WE FIND AN OUTFIT 



me he'd been hired by three fellows to buy the 

 team and rig up the whole equipment for them, and 

 he'd been their guide. He says it's a dandy out- 

 fit. He don't know how much they'll ask for it, 

 but says they don't care for money and will give 

 it away if they can't sell it. They've left Bill to 

 get rid of it. It's over yonder on Shawnee Street, 

 and we'd better look it over and see what sort of 

 a bargain we can make." 



nickname "Wild Bill" soon became so firmly fixed that few people 

 knew his real name. 



Wild Bill was the son of New England parents, born in Vermont, 

 who moved to New York immediately after their marriage, which 

 occurred in 1829 or 1830. From New York they moved to Illinois, 

 settling first in Putnam County and later in La Salle County. Here, 

 near the village of Troy Grove, the son, James Butler, was born, on 

 May 27, 1837. 



He went West when only a boy' and for some time served as scout 

 at different military posts and afterward as marshal and sheriff in 

 various new towns in Kansas. He was a man of unflinching courage 

 and a natural shot with the pistol and had many extraordinary ad- 

 ventures, in all of which he was successful. A remarkable incident 

 told of him was the killing of Jake McCandless and his gang of twelve 

 men in a hand-to-hand fight near Fort Hayes, Kansas. 



In 1873 or 1874, with William F. Cody and John Omohundro and 

 a number of Pawnee Indians, he appeared for a short time on the 

 stage in one of Ned Buntline's dramas of the plains, but his career 

 as an actor was brief. 



In March, 1876, Wild Bill was married to Mrs. Agnes Thatcher 

 Lake and that summer went to the Black Hills, where he prospected. 

 Here, in Deadwood, South Dakota, August 2, 1876, he was murdered, 

 while playing cards, by Jack McCall, who walked up behind him and 

 shot him in the back of the head. McCall was tried at Deadwood 

 and acquitted. Subsequently he was rearrested by Colonel N. J. 

 O'Brien, then sheriff of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and was taken to 

 Dakota, tried, convicted, and executed during February, 1877. 



Wild Bill was in no sense a desperado. He was a mild-mannered, 

 pleasant man who avoided trouble when it was possible, but when 

 trouble came he met it with a strong heart. 



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