by Clavin, Tom
Suddenly, there were gunshots. Tilghman jumped up and ran for Front Street. Having not met Luke Short before, Tilghman did not recognize him; he simply saw a man walking down the middle of the street, his boots covered with mud, wearing a tall black plug hat. A man crossed over from the sidewalk, aimed a gun at the head of the man in the street, and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was still echoing when another man appeared and also shot the victim in the head.
Tilghman took out his gun and the two men fled. The deputy should have gone after at least one of them, but he was too amazed that the man who had been shot at least twice was still on his feet. Luke Short grinned, took off his hat, and showed the gaping Tilghman the holes in it. “I made a bet with the boys back at the Red Dog that I could walk down the street without my plug hat being shot off,” he explained, returning the hat to the top of his head. “Well, it ain’t shot off, so I win the bet.”
Tilghman noticed several men had gathered on the sidewalk, and they appeared to be trying not to laugh. Catching on, he made tracks to the sheriff’s office. Bat sat with his boots perched up on his desk. He asked his deputy if there had been any trouble.
“None worth mentioning,” Tilghman replied.
“No arrests for Luke’s hat being shot full of holes?”
That and the sheriff’s big grin told the story. For Tilghman, it was “welcome to lawing in Ford County,” Bat Masterson style.
In addition to having an irrepressible personality, Bat enjoyed practical jokes because he knew that having fun endeared him to many of the city’s citizens, yet his past accomplishments meant he wasn’t thought of any less as a lawman. And sometimes what Bat concocted could have a practical purpose.
Cowboys were not the only ones who got drunk in Dodge City. There were men in other occupations who could not resist whiskey, and lots of it. Sometimes they got into a bit of trouble, while other times for the local lawmen it was a routine task to find a fellow passed out in the street, haul him to the calaboose, and let him out when sobriety was regained.
Bat and a few of his like-minded acquaintances had an idea of how to cure these unfortunates, and they invented what came to be called the Dodge City Keeley Cure. With many “patients,” it worked. (This can be considered the first “intervention,” long before there was Alcoholics Anonymous or group therapy.) A chronic drunk was approached at the bar in a saloon and actually encouraged to have more whiskey. Rarely was there any resistance, with the rounds being bought for him. When he passed out, he was taken to the sheriff’s jail as usual. But instead of being locked up, his face was powdered white, he was dressed in black, and he was laid out in a coffin with a mirror above his head. It had been arranged ahead of time that his friends who had hoped the man would see the light would gather.
Finally, when the man awoke from his stupor, he opened his eyes to his reflection in the mirror, which showed him laid out in a coffin and his friends standing around him murmuring prayers. The man was terrified at first; then, discovering that he was alive again and had been given a Scrooge-like second chance, he tearfully vowed never to touch another drop of liquor.
This time when Wyatt had returned to Dodge City, it was the new Ford County Globe that made note of it, telling readers he had arrived from Fort Clarke, Texas. If he did any lawing, it was not until the middle of May, when The Wichita Eagle reported that Wyatt was to be paid two hundred dollars a month to be the new Dodge City marshal.
This was a handsome sum, and the report could well have been true. It was not true, though, that he would be the new marshal. Charlie Bassett had the job. (Ed Masterson had recovered and returned as marshal in April, but for a reason to be detailed, it was Bassett’s post once more.) Wyatt willingly signed on as his assistant, as he had been to Larry Deger two years earlier. The Eagle continued to pay attention to activities of its former peace officer, informing readers that Wyatt was “adding new laurels to his splendid record every day.” He was even credited with putting out a fire on the outskirts of town.
Unless one of them was out of town, Bat’s and Wyatt’s paths crossed on a daily basis. But they managed to get into plenty of scrapes while on separate paths.
Unlike the quiet and laconic Wyatt, the more gregarious Bat continued to enjoy a practical joke. Thus, some believed that he was really behind an incident that took place around this time at the Lady Gay Saloon. A man calling himself Dr. Meredith arrived in Dodge City offering to lecture on phrenology and its use in diagnosing diseases. The “doctor” approached the sheriff asking for his protection, explaining that some towns along the frontier, especially ones filled with cowboys, had not received his lectures with anything approaching courtesy. Intrigued, Bat agreed and went so far as to persuade the owners of the Lady Gay Saloon to suspend their usual entertainment long enough for the visitor to give his lecture.
On that evening the saloon was almost full, and the regular patrons were at least puzzled when, instead of singing and dancing girls taking to the stage, a stranger appeared. Even Bat’s introduction wasn’t placating enough. Dr. Meredith was only a few words into his lecture when a member of the audience shouted, “You lie!” Bat stood, turned to the audience, and declared, “I’ll shoot the first man that interrupts this gentleman again.”
Again, Dr. Meredith began his lecture, and again a man in the audience blurted out, “You lie!” Bat was back on his feet, saying, “I meant what I said. The next time this gentleman is interrupted, I’ll begin shooting.”
The third time was not a charm. Bat produced his pistol and shot out the lights. The crowd went crazy, fighting each other to get through the front door, and a few audience members jumped out the windows, one man not bothering to open it first. When Bat lit a lamp, the distressed “doctor” was found cowering behind the lecture podium. Dr. Meredith was done as far as Dodge City was concerned, and he was on the next train out. Town wags believed that Bat either planned the mischief from the moment he met Dr. Meredith, or after only a few words realized anything would be more fun than the lecture.
Of course, Bat could not lollygag around Ford County playing practical jokes. There were outlaws to be caught, and one adventure was a postscript to the arrest of the Rudabaugh gang. When word came to the sheriff that not all of the men who had ridden with Dirty Dave were behind bars and that in fact one of them, Mike Rorke, had put together a new gang to bedevil banks and trains, Bat gathered a posse and hit the trail.
Riding with him were Charlie Bassett, Miles Mix, John Joshua Webb (apparently, before he fell under Dirty Dave’s spell), and Red Clarke, a respected local rancher. With the Ford County Globe declaring, “No better posse ever undertook such a duty,” the pressure was on to deliver. Bat had a pretty good idea of the direction the bandits had taken, and he turned out to be right when ranch hands and settlers reported Rorke and several other men having passed by a few hours earlier.
For thirteen days the posse stayed close behind the outlaws. They continued south, past the Cimarron River, then southeast, finally getting to the Staked Plains in Texas. There the trail ended. There was no sign of Rorke and his men. After a pursuit of three hundred miles, Bat and the posse had to backtrack to Dodge City. Even with no one to toss in the calaboose, the lawmen were cheered for what had been a valiant effort when they returned.
Rorke did not remain a free man very long. Later in 1878, in October, he and a companion, Dan Dement, were spotted in Ellsworth. The attempted arrest turned into a gun battle. Dement would die from his wounds, and Rorke was tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Perhaps to gain some satisfaction, Bat paid him a visit.
EIGHTEEN
What fools some young cowboys were after long drives “up the Chisholm trail,” and after filling their hides full of the poison liquors manufactured to put the red-shirted Irish rail-road builders to sleep, so that the toughs could “roll” them, and get their “wads.” Instead of putting a cowboy to sleep it stirred up the devil in his make-up, and made him a wide-awake hyena.
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br /> —CHARLES SIRINGO
It did not look too good for the future of Dodge City that death took a high toll in 1878. The fatalities would include women and lawmen, illustrating the risks both faced in their respective professions. But the year would prove to be a turning point.
A couple of names on wooden signs above their graves implied that women were buried at Boot Hill, but the only confirmed female buried there by then was named Alice Chambers. She was known to acquaintances and customers as Squirrel Tooth Alice—not because of her teeth, but for a fondness for the rodent. She was a prostitute who fronted as a dance-hall girl. In frontier towns, especially growing ones like Dodge City, there could be more than one or even several working women named Jane, Mary, and Alice (with only a few of the names being real ones), so even a minor physical characteristic inspired a nickname that distinguished one Alice from another. The story of the one nicknamed “Squirrel Tooth” pretty well represented the perils and often the fate of the soiled doves of Dodge City.
It was estimated at the time by the Ford County Globe that of Dodge City’s seven hundred residents there were forty-seven prostitutes. Some were tough, imposing women in the Big Nose Kate mold. According to Odie Faulk, “Most were as crude as their customers.” Even those hailing from Ohio, Illinois, or even New York often took on names like Belle, Dixie, and other ones with a southern flavor that were more appealing to their clientele, most of whom were Texas cowboys. The rest were hunters, gamblers, and the occasional Ford County citizen who had ridden in for a night on the town. Between the drinking, long hours, physical abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases, few frontier women in this profession lived to middle age. Old age was miraculous, with the odds much more in favor of an early demise, sometimes in unexpected ways.
That happened to a prostitute named Lizzie Adams. She had made a romantic conquest of George Palmer, who owned a ranch quite a way outside the city limits and brought her there as his bride. One would think that being a housewife and perhaps a mother would be a preferred existence, but apparently Lizzie missed the old life, because she began to entertain former clients in a room at a Dodge City boardinghouse. One night the building burned to the ground, with Lizzie in it. Palmer was the prime suspect but he was nowhere to be found, until his lifeless body was discovered some weeks later. One of Lizzie’s old clients, apparently another romantic conquest, was arrested, and he confessed to the revenge killing.
Squirrel Tooth Alice’s turn as headline fodder came one day in March 1878, but for a benign reason. The Dodge City Times reported that as she was walking down the street, a sudden blast of late-winter wind tugged seven dollar bills out of her stocking. The reporter contended that a six-hour search was undertaken “by all the tramps in town,” yet when it was called off, only one of the dollars had been recovered. The article concluded, “We did not suppose that the Kansas wind was of a higher order and did not stoop to such larceny.”
Sadly, during that spring Alice lost more than six dollars. She spent her last days and nights in a small room above the Lady Gay Saloon. It was not reported what her fatal ailment was, but prostitutes were easy prey for consumption, infections, botched abortions, and the like. The pastor of the new Presbyterian church visited to offer some comfort, which got him in hot water with his congregation for spending time with a woman of ill repute. Squirrel Tooth Alice Chambers soon took up residence in the Boot Hill cemetery.
About this time another woman caught everyone’s attention, though just for a single visit, and she came out of it in fine health. She had been born Myra Maybelle Shirley in a log cabin outside of Carthage, Missouri, and had just turned thirty when she made an appearance in Dodge City. Her tempestuous personality could be attributed to her mother being a member of the Hatfield family that wound up feuding with the McCoys.
The Shirleys became a prosperous family, and Myra and her four brothers were given good schooling. She attended the Carthage Female Academy, where she excelled at classical languages and music. How did a cultured girl destined for matrimony to a man well placed in southern society become a notorious outlaw? As with many other members of that generation, it began with the Civil War, and specifically for the Shirley family, it began with the Missouri-Kansas Conflict. The oldest son, Bud, joined Quantrill’s Raiders, riding with Jesse James, and was killed in June 1864. Devastated financially as well as emotionally, the Shirleys left Missouri, relocating to Scyene, Texas. That by itself did not transform Maybelle Shirley into Belle Starr—her brother’s bandit friend did that.
After the end of the Civil War, when Jesse and Frank James had teamed up with the Younger brothers to rob banks, their first successful attempt was in Liberty, Missouri. They made off with six thousand dollars and kept riding, all the way to Texas. Taking advantage of the Missouri connection and having known Bud, Jesse and his gang hid out at the Shirley farm. Myra fell in love with Cole Younger; however, it was Jim Reed, a member of another gang seeking shelter with the Shirleys, whom Myra married in November 1866. They moved to Missouri, and for a time the Reeds enjoyed a peaceful domestic life with their two children, Pearl and Edward.
That life came to a sudden end when Reed murdered a man named Shannon and the family fled to California. Embarking on her own life of crime, the woman who would be dubbed the Bandit Queen made up for lost time. While in North Canadian River country, she and Reed and two other men tortured a Creek Indian into revealing where he had accumulated thirty thousand dollars in gold. The gang returned to Texas with Myra, then known as Belle Reed. They rode hard and evaded capture until August 1874, when Reed was killed in a gun battle. Unpersuaded by this to go straight, Belle deposited her children at the Shirley farm and set off for Indian Territory. There she took up with an Indian desperado called Blue Duck, who may have been the inspiration for the renegade half Comanche in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.
Belle and Blue would be acquainted, romantically and otherwise, for the rest of her life (he died of tuberculosis in 1895), but it was another Indian, the Cherokee Sam Starr, whom she married. She and her new husband and Blue Duck and several others became an outlaw band, using a sixty-two-acre ranch north of the Canadian River, which Belle named Younger’s Bend, as their hideaway. One of their visitors there was an old friend, Jesse James. Led by Belle Starr, the gang committed robberies and other crimes.
It was on one of their side trips, perhaps needing to leave the Panhandle in the dust for a few days, that, according to the recollections of several residents, Belle and her husband came to Dodge City. They checked into a boardinghouse run by Dog Kelley’s wife. Their “vacation” was cut short by an incident at the Long Branch Saloon. Sam Starr walked in and became involved in a faro game—so involved and so unlucky or so unenlightened about the odds favoring the bank that he lost two thousand dollars. Back at the boardinghouse, the news did not amuse his wife.
Belle had Sam saddle their horses and she trailed him back to the saloon. Once inside, the action picked up. She marched in and yanked out her pistols. Her eyes darting here and there, she moved from table to table, collecting the cash on the players and pocketing about seven thousand dollars. The men at the bar and tables were slack-jawed, too astonished at the sight of a female robber expertly wielding a pair of six-shooters and covering the room to offer any resistance. Belle backed out to where the horses were waiting, and she and Sam were on their way.
Remarkably, for four more years Belle and her gang continued to leave their sanctuary of Younger’s Bend to conduct more raids and elude the law. But in 1882, she and Sam were convicted of horse theft, and Judge Isaac Parker in Fort Smith, Arkansas, sentenced them to a year in prison. (He had earned the nickname the “Hanging Judge” in September 1875, when Parker had the necks of six men stretched in the same day.) After serving their sentences, Belle and Sam returned to Younger’s Bend. Belle had become something of a folk hero along the frontier—aided by the inevitable dime-store novels easterners devoured—and for a time she acted roles (usually outlaws, of course
) in a traveling Wild West show, in between ongoing robbing and stealing adventures.
During a Christmas party in 1886, Sam got into an argument with another man that escalated to the point of him being shot to death. Belle continued with her gang, and she married one of its younger members, Jim July. He quickly became enraged by his bride’s demanding and mercurial ways, and he offered other gang members two hundred dollars to kill her. When there were no takers, July announced, “I’ll kill the old hag myself.” He did just that, shooting the forty-year-old Belle to death on February 3, 1889.
Her children did not have the opportunity or inclination to honor her memory. Edward Reed was sent to prison for horse theft by Judge Parker the same year his mother died. After his release, he received a presidential pardon and became a deputy in Fort Smith. One day in 1895, when two outlaws tried to escape, Edward killed them both. He in turn was shot to death a year later in an Oklahoma saloon. Pearl Starr became a prostitute and a madam, operating brothels in Arkansas up to World War I.
By April 1878, though Ed Masterson had been officially the marshal for six months, he had spent most of that time recovering from the gunshot wounds suffered the previous November. It was much too soon to become involved in more gunplay, yet after he took the marshal’s badge back from Charlie Bassett, almost immediately there was another confrontation.
Even in so short a tenure and on limited duty, Ed had proven to be a popular peace officer. With Bat as sheriff of Ford County and Jim on and off the peace-officer rolls, the Masterson brothers were the most responsible for keeping order in and around Dodge City. The knock on Ed continued to be what had been said about him since childhood, that he was a gentle sort, soft-spoken and slow to take offense, especially compared to the more direct and dynamic Bat Masterson. After Ed’s fight with Bob Shaw, Bat was, of course, greatly relieved to find Ed alive, but he also threatened to run his own brother out of town—after he was back on his feet, of course—if he again allowed another gunman similar leeway in a showdown. Ed promised he wouldn’t.