Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier by W. B. (Bat) Masterson

Author:W. B. (Bat) Masterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486131313
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-07-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

BILL TILGHMAN

Nothwithstanding the discovery of gold in California in 1849, and at Pike’s Peak, Colorado, ten years later, the civilizing of the West did not really commence until after the close of the Civil War. It was during the decade immediately following the ending of the conflict between the North and South that civilization west of the Missouri River first began to assume substantial form.

It was during this period that three great transcontinental lines of railroads were built, all of them starting at some point on the west bank of the Missouri River. The Union Pacific from Omaha to Ogden, Utah, was completed during these years, also the Kansas Pacific, from Kansas City to Denver, Colorado, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe from Atchison, Kansas, to Pueblo, Colorado. In twenty years from the day the first railroad tie was laid on the roadbed of the Union Pacific at Omaha, our Western frontier had almost entirely disappeared. There has been no frontier in this country for a good many years. The railroads long ago did away with all there ever was of it. Railroad trains, with their Pullman cars and dining car connections, have been reaching almost every point in the West of any consequence for the last twenty years.

On what was once known as our great American plains, which, a generation ago, furnished a habitat for the wild Indian, the buffalo, the deer and the antelope, today can be seen thousands of beautiful homes, in which none of the evidences of higher civilization are lacking. While it required but twenty years or so to bring about this wonderful change in this vast territory, the task was by no means an easy one.

Let the reader remember that in those twenty years, no less than half a dozen bloody Indian wars were fought, and that the scenes of these conflicts extended from the Dakotas on the north to the lava beds of Oregon on the west, and south to the frontier of Texas; and a fairly good idea of the magnitude of the undertaking will be gained. It was during those stirring times that nearly all of the famous characters of our once immense frontier, many of whom are now but memories, played a conspicuous part in this vast theater of human strife.

James B. Hickok (Wild Bill) was perhaps the only one of that chivalrous band of fighting men, who composed the vanguard of western civilization, who had acquired fame before the period I have named. When this most remarkable man came to the West at the close of the Civil War, in which he had taken a conspicuous part both in Southwest Missouri and in the campaign along the Mississippi River, he brought with him a well-earned reputation for daring and physical courage—a reputation he successfully held until stricken down by the Assassin McCall at Deadwood, in June, 1876. But it was not of Wild Bill I started to write, but of one whose daring exploits on the frontier will not suffer by comparison.

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