the warm blood bathed his
limbs as he hurled the two who were left across the room.

They came on crouching and their knives gleamed through the thick
smoke-clouds. His own bowie-knife was in his hand now, and he stabbed
the foremost through the throat. The other fled. Hickok stumbled out
through the door after him, and Doc Brinck came riding back from his
hunting expedition in time to lend his rifle to his partner, who
insisted profanely that he was fit to finish what he had so well
begun.

So young James Hickok shut his teeth against the weakness which was
creeping over him and lined his sights on the last of his enemies; for
the man whom he had felled with his fist and he with the broken arm
had escaped some time during the latter progress of the fight. That
final shot was not so true as its predecessors; the outlaw did not die
until several days later in the little town of Manhattan, Kansas.

When the eastbound stage pulled up that afternoon the driver and
passengers found the long-haired young station-keeper in a deep swoon,
with eleven buckshot and thirteen knife wounds in his body. They took
him aboard and carried him to Manhattan where he recovered six months
later, to find himself known throughout the West as Wild Bill Hickok.

How many men he killed is a mooted question. But it is universally
acknowledged that he slew them all fairly. Owning that prestige whose
possessor walks amid unseen dangers, he introduced the quick draw on
his portion of frontier; and many who sought his life for the sake of
the dark fame which the deed would bring them died with their weapons
in their hands.

In Abilene, Kansas, where he was for several years town marshal, one
of these caught him unawares as he was rounding a corner. Wild Bill
complied with the order to throw up his hands and stood, rigid,
expressionless, while the desperado, emulating the plains Indians,
tried to torture him by picturing the closeness of his end. He was in
the midst of his description when Hickok's eyes widened and his voice
was thick with seeming horror as he cried,

"My God! Don't kill him from behind!" The outlaw allowed his eyes to
waver and he fell with a bullet-hole in his forehead.

As stage-driver, Indian fighter, and peace officer Wild Bill Hickok
did a man's work in cleaning up the border. He was about to go and
join the Custer expedition as a scout when one who thought the murder
would give him renown shot him from behind as he was s