he did not how to beat anybody else but hickok. he'd become almost like believing his own legend of the gunfighter. he just had to look coldly at somebody and they would say i give up. that to me i think there was a poignancy to it. i felt differently. i expected my story of hickok i completely heroic figure and he wasn't. he was a more complex thinking that it. and someone also felt sorry for turkey was only 39 when he died so he never lived old enough to tell his own story like wyatt earp and bat masterson. he had those 39 years on this earth, and there was so much, it's almost like he probably would not haveba done well if it lived longer. he would not have been comfortable. he would've been more vulnerable in a world that was revolving around him. not that he wanted to die at 39, but almost like a justification to a life cut short that was going to be head of heartily in the 1880s and '90s. >> eric, i was interested in what you wrote about encountering pirates and other literary works and movies of popular culture, and your his

what do we know about wild bill hickok and what should we know? >> that much and that is the motivation and their hasn't been one since the 19 sixties but mostly what we know that he was a famous outlaw. was one of the most dynamic marshals and that is true to some extent and was a great gunman the only way he died is somebody shot him in the back. there's so much we don't know he spent two years in the civil war spying for the army. we had the rumor the love of his life was calamity jane. that's not true. it was the rival of barnum & bailey. what we don't know it is waiting to be unearthed to be as interesting or more interesting. >> with genome can temporarily? >> he was. as you make the argument for george custer but as a western celebrity he had a resume built up by gunfire but the monthly magazine sent to interview him and thousands and thousands of people back east read about it in a distinguished him as the iconic original loan gunman on the american west frontier. a lot of the stories were made up but some were true so everybody has an ima

another family member settled around abilene where wild bill hickok served as marshal in the 1870's. that is what the barn looked like when the gettysburg foundation bought it in 2008. there was a danger of a strong wind knocking it down. they were worried. the first thing they did when they bought it was put up wires, cross their fingers and hope it stayed up. and it did. and now it looks like that. on weekends, it looks like that. the foundation save the farm when it was falling apart, and it looked like this when it bought the spangler property in 2008. it nursed the farm back to life and preserved its story, and in spanglerade the george farm hospital site available to the public. you can get a ticket and see for yourself. i will be there at 12: 30 tuesday with a program to dedicate it to the granite schoolhouse. that is it. thank you. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] questions?ny have you been there and seen the founda

to kansas to use his carpentry skills in the new state and settled around abilene where wild bill hickok served as marshal in the 1870's. that is with the barn look like when the foundation bought it in 2008. there was a real danger of a strong wind knocking it down. they were worried about it. first thing they did was put up some wires and cross their fingers and hope it stayed up. it did. now, it looks like that. on weekends, and looks like that. the foundation saved the farm when it was dilapidated and falling apart. in 2008. like this they nursed the farm back to life and preserved the story. in 2013, it made the george spengler civil war farm site available for the public. you can get a ticket and see for yourself why the farm matter. i will be there at 12:30 on tuesday for a program dedicated to the schoolhouse. that is it. thank you so much. [applause] >> are there any questions? have you been over there and seen the foundation? >> i have a picture of where it is. you cannot see yet, but it is there. a couple of winters ago, i went over with a rake. --as able to break down any of