by Clavin, Tom
When he retired, Tilghman became a member of the Oklahoma State Senate, and in 1915 he starred in the Hollywood western Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws. In 1924, at age seventy, Tilghman was persuaded to come out of his second retirement to become marshal of Cromwell, tasked to clean up the city, which was ignoring Prohibition and had some business leaders thriving on prostitution profits. He was in the process of doing that when a drunk and corrupt Prohibition agent killed him in a street shoot-out. No one was ever convicted of the crime. A month after Tilghman died, Cromwell was set afire, its saloons, brothels, and seedy flophouses destroyed.
Wyatt was often described as a dour man who did not talk much and also as pretty sensible. He demonstrated the latter quality when he told the deputies that bounty money would be pooled but paid out only when prisoners were brought to the jail alive. This would not be “wanted, dead or alive”: dead prisoners were worth nothing. Each officer carried two six-shooters, and Wyatt placed loaded shotguns at locations only he and the deputies knew about, but shooting at a man would be a last resort. The mayor had told Wyatt of Brooks’s failed strategy, and he wasn’t about to repeat it. According to Wyatt, “Hoover had hired me to cut down the killings in Dodge, not to increase them.”
The assistant marshal could count as well as the next man, and if there was a fight involving gunplay, there were a lot more cowboys than there were lawmen. As Wyatt pointed out, “Any one of the deputies could give the average cowboy the best of a break, then kill him in a gunfight,” but the odds would eventually catch up with him. Equally undesirable would be ranch owners and trail bosses looking for other cow towns in which to sell their cattle if, ironically, the law made Dodge City too dangerous for their employees.
Wyatt imparted to his outgunned team three guidelines: One was to try to politely reason with a man, because he was not as dangerous when in the middle of a conversation. The second was if a deputy had to shoot, do it deliberately and accurately, because often the quickest man was off the mark. Third, don’t shoot to kill, because wounding a man usually disabled him enough and he would be worth more money that way.
This policy was fine with Bat and Jim Masterson. They hadn’t signed on for a license to kill but to keep the peace and earn decent wages while doing it. They would enforce the new laws, which included no horses or other animals in saloons and no guns allowed north of the “Dead Line,” which essentially was the railroad-tracks separation between the respectable section of the city on the north side of Front Street and the “anything-goes” section between Front Street and the Arkansas River.
What went on south of the Dead Line was what the business leader Robert Wright characterized as the “greatest abandon.” The prairie historian Odie B. Faulk wrote that there were seemingly moral civic-minded men who “would drink on the north side of the street until the dark of night, when their wives went to bed, and then cross the tracks for uninhibited fun until the early morning hours.”
But cowboys and buffalo hunters made up most of the customers, with money in their pockets “and a desire to make up in a single night for all the revelry they had missed during the lonely nights on the plains,” wrote Faulk. “They drank the raw, potent whiskey or huge steins of beer, they smoked cigars, they talked loudly, they spent seventy-five cents to dance ten minutes with one of the dark-eyed viragoes or brazen-faced blondes, and all the while the music swirled about in loud profusion.” Between dances, the girls “escorted the men to the bar to accept a drink, which usually was tea, or they coaxed them into the back rooms.”
The Hays City Sentinel reported, “Gamblers are congregating at Dodge and Larry Deger has his hands full.”
The mandate for Wyatt and Bat and the other officers who worked for the city was to contain the chaos that the town had experienced since the railroad had arrived four years earlier. But because they did it, herding many of the troublemakers to be confined to literally the wrong side of the tracks, what ensued was by Dodge City standards a nonviolent summer of 1876. Wyatt helped the deputies sharpen their skills at buffaloing, and that maneuver was often a preamble to a man landing in jail. The bars clanged shut quite a few times, with three hundred arrests a month. This kept the peace and made lawing a profitable occupation.
Some men needed more convincing than others, “but as practically every prisoner heaved into the calaboose was thoroughly buffaloed in the process, we made quite a dent in cowboy conceit,” Wyatt reported. “We certainly enforced a change in their ritual.”
Based on his experience with Virgil in the freight-hauling and mining camps, Wyatt was the better man with his fists. One day in Dodge City, after a herd had been penned up, the cowboys prepared to begin the same revelry they had enjoyed the last time in town, which had often ended with a midnight ride down Front Street with six-shooters blazing. As they were about to cross the Dead Line, Wyatt halted them and explained there was a new assistant marshal in town.
There was a lot of guffawing and backslapping over that. When Wyatt insisted that the cowboys either stay south of the line or leave their guns at the marshal’s office, the biggest of them was chosen to remind the impertinent lawman what Dodge City was really all about. The cowboy was flexing his fingers when Wyatt slugged him twice in the jaw, with a shot to the belly in between. The unconscious man was dragged off by his fellow cowboys as they headed south of the Dead Line.
Another incident tested Bat’s patience. He and Wyatt were confronted by a group of cowboys who wanted to air their grievances, and talking with their fists was just as fine. A large man hailed by his friends as the “champion of Texas” (there was probably one with every herd) stepped forward. Bat deferred to Wyatt, who removed and handed him his gun belt, and the bout began. The cowboy must indeed have been one of the better-boxing Texans, because before it was lights-out for him, Wyatt was bruised and bloodied.
Wyatt called out to the others, “Any of you want trouble?” Bat stepped in, offering to fight next. Wyatt refused, saying, “Either I run this town or I don’t.”
Another cowboy did step forward and put up his fists, but in a few moments the tips of his boots were pointed at the sky. There was no more trouble from this group.
As the eminent biographer Robert DeArment pointed out, “Bat’s role at these slugging sessions was more than that of an interested bystander.” As more of the cowboys fell to Wyatt’s fists, “doubtless they would have liked to catch him with his gun belt down. Bat was there to see that Wyatt did not take a bullet in the back while fighting.”
Understandably, Wyatt, Bat, and the other peace officers did not endear themselves to the Texans, who made up most of the cowboy population. Business was booming thanks to the Texas ranchers from as far south as the Rio Grande sending their cattle to Dodge City, where they were purchased for anywhere from ten to twenty-five dollars a head, depending on how fat they were at the end of the journey. In 1876, 250,000 head of cattle hoofed their way to the city, and that number would increase by 50,000 head the following year. Having too many cowboys buffaloed while forking over their wages to saloons, brothels, and the more upstanding businesses could begin slowing that swollen stream of revenue.
Sometimes it wasn’t cowboys but their bosses who caused trouble. One night that summer of 1876, Bob Rachals, a cattleman from Texas, was amusing himself by shooting at the feet of a musician—proverbially “making him dance.” The gunshots attracted Wyatt’s attention, and Rachals learned what being buffaloed meant. Wyatt dragged him off to jail, and the weary musician could finally stand still.
The assistant marshal did not know that Rachals was a friend of Robert Wright’s. (The entrepreneur did not include this incident in his memoir, for an obvious reason.) Wright confronted Wyatt, demanding that the cattleman be released immediately. The lawman refused. Wright threatened to have Wyatt fired, and launched into a rant about how arrogant and high-handed the lowly assistant marshal was. Finally, even Wyatt’s patience was exhausted. A couple of minutes later, Rachals had company in his jail cell.
A story has persisted for decades that the initial successes of Wyatt, Bat, and the other lawmen in lifting Dodge City up out of chaos attracted the attention of Ned Buntline, whom biographer Jay Monaghan, with justification, called the “great rascal.” Among other things, the man was a prolific writer of “dime novels,” tales that used few if any facts and were aimed at creating or enhancing the legends of lawmen and outlaws on the frontier. Buntline was credited with composing at least three hundred of them, many written not in a town west of the Missouri River but in his home in Upstate New York. It was reported that in 1876 he traveled to Dodge City to present members of the marshal’s and sheriff’s teams with custom-made Colt guns that would become known as “Buntline Specials” or “peace keepers.”
It is true indeed that the rascal had a very active life. Edward Zane Carroll Judson was born in Stamford, New York, in 1823. He was called Ned, and he later adopted the nautical term “buntline” to become his pseudonym, as he had run away at age eleven to become a cabin boy on a ship. As a midshipman, he participated in the Seminole War in Florida, and during the Civil War he rose to the rank of sergeant in the Union Army before being dishonorably discharged for drunkenness. He always referred to himself as “Colonel” because he was photographed in Mathew Brady’s studio wearing such a uniform, which was as close to being an officer as he got.
Somehow, Buntline was able to combine being a heavy drinker with being a serial philanderer and husband. He was paid handsomely for giving lectures on temperance, often delivering them while drunk. He had six wives and committed bigamy at least twice. He had five children that he knew about. In 1846, in Nashville, Tennessee, a man confronted Buntline over having an affair with his wife and fired a gun. He missed, but Buntline didn’t. He pleaded self-defense during the hearing, then fled the courtroom, followed by an angry mob. He was chased through the streets and in and out of buildings and was finally caught and taken to jail. That night the impatient mob broke open the jail and hung Buntline. Somehow, he managed to pretend he was dead while staying alive, and when the crowd dispersed, the few friends he had in Nashville cut him down. Over the years, when Buntline displayed his scars, he contended that he had survived an Indian’s arrow.
He did travel to the frontier several times, and hit pay dirt in 1869 when the New York Weekly published his serial titled “Buffalo Bill: The King of Border Men—the Wildest and Truest Story I Ever Wrote.” One of the most surprised readers was Cody himself, upon learning of all his exploits and that he did not drink alcohol. The frontiersman was smart enough to go along rather than object. He met the author in Chicago and starred in a play Buntline had written in only four hours (some critics wondered what took so long), Scouts of the Prairie, with the playwright costarring as well as Texas Jack, a friend of Cody’s, and an Italian actress playing an Indian maiden with a “weakness for scouts” (and apparently for Texas Jack, as the two wound up married). The play toured other cities, and for a time Wild Bill Hickok was a member of the cast in a rewritten version titled Scouts of the Plains. In 1876, Buntline could afford to commission the Colt company to manufacture single-action pistols with twelve-inch-long barrels and detachable shoulder stocks. Buntline traveled to Dodge City to personally present them to Wyatt, Bat, Bill Tilghman, Neal Brown, and Charlie Bassett. Wyatt preferred the long barrel, the better to buffalo miscreants, but the other four cut their barrels down.
Here is one of those temptations to print the legend, but the facts do not support the gifting of the “peace keepers.” Colt has no record of the custom-made weapons, and there is no evidence that Buntline was anywhere near Kansas in the summer or fall of 1876. For some historians, the convincing point is that Buntline always exploited and exaggerated adventures he was involved in, yet wrote nothing about meeting the “famous” lawmen and presenting them with unique pistols with “Ned” carved into the stocks. Also, in 1876, though the building of their reputations was under way, Wyatt and Bat were far from famous and no one from the East would make a special trip to honor them.
Buntline continued to write and have trouble with women and money, yet he still found ways to maintain his estate, Eagle’s Nest, in the Adirondacks. He occasionally roamed the grounds there wearing buckskins and carrying a rifle. When he died in July 1886, one New York newspaper, perhaps with some tongue in cheek, credited Buntline with being the “most thoroughly ‘American’ American of his time.” Because of all the debts that lived on after him, his remaining wives had to sell Eagle’s Nest.
Bat’s first year of lawing didn’t last very long. In the aftermath of the Little Bighorn disaster, the army was running down Indians and forcing them onto reservations, or killing them, or frightening them enough to follow Sitting Bull to Canada. (Another shocking piece of news would sweep through the frontier towns that summer: in Deadwood, South Dakota, the seemingly invincible Wild Bill Hickok had been killed, shot in the back by “Crooked Nose” Jack McCall.) That left the Black Hills in southwest South Dakota wide open. Gold had been discovered there.
Like many other men his age, Bat contracted gold fever. The team of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson ended—temporarily—when Bat hopped on a horse and headed for what he hoped would be riches ready for the taking.
Wyatt would miss his friend, but he had an able and willing replacement as a deputy marshal. The dust had hardly settled behind Bat when Morgan Earp was appointed to replace him.
TWELVE
Dodge City is bracing herself up for the cattle trade. Places of refreshment are being gorgeously arrayed in new coats of paint and other ornaments to beguile the festive cowboy.
—Dodge City Times, April 28, 1877
The Earp brothers, Jim Masterson, and the other lawmen were keeping an eye on things during a winter of little activity. Before 1876 was over, the Dodge City Fire Company was established, and the following February the Union Church was organized. Services were held in the same building that had been constructed the year before to hold nondenominational services.
The Victorian custom (or dictate) that a man and woman living together must be married was practiced by those in the middle and upper levels of society, but in the frontier towns everyone else was not concerned about such morality. It was not uncommon in Dodge City for men and women to live as man and wife, even if they were lawmen and brothel operators or their employees. This group included Wyatt and the blond, slightly plump Mattie.
With Sally Haspel having disappeared out of Wyatt’s life, Mattie had him to herself. One wonders how unromantic or at least practical a man Wyatt had become by 1876, because Mattie did not leave some of her Wichita ways behind. Mattie, it seems, was Mattie, warts and all. As E. C. Meyers offers in his biography of her, when Wyatt and his “wife” took up residence in Dodge City “real doubt exists that Mattie was even interested in a completely domestic life for she had grown used to the glitter and auditory vibrancy of nightlife. She knew her way around the sporting areas … and she felt very much at ease among her peers. She could always make a few dollars hustling drinks in whatever saloon Wyatt was operating his faro game; and if a newfound friend expressed interest in her she could always spare some of her time for him.”
It does not sound like Wyatt and Mattie had much of a romantic relationship. Making it worse was that she was flirting with addiction. That she liked whiskey could have been harmful enough, given that Wyatt’s preferred drink continued to be coffee, but Mattie was now beginning a relationship with opium. She had to buy it from somewhere, and she had no other marketable skills than being a prostitute. She lived in a small house north of Front Street, which Wyatt had probably bought or rented for her but did not visit very often if it doubled as a brothel. With the lack of any mention of Mattie in the two local newspapers, either she was very discreet or Wyatt’s connection to law enforcement kept her out of trouble.
Other than any volatility in his relationship with Mattie, the winter was too peaceful for Wyatt. There weren’t even that many dogs to shoot. No, he was not
necessarily cruel to animals, but part of the job of a peace officer was to get rid of dogs that were suspected of having rabies. Though it still made him the highest-paid lawman in the city, Wyatt’s modest salary was no longer being boosted by earning $2.50 per arrest. With cattle drives done for the year and a prairie winter having arrived with its frigid windy blasts from the western mountains, troublemakers were in short supply. That was good news for the law-and-order faction, but not for Wyatt and Mattie.
They left Dodge City in early March 1877. Wyatt’s destination was Deadwood. It shared with several of the Kansas cow towns a reputation for lawlessness, where gambling and violence thrived, with one exception being that the source of income was not cattle but the nearby mining operations. Wyatt went there to make money. Deadwood was fertile ground for a man experienced in dealing faro. (Participating in a game and hoping to beat the dealer was sometimes called “bucking the tiger.”) And whatever lawlessness transpired on the streets or behind saloon doorways was not Wyatt’s concern.
Given its rowdy reputation, few would have predicted that thanks to mining profits Deadwood would become one of the wealthiest communities west of the Mississippi River. Just two years after Wyatt gambled there, and a year after the new device was installed in the White House, lines were strung to give Deadwood the distinction of being the first community west of the Mississippi River to have telephone service.
Wyatt would later report that he did not end up doing much gambling while in Deadwood because another opportunity to make money was available. Unlike the seasonal cattle drives and buffalo hunts in and around Dodge City, mining operations and thus the building and maintaining of mining camps were year-round. Harking back to his freight-hauling days, Wyatt delivered wood. The demand was such that he did it seven days a week, and the job was made more difficult by the weather conditions in western South Dakota even in March and April. “But I was young and tough,” said Wyatt, who was turning twenty-nine, “so were my horses, and we came through into spring in fine shape physically.”