TRAVELER, JULY 25, 1877 - FRONT PAGE.
Arkansas City, KS


Wild Bill.

The murder of W. B. Hickok, known as Wild Bill, a frontiersman, whose fearlessness, skill, and manly beauty Gen. Custer has praised in a magazine article, attracted wide attention about a year ago.

A Cheyenne correspondent of the World gives this new account of the killing.

"Fate brought him to the same card table with Jack McCall, a gambling sharper. On the last hand McCall bet $10 and lost; and when he came to settle, found that he had only $7.50. Bill, remarking, "You oughten't to overbet your pile; that's no way to play cards," handed him back $5 to pay for his lodging and breakfast. Next morning Bill was in a saloon, when McCall came behind him noiselessly, placed the muzzle of his revolver to the back of his head, and killed him."

The same writer sketches the widow of Wild Bill. She has had two husbands, both public characters, and both doomed to a violent death. In 1847, at the age of 15, she married William Lake, a clown, of whose circus she became financial manager. In 1869, while the circus was at Granby, Missouri, a loafer named John Killion, slipped in without paying. Lake ejected the deadhead, who armed himself, returned to the tent, paid his way in, and seeking out Lake, shot him dead. After her husband's death, Mrs. Lake took the management of the circus, which she conducted for three seasons, visiting all parts of the Union. She then sold off her menagerie, apparatus, and stud [?], and in 1875 went to San Francisco. There she remained but a few weeks, going to Cheyenne a year ago last April, where a little afterwards she was married to Wild Bill.