texas
or Now Mexico cattle and vauueros were head
cd for Abilene or Dodge City. and those places
became tho resort of thousands of biR-hattcd
and heavily armed cowboys. Every cowpunch-
or looked for weeks ahead to his arrival in Abb.
his h,s,t droy os S or steers Snrk ana ab 20 paid mo in fq ~ for for
looms. dance houses, and gambling places for
the first time in a year or more and a perfect
herds arrived from their weeks of tramping
and horseback riding, to the beginning of winter.
s oeeu sTe SSS that : it nS attracted Th little ie s sN@mGm an
mouths in isG9!7o, and in that time there were
more than eighty-dve homicides and fully sixty
several Weeks there was not even a coroner's
Inquest upon tho murdered men. Out Of zoo
Houses Or ." dons Of other sorts. Thss Ioughss
from all over the United States and Canada
ado said OF Abilene that it was the only place
be had eyer Lived In where they had q new muir
der dent for ru 6rsa ana IT, every yoIi n morning. M az n EtyeTTy y b 'dy
ciashing of bowie knives could DO heard at all
hours of the night. There was no law, not even
viYilantes. and only occasionally when the mill.
tary interfered to put down a mob was there
anything like order.
by the spring of 1871 several hundred East
ern men who had come West to grow up in the
boot and cattle business, and had settled Mt
Abilone, decided that reform was necessary.
The town would never grow II 1t did not re.
form. Either tho cowboys must be restrained
or tho respectable citizens must move away.
They looked for a man strong enough to con.
troll tho lawless element, and In Wild Bill! they
found him.
At that time Hickok was "a years old. He
had lived entirely on the border. and had fought
Indians, pursued and shot land claim jumpers,
guided cmigrant trains across the plains, and
eambled with the miners In the mountains. 1t
Is related of him that on one occasion, when
making q solitary trip. he was surrounded by
hyo Indians and cnpturod. He took it good.
naturodly. and was 80 resigned that the captois
relaxed their vigilance. As they were about to
cross u stream he pushed two of them off tho
bank into the water, knocked another down