The WANDERER

Epigram

I am a pilgrim and a stranger and I am going to wonder* till I am twenty-one and then I will tarry a while…

James Butler Hickok
Nineteen Years Old
Monticello, Kansas
November 24, 1856              *[wander]

He was a good boy

My dear Mr. Edwards 

I thank you for your favor of the 9yh inst….The mother of the wife of Dr. Lindsay, an old physician here, knew Bill [James] as a boy when he first came to Kansas, and I  have secured a good       statement from her. He worked for her father at Monticello, in Johnson County.  

She says he was a good boy…

Mr. J.B. Edwards
Abilene, Kansas
January 11, 1926

Eyewitness to Hickok’s Skill

On the single occasion which the writer was privileged to witness the methods of Mr. Hickok in handling his six shooters, I was deeply impressed with his exasperating deliberation. No matter how elusive the target, even while shooting at objects tossed in the air, he never seemed hurried…. I am prepared to believe any story of his skill or prowess that does not conflict with the laws of gravitation or physics. 

Robert Kane, Gun Expert

Pluck Superior to Pistols

The Kansas City Fair….Wild Bill and the Texans….Pluck Superior to Pistols
There were 30,000 people on the fairgrounds yesterday, and to-day the crowd was not lessened. Wild Bill made a big point at the fairgrounds. A number of Texans prevailed upon the band to play Dixie, and then the Texans made demonstrations with the flourishing of  pistols. Wild Bill stepped forward and stopped the music, and more than fifty pistols were aimed at William’s head, but he came away unscathed. 

Special Dispatch to the Commonwealth
Kansas City Fairgrounds
September 1872

Dexter Fellows Recalls

Hickok would stand for all kinds of abuse from men whose courage was fired by drink, but let a chap strike town preceded by an announcement that he was coming to get Bill, and Hickok would live up to his reputation of always being the first on the draw. Many persons are of the belief that Wild Bill was helpless without a six-shooter, but Victor Murdock of the Wichita Eagle has told me a story of one of Bill’s fights while he was Marshal in Abilene, Kansas that disproves this. Bill, it seems, was standing at the bar of a saloon when a strapping young man lurched up to him and said;  “I know I’m not a match for you, Bill, with guns, but if you’ll throw them aside I’ll whale the lights out of you.” Hickok calmly put his pistols on the bar, seized a smoked buffalo tongue from on the free-lunch counter, and gave the boastful wight an unmerciful beating.

Book Jacket Cover

The cover photo is in the authors large collection of Hickok photos. What makes this evocative formal photograph of thirty-two year old James Butler Hickok important is both the haunting beauty of the image but also the family story behind it. 
James Butler Hickok visited his mother and family for the first time in seven years in Illinois in March and April 1869. Polly Hickok, James’ mother, later wrote to James’ brother Lorenzo and told of their meeting at the Mendota train station: “When I stepped down I turned round my back to the crowd on the platform to take my basket and the first knew he had me in his arms, he says Mammy have y come? James fetcht me a nice large Fotograph in one of those large oval frames.” The cover photo is the “nice large Fotograph” that James gave to his mother Polly. The original photograph was auctioned to renowned western photograph collector Robert McCubbin in 2003 In turn McCubbin auctioned it to an unknown buyer in 2019.