Sherman W. McMasters was an outlaw, Texas Ranger, and lawman best known for his participation in the Earp Vendetta Ride. Born in 1853 in Illinois, McMasters headed West and gained a reputation as a gunfighter. He was in Dodge City, Kansas, at the same time as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, where he became friends with them. He reportedly killed a man in self-defense after a gambling dispute in a saloon.
By September 1878, McMasters was working with the Texas Rangers in El Paso County, a position he held until the following spring. In the Lone Star State, he met Curly Bill Brocius, who, by some accounts, helped him escape from jail.
In 1879, he hooked up with other illustrious characters of the Dodge City Gang in Las Vegas, New Mexico. He was known to have associated with such characters as Hoodoo Brown, who ran the gang for a time and was firmly in control of a criminal cartel that participated in several stagecoach and train robberies, organized cattle rustling, and was said to have been responsible for multiple murders and lynchings.
Later, McMasters drifted to Tombstone, Arizona, where he was friendly not only with Curly Bill Brocius, Johnny Barnes, and Pony Deal, who supported the outlaw Clanton faction, but also with the Earp brothers, who were at apparent odds with the Clantons.
During this time, McMasters was suspected of stealing Army mules in July 1880 and, the following year, of stealing two valuable horses from the Contention Mine and of a Globe, Arizona stagecoach robbery. However, by 1882, Wyatt Earp allegedly employed him to help track down “Curly Bill” Brocious and Pony Deal following a January 1882 robbery of the Bisbee, Arizona stagecoach. Whether McMasters was truly an outlaw or was working undercover to break up the Cowboy faction remains a mystery.
McMasters was in the saloon where Morgan Earp was assassinated in March 1882. After Morgan’s death and an attempt on Virgil Earp’s life, McMasters clearly sided with the Earps and soon joined Wyatt and Warren Earp when they began their Vendetta Ride. Two days later, he participated in the murder of Frank Stillwell in Tucson, Arizona, and of Florentino Cruz, also called Indian Charlie. However, he was not present at Earp’s alleged confrontation with Curly Bill Brocius. After the Earps’ two-week revenge ride, McMasters left Arizona with Wyatt and disappeared from history.
Later, Will McLaury, in a letter written to his father, stated that McMasters had been killed in a shootout with the Cowboy faction in 1884. However, Wyatt would say that McMaster died in the Philippines in 1898 while serving as a soldier in the Spanish-American War, though no documents support this. McMaster’s siblings provided the most likely account, saying he died in Colorado in 1892.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2026.
Earp Vendetta Ride.
Also See:
Complete List of Old West Gunfighters
Dodge City – A Wicked Little Town
My Friend Wyatt Earp by Bat Masterson
See Sources.