more or less the same type. But you take people like Wyatt Earp, they ain’t going to object when they’re made heroes in print, and a Bill Cody will know how to build a profitable business on it.
Having said as much, I should make it clear that every once in a while there was real bloodshed and somebody got hurt, and now and again they died, but never as the result of a fair and equal draw. Take my word for it, when what’s at stake is one life or another, fair and equal don’t play no part.
Now I’m going to tell you about two of the violent deaths that took place in Dodge during my time there in the late ’70s, for they affected me most personally. Once I become an employee of Bat’s, and especially after he got to be sheriff, I didn’t hang around with him as much as I done in Cheyenne, for he had better things to do, and for a time I saw more of his brother Ed, who was a year older than him and real easygoing. As assistant town marshal and then chief, Ed was one of them genial policemen who smile at passing kids and stop to chew the fat with the storekeepers on their beat. Everybody liked Ed, but that would be better in a place run for the sake of decent women and children, like Dodge City not so many years later, when temperance came and the saloons was turned into soda fountains, if you can believe it, about 1885.
In the Dodge of ’78 it was preferable to be respected over being liked—and for that matter, over being feared, because if a man is scared of another he might get drunk enough to take him on, and someone will get hurt. Whereas if you was held in high respect, like Bat, nobody knew what you was capable of; you had imagination going for you, and a normal man’s fantasy except for sex is mostly about force: who’s got it and who ain’t.
There was a few rules regarding public conduct in Dodge. No horses allowed on the sidewalks, and none could be rid onto the premises of a business, namely into a saloon; firearms could not be carried by anybody not a peace officer or on Army duty, unless they was entering town, when all was obliged to check their weapons at the first place of call, saloon, shop, hotel, et cetera, or after picking up their guns on the way out of town. The public discharge of firearms was prohibited except on the Fourth of July, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and the eves thereof. Public intoxication was taken seriously only if a man in that condition tried to reclaim his weapons or committed an offense against order and decency, like taking a leak in one of the whiskey barrels full of water kept at intervals along the wood sidewalk in case of fire.
If you was to break one of these ordinances after calling Ed Masterson’s attention to it, he would surely do something, but unlike some peace officers, he never went about looking for an excuse to make an arrest. Ed was a live-and-let type of fellow, in a place that was kill-or-be. He ended up shedding more blood, of his own and others’, than did his brother Bat, who nevertheless is the famous one, while Ed has been forgot, and you will see, the same was true with Virgil Earp and his brother Wyatt.
Ed Masterson dropped in frequently to the Lone Star, both on his marshal rounds and off-time, and I got to know him well enough, by which I mean we talked about the usual subjects men cared for, the old days of buffalo hunting, the latest gold or silver strikes, horses, firearms, whiskey, and women.
As to the last-named, you might gather from my previous remarks that every single female to be found in Dodge was a harlot. Now with regard to Deadwood, that wouldn’t of been far wrong, but there was others in Dodge City. It’s just that in my situation it was not usual to run across the trail of schoolteachers and church-women, who didn’t patronize saloons. Respectable females of that time was not supposed to like strong drink or know much about sex even after having ten kids. And a man wasn’t supposed to enjoy himself with them: for
Having said as much, I should make it clear that every once in a while there was real bloodshed and somebody got hurt, and now and again they died, but never as the result of a fair and equal draw. Take my word for it, when what’s at stake is one life or another, fair and equal don’t play no part.
Now I’m going to tell you about two of the violent deaths that took place in Dodge during my time there in the late ’70s, for they affected me most personally. Once I become an employee of Bat’s, and especially after he got to be sheriff, I didn’t hang around with him as much as I done in Cheyenne, for he had better things to do, and for a time I saw more of his brother Ed, who was a year older than him and real easygoing. As assistant town marshal and then chief, Ed was one of them genial policemen who smile at passing kids and stop to chew the fat with the storekeepers on their beat. Everybody liked Ed, but that would be better in a place run for the sake of decent women and children, like Dodge City not so many years later, when temperance came and the saloons was turned into soda fountains, if you can believe it, about 1885.
In the Dodge of ’78 it was preferable to be respected over being liked—and for that matter, over being feared, because if a man is scared of another he might get drunk enough to take him on, and someone will get hurt. Whereas if you was held in high respect, like Bat, nobody knew what you was capable of; you had imagination going for you, and a normal man’s fantasy except for sex is mostly about force: who’s got it and who ain’t.
There was a few rules regarding public conduct in Dodge. No horses allowed on the sidewalks, and none could be rid onto the premises of a business, namely into a saloon; firearms could not be carried by anybody not a peace officer or on Army duty, unless they was entering town, when all was obliged to check their weapons at the first place of call, saloon, shop, hotel, et cetera, or after picking up their guns on the way out of town. The public discharge of firearms was prohibited except on the Fourth of July, Christmas, New Year’s Day, and the eves thereof. Public intoxication was taken seriously only if a man in that condition tried to reclaim his weapons or committed an offense against order and decency, like taking a leak in one of the whiskey barrels full of water kept at intervals along the wood sidewalk in case of fire.
If you was to break one of these ordinances after calling Ed Masterson’s attention to it, he would surely do something, but unlike some peace officers, he never went about looking for an excuse to make an arrest. Ed was a live-and-let type of fellow, in a place that was kill-or-be. He ended up shedding more blood, of his own and others’, than did his brother Bat, who nevertheless is the famous one, while Ed has been forgot, and you will see, the same was true with Virgil Earp and his brother Wyatt.
Ed Masterson dropped in frequently to the Lone Star, both on his marshal rounds and off-time, and I got to know him well enough, by which I mean we talked about the usual subjects men cared for, the old days of buffalo hunting, the latest gold or silver strikes, horses, firearms, whiskey, and women.
As to the last-named, you might gather from my previous remarks that every single female to be found in Dodge was a harlot. Now with regard to Deadwood, that wouldn’t of been far wrong, but there was others in Dodge City. It’s just that in my situation it was not usual to run across the trail of schoolteachers and church-women, who didn’t patronize saloons. Respectable females of that time was not supposed to like strong drink or know much about sex even after having ten kids. And a man wasn’t supposed to enjoy himself with them: for
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