Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  “You’re fond of him,” said my new acquaintance.

  “Friends of any breed come in handy out here where your back is often to the wall,” I says self-importantly as we enter a big fancy establishment I wouldn’t of had the nerve to try alone, shabby as I was at present, and I sure wouldn’t have got in now, I figured, had the big mean-looking, Colt’s-wearing fellow posted at the door not recognized my companion, nodding at him respectfully, from which I gathered my benefactor was wont to spend a lot of money on the premises.

  Now this place was enormous, being a complex under one roof of full-sized theater, hotel, gambling hall, and a bar all full of polished brass and mirrors and big shiny hanging lamps, where we bellied up and my friend tells the bartender to leave the bottle.

  He proceeds to throw down three fingers in one swallow, and I wondered if he knew what he was doing, for I had been told once that liquor has more effect in the high air of the West than at Eastern sea levels. I was myself more sparing, having so little food in my belly. I didn’t rightly care if he got drunk, though, for he might then listen with more credulity.

  But the one who got plastered, and soon enough on an empty stomach, was me, not him. By my second shot I was feeling it, and with the third all that glass and glitter lost its clear edges and I felt more and more like I was trying to see things with my head immersed in a stream.

  But the other fellow just kept drinking without no visible effect, at least to my impaired vision. This situation however did not stop me from not only telling the truth about Wild Bill’s last days but embellishing it quite a bit. Why would I do this when the facts was remarkable enough as they stood? Well, remember what a poor job I done as bodyguard: I wouldn’t want to boast about that. But why boast about anything? Because that’s what Westerners always done when in the presence of them from the East. It was expected of you, you felt you owed it to the landscape, but the real reason was you could get away with it to some tenderfoot who traveled by parlor car and never ate a meal except by knife and fork. And also I was drunk.

  I don’t remember after all these years and, at the time, all that whiskey, exactly what I said, but it is likely I come out the hero of the event even though failing to stop Jack McCall from shooting Wild Bill in the back. Maybe my gun misfired—though I never had one at the time. But at least there was a grain of truth within it, unlike a good many first-person accounts around in them days, and it seemed to go over with my friend, who poured me regular refills at the rate of about half the frequency with which he poured for himself while remaining cold sober.

  “I never had the good fortune,” he said at one point, “to personally meet Wild Bill, and I am sorry I now won’t ever have the chance.”

  “Well sir,” says I, “I can tell you anything you’d like to hear. And not only concerning Bill Hickok. I’ve knowed them all, General Custer and his lovely wife”—it was true I had some personal association of the General though only seeing Mrs. Libbie once—“and old Kit Carson”—just barely factual, for on my sole face-to-face with him, he slammed his front door in my face when I asked him for a handout. But then I made a big mistake, I picked up my brother Bill’s line on another famous gunfighter. “I expect the fellow still alive that I know best is Wyatt Earp, whose name might be recognizable. Fact is, I taught him most of what he knows about shooting.”

  I had met Earp briefly once, down on the buffalo range, and he coldcocked me with the barrel of his pistol for a fancied insult. He had went on to make a name for himself as peace officer in the Kansas cattle camps like Ellsworth and Wichita. He never came up this way to my knowledge, so I felt safe with my claim.

  “Is that so?” my drinking pal asks, his blue eyes twinkling in what I took for admiration. He put his glass down for a second while checking in the back-of-bar mirror on his appearance and then changing slightly the angle of the derby hat, his gold-headed stick secured under his arm. “I’ve met Mr. Earp myself. I always wondered how he got to be the fine shot he is.”

  I should have stopped at that point, but the liquor had taken away all my good sense, so I goes on. “Met him, did you? Well sir, if that ever happens again, you just ask him who learned him how to handle a sixgun.” I grins foolishly. “Of course, he might not be man enough to admit it, with the rep he’s acquired since.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” says my friend. “I’m thinking of heading back to Dodge one of these days soon. I’ve decided not to waste my time going up to Deadwood.”

  “That where old Wyatt is now?” I asks. Well, I wouldn’t be going anywhere near.

  “And what name should I mention?”

  “Jack Crabb is what they call me,” I says. “And what, sir, may I ask, is yourn?” Exchanging names was a polite matter amongst whites, and I always enjoyed the gentility of it, but with Indians it’s actually rude to ask a man his name: it might end up being used for bad medicine that would destroy its owner, so you do better to ask a third person. I should of done that in this case.

  “W. B. Masterson,” says he, giving me a salute with the gold top of his cane. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Crabb.”

  “Just call me Jack.”

  “All right, Jack, I’m usually ‘Bat’ to those I drink with.”

  “You’re Bat Masterson?”

  “At your service,” he says, with another lift of the stick.

  “I’m a fool, Mr. Masterson. I want you to know I admitted that before you kilt me.”

  He has a good laugh at that. “I’m not going to kill you, Jack. I wouldn’t have the nerve to draw on the man who taught Wyatt Earp to shoot.”

  Drunk as I had been, I was immediately all but sober. “Aw, that was a joke, Mr. Masterson. I figured you’d see through it.” I took a real deep breath to flush out some of the alcohol fumes, and decided to stick to the facts. “I run into Mr. Earp oncet on the buffalo range, but I never rightly knowed him for a friend. I was telling the God’s honest truth about Wild Bill, though, being there when he died, but I was also acquainted with him some years prior, back in Kansas City, and he really did give me shooting lessons which I never forgot.”

  I don’t know if Bat believed that or not, but since it had actually happened I was able to get his respectful interest once I talked with authority on the more technical aspects of the shooting and the weapons used, for he like Wild Bill and every other gunfighter I had experience of was fascinated with the tools of their trade, and no wonder, seeing how you could get killed if you wasn’t. Wild Bill’s trouble came when he lost the fine edge of that obsession and got occupied with making money to afford being married.

  Bat was rightly renowned for his prowess with weapons, but now is as good a time as any to tell you what ain’t generally known, and I didn’t myself know it then, at the bar of the McDaniels Variety: it’s possible that Bat never killed another person in a gunfight, his life long. I have said before that what mattered in the Old West, and maybe everywhere else as well, is the impression others have of a person. Bat was an outstanding shot with any kind of firearm, and he was a forceful man who never, with or without a lawman’s badge, backed down from anyone, and though, as you have seen, on the quiet, gentlemanly side and not even real tall, he had a commanding presence, but he didn’t kill no three dozen men, like the legend has it nor, having captured several Mexican outlaws, cut off and brung their heads back in a sack for the reward. As a peace officer he rarely fired a gun. He didn’t have to: he was Bat Masterson. Am I saying that name done it all? Well, you must admit it was a good one, though maybe not as obvious as Wild Bill. Like the latter, it wasn’t the real name of its owner, which was not the “William Barclay” he used, either. The famous gunfighter, who had few gunfights, was born as Bartholomew Masterson. Nor did I ever see him employ that gold-headed cane to bat persons in the head. He used it rather for the limp he had got after being wounded in a quarrel over a harlot’s favors, and that ruckus is where his reputation started, his opponent being an Army sergeant named King, at a dance h
all down in the Texas Panhandle, but a lot of shooting was going on by a lot of people on either side, and there was no real telling who shot who, but it ended up with King dead and Bat with a bullet which might of made him a woman had it struck a bit lower down on his pelvis. This had happened only half a year earlier, so he was still limping a little.

  Of all the celebrated figures I met in the white world of the day, I guess I respected Bat Masterson the most because not only didn’t he ever boast about himself, which was also true of Wild Bill and a few others, but unlike them he never even took it serious when anybody else did it for him, and that’s a man of balance. For example if Bat was asked by some arse-kisser journalist if it was true he had killed x-number of persons, he might inquire whether the count was supposed to include Mexicans and Indians, and give no further answer. Also he was real smart and, something that appealed to me on account of I felt I was too, a master at self-preservation without compromising his principles. The fact that he rarely drawed a gun and never took many lives if any, while standing up to any challenge, made him all the more outstanding.

  You might well ask, though, what he saw to make me a suitable pal of his for a while, and I’d have to say he found me amusing, as others had done for one reason or another, sometimes maybe only because I was shorter than them but had a lively temper, a combination often seen as hilarious because of the apparent harmlessness of the undersized individual, but I’d say that Bat also seemed to have a regard for me. I don’t claim he always believed I was telling the truth, after that big mistake I made at the outset, but I think he came to accept at least some of what I told him about Wild Bill, having the details as I did, and he sure learned in time to come, when my command of their language proved handy, that I had had an association with the Cheyenne Indians.

  Anyway, here at the McDaniels Variety, we eventually went into the eatery part, where I further sobered up on a big beefsteak with fixin’s, a lot of coffee, and a couple hunks of pie, all on Bat of course. When he seen me leave a considerable piece of the meat he asked if it was too tough or what? and I said I owed it to my dog for all the meat he provided me on the trail.

  “I approve of a man who pays his debts,” Bat says, “and I do a lot of wagering. That’s what I’ve been doing since I landed at Cheyenne, bucking the tiger, and I’ve won a bit. Let’s buy your dog a steak all his own.” And he sends a waiter to fetch one, after I told the fellow to leave off the onions and all else that was not flesh and in fact not even bother to cook it.

  When the steak arrived, me and Bat took it outside on its platter to find Pard, who was still waiting where I left him but not in peace, as there was three or four men who had come along from one of the saloons feeling their liquor, and seeing the animal decided to have some fun, barking at him and sending big kicks his way with heavy boots that would of done damage had he not been so deft at dodging.

  Now I had that Indian skinning knife in my grasp and would have used it forthwith, were it not that Bat says calmly to the biggest of these worthies, who was a good head taller than him and maybe forty pounds heavier, “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, you wooden, woodjew?” snarls this big bastard, sending still another kick Pard’s way, with boots large enough to shoe both my feet at once. “Tell me why you wooden, afore I give you a good kicking for yourself.”

  But one of his companions, after a stare and a sobering gulp, jabs him with an elbow and says, “He wouldn’t on account of he’s Bat Masterson.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” the big fellow whines immediately. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Masterson. I can’t hold my liquor nohow. I am a foolish son of a bitch, as anyone can tell you, but I mean well.”

  Bat says, “Nice to have met you,” and he pays no further attention to this bunch, who slinks off, hats in hands, sniveling apologies.

  Neither was Pard fazed by this experience. He had the smell of meat in his nose and no doubt would of lighted into the meal with gusto even while being kicked. As it was, with no hindrance, he more or less inhaled that big steak except for the bone, which he proceeded to crunch like it was pastry.

  Bat went back inside to the Gold Room, which was the gambling hall in the McDaniels Variety, and played faro, what they called bucking the tiger, and won so much he was glad to stake me to some decent clothing, till I could get gainful employment, and even offered to pay for a room, but none of the hotels would admit a dog, so I got a tent on more borrowed money, and me and Pard went out a ways beyond city limits and camped beside a little stream.

  After another day or so and finally a session at the faro table where he lost a little, Bat, who was as smart at gambling as he was elsewhere, figured his streak was running out and saw it as the moment to return to Dodge City. Now I knowed that town some years back and would probably have disliked it even if I had not been shot in the back there by someone whose identity I never learned, it being a nasty place in a hard time, with too many cowboys even then, when there was still lots of buffalo hunters to take them on.

  “What’s so great about that town?” I asked my friend. “It’s all cattle nowadays, ain’t it? I’m a buffalo man myself and can’t stand a cowboy even when he’s sober.”

  “Times change, Jack.” Bat wiped both sides of his mustache with a kerchief he took from up one sleeve, then put it away, after which he took another swallow from his glass. “I went for buffalo myself, but they’re mostly gone now, and anyway you want to make a place suitable for women and children, churches and schools. You can’t have buffalo occupying all that space.” He laughs. “Any more than you can have the main businesses in any town be gambling, drinking, and whoring.” He swallows more whiskey and says, “That’s another reason why I want to get back to Dodge: I prefer the women there.”

  Now that made me laugh. “Let me get this straight, Bat. Your own pleasures are the ones that ought to be done away with, but before that happens, you’ll enjoy them to the hilt?”

  “You’re right on the mark. Jack old boy,” says he. “Maybe you will want to come along. I’m thinking of going into business there, setting up an establishment like this McDaniels. You might not like those cowboys who come roaring into Dodge, but they get paid off at the end of their drive, and their money’s as good as anyone’s—and easier to take.”

  I didn’t have no other offers at the moment, that was for sure, and I wanted to repay Bat what I owed him, which by now was a tidy sum of fifteen to twenty dollars.

  “I might also run for sheriff of Ford County,” Bat added. “That is Wyatt’s idea for me, but I don’t know if I’m not too young.”

  I figured him to be at least my age if not older, but when I asked him now he says he’s twenty-two.

  “I got a few years on you then,” says I. “But don’t tell me I’m older than Wyatt Earp.”

  “I’ll have to,” says Bat. “I believe he’s twenty-eight.”

  I mention this only to point out that some fellows growed up faster than others in them days when so much armament was around, but I happened to have had as much as if not more action in my first three decades than these youngsters, yet thought of both as my seniors, which might of been owing purely to my size. Even I, until I got to be eighty or so, tended to assume I was younger than everybody bigger than me. Which might be one of the reasons I have lived so long.

  So my next port of call turned out to be Dodge City. Now I had to make a painful decision as to Pard. I didn’t think Dodge was the right kind of place for him, being he had growed up in the high country. Around these parts he didn’t need to rely on me for his grub. But I doubted if there on the flat plains of Kansas he could of found any small game that had not been scared away by the thousands of pounding hooves of cattle drove up from Texas, and seeing him in the field some damn cowboy was likely to shoot him as a coyote, for he greatly favored that creature in form and color, especially when going through the grass. Then I admit I wouldn’t want to keep living in a tent if I could afford better in a town, and Pard wasn’t the sort of
pet what would be tolerated on civilized premises. I was used to his smell by now, but you couldn’t ask that of others, and of course he had took a dump or pissed anyplace he pleased his life long.

  I ain’t real proud of the way I deceived him when it came time to leave, but though he was real smart for an animal, I could never be sure just what he understood or didn’t at any given point, so what I stuck to was what I knowed was within his mental grasp, namely matters of food. On getting up that morning I told him we was clean out of anything to feed on, to demonstrate which I poked around the tent and then throwed up my empty hands, seeing which he made a movement of his long nose that could of been taken as a nod, and off he loped towards the nearby wooded foothills.

  I myself headed the other direction, to join Bat Masterson for the trip to Dodge. However long it would take Pard to gather that I wouldn’t be coming back, he wouldn’t starve, and that was the main concern in a life like his. I was grateful to him for his companionship, but after all he was just a dog, meaning he was hungry all the time but randy only in season. He couldn’t talk or laugh or use tools or have a faith or creed, which meant he only killed to eat. I was fond of Pard and would miss him, but as I couldn’t have explained that to his face, I sneaked off as I did. Reason I struck the tent, folded it up, and sold it in town was not only for the money but because I didn’t want Pard guarding it for the rest of his life.

  4. Dodge

  MOST OF WHAT YOU ever heard about Dodge City took place along a couple of blocks of Front Street, which run parallel to the Santa Fe tracks: the Alhambra Saloon, another of them combination barroom-gambling-hall-eateries, this one owned by Pete Beatty and “Dog” Kelley, formerly called “Hound,” both names coming from the greyhounds he raised; the Dodge House hotel; the famous Wright and Beverly general store; the Long Branch and Alamo and Lady Gay saloons, and the Opera House. This was the fancy side of the tracks. On the south or wrong side was the lowdown part, consisting of rougher kinds of saloons and gambling joints, cheaper hotels, and of course whorehouses, one of the more famous of which, from the colored glass in its doorway, giving its name to the type everywhere else, namely, the Red Light.