Book excerpt: William Adams (Wild Bill) Hickman was one of the most notorious outlaws of the nineteenth-century American frontier. During the 1840s and 1850s, he served as a trusted aide and spy to LDS church presidents Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Hickman left an indelible impact on the history and myth of the West as a rough, undisciplined frontiersman who nevertheless helped to establish the Rocky Mountain kingdom of the Mormons.