Wild Bill Hickok (Legends of the West) by O'Connor, Richard

Stamford, 1987, Longmeadow, reprint edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6x9, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 282 pages, bibliog.-------------------------------------------------------------------In 1861 a young stock tender in southern Nebraska named James Butler Hickok won his first gun fight. Twenty years later he was known throughout America as the deadliest gunslinger in the West, a two-legged shooting gallery, hero of a thousand tales — each one taller than the last and many of them true.Indian fighter, free-lance Union ally during the Civil War, marshal of Abilene and Hays City during their most "wide open" years, Wild Bill Hickok never needed the embroidery and fantasy that grew up around him during his lifetime. Courage (nearly blind, Wild Bill outdrew and shot gambler Phil Coe); a quick temper (a jigger of whiskey jostled out of his hand,and four men hit the sawdust in a Jefferson County saloon); charm (Mrs. Custer and Calamity Jane were only two of Wild Bill's admirers); vanity (wavy shoulder-length hair, "stallion-tail" mustaches, a brace of pearl-handled pistols, and waistcoats of the finest brocade)... this was Wild Bill Hickok, the "knight chivalric of the plains" who, in Richard O'Connor's lively, readable biography, emerges as one of the West's most flamboyant heroes.