1.5em;">Wild Bill had a premonition that Deadwood would be his last camp and expressed this belief to his friend Charlie Utter (also known as Colorado Charlie), and the others who were traveling with them at the time.^[38] On August 2, 1876, Hickok was playing poker at Nuttal & Mann's Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, in the Black Hills, Dakota Territory. Unusually, he was sitting with his back to a door. Twice he asked Rich to change seats with him, and on both occasions Rich refused.

An ex-buffalo hunter named John McCall (better known as "Jack" or “Broken Nose Jack” McCall) walked in unnoticed. Jack McCall walked to within a few feet of Wild Bill and then suddenly drew a pistol and shouted, “Take that!” before firing.

The bullet hit Hickok in the back of the head, killing him instantly. The bullet emerged through Wild Bill’s right cheek striking Captain Massie in the left wrist. Legend has it that Hickok had lost his stake and had just borrowed $50 from the house to continue playing. When shot, he was holding a pair of aces and a pair of eights, all black. The fifth card is debated, or, as some say, had been discarded and its replacement had not yet been dealt.^[39]

Other cards have been mentioned, but there are four main suggestions for the fifth card.^[40]
Jack of Diamonds—according to the transcripts of McCall's second trial.^[41]
Nine of Diamonds—contemporary newspaper eyewitness account.
Five of Diamonds —the town of Deadwood claims this to be the card.
Queen of Clubs —Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

"Dead man's hand"

Owing to the number of poker players who died during disputes, Dead man's hand was already established poker idiom for a number of a different hands long before Hickok died. In 1886, ten years after Hickok's death, the Dead man's hand was explained as being three Jacks and a pair of Tens in a North Dakotanewspaper which attributed the term to a specific game held in Illinois 40 years earlier, indicating that Hickok's hand had yet to gain widespread popularity. Eventually, Hickok's "Aces and eights" became widely accepted as the "Dead Man's Hand".^[42] In 1979 Hickok was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

The motive for the killing is still debated. McCall may have been paid for the deed but most likely McCall became enraged over what he perceived as a condescending offer from Hickok to let him have enough money for breakfast after he had lost all his money playing poker the previous day.

At the resulting two-hour trial by a miners jury (an ad hoc local group of assembled miners and businessmen), McCall claimed that he was avenging Hickok's earlier slaying of his brother, which may have been true.

A Lew McCall is known to have been killed by a lawman in Abilene, but it is unknown if he was related, and the name of the lawman was not recorded. McCall was acquitted of the murder, resulting in the Black Hills Pioneer editorializing: "Should it ever be our misfortune to kill a man ... we would simply ask that our trial may take place in some of the mining camps of these hills."

Calamity Jane was reputed to have led a mob that threatened McCall with lynching, but at the time of Wild Bill’s death, Jane was being held by military authorities.^[43]

McCall was subsequently rearrested after bragging about his deed, and a new trial was held. The authorities did not consider this to be double jeopardy because at the time Deadwood was not recognized by the U.S. as a legitimately incorporated town, as it was in Indian Country and the jury was irregular

. The new trial was held in Yankton, capital of the territory. Hickok's brother, Lorenzo Butler Hickok, traveled from Illinois to attend the retrial and spoke to McCall after the trial, noting that he showed no remorse.

This time McCall was found guilty. Reporter Leander Richardson interviewed Hickok shortly before his death and helped bury him. Richardson wrote of the encounter for the April 1877 issue of Scribner's Monthly, in which he mentions McCall's second trial.^[44]

"As I write the closing lines of this brief sketch, word reaches me that the slayer of Wild Bill has been re-arrested by the United State authorities, and after trial has been sentenced to death for willful murder. He is now at Yankton, D.T. awaiting execution. At the trial it was proved that the murderer was hired to do his work by gamblers^[45] who feared the time when better citizens should appoint Bill the champion of law and order - a post which he formerly sustained in Kansas border life, with credit to his manhood and his courage."