James Butler Hickok was born in 1837 on an Illinois farm that served as a station on the Underground Railroad, and this episode follows his path from that abolitionist household to the poker table in Deadwood where he was shot from behind holding black aces and eights. Along the way it covers his flight to Kansas after a canal brawl, his time with the Jayhawkers, a near-fatal fight with a cinnamon bear, the 1861 McCanles shooting at Rock Creek Station, and his deliberate rebranding from the mocking nickname Duck Bill to Wild Bill.

The episode also examines how his Civil War scouting work honed a lethal pragmatism, the 1865 Springfield duel with Davis Tutt that gave birth to the Hollywood showdown, the Harper’s article by George Ward Nichols that inflated his kill count, and his years as a lawman in Hays and Abilene, including the accidental killing of his own deputy Mike Williams. It closes with his failing eyesight, a miserable stint in Buffalo Bill’s stage show, his final trip to Deadwood, and the strange fate of his petrified body.

• How a judge’s fair-fight instruction acquitted Hickok after the Tutt shootout
• The psychological trick he used to kill Bill Mulvey without a fair draw
• His tense standoff with John Wesley Hardin and the road agent spin claim
• The bull mural dispute with Phil Coe that ended in tragedy on an Abilene street
• Why the historical record undercuts Calamity Jane’s claims about their relationship