Gunfighters of the Western Frontier, A memoir of the Old West by W.B. 'Bat' Masterson, originally published in 1907 and 1908.76 pages; 11.00" x 8.00"; softcover, black & white photographs and text {with a map of mentioned places}
$29.95 including shipping & handling from CCNow or our lower-cost version for $19.95 from CreateSpace.
ISBN 1-928757-00-6
The preface
William Barclay Masterson, forever known as Bat to his friends and enemies alike, was born Bertholomiew {later Bartholomew} Masterson in Henryville, Quebec, Canada on November 26th, 1853. He died after a life of adventure, as fat and prosperous as a banker, in New York City on October 25th, 1921. Belying the dangers of his career as a buffalo hunter, scout, gambler, sheriff of several cowtowns in Kansas, and Deputy U.S. Marshal {for the Southern District of New York; he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905}, he ended his days as a newspaperman, writing a sports column for the Morning Telegraph {from 1903 onward} and dying at his desk.
During his sixty-seven years, Bat Masterson was friends with, enemies with, or knew by reputation nearly all the major figures of what is now called the Old West. From his early hunts with Tom Nixon, Bill Tilghman, and Billy Dixon {with whom Bat lived through the siege at Adobe Walls}, through his scouting days with Colonel {later General} Miles, to his friendship with Teddy Roosevelt and the Earps, he saw or heard of the exploits commemorated in hundreds of books, stage plays, television shows, and movies, including the ever-famous gunfight at the OK Corral.
History has been rewritten since the days when the Earps wore white hats and Marshal Dillon never made a pass at Miss Kitty, and our picture of that period is more complicated now than when we were children. The Old West was a lot safer, a lot poorer, and a lot less white-bread than movies and television made it out to be. There were more shootings and stabbings, per capita, in an average year in New York than in Dodge City during the cowboy era, just as there are today. There were more farmers and ranchers that went broke, or starved to death, than ever put together a spread like the King Ranch, or even the Ponderosa. There were Hispanic and black cowboys {after the Civil War} nearly equal in numbers to whites, tens of thousands of Chinese railroad workers, and German immigrants in Texas who outnumbered English-speakers in several counties. Ignoring the dozens of Native American nations, oft-maligned {including by Masterson himself} and much-abused in the rush to settle the frontier, there were a myriad other nations and languages represented that made the real Old West much more varied, and hell of a lot more interesting, than the one we watched on the silver screen at Saturday matinees downtown or on little black & white screens at home.
But revisionist historians cannot, yet, go back in time to see what actually happened. There were no movie or video cameras in the 1800s, and pitifully few still photographs. The best information we have is the recollections of those who were actually there, who saw the changes that swept over half the nation in half a century, from the 'howling wilderness' before the Civil War to the settled towns and cities at the beginning of the 1900s. This book is one such treasure, memories set down by a man who was there, who knew the people and the places, and who participated in the great deeds of the day. Are his stories tinged around the edges by fading or generous memory? Surely. No newspaperman, especially a sportswriter, can resist making reality a little bit better, a little more colorful. Without a time machine, we can only rely on these words to give us a sense of who these men were, what they did, and how the Old West really was.
Those of us who enjoy Cowboy Action Shooting™, or historical reenactments, or just dreaming about the cowboy life, wish we could visit the Old West. But the reality was, of course, far different than we like to envision. Before penicillin and anesthesia, before sanitary committees and clean water supplies, before modern dentistry {may the shade of Doc Holliday forgive me}, before paved streets and the replacement of horse droppings with auto exhaust, the Old West was far dirtier and deadlier than we imagine. Life was, indeed, 'short, brutish, and dull' out on the Ol' Prairie, as it was in the cities and towns the pioneers left behind. Even Bat Masterson once said, safely in New York, that he was 'quit with the West'. But it was a fascinating and glorious period, and there is much to enjoy, at this distance in time and comfort, in these tales of the hard men and the hard times of the late 1800s.
With his boots on his feet and with a pen, that deadliest of weapons, in his hand, W.B. Masterson was writing out his thrice-weekly newspaper column when he felt the end coming upon him, after a short illness he thought he'd survived. His last words......there are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose the ginks who argue that way hold that, because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter, things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way.
To see some of the unforgettable men, of a world that has vanished, through the eyes of Bat Masterson-- buffalo hunter, gambler, lawman, and writer-- read on.
Mark W. Seymour, editor
An excerpt from the book:
I have known Wyatt Earp since early in the seventies, and have seen him tried out under circumstances which made the test of manhood supreme. He landed in Wichita, Kansas, in 1872, being then about twenty-six years old, and weighing in the neighborhood of one hundred and sixty pounds, all of it muscle. He stood six feet in height, with light blue eyes, and a complexion bordering on the blonde. He was born at Monmouth, Illinois, of a clean strain of American breeding, and served in an Iowa regiment the last three years of the Civil War, although he was only a boy at the time. He always arrayed himself on the side of law and order, and on a great many occasions, at the risk of his life, rendered valuable service in upholding the majesty of the law in those communities in which he lived. In the spring of 1876 he was appointed Assistant City Marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, which was then the largest shipping point in the North for the immense herds of Texas cattle that were annually driven from Texas to the northern markets. Wyatt's reputation for courage and coolness was well-known to many of the citizens of Dodge City&emdash; in fact it was his reputation that secured for him the appointment of Assistant City Marshal.
He was not very long on the force before one of the aldermen of the city, presuming somewhat on the authority of his position gave him over a police officer, ordered Wyatt one night to perform some official act that did not look exactly right to him, and Wyatt refused point blank to obey the order. The alderman, regarded as something of a scrapper himself, walked up to Wyatt and attempted to tear his official shield from his vest front where it was pinned. When that alderman woke up he was a greatly changed man. Wyatt knocked him down as soon as he laid his hands on him, and then reached down and picked him up with one hand and slammed a few hooks and upper-cuts into his face, dragged his limp form over to the city calaboose, and chucked it in one of the cells, just the same as he would any other disturber of the peace. The alderman's friends tried to get him out on bail during the night, but Wyatt gave it out that it was the calaboose for the alderman until the police court opened up for business at nine o'clock the following morning, and it was. Wyatt was never bothered any more while he lived in Dodge City by aldermen.
While he invariably went armed, he seldom had occasion to do any shooting in Dodge City, and only once do I recall when he shot to kill, and that was at a drunken cowboy who rode up to a Variety Theater where Eddie Foy, the now-famous comedian, was playing an engagement. The cowboy rode right by Wyatt, who was standing outside the main entrance to the show shop, but evidently he did not notice him, else he would not in all probability have acted as he did.
An incident not on the programThe building in which the show was being given was one of those pine-board affairs that were in general use in frontier towns. A bullet fired from a Colt's .45 calibre pistol would go through a half-dozen such buildings, and this the cowboy knew. Whether it was Foy's act that angered him, or whether he had been jilted by one of the chorus we never learned; at any rate he commenced bombarding the side of the building directly opposite the stage upon which Eddy Foy was at that very moment reciting that beautifully pathetic poem entitled Kalamazoo in Michigan. The bullets tore through the side of the building, scattering pieces of the splintered pine boards in all directions. Foy evidently thought the cowboy was after him, for he did not tarry long in the line of fire. The cowboy succeeded in firing three shots before Wyatt got his pistol in action. Wyatt missed at his first shot, which was probably due to the fact that the horse the cowboy was riding kept continually plunging around, which made it rather a hard matter to get a bead on him. His second shot, however, did the work, and the cowboy rolled off his horse and was dead by the time the crowd reached him.
Wyatt's career in and around Tombstone, Arizona, in the early days of that bustling mining camp was perhaps the most thrilling and exciting of any he ever experienced in the thirty-five years he has lived on the lurid edge of civilization. He had four brothers besides himself who waggoned it into Tombstone as soon as it was announced that gold had been discovered in the camp.
Jim was the oldest of the brothers, Virgil came next, then Wyatt, then Morgan, and Warren, who was the kid of the family. Jim started in running a saloon as soon as one was built. Virgil was holding the position of Deputy U.S. Marshal. Wyatt operated a gambling house, and Morgan rode as a Wells Fargo shotgun messenger on the coach that ran between Tombstone and Benson, which was the nearest railroad point. Morgan's duty was to protect the Wells Fargo coach from the stage robbers with which the country at that time was infested.
