Outlaws and Peace Officers

by Stephen Brennan

  Sergeant King, one of the most notorious bullies and gun-fighters in the army, wanted to dance with Annie one night and because she refused he pulled his six-shooter and shot her in the breast. Even as she fell, dying, into Bat’s arms the latter jerked his gun on the soldier and shot him dead, but not before King had pumped some lead into Bat’s groin.

  That was one of the killings for which Bat Masterson has been held up by some ignorant writers as a shocking example of ferocity and lawlessness. But of the many men he killed there was not one who was not in the wrong, and not one who did not start it with the best of the fight. Shocking as it may seem to civilized souls, we had our crude code of honor on the frontier. When I speak of a fair fighter I mean a man who will not fight for what he knows to be a bad cause, and who will not take his enemy at a disadvantage. Such a man was Bat Masterson.

  Bat was acquitted, of course, and soon afterward came over to Dodge City, where I had just been installed as City Marshal.

  His fame as hero of ’dobe walls and the slayer of Sergeant King had preceded Bat to Dodge, and he attracted no end of respectful attention as he limped from one gambling house to another, still pale and weak from the effect of King’s bullet. Bat was somewhat of a dandy in those days, but before all else he was a man. Not that his physique entitled him to attention beyond other men, for in his case nature had packed a big consignment of dynamic energy into a small compass and corded it up tight. But there was something in the way his bullet-shaped head was mounted on his square shoulders, something in the grain of his crisp, wiry hair, something in the tilt of his short nose that bespoke animal courage such as not every man is endowed withal.

  Mere animal courage has made many a man a brute and an assassin, but Bat Masterson had a wealth of saving graces which shone from the honest fullness of his face. I have spoken of his eyes. They were well-nigh unendurable in conflict—so bold, so bright, so unmitigable was their gaze; but in moments of peace they danced with mischief, with generosity, with affection. A small and carefully nurtured coal-black mustache, half hid a mouth which was readier to soften in mirth than to harden in anger, and the stubborn chin beneath was cleft with the dimple physiognomists interpret as the symbol of a kindly heart.

  In moving from Wichita to take up the Marshalship of Dodge City at my own salary I had stipulated that I should have the appointment of my own police force. A fair judge of manhood as I esteemed myself, what wonder that I should have fastened hungry official eyes upon the hero of ’dobe walls?

  “Bat,” said I, “will you join the force?”

  “I’d like it first-rate,” he replied.

  “Then throw away that cane and get to work,’ I said.

  And forthwith Bat was sworn in to protect the peace.

  During the summer that he served with me—before he ran for Sheriff and was elected—stirring events came to pass in Dodge City. And like the Arizona feud of which I have already written, they all arose out of one incident. That incident was the killing of “The Nightingale.”

  One night a Texas desperado named Kennedy was diverting himself at a dancehall by flourishing his six-shooter. Mayor Kelly happened to be there, and as there was an officer present to restrain the Texan, he took it upon himself to interfere.

  “You’d better give them guns to the bartender, my boy,” he said kindly, “or some of my men will arrest ye.”

  Kennedy resented the suggestion and there was a dispute. But there was no word or thought of killing at that time. The mayor’s remonstrance rankled in Kennedy’s mind, however, and at two o’clock in the morning he started out to kill the Chief Executive.

  Mounting his horse, so as to be in readiness for flight, the Texan rode down to the house where Kelly lived. The room where the Mayor and his wife slept opened on to the street, and Kennedy knew the direction in which the bed lay at the opposite end of the room. On the other side of a slender partition was another bed, occupied by Willet and his wife. Willet was a clerk for a neighboring grocer; his wife was a vaudeville woman of varied experiences on the frontier, and so sweet a singer that she was called “The Nightingale.” Ask any man who knew Deadwood or Dodge in its prime to tell you how she sang “Killarney.”

  And so, making a careful estimation of the Mayor’s bed, Kennedy began to empty his Winchester through the panels of the door. He calculated well, for two bullets went through the down comforter under which the Kellys slumbered. Nearly all the shots penetrated the partition behind their bed.

  About that time Willet half awoke and turned over on his side, throwing his arm around his wife. At the touch her body fluttered like that of a wounded bird, and something bubbled up in her throat. Willet was wide awake in an instant—he did not know why. His hand touched something wet upon her breast and he asked her what it was; but there was no reply. A bullet had torn its way clear through her body. The Nightingale was dead.

  Poor Willet ran over to me and I pulled on my clothes in a hurry. The only house where there was a light was the Long Branch saloon, so I went in there for information.

  Kennedy was there, sitting on a monte table, swinging his legs.

  “Was he here when the shots were fired?” I whispered to the bartender.

  “For God’s sake don’t say anything here,’ was the reply. “Come into the back room and I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Kennedy’s the man,” he continued excitedly, when we had retired out of earshot. “He left here with another man just before the shooting and immediately afterward took a big drink of whiskey.”

  I ran back to the bar, but Kennedy had gone.

  Bat joined me just then. He had been down to the house and the mayor had told him all about the trouble in the dance hall. In searching the town for Kennedy we ran across the man in whose company he had left the Saloon, and this fellow more than confirmed our suspicions of the Texan’s guilt. Moreover, he led us to the alley where the murderer had tied his horse, and from there we picked up a clear trail leading out of the city.

  At daylight, Bat, Bill Tillghman and I started out on the trail, taking this man along with us. For two days we followed it across the prairie toward the Texas Border, and then a heavy rainstorm came up and swept away all vestige of a hoofprint.

  At a distance of nearly one hundred miles from Dodge we made a circuit of fifteen miles in order to get to a ranch for the night.

  “Some of these here Texans are going home pretty early ain’t they?” was the ranchman’s greeting. “Kennedy was here yesterday afternoon, and he seemed in a hurry too.”

  Thus we picked up another trail, only to lose it again next day, when we were overtaken by more rain. In this predicament we made for a ranch twenty miles further on and reached the place at three o’clock in the afternoon. Our horses were fagged out, so we turned them out to grass and prepared to rest ourselves. After a while we caught sight of a horseman four or five miles away across the prairie, evidently making for the ranch. We watched him with idle curiosity, and when he came within a couple of miles of us Bat said, with conviction: “That’s Kennedy. I know him by the way he rides; and besides, I know his horse.” And when the stranger had arrived within a mile of the ranch we all knew that Bat, who had the eye of a hawk, was right.

  Our horses were scattered over the pasture and it was too late to attempt to capture them. We agreed that it would be unwise to wait until Kennedy should get too close, lest he should recognize our horses and wheel in his tracks. So we ambushed ourselves behind a heap of earth that had thrown up from a new well, first agreeing that if he should scent danger and turn to make a run for it I should kill the horse and Bat attend to the man.

  When he came within seventy-five yards of us we rose up and called him to halt.

  He whipped out his gun, firing at us as he wheeled his horse. True to our agreement I shot the horse, which dropped just as Bat landed a bullet in Kennedy’s shoulder.

  Well, we took away his six-shooters and his Winchester, hired a team, and drove him back to Dodge. But the Bru
te was never convicted. He was the son of a multi-millionaire cattleman by a Mexican mother, and his father’s money procured him endless delays, and finally an acquittal.

  But the incidents connected with the wounding and capture of Kennedy for the murder of the Nightingale deepened the hatred bestowed upon Bat Masterson and myself by the Texan rustlers from whose violence we tried to protect the citizens of Dodge. Dodge had become the center of the cattle trade then, and the periodic incursions of cowboys, whose chief ambition was to be able to go back to Texas and boast of having “killed an orf’cer” were the curse of the community. The townspeople hated the Texans, and the Texans despised the townspeople. In the vernacular of the feud the Southerners were “long horns,” the Northerners “short horns.”

  It was after Bat Masterson had been returned as Sheriff that I paid a visit to Mexico, during which I first met Doc Holliday and Big-nose Kate, as told in a previous story. During my absence Ed Masterson, Bat’s elder brother, acted as my deputy. A crowd of cowboys started shooting in the Birdcage dance hall one night and Ed went over to see about it. He disarmed them all and made them pile their guns behind the bar. Then he returned across the deadline—the avenue formed by the railroad tracks, which divided the decent from the disreputable part of the town. Not long afterward, however, the cowboys recovered their six-shooters and began firing again. Ed went back to restore order and tried to disarm the first cowboy he encountered. The two men were scuffling for possession of the gun, when another cowboy fired at Ed Masterson and killed him.

  Just at that moment Bat Masterson had appeared, attracted by the shooting. He saw his brother fall and with a quick drop killed the man who had fired the shot. The rest began to run away, shooting, and Bat winged the man with whom Ed had been scuffling. He died a few days later, while they were taking him back to Texas.

  Thus perpetrated another of the so-called atrocities with which the hero of ‘dobe walls was to be reproached in after years by writers whose knowledge of the frontier was derived from Bowery melodramas.

  In view of the bloody complications closing in on my narrative it is high time that I introduced Bob Wright, the deus ex machina of much of the violent work that followed. Bob Wright was a tower of strength to the Texas faction. He had lived in their country and he depended on their patronage for the prosperity of his store, which was one of the largest in the city. He was a legislator, too—a duly elected representative from the county.

  Bob Wright sought to interfere with me one night because I was taking one ill-behaved cattleman, who happened to be worth some millions of dollars, to the calaboose. My prisoner had tried to kill an inoffensive Dutch fiddler for not playing his favorite tune often enough to please him. The cattleman appealed to Wright, and threatened to have me put off the city force if I persisted in the arrest. The upshot of it was that I threw Wright into the calaboose to keep his friend company for the night. It was soon after that incident that the Texans began to hatch plots to kill me by foul means or fair—preferably the former.

  The first attempt fell to the lot of a desperado named Hoyt, who was no ‘prentice in the art of assassination. I was standing on the sidewalk outside a saloon on a bright moonlight night, talking to Eddie Foy, who was leaning against the doorway, when Hoyt came riding down the street on a white horse. I noticed that he had his right hand by his side, but did not suspect anything until he came to within ten steps of where I was standing. The he threw his gun over like lightening and took a shot at me. By the time he was on a level with me he had taken another shot, but both missed.

  I ran out, intending to pull him off his horse, and, failing that, I tried to grab his horse’s tail as it passed me. But the horse was too quick for me, and as Hoyt dug in his spurs he wheeled in his saddle and fired at me again. With that I crouched down in the middle of the road for a steady aim, and emptied my gun after him as he torn down the road. I saw him disappear over the bridge that spanned the Arkansas river, and made sure that I had missed him. But five minutes later, when I was telling the story to Bat Masterson and a crowd of citizens, the white horse came galloping back, mounted by a boy, who told us that its rider was lying, badly shot, just beyond the bridge. Half suspecting an ambush, Bat and I took shotguns and went back with the boy. There, sure enough, was Hoyt, full of lead and remorse, groaning most dolefully. Two or three days later he died.

  This episode was not without its humorous side, for to this day Eddie Foy, the comedian, is fond of telling how, at the first shot, the threw himself under a monte table and stayed there until the shooting was over.

  Undeterred by Hoyt’s fate, the plotters sent Clay Allison, and the noted Colorado gunfighter hastened to Dodge City to kill the City Marshal. Let not the gentle reader, unused to frontier ways, jump to the conclusion that Allison was a hired bravo. He would probably have resented the imputation with deadly alacrity. It was reputation he was after, not money. To have killed me would mean for him to bask in the chaste effulgence of frontier fame for the rest of his days.

  And so Clay Allison came to town, and for a whole day behaved like a veritable Chesterfield. But the next morning one of my policemen woke me up to tell me that the bad man from Colorado was loaded up with rum and searching for me everywhere with a pair of six-shooters and a mouthful of threats. Straightaway I put my guns on and went down the street with Bat Masterson. Now, Bat had a shotgun in the District Attorney’s office, which was behind a drugstore just opposite Wright’s store. He thought the weapon might come in handy in case of trouble, so he skipped across the street to get it. But not caring to be seen with such a weapon before there was occasion for it, he stayed over there, talking to some people outside the drug store, while I went into Webster’s saloon looking for Allison. I saw at a glance that my man wasn’t there, and had just reached the sidewalk to turn into the Long Branch, next door, when I met him face to face.

  We greeted each other with caution thinly veiled by insouciance, and as we spoke backed carelessly against the wall, I on the right. There we stood, measuring each other with sideways glances. An onlooker across the street might have thought we were old friends.

  “So,” said Allison truculently, “you’re the man that killed my friend Hoyt.”

  “Yes, I guess I’m the man you’re looking for,” I said.

  His right hand was stealing round to his pistol pocket, but I made no move. Only I watched him narrowly. With my own right hand I had a firm grip on my six-shooter, and with my left I was ready to grab Allison’s gun the moment he jerked it out. He studied the situation in all its bearings for the space of a second or two. I saw the change in his face.

  “I guess I’ll go round the corner,” he said abruptly.

  “I’d guess you’d better,” I replied.

  And he went.

  In the meantime ten or a dozen of the worst Texans in town were laying low in Bob Wright’s store, with their Winchesters, ready to cover Allison’s retreat out of town, or help him in the killing, if necessary. From where he had stationed himself Bat Masterson could see them, but I did not know they were there. After the encounter with Allison I moved up the street and would have passed Bob Wright’s door had not Bat, from across the street, signaled to me to keep out of range. A moment later Allison, who had mounted his horse, rode out in front of Webster’s and called to me.

  “Come over here, Wyatt,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

  “I can hear you all right here,” I replied. “I think you came here to make a fight with me, and if you did you can have it right now.”

  Several friends of mine wanted me to take a shotgun, but I thought I could kill him all right with a six-shooter. At that moment, Bob Wright came running down the street to urge Allison to go out of town. He had experienced a sudden change of heart because Bat had crossed over to him with these portentous words: “If this fight comes up, Wright, you’re the first man I’m going to kill.” Allison listened to the legislator’s entreaties with scowl.

  “Well, I don’t
like you any too well,” he said. “There were a lot of your friends to here this morning to help me out, but I don’t see them around now.

  “Earp,” he continued, turning to me and raising his voice. “I believe you’re a pretty good man from what I’ve seen of you. Do you know that these coyotes sent for me to make a fight with you and kill you? Well, I’m going to ride out of town, and I wish you good luck.”

  And so Clay Allison made his exit. Ten days later he reappeared within a mile of town and sent a messenger asking my permission to come to Dodge and attend to some business regarding his cattle. I sent him word that he was welcome to come so long as he behaved himself. He availed himself of the offer, and for two weeks he behaved like an exemplary citizen. It was a fourteen days wonder, for Allison had never in his life before conducted himself like a Christian. Indeed, it had been his practice to force every store, saloon, and bank other than those he patronized to close up during such time as he honored the frontier town with a visit.

  A year or so later Allison came to an ignominious end by falling off a wagon and breaking his neck.

  It was a day or two after my bloodless encounter with the famous Colorado fighter that Wright came to me with the olive branch, made a clean break of the Hoyt and Allison conspiracies, and offered me his friendship in return for my protection from his erstwhile friends, the Texans.

  Even the Allison adventure was topped off with an epilogue of a grimly humorous kind, which I cannot forbear telling. Bat Masterson was speculating on the havoc his shotgun would have wreaked in the ranks of the cowboys if he had enjoyed a chance to use it that morning, and for the sake of a change of air and a little target practice he and I rode out of town, upended a broad plank, and began firing at it. First of all Bat fired both barrels of his shotgun, which was loaded just as he had picked it up at the District Attorney’s office when I was looking for Allison. Walking up to the board he found to his dismay that the gun had been loaded, not with buckshot, as he had thought, but with the finest of birdshot. Somebody, he learned afterwards, had borrowed the gun for a day’s sport, and left it loaded on returning it to its place.