Wild Bill

This program includes a bonus interview with the author.

The definitive true story of Wild Bill, the first lawman of the Wild West, by the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Dodge City.

In July 1865, “Wild Bill” Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in Springfield, Mo., – the first quick-draw duel on the frontier. Thus began the reputation that made him a marked man to every gunslinger the Wild West.  

James Butler Hickock was known across the frontier as a soldier, Union spy, scout, lawman, gunfighter, gambler, showman, and actor. He crossed paths with General Custer and Buffalo Bill Cody, as well as Ben Thompson and other young toughs gunning for the sheriff with the quickest draw west of the Mississippi.  

Wild Bill also fell in love – multiple times – before marrying the true love of his life, Agnes Lake, the impresario of a traveling circus. He would be buried however, next to fabled frontierswoman Calamity Jane.  

Even before his death, Wild Bill became a legend, with fiction sometimes supplanting fact in the stories that surfaced. Once, in bar in Nebraska, he was confronted by four men, three of whom he killed in the ensuing gunfight. A famous Harper’s Magazine article credited Hickok with slaying 10 men that day; by the 1870s, his career-long kill count was up to 100.