Volume 17 , Issue 37

Bat Masterson & Earp

In the Sunday Gazette-Mail, of Charleston, West Virginia, dated 2 March 1975, Sunday, page 75, we found this interesting article concerning Earp and Bat Masterson.

Found on Newspapers.com

Earp claimed that i Dodge City he appointed Bat Masterson as one of his deputies. According to town records, Earp was never marshal of Dodge. He served as assistant marshal. He claimed that in one month in 1877 he made 400 arrests, which according to the records, did not occur but in fact, he, himself, was arrested for brawling with a dance hall girl.

Earp was a professional gambler. His reputation was that of a card player who was up to some dishonest trick every time he played.

Bat Masterson was in Dodge for the cattle season of 1877. He particularly wanted a star, which permitted its wearer to carry a gun, which in turn gave him a psychological advantage in games played for high stakes.

Bat Masterson ran for sheriff of Ford County in November, 1877. He was elected by a three vote margin. He took office in 1878 and whiled away his evening hours with men like Doc Holliday, an alcoholic ex-dentist. Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson spent so many nights in Dodge City brothels that they were nicknamed "The Fighting Pimps." Later, in 1879, Bat Masterson was no longer sheriff, having been defeated for reelection by a bartender. Earp turned in his star and went to Tombstone, Arizona to join his brother, Virgil. With him cam Mattie, his girlfriend, two other Earp brothers, Jim and Morgan, and their wives, and tagging along after all of them was Doc Holiday and his common law wife, "Big Nose Kate Fisher," a Dodge City prostitute.

Tombstone was unlike Dodge Cty in that it had carpet in the saloons and French phrases on the menus. Wyatt Earp got a job as a shotgun messenger for Wells Fargo. He was not at this time a U. S. Marshal.

Doc Holliday was a mean and vicious man who was fond of killing. After killing two persons in Georgia, he fled. After killing a man in Dallas, he fled. After killing a soldier, he fled. After wounding a man in Denver, he fled, but he was Earp's kind of man and they had mutual admiration for each other.

Earp's difficulty began on the night of March 15, 1881, when a stagecoach left Tombstone carrying eight passengers and $80,000 worth of bullion. Bandits attempted to stop the stagecoach and in the process killed the driver and the passengers. Doc Holliday was the supposed killer according to Holliday's wife, "Big Nose Kate" and the brain behind the holdup was Wyatt Earp. "Big Nose Kate" retracted her statement and was hustled out of town. But the accomplices had to be silenced.

Wyatt Earp supposedly offered a deal to Ike Clanton to stage a robbery of a stagecoach so that Earp and Holliday could ambush them. Earp would guarantee that Clanton would be paid the reward for their capture. Clinton refused, but blabbed about it in Tombstone, so Earp devised a means to eliminate Clanton on 26 October 1881. Cannot was in Tombstone with his younger brother Billy, and with them were Frank and Tom McLowry and another young named Billy Claiborne. They were difficult people. That morning, Virgil Earp, as town marshal, deputized his bothers, Wyatt and Morgan, and sought to pick a quarrel with the Clantons and McLowrys. Virgil Earp clubbed Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp hit Tom McLowry, but there was no fight.

That afternoon, the Clantons, McLowry and Claiborne went to the OK Corral to pick up horses and ride out of town. Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan, with Holliday, went after them. In the corral, somebody started shooting. Within a short time, Billy Claiborne was dead. Frank and Tom Lowry were dead, and Ike and Billy Clanton ran for their lives and were safe. Morgan Earp was hit in the left shoulder. Virgil was hit in the leg, and Holliday in the left hip.

A mining engineer named Lewis witnessed the cold blooded murders and was one of a committee to tell earp that there would be no more killings inside town limits. Virgil Earp was fired as town marshal on October 29, 1881 and later ambushed and wounded on December 29, 1881. In March, 1882, Morgan Earp managed to be deputized by a Federal marshal. Wyatt left Tombstone, leaving behind his common law wife, Mattie, and went to Colorado.

Bat Masterson went back to Dodge in April, 1881. Later, he went to Trinidad, Colorado, and was appointed a peace officer. In the 1880's, Masterson ran a gambling operation in Denver. Around the turn of the century, he was ordered to leave Denver, which was one of the crookedest towns in the country. In the words of Lyon, "It was like being told he was too low for the sewer." He went to New York where he was arrested. ON the train from Chicago, he fleeced a Mormon elder of $16,000 by using marked cards. He became a sports writer for the New York Morning Telegraph and died in 1921 at his desk.

Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles in 1930. Mattie, the girl Earp deserted in Tombstone, drifted to a mining camp near Wilcox, Arizona, and in July, 1888, committed suicide.
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