DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Wild Bill's Last Trail" by Ned Buntline. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Book Excerpt: ...a man came cautiously out of the ravine, or rather out of its mouth. He was tall, slender, yet seemed to possess the bone and muscle of a giant. His eyes were jet black, fierce and flashing, and his face had a stern, almost classic beauty of feature, which would have made him a model in the ancient age of sculpture. He carried a repeating rifle, two revolvers, and a knife in his belt. His dress was buckskin, from head to foot."You are Persimmon Bill?" said Jack, in a tone of inquiry. "Yes. Who are you, and how came you by the signal that called me out?""A woman in town gave it to me, knowing she could trust me.""Was her first name Addie?""Her last name was Neidic.""All right. I see she has trusted you. What do you want?""Help in a matter of revenge.""Good! You can have it. How much help is wanted?""I want one man taken from a party, alive, when he gets beyond civilized help, so that I can see him tortured. I want him to die by inches."...

At about 12 noon, August 2nd, 1876, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, entered the No. 10 Saloon in Deadwood City seeking entertainment and drinks.... three men were engaged in a game of draw poker cards and quickly invited Wild Bill to join them.... Hickok had an unobstructed view of the front door and could comfortably turn his head to see the rear door... Jack McCall entered the No. 10 Saloon ... when less than half a dozen feet from the rear door, McCall suddenly turned and fired one round... death was instantaneous.... This historical book includes the best available description of the No. 10 Saloon interior floor layout, and the physical placement of all the participants that were involved with the shooting of Wild Bill on August 2nd, 1876. A detailed analysis of the subsequent flight, capture, and trial of Jack McCall is also provided. Original photos and a new 1876 Deadwood City Main Street informational map are made available for review.

Wild Bill’s ever-evolving legend When it came to the Wild West, the nineteenth-century press rarely let truth get in the way of a good story. James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok’s story was no exception. Mythologized and sensationalized, Hickok was turned into the deadliest gunfighter of all, a so-called moral killer, a national phenomenon even while he was alive. Rather than attempt to tease truth from fiction, coauthors Paul Ashdown and Edward Caudill investigate the ways in which Hickok embodied the culture of glamorized violence Americans embraced after the Civil War and examine the process of how his story emerged, evolved, and turned into a viral multimedia sensation full of the excitement, danger, and romance of the West. Journalists, the coauthors demonstrate, invented “Wild Bill” Hickok, glorifying him as a civilizer. They inflated his body count and constructed his legend in the midst of an emerging celebrity culture that grew up around penny newspapers. His death by treachery, at a relatively young age, made the story tragic, and dime-store novelists took over where the press left off. Reimagined as entertainment, Hickok’s legend continued to enthrall Americans in literature, on radio, on television, and in the movies, and it still draws tourists to notorious Deadwood, South Dakota. American culture often embraces myths that later become accepted as popular history. By investigating the allure and power of Hickok’s myth, Ashdown and Caudill explain how American journalism and popular culture have shaped the way Civil War–era figures are remembered and reveal how Americans have embraced violence as entertainment.

Eulogised and ostracised, James Butler Hickok was alternately labelled courageous, affable, and self-confident; cowardly, cold-blooded, and drunken; a fine specimen of manhood; an overdressed dandy with perfumed hair; an unequaled marksman; and a poor shot. Born in Illinois in 1837, he was shot dead in Deadwood only 39 years later. By then both famous and infamous, he was widely known as Wild Bill.