Volume 17 , Issue 37

Bat Masterson - "Bad Man?"

Do you remember watching the television westerns back in the late 1950's and early 1960's or was it in the '70's? Particularly the series they called "Bat Masterson." They portrayed him as a "good guy," but how good was he? Was he also a gambler? Did he begin as a bad man, champion gun fighter, scout, buffalo hunter, and known as: "Bat Masterson a terror of the west?"

Found on Newspapers.com

According to The Courier-Journal, out of Louisville, Kentucky, dated 12 February 1905, Sunday, page 25, we found this news article concerning Bat Masterson, which read: "Bad Man To Be Deputy Marshal In New York." It mentioned the notches on his pistol and named him as a "Terror of the west." It also tells the story of his meeting with "John L." Sullivan.

Bat Masterson, bad man, champion gun fighter, scout and buffalo hunter, was coming to New York as a United States Deputy Marshal, said the New York Sun. After a lifetime passed in tracking the buffalo to his lair and fanning the trigger of a single-action Colt .44 at drunken cow punchers and tin-horns, Bat was going to cap a strenuous life by running down counterfeiters and wiping out the Mafia. He was on his way from Hot Springs post haste to be sworn in. Marshal Henkel would probably induct him into office and pin on the official badge. Window insurance would go up 90 per cent in the Italian quarter, for although Bat shoots straight his gun is so all-fired powerful that the bullet may go straight through the chief of the Black Hand and do a lot of damage.

If you were a counterfeiter, you might want to be good after hearing this news. Bat Masterson, the bloodstained Avenger of Butte, was on your trail. Not that Bat comes from Butte. His fame was tied up with the fame of Deadwood, one of the 1,676 Western towns known as the "toughest town on earth." But Butte was the right word in this place. It sounded as if it belonged there, sort of rhymes inside, and that's the essence of real literature back in the early 1900's.

What Bat Masterson did not do in the old west wasn't worth doing. He began as a ranger, a buffalo hunter, a dead shot with his rifle and his side arms. The late 1870s and early 1880s found him in Deadwood as United States Deputy Marshal. It was a matter of record that he cleaned up the camp in jig time.

"Faro goes, poker goes, studhorse goes, even Monte goes, though it's a damned Greaser game. But it goes on the level. Brace games stop. Savvy?"These were the historic words of Bat's inaugural. It was recorded in Deadwood's history that brace games did stop. So did several hearts pulsing with warm, bright western blood.

His Looks Deceived

The great point about Bat Masterson was that he didn't look as though he could fight. He was meek and mild in all his ways. Even his manner of fluttering his left palm over the hammer of a triggers .44 had something of gentlemanly refinement about it.

After the gambling of Deadwood was made pure as the driven snow Bat did many things. He turned up in Denver as proprietor of a prosperous dance hall. The old love claimed him for a time and he became a deputy marshal in Colorado. His footsteps led him to Leadville, another "toughest camp on earth." There he fell in with Bat Moiarity, another Trojan of the unwritten epic of the West. History paused to make mention of Bat Moriarity.

This Bat was long on diamonds, fur overcoats and eighteen-carat watch chains, and short on early education. He struck it immensely rich and used to run his mines on a system of his own. When he wanted to find the time on one of his gold watches he'd stroll into a saloon and say: "It's that cold an' the snow's that bright I can't aether git out me watch or see it. Wood ye mind takin' it out an' telling' me the time?"

Once he shouted down the shaft of his mine:
"Hello, there! How many of yez is below?"

"Five," came up the answer.

"Well, the half of yez come up!"

Well. Bat Masterson met Bat Morality, and the two bats flitted forth into the night. At Wyman's dance hall Wyman himself - he called himself the worst man on earth, this Wyman - introduced these two leading citizens to John L. Sullivan. John L., then at the very apex of his greatness was in town on a sparring tour. The 10,000 foot altitude of Leadville had already affected John L. Even in those days the champ was susceptible to altitude. Even the sea level of New York had been known to go to his head.

John L. Said something unpleasant and almost profane about the climate of Colorado. Every one was charmed to hear the champion even notice the climate - all but Bat Masterson. In his tantalizing, courteous way he asked John L. to repeat the remark.

John L. said something which, being expurgated, was to the effect that he didn't chaw his cabbage twice. To emphasize his remark and show that he was really John L. he swung at Bat Masterson the celebrated Sullivan swing.

But bat wasn't there. He had ducked. And as John L. came back to his fighting pose Bat countered in the solar plexus with the nozzle of his 44. Clicking the hammer suggestively with his thumb, Bat inquired:

"How about the climate of Colorado?"

"Fine!" said John L.

And Bat Morality was moved to buy all the altitude in Wyman's place.

Career As A Gambler

The old west rather drifted past Bat Masterson. He got the prize fighting hunch and managed fighters a little, he played faro a good deal, he made book, he wrote sporting items for a newspaper. Along in 1902 a man from Utah charged him with a swindle in a brace faro game, which hurt Bat, who declared that he had never played foul in his life. The charge did not stick.

And now he's bound for New York to clean it up as he cleaned up deadwood. Well, times had changed. The West had got so quiet and respectable that Bat Masterson wasn't needed any more and the effete East sent a hurry call for him.

Since Inspector Byrnes got into the papers a lot there hasn't been such a chance for half-dime novel writers. Of course, bAt had been in the magazines a good deal, thanks to Alfred Henry Lewis and others, but here's the chance of the real thriller: "Bat Masterson in New York; or, Marshal Henkel's Last Stand Against the Mafia."

Imagination ran forward about three weeks and lights on page 3 of "Bat Masterson Library, No. 1."
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