In his youth, Samuel Eaton idolized as heroes the outlaws, gunslingers, and lawmen written about in the dime store novels of the 1800's, highly exaggerated stories that Samuel believed to be true. Even though he is a fearful and timid man, he ventures out West to live the adventures he read about in his youth but finds he isn't meant for the hardships of the frontier. Eagerly, he retreats to his beloved Boston where he is encouraged by his lover to write about his exploits, stories he has told her about his adventures on the frontier.

With his lover's encouragement, and using the nom de plume "Wildcat Willie," Samuel writes his memoir and titles it The True Adventures of Wildcat Willie. In it, he tells of surviving the harshness of the Rocky Mountains to trap beaver, standing down gunfighters as a sheriff in the most lawless cow towns of the Wild West, and fighting as well as living with Indians, not to mention prospecting for gold in the Black Hills illegally.

Fighting off a pair of mountain lions who tried to kill him, he earned the name "Wildcat Willie," given to him by none other than the well-known mountain man Jim Bridger. He only returned home after being forced to cut off all his toes due to frostbite, Samuel writes as Wildcat Willie, but not before negotiating a peace treaty between the U.S. Government and the Sioux Indians, his proudest accomplishment.

The publishers of his novel advertised that Wildcat Willie's story deserved to be read by all who could read, a depiction of life as it is on the expanding frontier, driving The True Adventures of Wildcat Willie to instant success, making him more famous than even Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show.