When we think of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson as legends of the Old West, most people naturally assume that the story goes something like this. Sometime around the start of the 20th century, the public suddenly became fascinated by the heroes of the frontier. A writer somewhere discovered these aging gunfighters, wrote down their life stories, and the result was a flood of movies, books, and television shows.
Well, as it turns out, that version of events is only about half true. The real story is much more interesting, and it involves friendship, loyalty, and a twist of fate.
Let us start with the two men themselves. Both of them were about as brave as you could possibly be without being a psychopath. Courage never goes out of style, and these two had it in spades.
Throughout the stories I am going to tell you, you will see time and time again how their courage defined their lives. One of them was a working-class Irish kid from Canada, and the other was a farm boy from Pella, Iowa, by way of Illinois. The Irish kid was William Barclay Masterson, who would become known to the world as Bat.
I always wondered if he used the pronunciation “boot” instead of “about,” which would have been a very working-class Irish accent. And I wonder if the farm boy, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, used the phrase “I suppose” that is such a typical Iowa thing. The dialects that were so prominent in those days must have marked these two men in their own ways.
I suppose we will never really know, but it is interesting to think about.
Fast forward a few years, and by the time these two young men were in their twenties, they were working together as lawmen. We have a photograph to prove it. Look closely at this image.
The man on the left is Bat Masterson, just twenty-three years old. The man on the right is Wyatt Earp, twenty-eight years old. They were both city policemen in the wildest and rowdiest cow town on the plains, Dodge City, Kansas.
Their job was, at heart, a simple one, but also nearly impossible to keep the peace when chaos came to town. Every summer, the massive Texas cattle drives would crash land into Dodge City, bringing hundreds of young, boisterous cowboys full of enthusiasm. These cowboys were proud of their Texas heritage, and they had more than a little prejudice against the upper middle Kansas Yankees.
So these two lawmen, representing Kansas and the order of the Yankee, were charged with keeping everything from reading into absolute chaos.
There are a couple of interesting things about this photograph. First, why are they in their shirt sleeves? In those times, it was considered extremely bad form to be out in public without your jacket and vest.
Some descriptions of the time described a man without his heavier clothes as being in his underwear, because the shirt beneath the vest was checked and coarse. Both men are photographed in their undershirts, which makes this image unique. Of course, they still look incredibly cool in those shirts, and I assume it was summertime and that’s why they had removed their heavy trail coats.
The second thing to look at in this photo is the badge on Wyatt’s chest. Eventually, you see the traditional six-sided star or the big, flat badge you see in most Old West photographs. Wyatt’s badge, however, is a delicate scroll-leaf design.
It is a very interesting and unique symbol for that time and place, quite different from the standard sportsman.
The third thing that stands out is the fact that they appear to be wearing light leather, almost velveteen gun belts. That’s a very modern look to our eyes, not at all like the traditional image of the gunslinger with a belt full of cartridges hung low on the hips. In this photograph, however, the belts appear to be regulation issue, light leather.
It also looks like Bat is holding his hand on the butt of his pistol, which would suggest that there was some sort of uniform or standardized equipment for the police in Dodge.
Now, the fourth thing that these two individuals had in common was their incredible adeptness at a tactic called “buffaloing.” Buffaloing meant that rather than shooting someone, which they could have done easily, they would often use the butt of their pistol to hit a criminal upside the head to subdue them. It was a harsh but effective tactic, and they used it with great skill.
One old timer told a story about being in Dodge in those days, remembering the fearlessness of the two young officers. Wyatt Earp went up to a billiards hall and looked inside. A man who refused to comply was causing a commotion.
Wyatt called his man to come out. He refused. Wyatt Earp, without hesitation, volunteered into that billiard hall right into the middle of a group of cowboys.
He grabbed the guy, buffaloed him, dragged him outside, and arrested him.
Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s called having sand. People who could do that had “sand.” That’s what we in the Old West called the next kind of courage.
People always ask me, knowing what this feels like, what is the modern equivalent? Well, here is your test. If you want to know what it feels like to be Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson in that situation, go into a biker bar and jump up on the pool table and yell out, “Only girl ride Harleys.”
You will immediately know what it feels like to be a hero in the West.
So, these were two stalwart lawmen. The newspapers of the time are full of stories about their restraints. They were not hotheads, nor were they killers.
They were honest and solid lawmen. Together, they were the law in Dodge.
Now, this close partnership makes a later point in the story very ironic. We will get to that in a second, because by 1879, Wyatt Earp wrote a letter to Dodge City and said that the town had “lost its snap.” It just wasn’t the place it used to be, and he was bored.
He was seeking new challenges. So, him, a lot of Earp family, packed up and went west.
They headed to Arizona, and in the mile-high city of Prescott, they stopped. Their brother Virgil was already there and had been for a while, a constable in the booming community. They came to an agreement that they would all head down to the new mining town in the southeastern part of the Arizona Territory, called Tombstone.
They arrived there in 1879.
Wyatt famously claimed that he was tired of lawing. He had had enough of being a lawman, and he wanted to make money. He invested in a mine and had other capitalist industry opportunities.
He did keep his hand in the game and ran a faro table at the Oriental Saloon on Allen Street in downtown Tombstone, which, by the way, is still there to this day. Wyatt was excited and writing letters back to Dodge and tells his friend Bat. He was making huge money, and he wanted him to come out to share in the wealth.
A faro dealer earned twenty-five dollars a shift. To put that in perspective, a cowboy was making thirty dollars a month. That was a great salary.
So, Bat took the call. A couple of weeks later, he arrived in Tombstone.
It was the spring of 1881, and he became a gambler there. Two distinct factions of gamblers existed in town. They were called the slopes of the slochers.
The slochers were the professional gamblers from the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, and the East certainly were the rest of the due weeks. Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson were the right in the middle of the Easterners; with men either like Doc Holliday and Luke Short. They were a gambling fraternity known as the Knights of the Green.
Cloth. And they were the gamblers of style.
It’s interesting to imagine what might have happened on the fateful day of October 26th, 1881. The famous altercation at the OK Corral was moments away. At that moment, if Virgil Earp, who was the city marshal, had been able to call upon Bat Masterson rather than Doc Holliday to come help him go down and disarm the cowboys, I think it is safe to step out on a limb and say that I don’t think you would have seen any violence.
The pair of Wyatt and Bat were so used to working together efficiently. They would have handled the situation differently, and we would not the same result that we have in the history.
Taking a step back, the irony is that we would’ve the story to tell if that had happened. It was a misdemeanor arrest, they would’ve carried it off, and they would have went right back to their day. We would likely be talking about some other story, but this one became embedded in the history of the west.
But, before that moment of fame could happen, Bat got an urgent telegram from his brother, Jim.
Back in Dodge, Jim was having a dangerous dispute in the war with some adversaries. He said there have been threats on his life. Loyal as he could ever be, Bat departed Tombstone and made the long, hard journey back to Kansas, a trek of about eleven hundred miles.
The last part of the journey was by train. As the train pulled into Dodge City, Bat had a feeling, that premonition, that he better be careful. Before the train had even come to a full stop, he got off from the opposite side of the depot landing.
He let the train pass by. As the caboose rattled by, he saw two men where his brother’s adversaries, and they were walking towards the depot as to ambush. And he saw they had rifles in their hands.
His instincts proved correct. Bat found cover near a berm bench, the railroad tracks. He yelled out, and the men scattered for the cover of a nearby alley and started firing at him.
Bat fired back until his gun was empty. One of the assailants worried, one of them was actually hit, but it wasn’t rifle fire that hit him. He was hit repeatedly by fire from a bar across the street.
All this shooting had attracted everyone who wanted to be in on the action, and they indiscriminately opened fire on him.
However, despite that, they were captured, and he and his brother, Jim, were brought before the local authorities. Their solution to the problem was effectively to tell them to leave town and never come back. But Bat and Jim were not the ones to stay gone for good, after all, because in a little while, a man by the name of Luke Short, a friend, remember the gambler Luke Short, he had bought the Long Branch Saloon.
He wanted to import some female singers to his establishment to perform. Of course, these talented singers weren’t going to be choir singers. So the town fathers refused to refuse.
They said “NO” to him, and they turned him down. They had their own reasons for it. Luke thought this was a great deal of injustice, since he had his own establishment.
He had the right to hire performers and why couldn’t he have some signers if everyone else could?
So, he put out a call to all of his friends in the gambling fraternity. They all did. And they did, they arrived in Dodge, the entire female group.
You see, they descended. They included characters like this, the witness of the band, the Bat Masterson, the gambler, and the others. They posed for a photograph before they quickly intimidated.
Lule’s enemies, that they feared for their lives, and they left town.
But before that happened, they all went down to the photography studio. They took a famous photograph, a name known to history is “The Dexter City Peace Commission.” In the photo from 1883, Wyatt Earp is second from the left, seated.
Luke Short is the second from the left, standing. And third from the left, the nomination of William Barclay, and there is Brother Bat himself. The short, known as the percussion commission, is made.
The presence of the five gunmen convinced Luke Short’s enemies to leave town. He was then able to recoup some of his losses and leave town with a little pride for returning to Texas, where he got into another gunfight but that’s another story. This commission proves he retained his connections and earned him respect.
Now back east, Bat Masterson traveled to Denver, Colorado, and later he went on the New York City which was a whole story. Let’s get back to him soon. Meanwhile, Wyatt Earp went from the heartland and all over the place, from Idaho up to Alaska, and then moved up down the coast of the Pacific, including San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and even up to Seattle.
He spent most of his life in California. Between these two friends, they never really saw each other again except in a couple of prize fights where they were both major fans and famous as well known as a fighting man, so they didn’t cross paths too often.
And yet, Bat Masterson was to absolutely grease the gears and turn this unknown and laconic frontiersman into an intellectual icon. Here is quote from Bat Masterson on his friend. He described Wyatt Earp and the gentlemen in the arenas, with displays of great courage and chipped.
Nervous and trying circumstances their envy, hatred of small-minded creatures which the world seemed to be populated, and those who delight in life seems to be fly specking the reputations on real men. This is not only what a true friend is, this is what made Wyatt Earp an icon.
After their adventures in Kansas and the southwest, the sporting men’s paths diverged. Earp went west, Masterson went east. In 19, I think bat was the bodyguard for the millionaire George Gould in New York City.
He loved it. He wrote back to his friends in Denver and said that he loved fishing off aboat called the Gould’s yacht. That was his first taste of the East Coast life, and he really liked it.
He went back to Denver a few times, he had some misadventures, and final finally, he wrote to friends in June of 1902 that he returned to New York to live. He was a bit of a celebrity in the west, and he met a writer named Alfred Henry Lewis, his brother had a newspaper magazine. Alfred had talked his brother into giving Bat Masterson a column to write, three times a week on anything he wanted to talk about.
It was Manly, so he wrote about boxing, but he also wrote Vignettes, or small character studies, about All the West man he had known.
He wrote profiles of Ben Thompson, Wyatt Earp, Luke Short, and Bill Tilghman. In his character studies, he makes it very clear how much he admired Wyatt Earp. He also makes it clear he didn’t care for another famous man of Tombstone Doc Holliday.
He called him spiteful; he couldn’t “beat up a fifteen-year-old kid” and that ver. Yew gun. He did that best.
Interesting enough, Bat was the sheriff of Trinidad, Colorado, and he got a letter. From none other than, friend and good Wyatt Earp, writing to him by the trouble. Doc Holliday and the man was in trouble.
It was in the best interest of the law for everyone to leave him. But Bat, against his own best interest went out on a limb and he granted Doc Holliday the pardon he needed to get him out of a legal jam. Somebody tried to extradite Doc back to Arizona for the events of Tombstone, and Bat actually went to the governor directly and was able to squelch the entire matter.
He saved the life of that friend of Wyatt’s. Actually spent his political capital doing it.
The bad news for Bat is that he got “clobbered” in the next sheriff’s election. He was beat and humiliated, and so that’s a debt he took for helping his friend. One could chalk that up to Doc Holliday, but his former and truth about his so-called friend, Wyatt Earp, never really paid back the debt and didn’t serve Bat.
Through his connections in the publishing world, Masterson became good friends with President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington. Roosevelt came to the White House by assassination. In 1905, Bat was in the admin.
He was a frequent visitor to the White House. Teddy even gave Bat a deputy U. S.
Marshal ship that only paid $2000 a year, which would be something like $50,000 today. So that was a fine.
He was in with the President. Once, while at a White House party, these stories out there, he said the true story of the West will never be known until Wyatt Earp talks, and Wyatt Earp is not talking. A young press secretary who was also at that White House event, a man named Stuart Lake, overheard his words.
That statement stuck. It stayed in his mind for years.
Very soon, poor Bat Masterson is typing his newspaper column at his desk, and he died of a heart attack. He passed away right then, still at the desk, in 1921 at age sixty-eight. His death was a sudden one.
Now let’s go out to Los Angeles and catch up with alive man out there. While Bat Masterson was on the East Coast hobnobbing with the biggest names in the country, the exact same thing was happening the exact same.
Apple County is at the corner of Hollywood, the last outlaw town. Earp gravitated to him because there were to the protyle of poker games and many gamblers, a lot of people he could fleece in. What a lot of men that were carny-type people in the movie business.
At the end, we have the writer Zane Gray, who said I will not say that everyone in the movie business is a crook, but I will say that every criminal that could play the business is a crook. So is the people in the movies, are in the business.
The Earps were all right in the middle of the scene. It wasn’t long before he became friends with two of the biggest western movie stars william S. Hart and Tom Mix.
Tom Mix was making about $10,000 a week, without having to pay any income tax. He was in the money. He loved Wyatt Earp because Earp was real deal.
Tom and Wyatt trying to get culture, Tom Mix was so rich that he ordered a whole stack of books by Shakespeare’s plays. Everybody decided that they were gonna read these, get the culture, and bring themselves up by the bootstraps of life. Somebody asked Earp what he thought of Shakespeare.
Wyatt apparently said, “That feller Hamlet, he sure was talkative. He wouldn’t have lasted long in Kansas.”
He would have had long in Kansas because he was not a talker. It shows the case. Another example, on the evening of October 25, 1881, in the days before the shootout at the OK Corral, Ike Clanton was on a tear, threatening the Earps.
He told him: “We’re going to fight.” He said “In the morning the ball will open.”
And I just want four feet of ground. The fiercest fight in the region.
So that night, Wyatt closed out his entire table at the Oriental and he was walking home. He walked along the boardwalk in Allen Street. And was rattling his threats, saying “We’re going to fight in the morning.”
And we know a wonderful, lucky response. Wyatt Earp said this: “Ike, you talk too much for a fighting man.” Earp’s great strength was that he didn’t talk, he fought.
At the same time, when it came time to cash in on the fame, he was not talking. When Stokely came out from the East Coast and found Wyatt Earp with his reporter’s notebook and tried to interview him, he was sitting in front with an adult who answered all the questions with a message. He had three basic answers.
Yes, “yep,” no, “nope,” and don’t know,” “don’t recall.” Lake was very frustrated. His dream was to write the true story of Earp, but the old man was a stone.
Within a couple of years, Earp himself died. That happened in 1929 at the age of 80. With Earps in his grave, Lake started writing not only what he knew and discovered but also everything he had imagined over years.
He wrote “Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal.” It was a huge bestseller. And put his name in the mouths of every American descendant.
Indeed, the weird irony that Earp was dead. He was. He could not sell his own story because he wasn’t a writer.
But Bat Masterson was the friend who created the man. After the death of the origin of the legend, he paved the way for it. Wyatt became a legend.
After the publication of Stuart Lake’s “Frontier Marshal,” Wyatt Earp rose from a local regional character into the iconic figure that he remains today. He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Jesse James, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo. And that’s precisely where William Barclay Bat Masterson would have wanted him to be.
