The gunfight between Davis Tutt and Wild Bill Hickok on July 21, 1865, was to be recorded as the first quick-draw duel on the American frontier. While this has not been disputed, there was another very significant aspect to the duel: Hickok emerged as the most famous gunfighter—often, the term “shootist” was used—on the frontier. When the duel was detailed in an article published eighteen months later in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Hickok, not yet thirty years old, was catapulted from local folk hero to national legend … and thereby, he became a marked man. During the ensuing decade, many men with six-shooters on their hips would measure themselves against the Hickok legend, and a few would ponder the value to their own reputations by gunning him down.
The duel took place in Springfield, Missouri. From the perspective of today, this town would not be considered part of the American West, but in the 1860s, Missouri and Kansas and Nebraska comprised much of the mid-American frontier. In July 1865, Springfield was one of the jumping-off points for people heading west, to Kansas next door or beyond to what had been known before the Civil War as the Great American Desert.
The participants in the “High Noon”–like shoot-out had once been friends. Davis Tutt had been born in Yellville, Arkansas, in 1836, and thus was or close to twenty-nine years old on that fateful July day. The Tutts were well known in Arkansas politics until the Tutt-Everett War. Also known as the Marion County War, it began when two prominent families took opposite sides in the presidential election of 1844 involving Henry Clay and the winner, James Polk. There were escalating confrontations—a scenario to be repeated decades later by the Hatfield and McCoy families—until 1850, when Hansford “Hamp” Tutt, Davis’s father, was ambushed and shot. On his deathbed, he requested that there be no revenge and no more fighting over politics, and the war ended.
The younger Tutt enlisted in the Twenty-Seventh Arkansas Infantry Regiment in 1862 and fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War, seeing action in Mississippi and elsewhere. At the war’s conclusion in April 1865, Tutt was sent home, but by then, Arkansas had lost its allure. Like thousands of other postwar young men, he turned his attention west. First, though, he ambled north, into Missouri, stopping for a spell in Springfield. Soon afterward, Hickok hit town, another postwar drifter killing time at the city’s gaming tables.
The major difference between Hickok and Tutt was they had served on opposite sides during the Civil War. By that July, though, what mattered more was a mutual love of gambling. For a time, they were fast friends, enjoying the same card games. But a couple of issues involving women began to spill over onto the gaming tables, and worse, Hickok went on a cold streak and accepted loans from Tutt rather than be broke and idle. In the third week of a typically steamy July, he was already in a foul mood and needed no further provocation … but then there was a card game at the Lyon House Hotel.
As will be detailed later in these pages, the outcome of that card game was that Hickok and Tutt completed the journey from friends to enemies … and Tutt had taken Hickok’s gold watch. It was only because Tutt was surrounded by friends at the hotel that Wild Bill did not confront him with guns drawn.
But it was a different story the next day. On the morning of July 21, there was Davis Tutt, strolling through the town square, sunlight glinting off the gold watch. By this point in his life, Hickok was no stranger to gunplay and people dying from it, yet when word reached him about Tutt’s performance, he did not go for his gun. He did approach Tutt, but to negotiate getting the watch back. He was rebuffed.
The day wasn’t over, though. Late that afternoon, Tutt was back in the Springfield town square, brandishing the pocket watch. Witnesses noted that a few minutes before six o’clock, Hickok was observed entering the town square from the south. In his right hand was one of his Colt Navy pistols. By the time he had drawn to within a hundred feet of Tutt, the latter was alone in one corner of the square, as townsfolk had rushed for cover in surrounding buildings. Dozens of pairs of eyes watched the scene unfold.
“Dave, here I am,” Hickok said. In one last attempt to avoid a fight, he holstered the pistol and advised, “Don’t you come across here with that watch.”
Did Tutt underestimate Hickok, or, with all those witnesses, he could not possibly hand over the watch? He may have been debating his options as his right hand came to rest on his holstered gun. He turned sideways, and Hickok did the same. This was a maneuver associated with a traditional duel, but this wouldn’t be the old-fashioned, Alexander Hamilton versus Aaron Burr kind of challenge, where the two men pace off and turn to each other, and each formally takes a shot, perhaps deliberately missing his opponent because just showing up and going through the motions was enough to have honor satisfied. This would be a quick-draw, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later event.
A few seconds passed, then Tutt’s hand jerked and his pistol came with it. In a smoothly coordinated series of motions, Hickok lifted his Colt, balanced the barrel on his bent left arm, and pulled the trigger the same instant Tutt tugged his. In an abrupt and hushed silence, the gun smoke was swept away by the evening breeze. Then Tutt cried out, “Boys, I’m killed!” He began to move, staggering, toward the courthouse. He got as far as the porch, then weaved back into the sunbaked, dusty street. He fell and may have been dead before he hit the ground. The bullet had entered Tutt’s torso between the fifth and seventh ribs and struck his heart. Hickok watched the man die as he holstered his pistol.
The story spread across the frontier like a prairie fire that there was a man named Wild Bill Hickok in Missouri who might well be the fastest gunslinger on the American frontier. For once, a story with such a swift circulation was true.