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The writer Brian Burrow says there is actually a moment you can point to in the history of the old

West of the very first gunfight. Now, it wasn't actually the first, but he says it was the

moment when this infatuation would take hold of the country. He told us it happened late in the

afternoon of July 21st, 1865. This was just three months after the end of the

Civil War. This was in the center of the Scragly Village of Springfield, Missouri.

The two men who stepped into the square just before 6 p.m. was a young man who had been a Confederate scout named Davis Tutt, and a man who had been

a union scout named James Butler Hickok, more commonly known later in life as Wild Bill Hickok.

And they were there because they had had a disagreement over a gambling debt.

In a photograph, Tutte has cat eyes and a goatee.

That day, by one account, he wore a long-leathered duster.

By all accounts, he was carrying a pistol,

and also, faithfully, a gold pocket watch, a Waltham model.

When they met there in the square that day, Hickok had warned Tutt that he had to give him back his watch.

That day, by most accounts, Hickok had a cold navy revolver in his hands.

By all accounts, he wanted his watch back.

And everybody around town understood what that meant, because the crowd had formed, right there and from the courthouse.

Everyone, it appears, understood what had to happen.

Some versions say the two men turned and stood sideways, cutting their eyes toward the other for a long moment or two.

Others say Tut took a step forward.

However, it began, they pulled their pistols simultaneously.

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