Wild Bill Hickock was unavailable for comment

GOLDEN, Colo. (Reuters) - In a crime that harkens back to Colorado's rowdy frontier past, two men have been accused of plotting to kill a man with rattlesnakes to recover a poker debt, authorities said on Tuesday.

"It's a story out of the Wild West -- there's poker, rattlesnakes and unsavory characters," said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. "The only thing I haven't heard is someone calling another guy a varmint."

According to arrest affidavits, Herbert Paul Beck and Christopher Lee Steelman planned to kill Matthew Sowash, the owner of Amateur Poker Tour, after Beck failed to recover $60,000 that he invested in the company.

The pair allegedly hatched a plot to cobble a box filled with rattlesnakes and somehow get Sowash to step into the box with the venomous snakes.