might direct a cowboy who had not yet spent his roll at the bar or in a game of monte or poker. These women seemed more like sisters to me than persons towards who I felt lustful, so for a while there I was amidst all that carnality, being a teetotaller in flesh as well as in alcohol, for pouring all that whiskey, I couldn’t stand the smell when it came to drinking any myself. I reckon I was cleanest of all indulgences there for a while as I ever been my life long, a-working in a den of same, drinking only coffee and with enough money to eat good beef and pay for a nice lodging, I instead lived at a leaky-roof shack of ten rooms, in the red-light district, calling itself a hotel, and unless I could grab a free meal at the Lone Star, I ate hog-and-hominy, as if I was near down and out. I was saving my money for better things.
I decided if I was ever going to make anything of myself, it was more than time, else I’d continue to wander around the country from one plight to the next, as I’d been doing all my life up to that point, with nothing to show for it, meanwhile civilization was settling in. At ten years younger than me, Bat Masterson was half owner of a thriving business. He also run for sheriff of Ford County in the fall of ’77 against Larry Deger, who had been town marshal, a real mean three-hundred-pounder who had arrested him once when Bat sided with some little fellow Deger was beating up in the street. Here was another example of how Bat handled himself the smart way, instead of what a hotter-headed man might of done: the revenge he got on Deger was not shooting him but whipping his fat arse in an election.
These was the years when Dodge was the cattle capital of the West, with the drive of ’78 setting a record at better than a quarter million longhorns, drove up from the Texas range by fifteen hundred men. Crowds like that could mean trouble, not only as to the unruly cowpunchers, but the money they brung to town was alluring to real criminals. Having said which I should add that with a lot of miscreants of them days the situation was real complicated. A fellow might be a thief and even a murderer at one point, but then at another, and by different people, be thought a credit to the community. For example there was a man named Dave Rudabaugh, who had a rep as a desperado and robbed some trains, for which Bat and a posse tracked him down. Rudabaugh escaped punishment by informing on the other members of his gang, after which he swore he was going straight, and he removed to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he up and become a policeman! But then he turned bad again a little later and lived a life of crime till, down in Old Mexico, an outraged mob cut off his head and mounted it atop a pole in the town square.
Bat was sheriff of the whole of Ford County, which included Dodge, but the primary job of keeping peace in the town itself was that of head marshal, formerly fatso Deger, but just as Bat had beat him for sheriff, Bat’s brother Ed got the marshal’s post when Deger was fired, and as his younger brother Jim was an assistant marshal, law enforcement was pretty much dominated by the Masterson family when Dodge was at its height, and not Wyatt Earp, the way you might of heard.
When he worked as only another assistant marshal, Wyatt was best known for beating up disorderly cowboys, either with his fists or by bending the barrel of his Colt’s over their head (like he done to me that time on the buffalo range). But no doubt that was better than killing.
Another thing I want to set the record straight on: given all the commotion that could be caused by big crowds of rowdies under conditions like those, during Bat Masterson’s time in and around Dodge, only seven homicides occurred. Them showdown gunfights happening every few minutes in movie versions of the frontier begun with the make-believe of Eastern scribblers like Ned Buntline, a confidence man, and in fact the tradition has continued ever since by
I decided if I was ever going to make anything of myself, it was more than time, else I’d continue to wander around the country from one plight to the next, as I’d been doing all my life up to that point, with nothing to show for it, meanwhile civilization was settling in. At ten years younger than me, Bat Masterson was half owner of a thriving business. He also run for sheriff of Ford County in the fall of ’77 against Larry Deger, who had been town marshal, a real mean three-hundred-pounder who had arrested him once when Bat sided with some little fellow Deger was beating up in the street. Here was another example of how Bat handled himself the smart way, instead of what a hotter-headed man might of done: the revenge he got on Deger was not shooting him but whipping his fat arse in an election.
These was the years when Dodge was the cattle capital of the West, with the drive of ’78 setting a record at better than a quarter million longhorns, drove up from the Texas range by fifteen hundred men. Crowds like that could mean trouble, not only as to the unruly cowpunchers, but the money they brung to town was alluring to real criminals. Having said which I should add that with a lot of miscreants of them days the situation was real complicated. A fellow might be a thief and even a murderer at one point, but then at another, and by different people, be thought a credit to the community. For example there was a man named Dave Rudabaugh, who had a rep as a desperado and robbed some trains, for which Bat and a posse tracked him down. Rudabaugh escaped punishment by informing on the other members of his gang, after which he swore he was going straight, and he removed to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he up and become a policeman! But then he turned bad again a little later and lived a life of crime till, down in Old Mexico, an outraged mob cut off his head and mounted it atop a pole in the town square.
Bat was sheriff of the whole of Ford County, which included Dodge, but the primary job of keeping peace in the town itself was that of head marshal, formerly fatso Deger, but just as Bat had beat him for sheriff, Bat’s brother Ed got the marshal’s post when Deger was fired, and as his younger brother Jim was an assistant marshal, law enforcement was pretty much dominated by the Masterson family when Dodge was at its height, and not Wyatt Earp, the way you might of heard.
When he worked as only another assistant marshal, Wyatt was best known for beating up disorderly cowboys, either with his fists or by bending the barrel of his Colt’s over their head (like he done to me that time on the buffalo range). But no doubt that was better than killing.
Another thing I want to set the record straight on: given all the commotion that could be caused by big crowds of rowdies under conditions like those, during Bat Masterson’s time in and around Dodge, only seven homicides occurred. Them showdown gunfights happening every few minutes in movie versions of the frontier begun with the make-believe of Eastern scribblers like Ned Buntline, a confidence man, and in fact the tradition has continued ever since by
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