‘…somewhat awkward, with a shuffling gait.’ He described Bill’s eyes as cold blue. Others said he had cold, gray, piercing eyes; mild, light blue eyes; or menacing blue-gray eyes.

After Joseph Smith’s death, before leaving Illinois, Hickman, along with the thousands who were planning to make the journey west, lined up and climbed the staircase leading to the attic of the mostly finished Nauvoo temple. Here, he would take his sacred vows. Bill writes: I took a solemn oath to stand up against all opposition that might come against the Latter-day Saints, and especially those who might stand at the head of God’s Kingdom.

Bill joined the Saints in Winter Quarters in Florence, Nebraska in the Fall of 1847. Whatever Brigham asked, Bill did. He considered Brigham Young to be the mouthpiece of God, an oracle of the divine, and a person who must be obeyed, or there would be an eternal price to pay. When Brigham requested Bill’s beautiful Spanish race horse as a gift for his ten-year old son, Brigham Jr., Bill relinquished his beloved mare.

Hickman claims his first acts of violence performed at the request of Brigham Young were when he killed a half-breed who threatened Brigham’s life, and later when he killed a notorious horse-thief who threatened Apostle Orson Hyde’s life. In return, Bill received Brigham’s promise he would make Bill a great man in the kingdom one day.

In the spring of 1848, when Brigham Young left Nebraska for his second and final trip to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Bill wanted to go with him but, much to his consternation, Brigham assigned him to stay and watch over Apostle Orson Hyde. While at Council Bluffs, Bill took the third of ten wives.

In the heat of the summer of 1849, Bill arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley with his first wife, Bernetta, his third wife, Minerva, and their four children. They settled for the summer, then endured a terrible winter with deep snow. When spring came, Bill moved his family ten miles south of Salt Lake City to the town of Taylorsville.

Discouraged with farming, he decided to devote his energies to breeding sheep, cattle, and horses in Rush Valley a few miles west. Rush Valley was also where the church kept their cattle. Brigham assigned Bill to herd the church’s stock.

Hickman was struck with gold fever in the summer of 1851 and went to California. Ten months later, he returned to Utah with a party of eight on good horses pulling pack mules. He also carried a few hundred dollars (probably five hundred) to make his family more comfortable.

Hickman was a miner in California, an Indian killer on the plains, and obedient when in Salt Lake City. By the winter of 1852, he was selected as one of his president’s lawmen and ordered to keep an eye out for Ike Hatch and his gang who were suspected of stealing horses and cattle. Bill trailed the gang for two or three months. He reported to President Young Hatch had been stealing cattle and then selling the butchered meat to the President himself. In December, purportedly at Young’s request, Hickman shot Ike. Ike’s gang continued to steal, so in April of ‘53, Hickman, along with several friends, including Porter Rockwell, tracked the gang down and sent them down the river.

Bill spent most of the year hunting wanted men. There were troubles brewing north on the Green River, a long ribbon of water that branched off from the Colorado River in southern Utah and wound its way past Ft. Bridger and much of Wyoming. When the Mormon legislature granted ferry rights to the Mormons, the mountain men who had been operating well-established ferries balked at the competition. Young’s appetite for control of the Green River Ferries and Fort Bridger knew no end. He sent Hickman to the Green River to establish another ferry alongside the river, but Wild Bill found the competition fierce. He avoided conflict and traveled sixty miles east, near South Pass, and set up his own trading post. That summer, the trail was crowded with immigrants on their way to Oregon and California, and Mormons flocking to Utah. Hickman set up a blacksmith shop for wagon repair. He had plenty of groceries and whiskey to trade, and exchanged lame stock for healthy stock at a rate of two for one.

By August, the Mormon militia forced Jim Bridger out of his fort. The following spring, Green River County was formally organized around Mormon settlements and Bill Hickman was designated sheriff. He was also appointed deputy U.S. Marshal by the federal marshal, Joseph Heywood.

Hickman often spent his winter months reading law, enabling him to pass a rigid bar examination in Salt Lake City. He purchased a broadcloth suit, a white shirt, and a tie and presented himself as a government official.

Bill was enjoying a comfortable summer. Bernetta visited him for one month. He began to take on legal cases and served as Brigham Young’s eyes and ears in the county.

Then, came the year the Grasshoppers. They swarmed in from the Wasatch Mountains into the Salt Lake Valley washing up four feet high around the great lake. Immigration was expected to be light that year so Hickman went up along Wyoming’s Sweetwater River in search of gold. He soon returned to the Green River to run for territorial legislature. In October, he was back in Salt Lake City where he acted as a defense attorney in several lawsuits.

Brigham Young assigned Bill Hickman to be his mailman for his new express. Plans were made for way stations to be built and applications for contracts with the federal government were applied for. Finally, in October 1856, the U.S. Postmaster awarded the mail contract to BYXpress (Brigham Young Express). President Young named Bill Hickman and Orrin Porter Rockwell as his chief mailmen. Hickman didn’t want to go but Brigham convinced him it was his duty. The trails were long, the weather, at times, brutal. Occasionally, Bill returned to Salt Lake and enjoyed a visit with his growing family. Then, in June of 1856, BYXpress’s mail contract was canceled.

Word was government troops were preparing to come to Utah to oust Brigham as governor. In early summer, President Young found the rumor laughable. By August, he was taking the situation more seriously. He declared martial law in the territory, a first step toward war. He feared movement of any kind through his territory. Suspicious travelers were jailed or terminated for violating the proclamation. Young took a hard stance against the incoming army and warned if the troops tried to enter the city they would find every house burned to the ground, every tree cut down, and every field laid waste.

By December, 1857, President Young and many of the leading elders were charged with treason against the United States. The following April, President Buchanan offered a pardon to the inhabitants of Utah. Unaware of this offer, at Brigham Young’s behest, Salt Lake City was deserted. Its leaders and residents headed south to a place where they felt safe from the government. Each family left a pile of logs at their doorstep knowing Brigham’s boys would stay behind to light the fires should troops appear.

In June, Governor Cumming and his wife, Elizabeth, officially arrived in Salt Lake City. Two days later, many of the leading elders rode back into the city. President Young’s mansion was opened and a banquet was prepared. Ten days later, at Brigham’s request, three hundred citizens returned to their homes in time to see the army march into the valley.

As the months progressed, Bill Hickman, Porter Rockwell, and a few others, acted as spies for their prophet. Then, Hickman was seriously injured in a shoot-out with a fellow Mormon. Hickman lay in excruciating pain. Two doctors examined the thigh and pronounced the man mortally wounded. Days later, when two army physicians opened Hickman’s flesh, they extracted a dirty piece of cotton saturated with something. Hickman required crutches for the next six months.

1860 began badly for Hickman. He was disfellowshipped. Things improved in the summer when the army prepared to move out of Utah and started selling-off government stores. Prices were ridiculously low and Hickman bought ten wagon loads of goods; much of it was building materials. Soon afterward, Bill built a big log house and moved in with his family.

By 1863, Bill Hickman established a kind of friendship with Brigadier General Patrick Connor. Bill became his guide and Indian spy. Hickman’s involvement with Connor helped start mining in Utah. A mining district was formed in the West Jordan area. Hickmen did not get rich in mining and his army pay was paltry for a family man. Worse yet, Brigham Young mistrusted men who accepted government employment.

By the end of 1864, William Hickman had quit paying tithing. He recognized several of the Bishops were speaking to his wives, suggesting they leave him. Hickman continued to work for Connor until 7th of December, 1865 when he was discharged from the service of the United States.

Hickman went on another mining adventure and returned home jobless. He bought a small ranch at the mouth of Brigham Canyon and moved in with his remaining family and stock. He built a good corral. Soon, he found men prowling around during the night, looking for a chance to take his life. During the fall months, five of his remaining wives left him. Hickman decided to go to San Francisco where he found his old and true friend, now promoted to General Connor. He thought about returning to Utah but attempted, instead, to do freighting work between Carson City and Placerville, California. He quit this work due to the severe strain it put on his injured leg. Often, it would swell to the size of a flour sack and he was unable to walk for weeks or months.

Hickman returned to Utah in August, 1868. He discovered he had been excommunicated without a bishop’s court, a trial, or any stated complaint. He had four interviews with Brigham Young in the months that followed, but both men had become irreconcilably hardened towards each other. Hickman found employment which lasted until Brigham Young heard about it and he was terminated. The only other work he found was drawing-up mining claims and occasional counsel for the defense in several legal cases.

Hickman had taken many a man’s life both as sheriff and deputy and at the behest of Brigham Young. He was accused of many murders he did not commit. During the winter of 1870, Hickman was indicted for the murder of Spanish Frank, a man who had taken one of Bill’s former wives and intimated he had designs on Hickman’s teenage daughter. The man was murdered and family stories attributed the murder to Wild Bill. Hickman disappeared into the Oquirrh Mountains until he learned Deputy Marshall H. Gibson was searching for him. Bill’s son convinced him to meet with the deputy and Gibson offered Hickman a deal: his life in exchange for his testimony against Brigham Young. Bill testified against Brigham and also wrote a book.

Hickman’s autobiography, Brigham’s Destroying Angels, became available in local bookstores in February 1872. At the time, he was in protective custody at Ft. Douglas. After his release, Bill returned to his Fairfield home, a place he had lived since 1868 with his first wife, Bernetta. He became increasingly paranoid and reclusive. He began to sell his Fairfield property the following March. His final parcel was sold in May of 1880 when he moved into the home of his son-in-law, John Allen, and his daughter, Kitten.

After Brigham Young’s death in August of 1877, Hickman’s began to fear he would be killed. His desire to die in peace prompted him to move to Wyoming along with Bernetta and three grown daughters and their husbands and children. He found a final stopping place at the headwaters of Baldwin Creek, up in the foothills with grassy meadows, craggy mountain peaks and filled with wildlife. There were no neighbors, no schools, stores, churches, or government officials, and most important of all, no spies.

He was taken into the small town of Lander two weeks before his death to be treated by a doctor from Ft. Washakie’s army post. On the 21st of August, 1883, Bill Hickman died. Forty-nine years later, he was posthumously reinstated into the church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. He was rebaptized by proxy on May 5th, 1934.