Spike Kenedy spent most of the next five years in Tascosa, Texas, running his father's two-thousand-head spread with a full crew of men. He seemed to mature past his reckless youth and earned the respect of his men. That was before he heard the siren song of Dodge City. Dr. Henry F. Hoyt, a Texas friend, wrote about him, "In the course of time he drove a herd to Dodge City, Kansas, sold them, and, unable to withstand the temptations of the underworld there, he 'stepped Out., 1157
Spike's transgressions were fairly routine, at first. He seemed to think being the son of a Texas cattle baron made him exempt from the law, and he drew an arrest and a fine from Wyatt Earp for carrying a pistol on July 19, 1878. A month later he was back in court, fined for disorderly conduct after an arrest by Marshal Bassett. Kenedy obviously did not enjoy his relations with Dodge's police force. He found Mayor Dog Kelley in his Alhambra Saloon and bitterly laid out his grievances. Kelley offered no solace. Instead he told Kenedy the officers were acting under his orders and that he damned well better behave in Dodge. The enraged Kenedy threatened the mayor and then rode out of town. But vengeful Spike Kenedy was not done with Dodge yet. He went off to Kansas City and lingered there a while, looking for and finding one of the fastest horses in the city. Again he made the trek west to Dodge.
Back in Dodge, Mayor Kelley became ill and went to Fort Dodge, the military outpost, for treatment. In his absence, he allowed two actresses to use his little frame house. Fannie Garretson, of the Commy-Kew, slept in the front room. Dora Hand, who worked under the stage name Fannie Keenan at the Varieties Theater, rested in Kelley's bedroom. At about four in the morning of October 4, Spike Kenedy guided his sleek racehorse through the quiet streets of Dodge and up toward Kelley's shack. Four shots exploded through the still night air, one slashing into the bedpost a few inches from Fannie Garretson's head to awaken her in terror.
Quickly responding to the shooting, Jim Masterson and Wyatt Earp heard the sound of sobbing from the little house behind the Western Hotel. Beside the splintered door of Kelley's house they found Fannie Garretson scared and shivering in her thin nightgown. The horrified actress pointed into the house, where Earp and Masterson discovered the beautiful Dora Hand lying dead in Kelley's bed. The bullet had entered under her right arm and crashed into her chest cavity, apparently killing her in her sleep. Garretson said her friend gasped once or twice, then dropped back onto the pillow without regaining consciousness.
Earp went to the Long Branch Saloon seeking information and saw Kenedy sitting at the monte table. Earp asked the bartender if Kenedy had been inside when the shots erupted. "For God's sake, don't say anything here," the bartender whispered. "Come into the back room and I'll tell you." The bartender said Kenedy had left shortly before the shooting and returned afterward for a big drink of whiskey. Earp stepped back into the bar to find that Kenedy had departed. Earp and Bat Masterson located a friend of Kenedy's who had been with him before the shooting. The lawmen threw the unnamed friend in jail and started the interrogation. The friend confirmed that Kenedy had fired the shots but insisted he himself had not been involved.58
The townsmen began grieving the next morning. Hand had been popular for her kindness and generosity as well as her acting. In death, her townsmen glorified her. Sheriff Bat Masterson put together what the Dodge City Timed called "as intrepid a posse as ever pulled a trigger," with Marshal Bassett, Assistant Marshal Earp, and deputy sheriffs Bill Duffy and Bill Tilghman. Their difficult assignment was to find the fugitive in the vast prairie lying to the south and west of Dodge. They picked up Kenedy's trail and followed it for two days until a heavy rainstorm wiped out the hoofprints. Stopping at a ranch for the night, the posse was told that Kenedy had gone by the previous day, "and he seemed in a hurry, too." Masterson's posse picked up the trail only to lose it again to another rainstorm.
Finally they decided to rest their tired horses, and turned the animals out into the grass to graze. As they settled in, they caught sight of a horseman four or five miles away. They watched with idle curiosity as the rider approached. Bat said, "That's Kenedy. I know him by the way he rides, and besides, I know his horse." The sharp-eyed Masterson proved correct. By then the horses were scattered over the pastureland, too spread out to be quickly assembled for a chase. It would have been unwise to wait until Kenedy came close enough to recognize the law, so the possemen prepared for an ambush behind a little mound. They formed a plan: If Kenedy tried to escape, Earp would kill the horse; Masterson would shoot the man.
Kenedy approached within about seventy-five yards when the posse arose in full force to face the killer. Spike grabbed for his gun and fired as he wheeled his mount. Earp fired, downing the horse. Masterson's bullet landed in Kenedy's shoulder and dropped the man. The racehorse fell atop Kenedy, forcing the posse to extricate him. Masterson said he could hear the bones "craunch" as he pulled him out. All the angry Kenedy uttered was, "You sons of bitches, I will get even with you for this."59 The posse hired a team and took him back to Dodge, where the newspapers immediately exaggerated the story. In their accounts the accidental capture of Kenedy became a well-plotted attempt to deceive Kenedy into thinking he was in no danger by allowing the horses to graze so they would not appear to belong to a posse. The capture owed more to luck than to pluck, but it became distorted into a tale of glory and cunning.
For two weeks Spike languished in his jail-cell bed recovering from the wound, which apparently had sent his body into shock. Finally he was well enough for Judge R. G. Cook to hold a preliminary hearing in the sheriff's office, a room too small to accommodate spectators. Cook ordered Kenedy's release, prompting the Ford County Globe to write: "We do not know what the evidence was, or upon what grounds he was acquitted. But he is free to go on his way rejoicing whenever he gets ready." The Timed reported only, "The evidence being insufficient, the prisoner was acquitted."60
Earp would later credit Mifflin Kenedy's money as the reason Spike never faced a jury. The captain came to Dodge on December 9 to join his son at the Dodge House. Spike Kenedy needed another surgery, and doctors removed a four-inch piece of bone from his shoulder. When Spike could travel, Mifflin Kenedy took his son back to Texas, where Dr. Henry Hoyt said the shoulder and arm were shot to pieces. Young Kenedy never fully recovered. According to Hoyt, he lived only a year or two more.61
Dodge rewarded Bassett, Earp, and Jim Masterson by cutting their salaries that December. The three officers, who normally drew a combined total of $250 per month, were reduced to dividing $200 at a time when there were few arrests to add to the coffers at two dollars a bashed head.62 Public service did not always have its rewards.
The winter of '78 passed quietly. In April, Earp and Jim Masterson received raises from $50 to $100 a month, decent wages for the frontier. The two deputies had an adventure in May when a drover rode off without paying an African American workman for services rendered. Earp and Masterson delivered the writ demanding payment for services only to find seven drovers lined up against them. According to the Globe report, Earp and Masterson "showed no sign of weakening" and delivered the writ, then received full payment before returning to town.63
As the summer progressed, all was not well in Dodge. Drought reduced the available grazing land near town, and Ogallala, Nebraska, emerged briefly as a shipping point to provide competition. In 1879, only about half the number of cows wended their way to Dodge as had the previous year. The reduction in business led naturally to a reduction in illegal activity - Earp made only nine arrests between April 13 and July 24. The wildest moment of the summer came in early September when a summer festival turned ugly, the cowhands brawling and fighting with the locals. Earp stepped into the middle and began his customary head-banging. According to the Globe, "The 'finest work' and neatest polishes were said to have been executed by Mr. Wyatt Earp, who has been our efficient assistant marshal for the past year. "64
Wyatt Earp had gained more in Dodge than just a little experience banging Texans around. Some stories suggest he had seve
ral romantic interests during his time there, and he apparently settled in with a woman named Celia Blaylock, always called Mattie. She grew up near Fairfax, Iowa, and ran away from home at 16 to head west, stopping in Scott City, Kansas, before reaching Dodge. She left no records, and there is no real hint of her employment. Much later, she would become a practicing prostitute, and it can only be surmised that she followed that ancient trade before settling in with the assistant marshal in the West's most wicked town.65
Dodge may not have had much character, but it certainly had more than its share of characters. Earp met several men there who would remain his friends for life; many of them he would meet again in another frontier town down the trail. In Kansas, he met and befriended Luke Short, a gambler/gunman whose name would also become a legend like Earp, Masterson, and Holliday. Johnny Tyler, another gambler/tough, sat in on card games in Dodge.66 Bill Tilghman, who rode with horse thieves in his youth, emerged as a sterling example of a frontier lawman.
Dodge also had its good times. Masterson and the boys were dedicated practical jokesters, pulling prank after prank with sophomoric glee. Masterson usually operated as the instigator, with the dour Earp at his side to lend authenticity. The favorite gag, constantly repeated, was to take a tenderfoot on a ride in the country and have a group of "wild" Indians surprise the party. The Indians, of course, would be Dodge folks dressed in native attire for the sake of a good scare. This worked quite well until someone tipped a tenderfoot, who took along a pistol and began shooting wildly over the heads of the fake Indians.
Earp apparently played a key role in one of the classic gags. The Reverend O. W. Wright had come to Dodge to lead the sinners away from perdition. He received a cordial welcome as Bat and Wyatt helped collect the funds to raise a church. In early June of 1879, the Ladies Aid Society decided to have a Beautiful Baby Contest to raise a missionary fund. Only Dodge-born infants less than a year old were eligible, with ballots to sell at six for a quarter. The winner would receive a hundred dollars in gold, donated by Luke Short, manager of the gambling concession at the Long Branch. The mothers campaigned intensely for their progeny, soliciting the townsmen to buy ballots and show their support. Sales intensified as voting drew to a close, with the gamblers buying ballots in $20 lots. At the church supper that evening, the Reverend Wright rose to announce that the contest had brought in more than $2,000, drawing the applause of Dodge's unusual congregation. The minister then read the name of each child, starting with the contestant with the fewest votes. One by one, the children of all the doting mothers were eliminated. Wright paused before naming the winner, then called out a name unknown to the churchgoers. The sports in the rear began laughing as the reverend asked if anyone knew the woman. Masterson and Earp stood with proper solemnity and said they knew her and would bring her. They returned a few minutes later, escorting a very large African American prostitute from a dance hall on the south side of the tracks. After protests from the mothers and laughter from the gamblers, the minister turned over the money.67
Earp gained some distinction as a cowtown Christian. He would leave Dodge with a bible presented by two local lawyers and inscribed, "To Wyatt S. Earp as a slight recognition of his many Christian Virtues and steady following in the footsteps of the meek and lowly Jesus." Earp served as a deacon in Wright's church, a rather odd position for a gun-toting deputy cohabitating with a woman. But this was Dodge City, after all, where old-fashioned morality was usually on holiday. Earp learned the job of lawman in the skewed reality of Dodge. Enforcing cowtown law meant preventing trouble so that the saloons would not be closed and the brothel business would not be slowed. The troublemakers were usually good-time boys out for a little fun, rarely real criminals who stole as a profession. City and county officers worked together almost as one force, and the offices were virtually interchangeable. Earp and the Mastersons worked together more as one unit than as separate forces. All this was about the worst preparation possible for what Earp would face not far in the future, where nearly everything would be different.
The Wyatt Earp who left Kansas had matured markedly from the boy who found himself in trouble in Indian Territory. He had become a most self-assured man who stoutly believed in right and wrong-and in his ability to determine which was which. He loved to be amused, yet almost never laughed; his dour countenance covered an air of supreme confidence in his ability to deal with just about any problem. He attracted followers, drawn by his strength; others were repelled by his self-assured ways. He was a saloon man, tolerated and respected by the better classes though never really accepted.
Wyatt Earp did draw the antipathy of many Texans, who left Dodge with bruised skulls that hurt more than their hangovers. Wyatt was often excessively rough in keeping the peace, but keep the peace he did, along with the Mastersons, Bassett, Tilghman, and the other officers whose job it was to prevent rowdyism from interfering with whiskey sales. Earp had even earned something of a national reputation for the Hoy shooting and the capture of Spike Kenedy. When young Texan William Box Hancock reached Dodge with a cattle drive, he made it a point to get a look at Earp and recounted his impressions to his wife when she wrote his memoirs. He may not have spelled the name correctly, and he confused Wichita with Abilene, but he knew the story of Wyatt Earp:
Wyatt Erps was the city marshall. He held the town down and controlled the bad actors with an iron hand. Having heard a great deal about this noted peace officer, I was very anxious to see him.
When he first came to my notice, I had heard of him as a great buffalo hunter. Later, he was appointed city marshal by the mayor of Ellsworth, Kansas, when the notorious Ben Thompson had threatened to kill everybody in town. Erps arrested him and put him in jail. Later, he served as city marshall of Abilene, Kansas, and finally drifted west and became the marshal of Dodge City.
I found him a man perhaps thirty years of age, tall, erect and athletic, light hair, blue eyes and blonde mustache. He seemed very quiet in manner, but old settlers of Dodge told me he was the most fearless peace officer in the entire western country.68
One of those Dodge City settlers was a young lawyer named John Madden, who had enlisted the help of Earp and Bat Masterson to protect a client from attack by the Texas men. The two officers quietly prevented trouble, just by their presence. "They were in the vanguard of law and order in the early days of Kansas," Madden wrote. "God Bless old Wyatt Earp and men of his kind. They shot their way to heaven."69
Wyatt Earp had had his impact on the cowtowns of Kansas. He may have spent much of his time at the gambling tables, but that was expected since his job was to protect the business. Masterson and the rest did the same. He certainly made his mistakes-beating on Bill Smith, the man who once handed him a badge, was not a prudent decision. He was no plaster saint with a spotless record, but he was the kind of man the citizenry wanted walking in front of the procession during dangerous times. Men like Earp were also the men whom the "good" citizens wanted out of town during peaceful times. Earp seemed most at home with the gambling crowd, surrounded by prostitutes, with men whose morals would not meet high standards. Wyatt Earp had been an honorable and effective lawman, one of the best of a generally unsavory lot. His fling with recklessness in his youth seemed to end, and his honor and honesty never came into question as he fit well into the easy morals of the trail towns.
Dodge City had already started to change by 1879. The cattle trade had fallen off dramatically, and settlers had moved into much of the prairie land that had once been used for grazing cattle. The temperance unions had started a drive to dry out Kansas, which would certainly dry out Dodge as a center of wickedness. Earp had served his time as a lawman, and he was ready to become an entrepreneur. He was later quoted as saying: "In 1879 Dodge City was beginning to lose much of the snap which had given it a charm to men of restless blood, and I decided to move to Tombstone, which was just building up a reputation."
Brother Virgil had settled in Prescott, Arizona, and began hearing stories of the fabulo
us silver mines that were just starting to boom. He wrote Wyatt about the possibilities, and the two looked to more profitable enterprises than bruising Texans. A cowtown assistant marshal would never be rich, and Wyatt Earp was to spend his life trying to join the ranks of the wealthy. On September 9, the Ford County Globe reported that Earp had resigned and was headed to Las Vegas, New Mexico. If he could translate his skills to business, he could expect to make more than the meager wages of a lawman.
A NEW TOWN,
A NEW BADGE
IN THE FACTORIES OF THE EAST, on the farms of the South, and in the mining camps of California, a certain breed of Americans awaited the call their parents had heard before them: opportunity built on a foundation of optimism. Somewhere, sometime, every little guy would have his chance to become a baron of enterprise; whether he made his stake by running a cowtown saloon or hitting a vein of silver, opportunity waited just one right decision away. The Earps knew this, as did the many adventurers-in-waiting who bided their time behind a mule or working for wages, hoping for that chance to come. It had happened before, in the gold fields of California and the silver strikes of Nevada. America's West had been built on gold, silver, and illusion, built on the beliefs of the masses that they might be the lucky ones to strike it rich. Certainly there were enough examples to make this dream plausible. It was a lottery mentality-take a risk and hit the jackpot. The risks were big and the stakes high, but dreams could come true in America. Success would come to those with the guile, ambition, and grit to turn risk into riches, and these would-be moguls awaited the next opportunity. There were always strikes and even more rumors, but by the late 1870s the stories began circulating about a mining region that truly held the promise of becoming the next Comstock Lode. Down in the hills of southern Arizona, just a few miles from the Mexican border, in a dry, dusty area filled with Apaches and scorpions, a lone miner made a find that would echo across a nation.
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend Page 6
