Bat Masterson
1856 - 1921
The changes which occur
in a man's lifespan are indeed strange. From gunfighter to newspaper writer in a
big city paper is what I am referring to. And yet this is precisely what
happened to gunfighter Bat Masterson. He was born in an age when culture was upon the
eastern seaboard and savagery along the frontiers of an expanding country.
Bat was born William Barclay Masterson in 1856. As a young man he left
home to become a buffalo hunter on the great planes when the vast herds were
being annihilated by thousands of hunters who left the meat to rot and shipped
skin and bones off to St. Louis by the trainload.
Mr. Masterson had
distinguished himself as a frontiersman by taking part in the historic Battle of
Adobe Walls in which 19 hunters were attacked by 100 Commanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne
and Arapahoe warriors. Also, Wyatt Earp, frontier marshal has a good opinion of
Bat Masterson as is indicated when we see that he was made one of the Dodge city
Peace Commission in 1883.
That he was a fighter, there is no question.
He knew and understood the big country and became an army scout at Sweetwater,
Texas. He derived his name "Bat" partially because of an incident which happened
in Texas. An army sergeant by name of King had a girl friend who Bat had asked
for a dance and a fight ensued in which Bat was shot in the leg, fracturing the
bone. King was killed in the fight with a bullet in the heart. This leg wound
made Bat limp, and because he later came to use the came as a club on
recalcitrant cowboy heads when he became a peace officer, he earned the
sobriquet, "Bat."
Wyatt Earp became the marshal of Dodge and had his
hands full of hell-raising cowboys off the trail, along with gambling men and
killers in general, and so he offered Bat and his brother Ed jobs as deputies,
which they readily accepted. Bat became a familiar figure along the boardwalks
with that formidable cane, and with tilted hat. It also gave him a debonair and
cosmopolitan look, save for the ivory-handled pistols swinging at his sides. He
was a natural born fighter and as fearless as they come. He always claimed he
owed much to his teacher, Wild Bill Hickok, for his manner in handling his guns.
Bat received word that Wild Bill Hickok had been slain in Deadwood,
South Dakota, by Jack McCall and decided therefore to quit his job and go to
visit the wild mining town. He got no further than Cheyenne, where he lost
considerable money and then decided to return to Dodge. He ran for sheriff of
Ford County, which he won at the age of 22.
Bat disliked many of the
gunfighters who hung about the gambling halls of town, and he put up with Doc
Holliday simply because he was Wyatt Earp's friend. It was Bat who captured and
jailed the notorious Dave Rudabaugh, who had been robbing trains in the
vicinity. Bat had shot down a couple of hard characters in fair street fights and
so his popularity soared.
Ed Masterson was not the man his brother was.
In a street gunfight with gunslingers Alf Walker and Jack Warner, Ed was cut to
ribbons and lay bleeding in the street when Bat came upon the killers. His guns
immediately went into action and left Jack Warner dead in the street and Alf cut
down and on his knees with a bullet in his guts.
Wyatt Earp had gone on
to Tombstone, Arizona, and wrote both Bat and Luke Short to come down to the
lively mining town and he would put both of them to work in his new business
venture, the Oriental Saloon. This offer was accepted. However, Bat wanted to go
into business for himself and soon left Tombstone for Colorado where he opened
up a gambling house of his own in Trinidad.
The fast pace was telling on
Bat. He decided to slow down. He was offered a U.S. Marshalship in Arizona but
declined this offer from President Theodore Roosevelt. Instead, he accepted a
post of U.S. Marshal in New York State. Then he quit this job, feeling that some
hoodlum would shoot him sooner or Later, and went to work as a sports writer on
the New York Morning Telegraph, where he became a familiar figure at ringside at
all the top fights, and as a night goer along the Big White Way of Broadway. He
took sick in 1921 and cashed in his chips at the age of 65.
Calamity Jane | Clay Allison | Curly Bill | Dave Mather
Doc Holliday | Jesse James | Jim Courtright | Joaquin Murrietta
John Ringo | John Wesley Hardin | King Fisher | Luke Short
Old Man Clanton | Pat Garrett | Wild Bill Hickok | Wyatt Earp
OK Corral | Artist - Lea Franklin McCarty