The biased history books don’t mention it, but I had a relative that helped out Wild Bill Hickup on many occasions. He even taught Wild Bill how to shoot.

When Hickup was a little kid on a farm in Chicago, the kid saw a tin can bouncing around his back yard. Looking closely he saw my ancestor, Buck Rat, firing at the can with his specially made Colt revolver. Buck had even started Samuel Colt on his career, helping Sam design his first revolver. Old Sam Colt made one for Buck in appreciation of his help.

Over the next few years, Buck, knowing all the intricacies of the weapon, taught Wild Bill to shoot. The two spent many an hour, and plenty of gunpowder, in practice. Wild Bill got to be almost as fast, and almost as good a shot as Buck.

“Dagnabbit, Buck, how you know so much 'bout this darn thing?” Bill would yell as Buck beat him time and time again.

“Tarnation, Bill. I helped design it, I should know how to shoot it,” Buck would answer, shooting the buds 'offen Bill’s Pa’s opium poppies at six feet.

Bill done got 'growed up and went to Abilene Georgia to be the town Marshall, and of course Buck Rat went along to watch out for the young man.

His first ever gun fight was with the town drunk, a fight Bill easily won, shooting the man in the bottle. Leaving the galoot crying in the dirt, slurping up whiskery mud, Bill got his reputation as a top bottle shot.

Him and Buck traveled all over Western Georgia showing off their skills, and leaving busted glass all over the prairie.

One day a real bad ass hombre challenged Wild Bill to a human type of gunfight. Now, since Bill had never faced a man down before, only bottles -- empty ones at that -- Buck figured it was all right to cheat. It was Blat Masterson, a man who owned a gun of his own.

When they faced down with holstered guns, Uncle Buck was standing in a specially built-in pocket in Bill’s left boot.

“You’re good wit’ dem’ bottles, Wild Bill. Le’s us’uns see how you is wit’ pipples’,” Blat Masterson wove drunkenly into the street, gripping his booze.

Wild Bill stood heroically, and soberly, in the street -- facing his adversary. Although appearing nonchalant, his feet were sweating, waves of stink obscuring Buck’s vision. Holding his nose with one hand, Buck persevered. Abruptly, hands fell to revolvers.

Of course Buck was the first to draw, and the best shot. He hit Blat’s trigger finger. The pain caused Blat Masterson to drop his gun. The slower Wild Bill fired, breaking the bottle in Blat’s other hand, winning the contest in his usual manner.

Oscar Rat