OLD WEST LEGENDS

Bat Masterson - King of the Gunplayers

By Alfred Henry Lewis in 1907*

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William Barclay Masterson was born in Iroquois County, Illinois, about fifty-three years ago [1856] His father was a farmer and came originally from St. Lawrence County, New York. His mother and father  still live, and count themselves among the Sedgwick County pioneers of Kansas, with a sunflower residence that reaches rearward half a century.

First a Kansas farm boy, Mr. Masterson was early abroad upon the plains. What is farmland now was savage wilderness then, and those who invaded it did so with a knowledge that their hands must keep their heads. For twenty years, beginning when he was thirteen, Mr. Masterson lived by his own personal powers of offense and defense, and was in more or less daily peril of death from Indians, or from outlaw spirits common enough, these latter, in the West of that hour.

Bat Masterson

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Cheyenne Warriors by Edward S. Curtis

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Mr. Masterson's rifle was lying on the grass -- a 50-caliber Sharp's buffalo gun, for which he had paid eighty dollars. One of the Cheyennes carelessly picked up the rifle, as though to examine it. As he did so, another reached across -- Mr. Masterson was bending over the dead buffalo bull, skinning knife in hand -- and whipped the six-shooter from the Masterson belt. At these maneuvers, Mr. Masterson straightened up, and was just in time to receive a confusing blow over the head from his own rifle. The 8-square barrel cut a handsome gash and covered his face with blood. As the Cheyenne struck the blow, he broke into excellent agency English, through which flowed a dominating element of profanity, and commanded Mr. Masterson to "dig out.”

Since the Cheyenne had the muzzle of the rifle not two feet from his stomach, and those four fellow Cheyennes evinced an eagerness to bear a helping hand, Mr. Masterson decided to "dig out.”  That is to say, with blood covering his face, he backed away from the rifle-pointing profane Cheyenne, towards a ravine which yawned conveniently in his rear. Arriving at the brink, Mr. Masterson with hasty strategy fell into that saving canyon, and was out of range in a moment.

Running along the bottom of the ravine for half a mile, Mr. Masterson reached his own buffalo camp. After a consultation with his two camp mates, the whole party packed their burros, and pointed their noses for Dodge, sixty miles to the north. Mr. Masterson, sore of head from the blow and sore of heart from the loss of his new rifle, was all for following the five Cheyennes and giving them battle. But his comrades, whose unvisited heads were still intact, and whose hearts had been wrung by no rifle losses, overruled him.

They said, "Let's pull our freight," and they pulled it.

Mr. Masterson, however, was not to be consoled. That night – Christmas night it was – he rode back, and ran off forty of old Bear Shield’s ponies. These brought him twelve hundred dollars in Dodge, and repaired what monetary losses he had suffered, to say the least. The wounds to his head, and to his honor, vide licet (permitted) his boyish vanity, which those five Cheyennes had inflicted, he cured later at the battle of the 'Dobe Walls.

It was in the last days of June that the fight at the 'Dobe Walls occurred. The "''Dobe Walls" consisted of two buildings, one a great outfitting store belonging to Mr. Wright, present head of the Kansas State Historical Society, and the other, Mr. Hanrahan's saloon. The latter gentleman is now, I think, a member of the Idaho legislature; but, at the time whereof I write, he cheerfully conducted a bar and restaurant, for the comfort of what buffalo hunters worked along the Canadian [River,] two hundred miles south of the last sign of civilization.

There were fourteen buffalo hunters at the 'Dobe Walls that night in June. Nine -- among them Mr. Masterson -- slept in Mr. Hanrahan's saloon, and five in Mr. Wright's store. Not one anticipated attack.

Luckily, about three o'clock in the morning, the roof -- a dirt roof -- of Mr. Hanrahan's saloon fell in. The sleeping buffalo hunters were forced to turn out. This was all that saved them; otherwise, the prophecy of the Comanche medicine man would have been fulfilled, and the buffalo hunters knocked on the head as they slumbered.

Morning came streaking the east, and found the buffalo hunters still engaged in aiding Mr. Hanrahan about the restoration of his roof. It was at this moment of morning that full five hundred Indians, the picked warriors of the Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahos, and Cheyennes, swung out from the shadow of a fringe of cottonwoods that ranked the Canadian River.

In a moment, every buffalo-hunting man jack of them, abandoning roof for rifle, clawed up his gun and took to a window. Mr. Masterson's window mate was Mr. Dixon, who has since -- for the sentiment of the thing, perhaps -- homesteaded the one hundred and sixty acres which include the 'Dobe Walls, and makes the same his residence.

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Great American Bars and Saloons

By Kathy Weiser

Owner/Editor of Legends of America

Kathy Weiser's first venture into the publishing world takes you into the many watering holes of America's past, particularly the numerous saloons that sprouted up during our nation's Wild West days. This great photographic review displays hundreds of vintage photographs from California to Arizona, the mining camps of Colorado, all the way to New York and its turbulent days of Prohibition.

Hardcover, 2006, 224 Pages. Signed by the author!!
 

New - $17.95 -  Item #kw001