The walk-down, faceoff, quickdraw, showdown gunfight in the street has become an iconic image of the Old West. From the days of dime novels to dramatic depictions on silver screens, “slapping leather” to outdraw and outshoot an opponent has been a staple in action Westerns.
Historians tell us it seldom happened that way. Actual gunfights were more often hit and run, hide and shoot, drawn-out affairs.
Still, there is an element of truth in the popular portrayals of showdowns in the street. And, as far as history can tell us, the whole idea started with one of the Old West’s most famous gunfighters—Wild Bill Hickok.
It happened when Wild Bill shot it out with Dave Tutt in the town square of Springfield, Missouri, on July 21, 1865.
Both men, like many others, had drifted to the town following the Civil War. Tutt had worn gray, Hickok blue. And those allegiances may have had something to do with circumstances leading up to the shootout.
That Hickok had been involved with Tutt’s sister, and Tutt did not approve, may have been a contributing factor.
But mostly, it came down to a pocket watch seized by Tutt as security for a gambling debt he claimed Hickok owed him.
Cornered by Tutt and his friends, Wild Bill surrendered the watch. But he did so with a warning — if Tutt displayed the watch in public, he would kill him.
Tutt did not take the advice.
Birth Of A Legend
It was in Springfield that Hickok became something of a legend, thanks to a writer named George Ward Nichols, who was in town at the time and wrote about Wild Bill in an article for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.
Nichols could not contain his admiration for Hickok. “As I looked at him I thought his the handsomest physique I had ever seen,” he wrote.
“Bill stood six feet and an inch in his bright yellow moccasins. A deer-skin shirt, or frock it might be called, hung jauntily over his shoulders, and revealed a chest whose breadth and depth were remarkable . . . The head which crowned it was now covered by a large sombrero, underneath which there shone out a quiet, manly face; so gentle is its expression as he greets you as utterly to belie the history of its owner, yet it is not a face to be trifled with. The lips thin and sensitive, the jaw not too square, the cheek bones slightly prominent, a mass of fine dark hair falls below the neck to the shoulders. The eyes, now that you are in friendly intercourse, are as gentle as a woman’s.”
Street Showdown
The showdown in the street was recorded by Nichols in the words of a witness called “Captain Honesty,” whose vernacular and grammar are somewhat wanting.
“Tutt, who war alone, started from the court-house and walked out into the squar, and Bill moved away from the crowd toward the west side of the squar. ’Bout fifteen paces brought them opposite to each other, and ’bout fifty yards apart. [Seventy-five yards between the men is the more commonly reported distance.] Tutt then showed his pistol. Bill had kept a sharp eye on him, and before Tutt could pint it Bill had his out.”
Nichols added, “At that moment you could have heard a pin drop in that squar. Both Tutt and Bill fired, but one discharge followed the other so quick that it’s hard to say which went off first. Tutt was a famous shot, but he missed this time; the ball from his pistol went over Bill’s head . . . Bill never shoots twice at the same man, and his ball went through Dave’s heart. He stood stock-still for a second or two, then raised his arm as if ter fire again, then he swayed a little, staggered three or four steps, and then fell dead.”
Nichols asked Wild Bill himself the reason for the fight. “[T]here was a cause of quarrel between us which people round here don’t know about. One of us had to die; and the secret died with him.”
Hickok was tried for the killing and acquitted. In years to follow, he hunted buffalo, scouted for the Seventh Cavalry, wore a badge in Kansas cowtowns, tried and failed at acting, and gambled his way across the West.
While playing cards, Wild Bill was shot and killed not in a showdown in the street, but instead by a back shooter—Jack McCall—August 2, 1876, in Deadwood.
R.B. Miller can be reached at WriterRodMiller@gmail.com
