BOGUS BILL
He’d ride into town on a fancy rig pulled by fine horses. He’d draw a crowd by sticking a clay pipe into a manikin’s mouth, striding 200 paces, raising his rifle, and shooting the pipe out of the dummy’s yap. Then he’d whip out a $10 bill and offer it to anyone able to duplicate his feat. Few people could.
That’s how the bearded stranger sporting flashy clothes and gold rings got folks’ attention in small upstate New York towns in the decades before the Civil War. Attention gotten, he’d introduce himself as an “herbal doctor” or a “botanic physician” and peddle bottles of
