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 After the war over, it is thought that he served
with
Ben Thompson under Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. It was under famous
gunfighter
and gambler,
Ben Thompson,
that Coe would hone his shooting and gambling skills.
By late 1869 he was
in Brenham, where his sister, Delilah, and her family lived. There, he met
and gambled with such notorious individuals as James Madison Brown,
John
Wesley Hardin,
and William P.
Longley. Next he went to Salina,
Kansas
in 1870, but by May, 1871 he had moved on to the wild
Kansas
cowtown of
Abilene. Also there were
Ben Thompson
and
Bill Hickok,
who was serving as city marshal.
Coe and
Thompson soon went into
a partnership operating the Bull’s Head
Saloon, one of
the wildest places in the already wild
cowtown. This, of course, created dissension
between Thompson
and Coe with City Marshal,
Bill Hickok.
Though there were a number of disagreements, tension rose again when Thompson
and Coe hanged an oversize painting of a
Texas
Longhorn, complete in its "full masculinity” at the Bull’s Head
Saloon. Most
Abilene townspeople were offended by the sign and demanded the animal’s
anatomy be altered. As a result,
Hickok
stood by with a shotgun as the necessary deletions were made to the
painting. The tension was, no doubt, so thick it could be cut with a knife,
and the alteration was made without serious incident.
Though Coe and
Hickok
continued to have a number of disagreements and it was well known the two
disliked each other,
Thompson
and
Hickok
never had problems with each other, seemingly having a mutual respect for
each other’s reputations.
Later,
Thompson left town and Coe sold his
interest in the
saloon,
although he remained on as a gambler.
When
Hickok
and Coe began to court the same woman, rumors started to circulate that each
planned to kill the other.
At one point, Coe and
Hickok passed words during a disagreement, during which Coe bragged of his expertise in
shooting, with Coe reportedly stating he could "kill a crow on the wing", to
which
Hickok
replied: "Did the crow have a pistol? Was
he shooting back? I will be."
Hickok-Coe
Gunfight
Eventually, the tension between the Phil Coe and
Wild Bill
Hickok would culminate in the ultimate gunfight. On the night of
October 5, 1871, the trouble came to a head.
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