In the pitch-dark and white daguerreotype capturing all theicons of the American Wild West , Bartholomew William Barclay Masterson is there , along with Wild Bill Hickok andBuffalo BillandDoc Hollidayand several others , and with his old friend , Wyatt Earp , too , all staring unsmiling and unblinking into the harsh heartbeat of the photographer . Old W.B. Masterson — bonk in life and in lore as " Bat " — might well be standing in the back dustup , if such a mark in reality existed .
But that ’s a Hall of Fame of the American West that exists only in the imagination . No shame in place upright among those greats .
Despite carrying perhaps a lower profile than many of his contemporaries , Bat Masterson ( 1853 - 1921 ) probably deserve , and story has largely provided , his own ecological niche in the Wild West pantheon . Buffalo hunter , scout , lawman , gambler , gunfighter and , in late life , sport author , newspaperman , raconteur and Quaker of a president ; Masterson truly was someone who take whatever was throw at him and grab for more . Canadian - digest but American Western - bred , Masterson leave the family farm as a teenager , take up a rifle and seldom appear back .
" What intrigue me about Bat is that he had this sense of curiosity and wonder : ' What ’s next ? ' " says writer Tom Clavin , whose interest in Masterson led to , " Dodge City : Wyatt Earp , Bat Masterson , and the Wickedest Town in the American West , " a 2018 New York Times bestseller . " He was in this time when America was young , and so much of the American ethos of the sentence was ' What ’s next ? What ’s on the other side of that hill ? What ’s on the other side of those mountains ? get ’s detect out . '
" That could have been on Bat Masterson ’s tombstone : ' Let ’s find out . ' That ’s the way he viewed life . "
The Making of a Legend
Masterson ’s home emigrated from Quebec into the plains , ultimately square off in Kansas , not awfully far from where Bat would gain his greatest measure of celebrity . He began his career , as many unseasoned adventurer did then , hunting buffalo , and first distinguished himself in a Texas panhandle output known as Adobe Walls . It was there , in 1874 that he and more than two dozen other hunters ( and one woman)fought off as many as 700 hostile Native Americans — the Indians saw the rival buffalo hunters as an existential threat — killing as many as 70 . The story of the stand diffuse quickly . Masterson was 20 years older .
Not two days after , in a bar in another Texas panhandle town , Masterson take out his gun forthe first time in a fight against another mankind . The report varies — first - mortal account of shootout are notoriously sketchy , whether from participant or witnesses — but in the end , a wounded Masterson gunned down his opponent , an angry cavalry soldier named Melvin King . According to legend , the fight , perhaps predictably , involved a char , a " saloon lady friend " identify Mollie Brennan . Both she and King were killed . Masterson came out of it with a limp that many say he carried the residuum of his life ( though that , too , is gainsay ) .
In the 1958 - 61 television series " Bat Masterson , " actor Gene Barry played a dandified Bat bycarrying a canealong with his gun . No known photos of Masterson with a cane exist , though .
Whatever the details , when the 50 - year - quondam Masterson inflict Washington , D.C. in 1903,The Washington Timesheralded his arriver with a gushing protection that march how his reputation stand firm the rigors of time :
The Dodge City Legend
Masterson bring back shortly after his 1876 Texas shootout to his variety - of home base , Dodge City , Kansas , a frontier townspeople that was on its path to becoming the epicentre of a roaring cows trade . Dodge Cityat the sentence was full of rich ranchers and cowman with money to expend and steam to blow off . It was a town filled with pothouse , gambling halls , brothels and furiousness .
" It was a piazza that was doing great business because the cowboys were getting paid … hotels were opening up , restaurants . There were the great unwashed there who want to build Dodge City as a good , peaceable town and nurture a folk , build churches and schools and all kinds of stuff , " Clavin says . " But it was also a place that was somewhat lawless . If you were trying to be a really effective peace officer in the mid-1870s in Dodge City , there were a lot of bullet with your name on it .
" So it was a very strident kind of town where the rodeo rider ruled . But there was also a business sector constituent that did n’t want to domesticate Dodge City that did n’t desire it to be a place to raise a family . peculiarly the saloon business . They were making loads and short ton of money , so why toss off the Golden Goose ? "
There in Dodge City , deputy Wyatt Earp — still a few years off from his starring role in the most famous throttle - blaze showdown in American West history , at theO.K. Corral in the Arizona Territory town of Tombstone — approached Masterson about becoming a law officer . About a year later , days shy of his 24th birthday , Masterson was elected sheriff of Ford County . His pal Ed was named marshall of Dodge City , and a novel geological era of law enforcement in west Kansas was launched .
Many of the stories in Bat ’s time in Dodge City require , as might be expected of the prison term and space , gunfire and dying . After his takings from Texas , but before he was elected sheriff , he was involved in a scraping with a local lawman — sheriff Larry Deger , whom he would later on defeat in an election for sheriff — when Masterson apparently interfere with an arrest . Masterson was arrested , but he did n’t go quiet .
" Bat Masterson seemed possessed of sinful strength , " a June 9 , 1877,dispatch in the Dodge City paperread , " and every inch of the means was closely contested , but the urban center dungeon was reach at last , and in he go . If he had get hold of his artillery before he conk in , there would have been a general cleanup . "
As sheriff , in 1878 , Masterson retaliate the shooting last of his brother by gun down the two culprits . He captured bonk outlaws . He formed posses to track down outlaws . He was known as a tough , imposing mien all over the county . Still , he was voted out of office in 1879 , closing perhaps the most exciting chapter in what would grow into an exciting , peripatetic biography .
Masterson further polished his reputation as a gunfighter after his Dodge City law career terminate , pass plenty of time in taproom , concisely became sheriff of a Colorado town , act to Denver , bring in another trash or two , returned to Dodge as part of a famed " Peace Commission " that re - installed a Masterson deary to mightiness , and became a somewhat renowned expert on variation ( specially boxing ) and gaming . He attended prizefights throughout the nation , and made Quaker with many boxers and other athletes .
From Dodge to the Big Apple
By the former 1900s , after riffle between stake in the West and in New York City , Masterson settled in New York and , in 1903 , became a sports writer and columnist ( he splash around in pieces on Broadway and political sympathies ) for the New York Morning Telegraph . He was present to President Theodore Roosevelt , who shared Masterson ’s love of packing and the West , and the two became prolific letter - drop a line friends . In 1905 , Roosevelt appoint Bat as a U.S. marshal for a New York district , a side he held until William Howard Taft take aim over the Oval Office in 1913 .
Masterson lived for several more years , treat admirers and hanger - on at his favorite New York City tearing fix and generally enjoy in his own celebrity . Clavin tells the story of an out - of - towner who insisted on buying Masterson ’s side arm , the one with 28 notches , used ( purportedly ) to pour down 28 men . Masterson kept turning the man down , but the would - be buyer would n’t take no for an answer .
" last , " Clavin says , " the Mary Leontyne Price got high enough that Bat would say , ' OK , but take heed , you have to leave town , because if word get around that I enounce yes to you but I said no to everybody else …. ' So the guy reach over the money , grab the gunslinger , run to the geartrain place , and the next day Bat would go to the pawn shop class and get the same [ role model ] gun , lodge the notches on it and put it back on his belt or wherever he carried it . "
Masterson wrote hundreds of columns in his terminal yr , man the corner for many professional fight , frequented city bars and had just finish up a spell for the paper on an October night in 1921 when he had a heart tone-beginning and drop dead at his desk . He was 67 .
" For a diary keeper , " read Clavin , a former Times reporter , " I guess it ’s like drop dead with your spurs on . "
He ’s buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx , New York .
