Volume 17 , Issue 37

Buckskin Alice, Bat Masterson & Gamblers (1893)

It was on 8 October 1893, Sunday, in The Time, out of Philadelphis, Pennsylvania, that we found this news article of Buckskin Alice. She was the west's professional woman gambler, an extraordinary character. A native of St. Louis and a charming person who arrived a gambler and supported herself and her children in 1893 by this means of gambling.

Found on Newspapers.com

"Buckskin Alice" was not a very high sounding appellation nor was it exactly fitting the peculiar bit of femininity who bears it. The possessor of this unusual title so suggestive of the frontierswoman arrived in town the night before and was luxuriously ensconced in a handsome suite of apartments at the swellest of Denver's hostelries.

"Buckskin Alice" was an appositive for Mrs. Alice Ramsey, which was applied to her by the miners of Leadville when the city of the clouds was at its zenith or prosperity on account of a suit of buckskin in which she nightly appeared.

After learning of the exploits and achievements of "Buckskin Alice," one would expect to see a muscular sort of an individual, with qualities and manners befitting a woman who had to deal with the roughest members of the male sex on the Western borders. You might of fancied a big Amazonic kind of female, uncouth and indelicate in her bearing, and with many marks indicative of her unusual and exciting career. Such a life could not but leave its impress firmly and prominently upon every line of her features and render apparent at ta glance the manner of living.

You would be utterly wrong. Nothing could have been more erroneous than the mental picture which had been painted of the noted female gambler. Instead of the raw and uncultured specimen of the female sex that was anticipated, we might found a modest and unassuming little woman, gentle to marked degree and rather refined in her instincts.

Buckskin Alice was a trifle below medium stature and possessed a handsome figure. The head and face were distinguishing features. The head, on which grows a wealth of beautiful black hair, was nicely poised on a full, white neck, which was just a trifle short. The face was entirely regular in its formation, with big brown eyes, with a soft, delicate expression and a rich, creamy complexion. She was, withal, a woman of beauty and cultivation.

More was the wonder, then, the life she had lived. Alice was a confirmed gambler and had actually made living, and a good one, too, at this precarious calling for years. She was entirely free from the disagreeable proclivities of the ordinary female with a sportive turn. To Buckskin Alice such tendencies were as repulsive as to any mother int he city. But she had an uncontrollable passion for risking her cash on the turnoff the card, which she did with as much nerve and skill as themes accomplished male member of the fraternity. To her the merry chink of chips as they were deftly stacked on a nine spot of a faro layout or were nervously fingered by the excited player was sweeter music than the most delightful strains born of a Paderewski's magic touch or drawn forth by a Sousa's wondrous band. The dull whirr of the roulette wheel as it spun about and then with the dropping of the ball which decided the fate of the money on the board, in itself monotonous and disagreeable, was to Buckskin Alice most entrancing melody.

Alice was a mistress of almost every kind of game, but her chief source of pleasure was the festive draw, which she played with the knowledge of the fine points of a Hoyle and the dash and spirit of Billy Deutsch. She could sit in a game of draw as long as the best of them, and had dealt this game, as well as faro, my a time in the mining camps and frontier towns.

This was Alice's first visit to Denver in some time, and very naturally she looked up her old friends and acquaintances whom she had known in more exciting times. She hunted up Bat Masterson, the king of Western sports, and Colonel Jefferson R. Smith, with whom she had operated all over the Rocky Mountains.

Alice knew Bat in the bloodiest days of Doge City, before that noted man-killer had completed his unbeaten record of twenty-five killed - which, by the way, did not include "niggers" or Indians. She spoke of those as among the most exciting times of her eventful career, and glibly recounted the tragic incidents in the early history of that now almost forgotten Kansas town. She knew Bat when that quiet appearing individual could draw a Colt's and fire as quickly as a poker-dealer could turn a four spot. The histories of the other Westerners of record, such as Luke Short, who had a mark of eleven killed at his death at Gueda Springs, Kansas, on September 7; Doc Middleton, the noted ranger, who last came into prominence by making the race to Chicago from Chadron. Nebraska, in the the cowboy race, and who had a long list of frontiersmen who had dropped at the the crack of Doc's Derringer, and Wyatt Erp and Doc Holiday of the same type.

The death of Short, notice of which Mrs. Ramsey received shortly after her arrival inDenver, brought a shade of sorrow over this eccentric female gambler, who mourned the loss of a true friend. It set her Talking of the exploits of the dead scout, cowboy and sport, whom she knew well. With Masterson she talked over old times. She recalled how Short bought down the notorious Jim Courtwright, who was considered a terror by the entire country, in 1877 at Fort Worth, Texas. Short was running the White Elephant gambling house, where he was sought one evening by Courtwright, who had been held for the murder of four strikers on the Missouri Pacific, but who had secured his release and come to kill Short.

"Come, Luke, let's make up and be friends," said Courtwright as he entered, at the same time drawing his right hand from his hip pocket as though to shake hands. When the hand appeared, however, it held a shinning 45. Quick as an electric shock Luke pulled his gun and fired. The ball took off Courtwright's right thumb and entered his side, while Short's would-be slayer shattered a neighboring window with his bullet. Luke then proceeded to fill his antagonist up on coal lead with deadly effect; ho Short in 1883 took possession of Dodge and with a band of cowboys ran the place to suit themselves in defiance of the alleged officers of the law, and in 1878 while dealing Spanish Monte up in Dakota he killed two notorious desperadoes who had attempted to hold him up; how, while scouting during the Sioux war under General Crook, he killed five of a band of fifteen Indians who attacked him, and again, in 1881, sent to grass Charley Storms, a desperado, with three to his credit, down at Tombstone, and in 1891 was badly wounded by a man named Wright, who was himself shot before he escaped, at Fort Worth - all this was recalled by "Buckskin Alice," who had witnessed the killing of Courtwright and was fully acquainted with the other incidents.

During Buckskin Alice's varied career of ups and downs, she had come in contact with every class of society, from the most exclusive circles of St. Louis itself - in which city she was born - down to the monte players int he wilds of New Mexico. She was known the west over as a nervy, but a square gambler. Hercules had been as varied as her career, and she had been compelled to relieved financial stringency by way of a negotiation on more than one occasion, but it was always a temporary one, for she never borrowed a dollar she didn't return.

The most singular thing of her whole life was that she should had ever entered the speculative existence which she had led for the past fifteen years earlier.

Born of a cultured Southern family, when was reared in wealth and affluence in the metropolis of the Mississippi. Her father was of Scotch-Irish descent and a colonel in the Confederate army, while her maternity was the best that old Kentucky could afford. She had the tenders care during childhood, and her welfare and morality were looked after with the greatest solicitude. When 12 years of age little Alice with her parents removed to Virginia, and at 15 was a most promising pupil at Braode's Female Seminary at Clarksburg, West Virginia.

It was then came the change which so completely altered her life and misdirected the talents which doubtless would have brought distinction to their possessor in a less ignoble calling. Alice was just 16 when she ran away from school and joined Cole's circus, appearing as a hurdle rider. Later she filled engagements with Orrin Brothers, Forepaugh's and Sells Brothers' chows, changing her vocation to that of a charioteer.

While on the road she met her husband, who was a professional gambler. He taught her faro. She was fascinated by the game, which soon took complete possession of her.

When her husband died she adopted a gambling as a means of livelihood for herself and her two children, whom she handsomely supported at St. Mary's Academy at Columbus, Ohio.

The historic old City of Mexico was the birthplace of her gambling life. Since then he had operated gambling games of her own, dealt faro, poker and monte for others and bucked the tiger from he other side of the table in speculative institutions in every quarter of the West.

At the age of 31, her experiences had probably been more varied and exciting than a score of ordinary women's lives rolled into one. She took up her new calling with a vim and paid little attention to her surroundings. Many a fortune had slipped through those soft, white digits of hers and many a one had reversed the course. A single sitting at faro had netted the daring gambler as high as $3,200.

ON one occasion at Silver City, Colorado, she not only watched her last dollar disappear over the green cloth, but lost her watch, diamonds and wardrobe as well. Alice borrowed $500 from a friend, journeyed to another camp, struck a streak of luck and won enough to pay out and have some left.

Mrs. Ramsey was at Crede at the height of the excitement and had attended the opening of all the other mining camps in the West in the last decade.

Alice had rarely fallen a victim of the pilfers. The most notable attempt of holding up the female gambler was made by a wild and wooly cowpuncher down at Sacarro, N. M. Alice was sitting in a game of faro one night and had just put an $8 stack of chips on a winning card doubling the money, when the cowpuncher grabbed the chips and made a run. Alice waxed exceeding wroth and seizing an iron poker smote the fleeing puncher such a swat as to send him headlong down the stairs. She gathered up her chips and continued her play, finally quitting winner just $385.

At another time up in Jimtown, while playing in Doc Muncon's a "tin-horn" snatched at a $50 stack of chips and ran, but his forlorn appearance excited the pity of the kindhearted gambler and Alice allowed him to go unmolested.

Alice's gambling operations had not been confined to mining camps alone. Once she journeyed eastward and played in the big places of Kansas City, St. Louis and Cincinnati, but, of course, always disguising her sex, which she could do with great success.
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