by Clavin, Tom
A doctor was quickly located, and when he pushed his way through the lingering gunsmoke, he found Ed Masterson propped up against the bar, the gun still in his left hand and pointed at the two wounded men he had just arrested.
Ed recovered from his painful injury, and as had happened to the Earps, for a while the most well regarded lawman in the Masterson family was not named Bat. Dodge City officials showed their appreciation by voting to give him twenty-three dollars to cover medical expenses. Charlie Bassett was appointed interim marshal while Ed convalesced.
Though swearing-in day in January 1878 hadn’t arrived yet, with Bassett covering for his brother as marshal, Bat was the de facto acting sheriff. He went to work right away when he received Wyatt’s telegram from Fort Griffin. If this had been a year or even a few months later, Bat might have tossed it aside if he’d known that the deputy U.S. marshal’s hunch had been helped along by Doc Holliday. The two men quickly came to dislike each other and observed an uneasy truce only because they were Wyatt’s best friends. One indication of how generally unlikable Doc was could be summed up this way: if the gregarious and often cheerful Bat wanted to have as little to do with you as possible, you must have been rather unappealing company.
Another indication was what Bat wrote about him. One of the magazine essays he wrote thirty years later was on Doc Holliday. All of the essays are complimentary, even admiring, of their subjects, especially those about Wyatt and Ben Thompson—with one exception. Bat begins in an evenhanded way: “While he never did anything to entitle him to a Statue in the Hall of Fame, Doc Holliday was nevertheless a most picturesque character on the western border in those days when the pistol instead of law determined issues.”
Then, even though Bat had to consider that Wyatt might read what was written about his old friend who was long in the grave, Bat could not resist: “Holliday had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper, and under the influence of liquor was a most dangerous man.… Physically, Doc Holliday was a weakling who could not have whipped a healthy fifteen-year-old boy in a go-as-you-please fist fight,” he wrote, pointing out that this was why Doc was quick to go for his gun when threatened. “He was hot-headed and impetuous and very much given to both drinking and quarrelling, and, among men who did not fear him, was very much disliked.”
However, that January such judgments were ahead of him, plus Bat doubted that Wyatt could be hoodwinked with false information. Thus, he acted on the belief that Dirty Dave and his gang were back in Kansas. And Bat was probably aware that a couple of previous efforts north of Fort Griffin had failed. His old “friend” Bob McCanse had led a posse that followed the gang’s trail to the town of Kinsley. The former sheriff crossed the Arkansas River after them, thinking he was closing in, but a dense fog closed in instead and the posse lost the trail. Back in Kinsley, they drowned their sorrows of having ridden 115 miles with nothing but dusty clothes and tired horses to show for it. J. W. Fuller, who had replaced McCanse as the Edwards County sheriff, had also led a search, accompanied by army cavalry. He too came up empty.
Undeterred, Bat put together a posse that consisted of Prairie Dog Morrow, John Joshua Webb, and his former boss, Bassett. The third week in January, having by then been duly sworn in, and braving the risk of blizzards, Sheriff Masterson and his posse set off for the territory between Dodge City and the Texas Panhandle, which included the Cherokee Strip. They picked up signs on the trail that made them think the Rudabaugh group was in the area. Nasty winter weather caused Bat and his deputies to seek shelter at a ranch owned by cattleman Henry Lovell.
As the storm worsened, many travelers would have been content to wait it out at the ranch. But Bat had another idea: if those outlaws were in the area, they would be looking for shelter themselves, and Lovell’s ranch was known to all. Bat suggested that they abandon the ranch but stay near it, at least for one night. They bedded down within sight of the compound, and the four men took turns as lookout. The night ended but the storm didn’t, making for a cold and miserable posse. But Bat wasn’t a quitter and neither were his deputies.
Late the next afternoon, as the wan light was fading from the western sky and Bat debated whether another night spent in the snow was merited, the lawmen saw four riders approach the ranch. The sighs of relief of Dirty Dave and his desperadoes turned to groans as Bat, Morrow, Webb, and Bassett appeared out of the driving snow with their hands full of shotguns and six-shooters. Bat ordered them to throw down their guns and throw up their hands.
Though heavily armed themselves, the outlaws were too flummoxed to fire a shot. The next morning, Bat led his party back to Dodge City, where the lawmen were lauded and the outlaws were taken by train east to await trial.
“The successful efforts of Sheriff W. B. Masterson in this capture entitle him to the unanimous accord of praise given him, and in which I join,” offered an approving Robert Wright.
Two postscripts to this story are warranted. One is that after the robbers had been questioned, a judge, based on a claim by one of the crooks, ordered the arrest of Bill Tilghman as being an accomplice. Bat knew this was ridiculous but realized that to avoid violence he had better put the cuffs on Tilghman himself, which he did. Bat promised his falsely accused friend to get the matter straightened out. Tilghman was put on the same train as the outlaws, but three days later, with the accusation proven to be a complete fabrication, Bat went and got Tilghman and brought him back to Dodge City.
The second postscript is that the saga of Rudabaugh’s life of crime had more chapters to it. Dirty Dave was a low-down scoundrel to the rest of his gang. He informed on them, probably heaping most of the blame on his former comrades. They wound up in prison. Rudabaugh, after promising to go straight, was released and allowed to ride off to New Mexico.
After some time in the territory, he returned to his thieving ways. By 1879, he had put together a fresh (except for him) band of outlaws, and a crime spree commenced. Because there were several fellows from Kansas in his new gang—including Hoodoo Brown, and, of all people, former lawman John Joshua Webb—Rudabaugh’s outfit was known as the Dodge City Gang. During a six-month reign of terror they robbed stagecoaches and trains. One of the more sensational attacks on a train in New Mexico took place on October 14 of that year, when a group of masked men led by Dirty Dave held up a train outside of Las Vegas in New Mexico. They rode off with not only over two thousand dollars in cash but every lantern on the train.
Not long into the new year, Webb was found and arrested. He waited in jail to be tried. Rudabaugh led the effort to free him, and in the ensuing melee he killed Deputy Sheriff Lino Valdez. Breaking off the attack, Rudabaugh fled, soon finding himself in Fort Sumner. There he joined up with another gang, this one led by William Bonney, known throughout the frontier as Billy the Kid.
On the night of November 30, 1880, Dirty Dave and the Kid and a third outlaw rode into White Oaks, New Mexico. There was a gunfight with local lawmen, and another one at dawn, resulting in the death of a deputy sheriff, James Carlyle. After their escape, Sheriff Pat Garrett set off after them. For almost three weeks the relentless pursuit continued. When Billy the Kid’s gang arrived in Fort Sumner on December 19, Garrett and his posse were waiting for them. Guns blazed, men and horses were hit, one outlaw was killed, but Billy the Kid, Rudabaugh, and three others who had joined the gang got away. They holed up in a cabin near Stinking Springs, which had earned its name naturally, not thanks to Dirty Dave.
In the morning, when one of the gang stepped outside the cabin, he was shot dead. During the night, Garrett and his men had tracked them to Stinking Springs. As the other four ran toward their horses, Garrett killed another one. Rudabaugh and the Kid and a third man hurried back into the cabin and for much of the day shot it out with the posse. Finally, low on bullets and water, Rudabaugh fluttered a piece of white cloth out a window and the outlaws surrendered. Billy the Kid was jailed in Lincoln, New Mexico. (On April 28, 1881, he escaped, as will be detailed.)
This would
seem to be the end of Dirty Dave’s days as a desperado, but he was not finished yet. He was tried and convicted of murder. He was put in the same Las Vegas prison as Webb, which turned out to be unwise. Somehow, on September 19, 1881, they and two other men obtained guns and attempted to shoot their way out of prison. They failed, but one man was killed. In the first week in December, Rudabaugh and Webb had better luck when they dug a hole through one wall, crawled out, and fled. Webb made his way east, where for several months under the name Samuel King he worked as a teamster in Kansas and Nebraska, and ended up in Arkansas, where he died of smallpox. Dirty Dave escaped to Mexico.
For years there, he apparently found ways to stay out of trouble … until the night of February 18, 1886. He was involved in a card game at a cantina in Parral when Rudabaugh and a local man accused each other of cheating. They jumped up and jerked their guns. The gringo was faster, with the Mexican man taking a bullet in the head. His friend went for his gun and Rudabaugh shot him through the heart. He went outside, couldn’t locate his horse, and returned to the cantina. By this time, angry friends of the dead men had gathered inside and they had put out the lights. Rudabaugh, encountering the darkness, tried to turn and leave but he was seized. Knives went to work. For the next few days, Dirty Dave’s severed head was paraded through the town. He had lived a full life of villainy in only thirty-two years.
SEVENTEEN
Such, then, was the beginning of my acquaintance with Doc Holliday, the mad, merry scamp with heart of gold and nerves of steel; who, in the dark years that followed stood at my elbow in many a battle to the death.
—WYATT EARP
With Bat and his posse taking care of Rudabaugh and his gang after they had doubled back from Texas, Wyatt returned early to Dodge City in January 1878. Around this time, his new acquaintance, Doc Holliday, began the flight that would eventually bring him to Dodge City. It was Kate Elder who got him out of a serious jam. It wouldn’t be the last time.
Mary Katharine Haroney was born in Hungary in November 1850. The family then lived in Mexico because her father was the personal physician of that country’s emperor, Maximilian. But after only three years, in 1865, Maximilian was ousted and the Haroneys fled Mexico, winding up in Davenport, Iowa. Within months, Kate’s displaced parents were dead and she and her siblings were sent to live in foster homes. Kate tolerated this until she was sixteen, when she stowed away on a steamship that landed her in St. Louis. She enrolled in a school there, changing her last name to Fisher, after the ship’s captain.
The first dentist she fell in love with was Silas Melvin. The two married and had a child. But in less than a year, Kate had lost her child and become a widow. She headed west and wound up in Wichita, working as a prostitute in the brothel run by James and Bessie Earp. It would seem highly unlikely that she did not encounter Wyatt. (Some have speculated that she knew him all too well but both denied it out of respect for Holliday.) The following year, in 1875, she went by the name of Kate Elder and was performing in a Dodge City dance hall and was probably a part-time prostitute. Though an attractive woman, her nose was a tad prominent, and both men and women began referring to her as Big Nose Kate. Some of those same people were afraid of her because she had a terrible temper, especially when drinking, which was often.
Why she was in Fort Griffin, Texas, in January 1878 is not known. It may simply have been a place to find work at a time of year when saloon jobs were scarce in Dodge City. It was there that she met Doc Holliday. They had quick tempers, alcohol, independence, restlessness, and a low regard for life in common. All that and more would be enough to keep them together despite the knock-down, drag-out fights that would impress those who knew them.
Soon after Wyatt left Fort Griffin to head north, Doc was playing cards with Ed Bailey, a man whose reputation included being a bit of a bully. Doc was the one dealing, and Bailey picked up the discarded cards and looked at them. The former dentist must have been in a mellow mood because he let slide what was a clear violation of western poker. But when Bailey continued to do it, Doc warned him, and after a couple of unheeded warnings, he simply raked in the pot without revealing to Bailey if his hand was a winner or not.
For Bailey, this was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Immediately furious, he reached for his gun. Just as it was coming visible above the table, Doc slashed a knife across his stomach. Bailey lurched to his feet, then pitched forward, his blood drooling out across the poker table. There were witnesses to the incident, so when lawmen arrived, Doc surrendered the knife and cooperated with his arrest. It was clearly a case of self-defense, as the others in the saloon would testify. Because there was not a jail in Fort Griffin, Doc was kept in a hotel room until the judge could be found.
But Bailey had friends who didn’t take kindly to him being filleted like a fish. They gathered and began heading toward the hotel with a long length of rope. Fortunately for Doc, Big Nose Kate got wind of what was going on, and thinking fast, she set fire to an old shed filled with hay. The sudden conflagration and the hectic activity involved in trying to douse the fire slowed the lynch mob enough that Kate arrived at the hotel first, a pistol in each hand. This surely intimidated the guard, who ran off. Kate and Doc commandeered a couple of horses and left town while the fire continued to be fought.
Their destination was Dodge City. The reason may have been to seek the protection of Wyatt Earp in case some people in Fort Griffin went on being agitated about Bailey’s bloody demise. In any event, when the two fugitives arrived they checked into Deacon Cox’s Boarding House, with Doc signing the register as Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Holliday. They were so relieved by their escape from the mob that Doc vowed to give up gambling and return to dentistry, and Big Nose Kate reciprocated by vowing to give up the whoring saloon life. For a time, both were sincere.
Once Bat could get settled in as sheriff of Ford County, he added the recently exonerated Bill Tilghman to his staff. He was good with a gun, people trusted him, like Wyatt he shunned alcohol, and he kept a cool head. Bat had thought well of him since their buffalo-hunting adventures.
Tilghman and his new wife, Flora, had been trying to make a go of it as ranchers in Bluff Creek. They had 160 acres on the prairie west of Dodge City, and they worked from dawn to dusk despite having a baby, and during the winter of 1877–1878 another one was on the way. Flora was quite pleased with the ranching and domestic life. Her husband grew increasingly restless. So it was that on the day when Tilghman had seen a lone rider approaching from the east and it turned out to be Bat Masterson, the would-be rancher was more receptive to what was offered to him. Flora could have dug her heels in but recognized that holding her husband back would not do the marriage or the ranch any good.
During his first day on the job as deputy, Tilghman encountered Luke Short being shot in the head several times, which had to make him think that this job was going to be a lot tougher than he’d anticipated.
In the annals of Dodge City and the lives of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, Short would be a familiar figure, popping up here and there. He did not save Bat’s life, like Ben Thompson had done in Sweetwater, nor was he a steady badge-wearing man like Tilghman, but Wyatt and especially Bat considered him a friend, and as such he deserved their loyalty.
Luke Short was only a couple of months older than Bat and hailed from Polk County, Arkansas, but when he was six the family relocated to Montague County in Texas. That would suit him just fine because Luke took to being a cowboy, and beginning when he was sixteen, in 1869, as the cattle-driving business began to boom, he regularly went on the trail north, steering cattle to the Kansas cow towns, especially Dodge City. His lifelong enjoyment of—many might say addiction to—gambling commenced early on, when he got to the end of the Chisholm Trail and the gaming tables of Abilene.
Wyatt later claimed that was where he set eyes on him: “First time I saw Luke he was selling red likker to the hide hunters. He’d quit working as a cowhand already, didn’t cotton to it. That little fella never
did hanker for lifting and straining.”
He hadn’t quite quit being a cattle driver yet, but in the cow-town saloons, he watched and listened as the experienced gamblers plied their trade. He learned the tricks and how to cheat only enough to not get killed and how to read in the eyes of other men what they were holding. When he won, he improved the way he dressed. The ladies in the saloons took notice of that and of his easy grin behind the fashionable brown mustache.
When Lady Luck was against him, Luke found other ways to raise a stake. One example was during the Great Sioux War of 1876, when he was a scout for General George Crook. Another was heading out to the buffalo camps with a wagon full of whiskey. He had the reputation of being reliable and of offering fine-tasting whiskey. No one knew he stacked the bottom of his barrels with rattlesnake heads. Luke liked to partake himself, but never touched his own supply. When he’d made enough money, he exchanged his dusty duds for his successful frontier gambler outfits and returned to the tables.
Along the way at those gaming tables he had met Bat Masterson, and inevitably Luke gravitated toward Dodge City, where Bat and Wyatt were. There he won at faro and other games more than he lost, and when he asserted that he was good with a gun, no one tried to disprove him. Luke had done pretty well in either Texas or Deadwood over the winter, and in spring 1878 he was on Front Street in Dodge City, though seemingly in a bad way.
Bill Tilghman’s inaugural patrol through the streets of Dodge City had been a pleasant one. Most people greeted him with courtesy, welcoming him to the sheriff’s department. Gamblers and prostitutes mingled on Front Street with dust-covered cowboys and farmers and ranchers, some accompanied by wives who wore ankle-length calico dresses. When Tilghman arrived at the train station, he sat down to rest and chat with the freight agent, recalling how on any given day the area adjacent to the station was once piled high with buffalo hides and behind that were the piles of sun-bleached buffalo bones.