James Butler
"Wild Bill" Hickok had come to Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876 at age
thirty-nine to make a stake for the bride he had just taken, but lawless
elements, fearing his appointment as town marshal, hired gunman Jack McCall to
assassinate him, paying McCall three hundred dollars and giving him all the
cheap whiskey he needed for courage. Wild Bill was playing cards in the No. 10
Saloon (his back to the open door for only the second time in his days of
gunfighting) when McCall sneaked in and shot him in the back of the head, the
bullet passing through his brain and striking the card-player across the table
in the arm. Hickok's last hand, which he held tight in a death grip, was aces
and eights and has ever since been called the dead man's hand. McCall,
although freed by a packed minor's court, was later convicted by a federal
court, and his plea of "double jeopardy" was disregarded on the grounds that the
miner's court had no jurisdiction. He was later hanged for his crime.