The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-01-30
WILD BILLS WAR work.
scout and Spy with Gen. Curtis in
Missouri.
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun
1.-THE Californians who knew Wild Bill
Hickok out at Abilene and Deadwood in
the seventies are wrong when they say he
was first heard of after the war" said
the man from Missouri, on reading the
story of the famous plainsman in the
Sunday Sun. wild Bill was a Union
scout and spy all through the war on the
border, and he had fought Indians and
taken a hand In the Kansas row before he
served under Curtis down in Southwestern
Missouri and Arkansas. knew him at
Springfield in the fall of '65, soon after
the surrender. Few men in that region
were so well known as Wild Bin. OF all
the daredevil characters that came to the
surface in those days he was the worst
or the best. Bin was not a murderer or
an assassin, or anything of the kind. He
killed his men In open fight always. but
he killed lot of 'em. He was quicker
with his gun that the other fellows were
and he never missed when he drew on a
man; that was ALL
Human life. like the greenbacks, was
below par in that part of Missouri just
after the war. You see, the state had
been divided in sentiment when the seces-
A
part of the people-the larger part-were
Southern rights men who wanted to take
Missouri out of the Union. They would
have done, it, too, if that daring little
Connecticut Yankee. Nathaniel Lyon,
hadn't got together in st. Louis a small
force of regulars and volunteers and
driven Sterling Price, Gov. Jackson and
the rest of the secession leaders out of
the state before they had time to resist
or raise an army. On this quick march
to the southwest Lyons troops moved
light, living off the secession population as
they went along. After Lyon was killed
at Wilson's Creek in the first battle of
the war in the West, Pap Price fol-
lowed the retreating Union army north
ward, and, of course, too whatever he
needed from the Union portion of the
population. So it went off and on, for
four years, according to the shifting for
tune of the war, but one side or the other
was always getting the worst of 1t. And
when the Missourians were not away from
home, fighting in the ranks with either
Price or Curtis, they kept up a guerrilla
warfare among themselves, so that hun
dreds of grievances and grudges remained
to be settled after the main fight ended.
"Wild Bill and a man named Dave Tut
settled one of these old scores on the
public square at Springfield while l was
there Tut had been a scout in Prices
army He was handy with his gun game
as a hornet, and an all-round bad man
even for that country at that time. Dur
ing the war BIZ had killed TUFTS pal I'M
der circumstances to which Tut took ex-
ception, and he had declared to his friends
that he would have Bits life. Back of
all this, l afterward learned, there was
an undercurrent of woman in the case. so
that the fued was bitter. Everybody in
the town knew that one or the other of
those men, and maybe both of them, had
got to die with his boots on when they
came back to Springfield after the war
Bilrs position was doubly dangerous be-
cause Springfield was strongly secession.
and Tut had ten friends to his one among
the border fighters who frequented the
gambling rooms and the saloons. Many of
us thought this crowd would riddle the
union man with bullets the moment he
shot Tut, even If Bill should have the
luck to get the drop on Dave Nobody
realized the situation any better than Bfll
did He tried to avoid a fight, kept out
Of TUFTS way, and refused to sit in any
game that Dave was in.
Il never knew just how it happened.
but 1t was over a game Of seyen-up that