Dead Man's Hand

Wild Bill Hickok (1837-1876) died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, then a gold-rush town in the Black Hills, Dakota Territory. The game was five-card stud and Wild Bill held a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights, all facing up. In the hole, he held the two of spades, according to a writer who interviewed eye witnesses.

The man who shot Wild Bill used a Colt .45 at close range. The shot went through Wild Bill's skull and cheekbone and hit another player in the wrist. The shooter, Jack McCall, was most likely avenging a petty insult Wild Bill had made to him earlier.

Wild Bill carried a Smith & Wesson No. 2 revolver, which, of course, he had no time to draw before he died. He had not drawn in a gunfight since his own friendly fire killed his deputy in a shootout in Abilene in 1871.

McCall was acquitted at his first trial in Deadwood, but made the mistake of bragging about the murder some months later. He was arrested and convicted at a second trial in Yankton and hanged for his crime. McCall could not use double jeopardy as his defense, because his first trial had been held in Dakota Territory, which, according to the 1868 Treaty of Laramie, was not U.S. land, but belonged to the Lakota Sioux.

Regrettably, this is not the first "dead man's hand" we know of. The first dead man's hand might have been played in Illinois forty years earlier, but, within ten years of Wild Bill's death, his gained ascendancy as the definitive dead man's hand. The shootout is still reenacted on summer evenings in Deadwood, South Dakota.