On today's episode of Dave Does History, we're pulling up a chair at a Deadwood poker table and watching the final moments of one of the West’s most iconic figures. James Butler Hickok, known to the world as Wild Bill, wasn’t looking for a fight that day. He was just trying to win a hand.

He had no idea that someone had already decided to end the game, permanently.

But who was Wild Bill really? Beneath the pistols and portraits, was he a hero, a fraud, or something far more complicated?

We’ll explore his rise from canal brawler to Union scout, his time as a lawman in Kansas, and the long, slow slide that brought him to that fateful chair in Saloon No. 10. The legend says he died with aces and eights. The truth might hold something even more valuable.

Stay with us. The hand has been dealt, and the story’s just getting started.

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