Cattlemen

by Mari Sandoz

  This summer the Comique opened with Eddie Foy's troupe as one of its chief attractions. After a harsh difference with Bat Masterson, Foy was drawn to him, even when Bat's friend, Ben Thompson, fairly drunk, pushed backstage and, wanting to shoot out the kerosene lamp, ordered Eddie to get his goddamn head out of the way. It was a boisterous time and left Foy with enough experiences to relate and write about the rest of a natural life.

  It was while Foy was in town that, as some told it, the attempt was made to collect the $1,000 bounty the Texans supposedly put on Wyatt Earp's head. Others told a different story, saying it didn't have anything to do with Earp until he pulled his gun. Several cowboys, they said, were doing a little of the usual celebrating, not aiming at anyone, just firing into the air. Earp and Bat Masterson wounded one of them, George Hoyt, who died later from the amputation of a shattered limb.

  A much more exciting story was told of the incident by the Earp sympathizers and those with an eye to a good story. They said that Wyatt had stopped outside of the Comique to look around the night and listen to the singing and square dancing inside when the cowboy Hoyt rode by. He saw Earp, turned, and came back at a dead run, firing three shots from his .45 at the officer. The bullets tore through the thin wall beside Earp, across the stage, and into the boards on the far side. Foy was calling the sets, but at the first shot he dove for shelter while the girls new to Dodge screamed and had to be pulled down to the floor by the dropping cowboys. Outside, the firing picked up, windows came crashing in, bullets whistled. Hoyt had missed, shooting from the running, plunging horse, and Earp missed, too.

  By then others were joining in on both sides, the gun blasts like exploding fireworks in the night. As the cowboy spurred away south, Earp dropped down to catch him against the sky and took careful aim. On the bridge the horse's hoofs slowed and a body thumped to the planks. The dying man was captured, and turned out to be one of the 4,000 on the Wanted List the Texans were said to have put out earlier in the year, with substantial rewards on their heads. Before he died, Hoyt claimed some of the cattlemen had promised to take care of the Texas warrant out for him if he got rid of Earp.

  So Hoyt was dead and some of the Dodge citizens had their own stories of what happened, and their own notions on the entire situation. Either way Earp shot a man. Before long Clay Allison, a well-known and often troublesome rancher from the Cimarron, hit town. It seems he came to protest the shooting of Hoyt, an acquaintance, a friend. Afterward there were stories about this, too, stories that Allison hunted up Bat Masterson for an explanation. Seeing that the rancher had been drinking, Bat decided to wait until he sobered up. Whatever happened, on August 6 the Dodge City Times mentioned that Clay Allison came to town the past week and on August 30 that Bat Masterson had departed for Hot Springs, Arkansas, for medical treatment and rest.

  The items were generally cited to prove that Allison really had made Bat Masterson hunt his hole. Some said the rancher had come to town with twenty-five cowboys, rifle-armed, ready for real trouble, and went through one saloon after another looking for the town policeman or the marshal to wipe them off the face of the earth as Hoyt had been wiped out.

  Whatever the facts, nobody got hurt, but neither Bat nor Wyatt Earp spent much time around Dodge afterward.

  By the first of September there was more serious trouble on the wind for Dodge City. Rumors had been flying most of the summer that Indians were jumping the reservations to the south and denied, confirmed, and denied again. Then, finally, a cowboy came spurring into Dodge, his lathered horse lurching down at the hitching rack, the man without his hat, his gun out, his eyes wild, yelling, "Indians! Indians hitting straight for Dodge!"

  Men jumped for their horses, came running out with rifles and scabbards, stuffing extra cartridges into the saddlebags, perhaps gulped down a last slug at the bar, and were gone, too, for the bridge or the shallow river. A couple of old Indian scouts moseyed out to see what was going on, laughing aloud when they found out where the cowboy thought he had seen the Indians.

  "They was looking right over the hill at me. I seen them warbonnets a-waving!"

  The old scouts went back into the saloon out of the hot sun that shimmered the heat plain around Dodge. "Them Indians down there don't go wearin' their warbonnets out scoutin'," one said.

  "Sure you ain't working with them Indians, maybe planning to sack the town?" someone asked. "You been pretty friendly with some of them."

  "Oh, I laid out with a squaw couple years back but a man don't need to be accused of goin' against his own kind just for that. I know them wasn't Indians, warbonnets or no, if that greenhorn seen 'em spyin'."

  The first heat for scalp taking cooled when it turned out to be a thirty-mile ride in the sun and dust, but several did start out, while others got the news spread around the saloons, dance halls, the grocery stores, and to a couple of the preachers. There was a little debate about telegraphing the fort, and somebody finally did, although there was a growing contempt for any fighting the army wanted to do. "Ain't never come out for any a them earlier rumors," one of the loafers said, to nobody in particular.

  Turned out all that the cowboy had seen was a couple of stray soapweeds along a ridge. So he went back down the trail as he had started, with the name of Indian Bill hung to him for life.

  Although the cowboy didn't know it, the Indians were out, hurrying north, around 290 Northern Cheyennes, mostly afoot and sick and dying, hoping to escape the starvation and fevers to which they had been brought from their healthy hunting grounds in the Yellowstone and Powder River country. The Cheyennes were determined to take their people back before all died but insisted they were going peacefully. Mounted troops easily overtook the long string of worn and footsore women and children, with only around eighty males along, counting boys and very old men, and few arms beyond the hastily made bows. So the Indians had to outwit the troops sent to drive them back, or leave them dead. They made one night escape after another. But some of them were shot, including children. Angered and desperate for horses to get the sick and wounded away fast, and for guns, the young warriors did some raiding along south Kansas. Scare headlines flashed over all the telegraph lines, in all the papers, on every rumoring wind. Hundreds of whites were killed, a whole trail herd captured, the Kansas border aflame. Turned out the only flaming was a house near Dodge and not an Indian up that far yet. The trail herd came in unaware that an Indian had jumped the reservation. Most of the whites supposedly killed turned up, too, some without knowing they had been missing. But some were killed, and some dead were plainly from white-man guns, somebody getting rid of an enemy or two while the Indians were around to be blamed.

  The cattle season was about over and Dodge had time to get stirred up like Longhorns before a tornado. The town would surely be burned to the ground, women ravished, men tortured, children get their heads bashed in or dragged off to captivity. And as the alarm grew, thirst quickened and the saloons gathered in the business. Nobody seemed to remember that Dodge was supposed to have the finest collection of gunmen in the nation, well armed and equipped against any handful of sick and ragged Indians. Telegrams went to the governor's office demanding at least 100 stands of guns, with appropriate ammunition, although the governor replied with a little understandable sarcasm.

  The Indians kept eluding the troops as they neared Dodge and so a big party of local citizens, cowboys, and others honing to fight Indians went out, with much big talk and many promises to show the troops how to catch Indians. They rode away in high spirits, well supplied with ammunition and drinking liquor. A Texan who had been with a civilian outfit trying to catch Comanches last summer along the breaks of the Staked Plains watched them go with curling, sun-cracked lips.

  "I can see them, getting up too close, and then when the Indians begin to pop sand in their eyes, those civilians will break for home. Takes rawhide troops to stand against yelling Indians, sneaking up through the grass."

  He was right about the break for home. The next day t
he Dodge City expedition against the Cheyennes came whipping back, their horses dropping in their tracks, some believing that the Indians were whooping at their tails. Instead, they were slipping around Dodge as quietly as possible, to cross the Arkansas up the river and head away north, the darkness undisturbed by anyone, cowboy, Dodge Indian fighter, or federal trooper.

  Most of the earlier men dedicated to the cow brought their herds of selected steers to Dodge for shipment now, or through the region on their way to Ogallala, and perhaps some lesser stock to fill government contracts, or young stuff for the northern ranches. Such men as the Slaughters, Snyders, Blockers, Reynolds, Milletts, and King followed the pattern in a general sort of way. Mifflin Kenedy, the Pennsylvania Quaker who was behind King's move to Texas long ago, and his ranch partner for a while, was now running cattle up farther in Texas. His son James, called Spike, had brought his father's herd to Dodge earlier in the summer and hung around in some mighty un-Quakerish spots. As every cowman knew, the get, the calf, didn't always resemble the sire much. Young Kenedy was in trouble most of the time for carrying a pistol or perhaps disorderly conduct. He even got into a rough-and-tumble fight with the mayor called Hound Dog Kelley perhaps because he ran a pack of hounds. The Texans had another explanation for the nickname. "Just naturally looks like a hound dog caught in a smokehouse or a chicken run—looking whipped, and that hair hanging down like lop ears."

  "Naw, looks more like a dog that's just been whipped back by an old boar coon come fallin' out of a persimmon tree."

  But Hound Dog Kelley had been an old army sergeant and was a mean man in a waller fight, good enough to put down the hotheaded young Spike Kenedy, who was contemptuous of physical encounter anyway. Helpless, naked without his gun, Spike brooded around Dodge awhile but along in October he vanished. Not long afterward four pistol shots were fired into one of the little shacks behind Hound Dog's saloon, the one where he usually slept. Hoof-beats were heading off north by the time Wyatt Earp and a policeman hurried in to investigate. The mayor was away sick at the hospital in Fort Dodge but two dance-hall girls had rented the house. One was not hurt but the other, Dora Hand, a singer at the Comique, the Queen of the Fairy Belles, had been killed instantly.

  Spike Kenedy was suspected. Although out of town some time, he had been seen back just before the shooting. Nobody started after him until late the next afternoon. The delay proved wise or lucky. Apparently the killer had fled north, but Sheriff Bat Masterson knew where the Kenedy ranch was and started down that way with the town marshal and assistants, including Earp. Kenedy came up on them from the north and was ordered to throw up his hands. Outnumbered, he set spur to his fast horse, but one of the bullets hit him in the shoulder and another brought down the horse, pinning the rider.

  Because the officers were after him, Spike assumed he had killed the mayor. He couldn't believe that it was the Queen of the Comique that he got instead.

  Mifflin Kenedy hurried to Dodge and got three doctors to work saving his son's life. Sober, with the resolution and courage of his ancestry, and a boyhood among the wild Longhorns, Spike faced the removal of a piece of shattered bone in his right arm. After a long illness he was acquitted for lack of evidence and went home with the father. Later Dodge heard that Spike learned to shoot well enough with his left hand to kill a man face to face, and ended the same way, with a gun in his good hand, as befitted a Texan if not a Quaker.

  There had been outbreaks of Texas fever up as far as Dakota Territory and with settlers and better cattle pushing into west Kansas a petition demanding the exclusion of all through Texas cattle brought legislative action, backed by Wright, one of the fathers of Dodge. Not even the very hard winter made the cattlemen forget the fever and early in 1879 the quarantine line was moved up to the east edge of the town's stockyards, and from there east along the river to the county line and south to Indian Territory.

  The Texans were furious, some still certain that their fine, healthy cattle could not possibly spread disease. It was the inferior northern stock and range. Some of the businessmen of Dodge hurriedly planned special attractions to hold the cattle trade next summer. A cowboy band was sent all around the Southwest while at home there was worry over the Murphy Movement for Temperance. Some tried to treat this as a joke in the face of much talk for an ordinance that would close the saloons all day Sundays.

  "Bound to drive us to church," one of the local followers of Bob Ingersoll complained.

  "Hell, nobody's been burnt yet. You ain't seen the law against gambling and whore houses enforced, have you?"

  But with so many herds already passing Dodge, they had to be cautious, particularly after another saloon killing. Usually those battles were little except a lot of lead that sent mirrors, bottles, and glass crashing, but hurt very few. Then in a fight over a woman at the Long Branch Saloon, CockEyed Frank Loving, a young gambler and apparently no relative of the Lovings of Texas, exchanged shots with Richardson, a freighter with a reputation as a bad man. They started in so close that their pistols almost touched, the crowd jumping back and taking to the floor. Bullets flew, ten, eleven at least, as Richardson chased Cock-Eye around the stove and finally fell mortally wounded, still firing. Loving was barely scratched although it was Richardson who claimed several dead men to his credit and had taken to fanning his gun lately. Cock-Eyed Frank, mild and quiet, had apparently never killed a man before, just wore his gun for show.

  Yet in spite of this little outbreak, Dodge had tamed down, although she still refused to honor the dry law of Kansas. With the loose money shrinking, Sheriff Bat Masterson, defeated for re-election, left the town for the Colorado mining camps. Earp was already headed for Tombstone, with Bat to join him there some time later. Other gamblers and would-be gamblers were leaving, too, some to Deadwood or Ogallala, the new queen of the cow towns. Billy Thompson was still working with trail herds and managed to stop five bullets up at Ogallala. Ben heard that a posse of citizens was waiting to hang his brother as soon as he got off the flat of his back. Outlawed up there, Ben asked Masterson to shag up that way and get Billy. Bat went and smuggled the wounded man out to Cody's place at North Platte in a wagon and finally down into Kansas.

  Next year Bat was back at Dodge but only to put his gun on the side of his brother. The fight started because Jim Masterson put the run on a bartender that his partner, Peacock, wanted to keep. Bat came shooting as he hit town and got lead back. Wild bullets crashed into a drugstore, the Long Branch Saloon, Hoover's liquor store, and the corner of the town jail. Unfortunately one bullet did go through the lungs of the bartender who was the cause of the fight, and for this Bat was fined $8. Many local people were furious that Bat, an outsider now, should come in with his gun strapped down. Neighboring towns were caustic, too, but about the justice handed out. "It costs $8 to shoot a man through the lung in Dodge City—"

  To the relief of many Bat took his brother to New Mexico with him, leaving the town mighty quiet. The railroad had reached down to Caldwell, over east and south of Dodge, deep in the quarantine region, but so close to Indian Territory that the ban was easily ignored. Within a few months Caldwell became the Border Queen and, with neighboring Hunnewell, brought a new movement of cattle up the grassed-over Chisholm Trail. Many of the good herds from central and north Texas took this shorter route, risking the quarantine to pull in a little of the rising prices, probably ready to fall before a good run of stock.

  The cattlemen who turned to Caldwell knew that these outlets, all of them were very temporary, a little like the grab a tenderfoot on a mean horse makes at the apple. Southern ranchers threw their boiled shirts into their valises and headed for Washington to talk up a permanent trail, one safe from the harassment of settlers, grafting local politicians, and prohibitive legislation. In 1883, with cattle prices still up and blooded stock spreading, Shorthorn breeders of west Kansas were fondling the ears of their fat, chunky calves. So the quarantine line was pushed out still farther, far beyond Dodge, leaving only a narrow strip up
the Kansas-Colorado line open to trail herds. True, stock still reached Dodge but the enforcement might come any moment. Besides, many cattlemen scorned the petty officials who let the quarantine be evaded for a price, and despised themselves as bribe givers. They looked toward the new National Stock Growers Association and the convention planned for the fall of 1884 at St. Louis to consider permanently improved beef prices, lower freight rates, and better packing-house practices. The chief interest of the Texans, however, would be a National Trail of some sort. Richard King had long believed in a trail bought and paid for, but he knew that was hopeless. Early in 1884 his trail boss struck the Dodge region with a big herd and added another to travel close, making 5,600 head for the long pull to Montana. Even with King's fine large crews, this was too many cattle together in a possible hailstorm or tornado. But the prices for northern-grazed stock were very good and King ran in notorious luck.

  He also ran in notorious cheek and brass, bringing such herds from the fever coast into the quarantine region where fortunes in blooded stock fed on the prairie.

  Down in the Cherokee Strip the trails were closed with barbed-wire fence and although the cattlemen got troops from the War Department to cut the fences, they could do nothing about the fever quarantine. In addition, this year there was foot-and-mouth disease, with the government men out killing the infected cattle. Then the trail drivers pushing north beyond Dodge City found plowed furrows laying out a strip varying from half a mile to six stretched from the river to the Nebraska line, with a fine of $500 for crossing outside the furrows.

  Range was getting mighty scarce up north, too, many saying that they had more cattle than they could handle if the state legislatures pushed through the Herd Law they threatened. That would mean keeping range cattle off the settler's unfenced grass and crops or pay damages. The presidential election coming up added another uncertainty up north. Although the Republicans talked optimistic, some recalled 1876 and were not certain they could throw out enough southern votes this year to win.