In 1865 Wild Bill killed Dave Tutt in the town square in Springfield, MO. This quick-draw style duel was recorded and portrayed to the public in a Harper’s Monthly article in 1867. Full of tall tales straight from Wild Bill’s mouth, this article played into the creation of the mythology of the wild west, specifically the duel.Over the last number of years Harper’s has undertaken the task of digitizing all of their historical content. When this article was scanned into their system page 278 was skipped, leaving a gap in the digital version.

Writers were asked to write a new page to reimagine Wild Bill. The fifteen articles presented here all have a new page 278 and represent what might have, could have, or possibly did happen to Wild Bill.

The original Harpers PDF is available here and the new pages that were written are available here.

I would like to thank all of the writers that participated in this project:

Meredith Bak, Mike Bryant, Tejas Desai, Clarrisa French, Glenna Jennings, Antony John, Louisa Loewenstein, Peter Mann, Wythe Marschall, John Murray, G. Parker Nathans, Nina Rao