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Old Bill. Old Bill was created by “Culpeper Chunn,” the pseudonym of Seymour C. Chunn (Braley Rising), and appeared in twenty-six stories in Action Stories from 1925 to 1933, beginning with “‘Old Bill’ Draws One” (Action Stories, June 15, 1925).

On the American frontier in the latter half of the 19^th century “Old Bill” Nevit is the proprietor of the Come Back saloon—a “low, rambling room, with gaudy prints on the walls and a floor covered with saw-dust, discolored by tobacco juice.” He has a bulbous nose and “grizzled hair around a bald pate.” “A fat, red-faced little man he was, dressed in a blue denim shirt and soiled corduroy trousers which he wore tucked in the tops of worn cow-hide boots. In appearance he was the very antithesis of everything that the proprietor of a prosperous saloon is supposed to be.” He drinks heavily, but even when drunk he is clever, grandiloquent, and fast with the cards.

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