Which only goes to show, Unca Dave, that you never read any of Ned Buntline's dime novels. He was before my time as well, but is still known for making Buffalo Bill famous- not only the dime novel, but a play in which B. B. Cody himself starred.
Buntline himself was more of a character than anyone he wrote about- in the fur trade, in the navy, once hanged by a lynch mob for murder, but saved in the nick of time, blackmailer, temperance lecturer who got drunk after the lecture, etc., etc. and of course a liar, but all that belongs in another thread.

The term 'Billy' for a policeman's club first appeared in 1848 in his "Mysteries and Miseries of New York."