Bat Masterson - King of the Gunplayers by Alfred Henry Lewis

Bat Masterson - King of the Gunplayers

"Had It In" for "Bat"

When the new liquor law took effect in Kansas in '81, Mr. Masterson laid down his office. He was not sumptuary, and, while he himself never drank liquor, refused to be drawn into deadly collision with gentlemen whose only offense had been a too vehement thirst. Besides, he urged, considering the many strenuous years he had gone through, he felt he had earned a rest.

There was at least one gentleman in Dodge who didn't share this vacation view. The hour was evening, and Mr. Masterson, no longer sheriff, was sitting in the rear room of Mr. Kelly's Alhambra, in talk with Judge Colburn. Mr. Bell appeared abruptly in the door, a six-shooter in his right hand, another in his belt. Mr. Bell is the sober, quiet sheriff now of that same county of Ford; but in these, his younger years, he was a sturdy customer, and had "shot up" several of his acquaintances. Per incident, he "had it in" for Mr. Masterson.

Bat Masterson

"I think," remarked Mr. Bell, as he stood thus triumphantly in the door, "I think there's a horned toad here I want to kill."

Like a flash, the sensitive Mr. Masterson -- who, had he been either slow or dull would never have lived till now -- was on his feet, the muzzle that never missed pointing squarely between the eyes of Mr. Bell. Naturally. the latter warrior froze up; he stood as though planet-struck.

There was a darkling pause; then Mr. Masterson, gun still unwaveringly upon Mr. Bell, began slowly to advance. Mr. Bell never moved. Coming within reach, Mr. Masterson suddenly let down the hammer of his pistol and smote Mr. Bell such a jealous blow upon the head that he went to the floor, and from the floor to his bed for two weeks.

Years later, I asked Mr. Masterson why he withheld his fire. "I didn't think I had to shoot," he said. I once saw Bell jump over a bar-counter to get at a man, when he might just as well have gone round, and it struck me all at once that he was much too dramatic. If it had been Wyatt Earp now, or Doc Holliday, or Luke Short, or Ben Thompson, I'd have begun to bombard him out of hand. But I didn't think such extreme measures were demanded in the case of Bell;" and here Mr. Masterson smiled peacefully at the retrospect. "My size-up of Bell may have been wrong," he concluded, "and if it was I hope he'll pardon me. He ought to; for, between us, it was all that saved him from death that day."

Some of his Other Adventures

This chronicle of Mr. Masterson might be extended to one hundred thousand words, and only the half be glanced at, not told. I might relate how he rescued from a mob the State's Attorney General, and the Chief of the Prohibition Leagues of Kansas, when those reforming functionaries led a temperance crusade against Dodge. Or how, when Mr. Webster of the Alamo and incidentally Mayor of Dodge, exiled Mr. Short of the Long Branch -- the rival shop -- Mr. Masterson, then a citizen of Leadville, returned to Dodge at the militant head of such choice fighting men as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Henry Brown, Shotgun Collins, and Shoot-your-eye-out Jack, to say naught of the redoubtable Mr. Short himself, and restored that persecuted one to all his property right, as well as what elevated station, as owner of the Long Branch, he should occupy in the social life of the place.

Or how -- this was a case of mistaken identity -- Mr. Masterson smote the Pueblo railway policeman so grievously upon his skull with a six-shooter, that the latter officer, who had wrongfully assailed Mr. Masterson with a bludgeon, must be furloughed to a hospital for a month. Or how Mr. Masterson took a man from a mob of lynchers at Buena Vista, and carried him before a magistrate; and how, when the magistrate, in sympathetic league with the lynchers, would have committed the man to the local jail, where the mob could get at him, he, Mr. Masterson, tore up the commitment papers in the face of the court, and carried the man off to the Denver jail, where subsequently he was sufficiently yet lawfully hanged. Or, how Mr. Masterson protected Mr. Holliday from the requisition of Arizona's Governor for killing Mr. Stillwell in Tucson, by the simple stratagem of having that consumptive gun player put under arrest on a charge of highway robbery -- a fiction -- in Colorado. Or how, when Mr. O'Neal, with a six-shooter in each overcoat pocket, and a hand on each six-shooter, sent forward a drunken ruffian to attack Mr. Masterson, with full and fell intent on Mr. O'Neal's part of "bumping off' Mr. Masterson when once entangled with the drunken one he, Mr. Masterson, knocked the drunken one senseless with his left fist, while with his right hand he abruptly acquired the drop on the designing Mr. O'Neal. With that never-erring six-shooter upon him, Mr. O'Neal's empty hands came out of his pockets, and went into the air, like winking.

"Don't kill me!" he faltered.

Mr. Masterson's finger was itching upon the trigger. In an instant he shifted. Letting down the hammer, he repeated the maneuver which had worked so well in the days of Mr. Bell. Later, the wounded Mr. O'Neal, head in bandages, sent from his bed a message of peace, asking Mr. Masterson to see him, and give him an opportunity to "explain."

"Well," said Mr. Masterson to the messenger. "I'll come. But tell O'Neal to be careful and keep his hands outside the blankets while he's doing his ‘explaining’”

Or, I might set forth how a dear but intoxicated friend, forgetting for the moment -- an election moment wherein the "dear friend" resented the indomitable republicanism of Mr. Masterson -- those close social ties which subsisted between them, pulled his pistol, intending the destruction of Mr. Masterson; and how Mr. Masterson shot the weapon from his dear friend's hand, and let him live to apologize for his murderous rudeness. That apologetic one is sober now, and a Denver detective of much good repute.

Or, I could tell how Mr. Gallagher of Denver imported a desperate character, one Smith. for the wiping out of Mr. Masterson; and how Mr. Masterson, when he heard, sent a 100-dollar bill to Mr. Gallagher, with word that the money was his if he would but walk down the street "as far as Murphy's," with his importation. Also, how Mr. Gallagher refused the money, and how Mr. Smith made haste to explain that his purpose in coming to Denver was wholly innocuous.

Or, how -- if these be not enough -- Mr. Masterson journeyed, in the name of friendship, to far-off Ogallala, and surreptitiously bore away Mr. Thompson -- then under arrest, but stiff and sore from buckshot wounds, and held captive in a hotel instead of the jail, because of them. Mr. Masterson, having advantage of a drunken sentinel, rolled the injured Mr. Thompson in a blanket, and packed him to the station on his shoulder, Mr. Thompson aiding his rescue by conveniently fainting away. It was two o'clock of a dark morning, every Ogallalan was at a dance in the far end of camp, and no one beheld the feat. Which was just as well, since there were more buckshot in Ogallala than had been stopped by Mr. Thompson. Mr. Masterson carried Mr. Thompson aboard train as far as North Platt; and there the excellent "Buffalo Bill" Cody presented the fugitives with his wife's phaeton, and a horse of a temper like Satan's and a hideous hammer head, with which double donation they made their safe way cross-country three hundred miles to Dodge.

Continued Next Page

Wyatt Earp

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Doc Holliday was one of the most deadly shootists

in the American West.

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Great American Bars and Saloons

Great American Bars and Saloons by Kathy Weiser 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