Many books have been written about the Pony Express, and most of them name Buffalo Bill Cody as the greatest of all the riders. There is no doubt that Buffalo Bill was a great rider and frontiersman, but is is very doubtful that he ever carried the Pony Express mail. He did work for Russell, Majors & Waddell at that time, but he was then only fourteen years old, and worked as a messenger boy at Leavenworth, Kansas. The stories of his daring experiences as a Pony Express rider were never told until he became famous and had a talented publicity agent.
"Wild Bill" Hickok became most famous of all the men who worked on the Pony Express route, but he was not a rider. He was a stableman at the Rock Creek station in eastern Nebraska. It was there that he gained his first fame -- and the name of "Bill." One of the men whom he and his friend Doc Brink are said to have killed in self-defense gave him the name as well as the fame.
James Butler Hickok was twenty-three years old when he came from Illinois to take the job of stableman at Rock Creek. At that time he had no mustache to cover his buck teeth and protruding upper lip. Dave McCanles, a hard-drinking bully who had a homestead nearby, ridiculed Jim's appearance, laughed at him, and called him "Duckbill." After their famous gun fight, Jim was arrested, tried for murder, and exonerated. But the sheriff misunderstood the nickname. He wrote out his warrant for "Dutch Bill" Hickok. The "Dutch" was soon forgotten, but the "Bill" stuck.