Cody, Hickok, Earp, Oakley. These iconic names from the Old West need no introduction or even a first name. But add Omohundro and the response might be, “Who?”

Students of cowboy and frontier history will know immediately that it’s the surname of a dashing young fellow known as Texas Jack. His impact was profound but his stay much too brief. It takes time to build a legend and Jack was successfully working on his when he died of pneumonia at age 33. Today collectors are keen to obtain pieces connected to Texas Jack. One of the rare pieces connected to his life to surface at auction is a revolver that will be offered by A & S Auctions of Waco, Texas, in September. The revolver comes with family provenance stating it was sent to Omohundro’s family by Buffalo Bill.

Texas Jack was raised on a farm near Palmyra, Va. At age 13 he became a courier for the Confederate army. By 1864 he had become a private in Company G, 5th Virginia Cavalry.

Having no interest in the family farm, Jack went West after the war and joined cattle drives. As the story goes, after delivering Texas cattle to drought-stricken Tennessee, appreciative farmers thanked “Texas Jack” for bringing them food. The name stuck.

Jack became a scout and buffalo hunter. He met another scout his age, Bill Cody. They attracted the attention of writer Edward Judson, of Stamford, N.Y, who wrote under the name Ned Buntline. He wanted to write an article based on an authentic Old West figure and went west to find one. His first choice was Major Frank North of the 5th Cavalry. North declined and referred Buntline to Cody, then 23.

The result was the dime novel, Buffalo Bill Cody — King of the Border Men. Another writer, Fred Maeder, composed a theatrical adaptation of it called Scouts of the Plains. Local actors were hired. Buffalo Bill came to see the play. Buntline became convinced that Cody and his “pard” Texas Jack should leave Nebraska and act out the story on a Chicago stage. To avoid plagiarizing the other play, Buntline quickly wrote a new one called Scouts of the Prairie. He gave himself a part as trapper Cale Durg. A dancer who had emigrated from Italy, Giuseppina (Josephine) Morlacchi, played an Indian maiden called Dove Eye. The play opened on Dec. 16, 1872.

The show gave city slickers the rare opportunity to see actual frontier scouts and Indian fighters fresh off the prairie while the West was still very much wild and dangerous. Bill Cody had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery only seven months before the play opened.

Following a successful debut week in Chicago, Buntline booked the play in other cities.

Like the public, critics had never seen anything quite like it. Some reviews stung like Sioux arrows.

“Everything was so wonderfully bad it was almost good,” wrote the New York Herald in April 1873. “The whole performance was so far aside human experience, so wonderful in its daring feebleness that no ordinary intellect is capable of comprehending it.”

Despite the play’s amateur acting and weak script it regularly filled music halls and theaters. Soon the reason why became clear: crowds gathered to take in the sight of Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack.

A Boston Journal review of March 4, 1873, exclaimed: “The chief interest, however, settles in the performances of the Hon. W.F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody and Mr. J.B. Omohundro (Texas Jack). Two finer specimens of manly strength and beauty were never seen on the stage or off the stage.”

By June 1873 the play had concluded its run. Jack married his co-star Josephine in August 1873 in Rochester, N.Y. Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack formed their own acting troupe, the Buffalo Bill Combination. They persuaded their friend, Wild Bill Hickok, to join them. This remarkable trio of Old West legends delighted city audiences in the 1873-74 season.

By 1875 the trio had disbanded. Both Cody and Hickok returned to the West. Buffalo Bill was contemplating his own show, a grand outdoors exposition with Indians, horses, buffalo, and all the sights, sounds and smells of the West. Hickok got married and moved to Deadwood, S.D., where he was shot and killed while playing cards in August 1876. By 1877 Jack headlined his own company, which he called the Texas Jack Combination. He was also writing articles about the West for several major newspapers.

A rare scrapbook found by the PBS “History Detectives” show in 2008 was filled with period newspaper clips containing reviews and coverage of Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill during the height of their performing period. It also mentions shooting competitions with local hunters where Jack would regularly out-gun Bill. An unnamed Virginia paper alluded to Jack’s future in politics.

“The shooting of Mr. Omohundro, alias Texas Jack, elicited much applause. Nothing else could be expected from a native of old Fluvanna, Virginia. Jack, since he wandered away from the State of Flu, has not forgotten the way he used to shoot persimmons with his slingshot. He is a handsome fellow, a good actor and a brilliant shot. When he makes his fortune on stage we want him to settle down in the Point of Fork and represent Fluvanna in the state legislature. Buffalo Bill, incidentally, did not do so well.”

Another entry, this one dated July 16, 1873, and published in the Omaha Herald, gives the sense that Bill and Jack, each 27 years old, were the rock stars of their era:

“The lions of the hour yesterday were Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack, who arrived here on the forenoon train from the East. Bill looks as handsome as ever and he sports a wealth of jewelry. He is ’well-heeled’ financially and ’loomed it up’ for the boys lively yesterday. Jack has changed wonderfully. We failed to recognize him. Instead of the buckskin, bead-trimmed suit, he wears a faultlessly-fitting suit of the best store clothes and the $1,000 chain he purchased at Tiffany’s, New York.”

A reporter from a Rochester, N.Y., paper who met Jack for an interview was also impressed. “It is usual to regard the traditional guide of the plains as an honest but uncouth specimen of humanity, whose chief desire is to kill Indians and consume bad whiskey. This picture would no more answer for the subject of this interview than darkness does for daylight. Mr. Omohundro is a gentleman in appearance as well as in fact. Standing about six feet or more in his stockings with a figure that a sculptor would admire.”

By 1876, Jack and Josephine had moved to Philadelphia where Jack opened a saloon, but the west kept calling him. In a newspaper article he spoke of the loss of General Custer at Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. “I was in the Centennial saloon business until I heard of the Custer massacre, when that decided me. I knew Philadelphia was no place for a man like me in such a time. I telegraphed to [Gen.] Sheridan offering my services as a scout, which were immediately accepted, and I took the train after the red skins.” He was gone for three months.

Texas Jack and Josephine had moved to Leadville, Colo., by 1880. It has been widely reported that a common cold became pneumonia which Jack could not beat. He died June 28, 1880, at age 33.

Dr. Paul Fees, former senior curator at the Buffalo Bill Museum, commented on the History Detectives website: “The poverty of his end at Leadville, and the custom of auctioning personal effects to pay for funeral and burial expenses, has meant that relatively few artifacts and documents relating to Jack have survived or, at least, come to light.”