Dodge City

by Clavin, Tom

  That same year, Chalk Beeson raised funds among members of polite society to match his own to underwrite what became the Dodge City Silver Cornet Band. It would expand and evolve into the Dodge City Brass Band, and by 1880 it was the Dodge City Cowboy Band. There were no actual Texas trail riders in it, but the musicians dressed the part with broad-brimmed hats, leather chaps, and unloaded six-shooters. Chalk boasted that one of his “cowboys” could “throw a steer over a horse.” The only loaded gun was brandished by the band’s director, a man known as Professor Eastman, who used it as a baton. When asked why a gun, Eastman replied, “To kill the first man who strikes a false note.”

  The Cowboy Band played at holiday events and other celebrations, and its popularity spread enough that it would be invited to play in such major mid-American cities as St. Louis, Chicago, and Kansas City. It would even get to perform before another U.S. president, in March 1889 in Washington at the inauguration of Benjamin Harrison, “and my what a swath the bunch did cut,” commented Robert Wright, who had accompanied the troupe. “People just went wild over them, I expect because many of them had never seen a cowboy before and their uniforms were a wonder to them.”

  The Washington visit was the proudest event in Chalk Beeson’s musical career. He later went into lawing, serving as the sheriff of Ford County in the 1890s, and in the decade after that he was a member of the Kansas legislature. He died at sixty-four in 1912 as one of Dodge City’s most respected citizens for having guided it into the new century.

  Also in 1878, the city’s residents would no longer have to depend on buckets and willing neighbors when one of their wooden structures turned into a tinderbox, especially during the tail end of a typical bone-dry prairie summer. The Dodge City Fire Company was formed. The young men who volunteered for it had been born elsewhere, but by 1878 they must have believed that their future and that of their families lay in a growing Dodge City.

  Surrounding Dodge City were more ranches and farms, yet western Kansas was still a largely unsettled expanse of land on the frontier. Men and women and children still shuddered along in prairie schooners, heading west on trips that had originated in Kansas City or St. Louis. Whether they were searching for a site to stake out and build a homestead or had dreams of California, they confronted hundreds of miles of flat land carpeted with tall grass being tossed by the warm winds coming up from the south. Above was a seemingly endless blue sky.

  As Laura Ingalls Wilder recalled from her family’s travels west, “In a perfect circle the sky curved down to the level land, and the wagon was in the circle’s exact middle.” No matter how far her family drove their wagon during the day “they couldn’t get out of the middle of that circle. When the sun went down, the circle was still around them and the edge of the sky was pink.”

  Travelers through Kansas had to be careful when they camped not to start a fire that would rush across the prairie, burning everything in its path. Before getting a campfire going, one had to clear a circle by pulling grass out by the roots. Drier grass could be mixed with twigs to begin the fire, then larger sticks of wood were laid on top. During the night the fire would keep away coyotes and most other animals.

  In the morning the migrants would be woken by the songs of hundreds of meadowlarks, and after drawing water from the stream they had camped near and having a simple breakfast, the journey deeper into Kansas would resume. As the wagon trundled along, its occupants observed deer lying under trees on the low, rounded hills, and the pink, blue, and white blossoms of wild larkspur; and slithering along the ground were a variety of snakes making sure to keep clear of the horses and the rolling wheels. There was a scent in the air that reminded the travelers of bread being baked, which was really grass seeds parching in the heat.

  Thankfully for those entranced by history, there remained in Dodge City and its surroundings characters drawn to frontier life who made an indelible impression. One was Mysterious Dave Mather, and a good illustration of him is his experience with Bill Tilghman and a petrified preacher.

  David Allen Mather, born in 1851, was another adventurous man from New England—specifically, Connecticut. He claimed to be descended from the Pilgrim leader Cotton Mather, which probably did not mean a darn thing on the frontier. His father, Ulysses Mather, had been a ship’s captain who sailed away in 1856 and never sailed back. He was found murdered in Shanghai eight years later.

  When he was nineteen, Mather and a younger brother boarded a ship, and this one brought them to New Orleans, where they worked as laborers. They took on jobs that kept them going west, and Dave’s first venture into Dodge City was in 1872 when he and his brother, Josiah, gave buffalo hunting a try. Not much is known of his activities after that, until 1878 when he was back in Dodge City.

  Somewhere along the way Dave acquired his nickname. His personality was so taciturn that he made Wyatt Earp seem giddy. He rarely spoke, and even those who considered themselves friends could not discern what he was thinking. There was rarely an expression on his face. The curling of his thin lips was a dramatic outburst. Whatever went on in Dave Mather’s head was a perpetual mystery.

  One evening, the last place Bill Tilghman, Bat Masterson’s deputy, expected to find him was at a revival meeting, but that is what happened at around nine. A preacher who had been dubbed “Salvation Sam” had come to Dodge City with a few male and female followers and had been given permission by Luke Short to hold a soul-saving service at the Red Dog Saloon, which had Luke as a silent partner. Tilghman was alone in the Ford County sheriff’s office when he heard shots fired. He hurried down the street, having been told that whatever was going on, it was happening inside the Red Dog.

  Entering the saloon, Tilghman saw Salvation Sam and his followers cowering behind a lectern that stood before several rows of wooden benches. Mysterious Dave stood to the side, a gun in one hand. Tilghman did not know which way this situation was going to go, but his future suddenly got a lot shorter when Mather turned the gun on him.

  As usual, whatever was on the gunman’s mind could not be gleaned. Hoping these were not the last words he would utter, Tilghman calmly said, “Dave, I need you to give me your gun.”

  No response. Mather stared at him. In case the man was indeed mad, Tilghman kept his voice low and calm as he walked forward, assuring Mather that he would not hurt him and that he wanted the gun “so that you don’t hurt anybody either.” He could hear the preacher and his followers panting. Finally, he stood before Mather and extended his hand. After a few more moments of quiet, the gun was relinquished.

  The others in the saloon stood up and spread out, still eyeing the unarmed Mather fearfully. The deputy sheriff looked them over. No one appeared injured. He asked Salvation Sam to accompany him to the sheriff’s office to swear out a complaint against Mather. But the preacher pointed toward the ceiling and said, “Charges against this sinner have been made in heaven. God will punish him as he sees fit.”

  Good enough. Now to get Mysterious Dave out of the saloon so it could go back to being a church for one night. Once they were out on the street, Mather finally spoke: “Hypocrites.” Wondering if there was more, Tilghman waited patiently. In what for him was the equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy, Dave continued, “The preacher asked them to come forward and confess their sins, and after they did the preacher said they could go straight to heaven. I figured to help them take advantage of that opportunity right away, before sinning again and ruining things. But they really didn’t want to go, so they’re a bunch of hypocrites.”

  Tilghman chewed that over while he escorted him to the bridge that crossed the Arkansas River. Handing back the gun, he told Mysterious Dave, “It’s best you stay out of Dodge City for a while.” Dave got on his horse and rode across the bridge—without a word, of course.

  While characters like Mysterious Dave reminded folks that Dodge City was still very much a frontier town, another clear sign that civilization was encroaching was the ongoing efforts of its peace officers. A specific examp
le was Bat Masterson not avenging his brother by gunning down the other cowboys who rode for Alf Walker and who had been present when Ed Masterson was killed.

  Few would have blamed Bat for allowing his ivory-handled pistols to settle the score. As a county sheriff he had the power and opportunity, and he had watched his brother die from a grievous wound. Then, being still only twenty-four years of age, Bat could have put Ford County and its troubles behind him and gone elsewhere to start over. But he did not. He was surrounded by people he knew; there was his friendship with fellow lawmen, especially Wyatt; and he had a job to do, which included upholding the law and demonstrating a belief in the justice system, as faulty and arbitrary as it could be. Bat was emerging as a new kind of frontiersman, one who attempted to elevate law and order in the West, not ignore or repudiate it.

  This was mostly true of Wyatt, too. Like the system he represented when he wore a badge, Wyatt was flawed, too, and he had a past that included being on the wrong side of that system. He did not envision spending the rest of his life as a lawman but as a businessman, and just having turned thirty, he had little time to waste in an era when for many men of that age, life was more than half over. But whatever other motivations he had, in the spring of 1878, Wyatt returned to Dodge City and the marshal’s office out of loyalty to Bat and to the citizens of the city. He probably did not have lofty thoughts about creating a peaceful environment for when he became a family man, because he was usually looking west for opportunity, and, in fact, Wyatt would never have children. (The same would be true for Bat.) But the job of taming Dodge City and by extension the American frontier was incomplete that April. There was much more to be done so that other people could raise families there.

  That month saw the first public and certainly the biggest funeral in the brief history of Dodge City. The combination of a marshal being gunned down and the affection many of the population felt for Ed Masterson resulted in most residents turning out for it. The funeral began at two on the afternoon of the tenth. All businesses had closed at 10 A.M., and those that reopened would not do so until 6 P.M. Doors and windows were draped with black crepe paper. When the account of the funeral was published the following week in the Ford County Globe, the paper’s front page was bordered in black. Attending the funeral was Bat, the only Masterson brother there. He followed on foot, his eyes fixed on the wagon bearing Ed’s body as it trundled slowly out of town.

  According to the newspaper’s coverage, “Everyone in the city knew Ed Masterson and liked him. They liked him as a boy, they liked him as a man, and they liked him as their marshal. The marshal died nobly in the discharge of duty; we drop a tear upon his grave.” It then offered a poem:

  Whether on the scaffold high,

  Or in the battle’s van,

  The fittest place for man to die

  Is when he dies for man.

  The day after the funeral, Bat and a friend, Mike Sutton, journeyed to Sedgwick to give the news to his mother and father, Thomas and Catherine Masterson, and the three children still living with them on the farm, George, Minnie, and Thomas Jr. Yet to be told were Nellie, who was living in Wichita after marrying a lawman there, and Jim Masterson, who was off buffalo hunting and did not yet know of his brother’s death. After the trip to Sedgwick, Bat would track Jim down and tell him the details.

  Because Boot Hill was not a cemetery for solid citizens like Ed Masterson, he was buried at Fort Dodge. In 1879, when the Prairie Grove Cemetery opened, members of the Dodge City Fire Company took care of moving Ed’s body to be reburied in it. Sadly, years later when the Prairie Grove graves were transferred to the larger Maple Grove Cemetery, the remains were lost, and there is no longer a grave in Dodge City bearing the remains of Edward Masterson.

  TWENTY

  Then the town’s peace officers were called to restore order, although many of those wearing badges little understood—or believed in—the laws they swore to uphold when they took their oaths of office.

  —ODIE B. FAULK

  After the funeral, Charlie Bassett resumed the role of marshal while remaining Bat Masterson’s undersheriff. Shaken by his close brush with death and the shame of having fled the fight, Nat Haywood had resigned as assistant marshal, so Bassett was indeed free to appoint Wyatt Earp to the position. With the cattle-driving season fast approaching, Bassett was quick to fill out his staff by appointing John Brown and Charles Trask as peace officers, and he would soon select Jim Masterson to replace Trask when Bat’s grieving brother was back from the buffalo hunt.

  Steady lawmen with experience would be needed like never before in Dodge City in 1878. That year would go down as the one that saw the most cattle arrive from Texas, accompanied by well over a thousand drovers. That would mean the saloons would operate at full capacity, constantly populated by gamblers and dancing girls and prostitutes and an excess of customers. Drinking and carousing and hurrahing would be a nightly revelry, and not all of it stayed confined to the south side of the Dead Line. How the peace officers handled all this activity would determine whether the city could continue to progress or would descend into chaos.

  Dodge City was as ready as it was going to get with Bassett’s team in place, and on the Ford County side of the ledger, Bat had Bassett—part-time, anyway—and the redoubtable Bill Tilghman as deputy. The Dodge City Times reported that the “far-famed ‘wicked city’ is decked out in gorgeous attire in preparation for the long horn” and the “Mary Magdaleens” were about to be “selling their souls to whoever’ll buy.” The saloons were well stocked with alcohol and “there is a great ado, for soon the vast plains will be covered with the long horn,” and Dodge City “is the source from which the great army of herder and drover is fed. The season promises to be a remarkable one.” Indeed: by just the second week in June, 110,000 head of cattle had enjoyed the hospitality of the cow pens near the railroad station.

  It was as good a time as any for a confident gambler like Doc Holliday to pull into town. This would be the beginning of people puzzling over Wyatt’s devoted friendship with a man whom others disdained and whose sometimes appalling behavior they, with some justification, objected to. Some years later, reflecting on Doc, whom he described as “long, lean, and ash-blond and the quickest man with a six-shooter I ever knew,” Wyatt recalled that not long after Doc and Big Nose Kate Elder arrived in Dodge City “his quickness saved my life.”

  Without identifying who the assailant was, Wyatt told of a man drawing a gun on him while his back was turned. Doc shouted, “Look out, Wyatt!” Before Wyatt could completely turn around, Doc had jerked his pistol out and shot the man. In his recollection, Wyatt commented, “On such incidents as that are built the friendships of the frontier.” This incident could have been invented years afterward to justify the odd friendship, but it was not out of character for Doc to have Wyatt’s back, and it would not be the only time.

  Upon arrival that spring, Doc and Kate Elder settled into the Dodge House. The bursting-at-the-seams environment of Dodge City as the summer approached boded well for a skilled gambler—and con man. One story implies that Doc was still a bit short of cash or enjoyed practical jokes, or both. Wearing shabby clothes, Doc entered the Alhambra Saloon. He attracted the attention of a group of cowboys leaning against the bar, who decided to have some sport with the poor, thin, sallow fellow who obviously had seen better days.

  They invited the man to have a drink. Doc refused. This wasn’t the expected response, so one of the cowboys called Doc over, poured a whiskey, handed him the glass, pointed a pistol at him, and ordered Doc to drink. Doc did, made a face, and coughed a few times (which did not take much pretending). The trail riders guffawed over this, and wanting to see that reaction again, insisted that the man have another whiskey. Finally, after the fourth drink and with Doc licking his lips and grinning, the cowboys got it. It is not known if the gathering ended in more laughter or with Doc making a quick exit.

  With his gambling and carousing in fine fettle, it was odd, then, that Doc
decided to resume his dental practice. He sent a telegram to Dallas, asking that John Seegar, his former partner, ship his old dental chair north. Doc then placed an ad in the Dodge City Times advertising his “professional services,” and set up shop in Dodge House. He was not giving up gambling, but perhaps Doc saw himself as gaining some respectability as a dentist in a city vying to become a bastion of civilization on the frontier.

  And what could be more a sign of an emerging cosmopolitan civilization in Dodge City than the introduction of the cancan? And it was done by a man who would wind up being one of the most well known and, he claimed, the longest-living lawman of the West.

  Ham Bell, into whose arms Alf Walker had fallen at A. J. Peacock’s saloon after the Ed Masterson shooting, had been born Hannibal Boettler Beltz in Washington County, Maryland. When he was nine, he and two siblings became orphans. Five years later, after living with an uncle, he set off on his own. When he was nineteen, he was a restless jewelry-store salesman in Pennsylvania. In 1865, the newspaper editor Horace Greeley had exhorted, “Go west, young man”—borrowing from an earlier editorial in an Indiana newspaper, which had suggested, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country”—and in 1872, the year Greeley was unsuccessfully running for president against the incumbent Ulysses S. Grant, here was another young man taking that advice. One of the skills Bell had acquired was cleaning clocks, and doing so paid his way to Kansas.

  En route, he changed his name to Hamilton Butler Bell. His first stop, a brief one, was in Lawrence; then he moved on to Abilene and Ellsworth and Great Bend. He worked several jobs, including driving freight wagons and delivering ice. Not surprisingly, given the heat of west Kansas summers, there was a great demand for ice on the frontier, and by the summer of 1874, Bell had a contract to deliver ice, railroad ties, and other material to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad as it steadily worked its way through Kansas and into Colorado. He made Dodge City his headquarters, and it would be home for the rest of his life. His future there was confirmed that summer when he married Josephine Dugan, the daughter of a local farmer.