After James Butler Hickok had spent some time working as a coachman and a bodyguard, the war started. He enlisted in the Union army and there he performed such heroics that he was nicknamed "Wild Bill".
In 1866 he became a deputy in Fort Riley, Kansas. There he learned to know H.M. (Dr. Livingstone, I presume?) Stanley, and some months later he joined the army again, this time as a scout.
Wild Bill had the reputation to be a master with his Colt Navy. The following story is a proof of this. Shortly before christmas 1867, Wild Bill walked into a saloon to have a beer. Four men, drunk and probably not aware of who Wild Bill was, made a comment about his nose and his clothes. Bill took offense and when the gunsmoke cleared three of the men were dead. The fourth was alive, but half his chin was missing. Bill had been shot in the arm.
1869 Bill started working as a town marshal in Hays City, Kansas and before the year was over he had shot two men. But when he was forced to shoot three soldiers he realised that it was best for him to leave the town, to avoid revenge from Captain Tom Custer (George A. Custer´s brother) and the other soldiers that were posted outside town.
After having spent some time with his good friend William Cody (Buffalo Bill) he once again pinned a marshal‘s star on his chest, this time in Abilene, Kansas. There he ran into trouble with the gunfighters John Wesley Hardin (see below), Ben Thompson and Phil Coe, but it was only in Coe‘s case that it ended with a shootout. Coe died in the fight, but Hickok also killed a deputy that happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time. This forced him to leave the town.
During seven months in 1873 Wild Bill played himself in Buffalo Bill‘s roadshow "Scouts of the plains", but he grew tired of this and left for Cheyenne, Wyoming to look for gold. When he came to Cheyenne he thought that the gold could wait and instead he invested his money in the town‘s gambling halls. In the town he met Agnes Lake, and 5/4, 1876 they married, and shortly after this he left for the mountains to look for gold. As a companion along the way he had the adventuress Calamity Jane.
2/8, 1876, Wild Bill was sitting together with some friends in "Man´s Number Ten Saloon" in Nuttall, playing cards. He never saw the man with the Colt Peacemaker that shot him in the back. When Wild Bill Hickok fell down dead on the floor, he had in his hand five cards, the cards that became known as a "dead mans hand" (a two-pair of aces and eigths).