Return of Little Big Man (11 page)

Now on the particular afternoon in question, a fellow name of Bob Shaw stood in the Lone Star, accusing one Texas Dick Moore of taking forty dollars off him by some dishonest means, and what made this a troublesome matter was that Shaw was not only in the state of drunkenness in which the rest of the world is also guilty for his grievance, but he was also brandishing the pistol which by law he should of checked on entering the premises. Under the bar I kept a club and a double-barreled shotgun, but I didn’t want to kill or even maim him badly. On the other hand I also didn’t like the idea of clubbing him enough to make him madder but not enough to knock him out. So I quietly asks a man named Frank, further along the bar, to go fetch Marshal Masterson to come before this thing got out of hand.

Meanwhile I pushed a bottle in Shaw’s direction, telling him to drink on the house, for free whiskey will sometimes calm a man down temporarily. But the offer only riled Shaw further, and he waved the muzzle of his pistol from Texas Dick over my way, advising me in abusive language to horn out unless I wanted my own case of lead poisoning.

I was delicately fingering my way along the underbar towards the scattergun, without moving that part of my person that could be seen by Shaw, when Ed Masterson arrived.

In his nice way Ed asks Shaw to just hand over the weapon.

“I aim to kill thish sson of a bish,” Shaw says, meaning to my relief Texas Dick, on who he again directed his gun, “and if you try to sstop me, I’ll kill you, you sson of a bish.”

At this, Ed draws his own pistol, steps up and hits Shaw in the head with the barrel.

I had knowed what I was doing when I decided against trying to club the bastard: just as I feared, Shaw had too thick a skull to be dented, and the blow served only to increase his grudge. He turns and shoots Ed almost point-blank, right under the shoulder blade, putting Ed’s whole right arm out of action, to say the least. That shot might of killed anybody not a Masterson. But as he falls bleeding to the floor Ed coolly swaps hands with his Colt’s, and with the left he puts two rounds into Shaw, arm and leg, dropping the man, though not before Texas Dick takes a slug near the crotch, and Frank, what had fetched the marshal and stayed outside, a-peeping in the door, catches Shaw’s last wild shot in the left arm.

If you ever heard two .45s discharge multiply at the same time under a roof, you know the reverberations ring inside your head for some minutes thereafter, and with the black powder then in use, there was so much smoke it could of been from a roaring fire, and I admit I was stunned for a minute, not reacting as quick as I did after Wild Bill’s murder, but in fact Ed didn’t need no help, being still in control of the room. Laying there in his own blood, he continued to cover the likewise fallen Shaw, who had not been killed, as well as a few of Shaw’s nearby friends, who might otherwise have been seeking revenge.

To show you further what kind of man Ed Masterson was, after only a couple weeks off, he did the rest of his recuperating back on duty.

Not long after this Ed was appointed chief town marshal. Dodge City entered the years that gave it its subsequent fame, as I have said, but for me what made the place so special was the entertainment and I don’t mean the low order available elsewhere, but the high-class type come from back East, headed by the great Eddie Foy, famous the country over, who could sing and dance better than anyone else alive and was so funny with his costumes and antics your belly would ache from laughing so much. The hall he performed in was called the Comique, which naturally was pronounced to rhyme with “stew” by the ignorant louts (like myself at that time) who packed the place. This was my first exposure to what come to be known as show business, and it made a permanent impression on me, and in time I’ll be telling you of my own career in another form of it.

But let me get back now to Ed Masterson, who returned to marshal’s duty long before the wound he got from Bob Shaw had healed, and he was just as friendly and easygoing as ever though having been almost killed. Unlike his brother Bat, Ed often managed to get hurt while keeping the peace. Even in court this could happen, like the time one Jim Martin was charged with stealing a horse and at his trial got mad and beat up the city attorney, broke a lot of courtroom furniture, and cut Ed’s nose before being coldcocked with the barrel of the marshal’s .45.

The Lady Gay was another of the popular saloons of the time, right near the Lone Star, and in fact was where the political meeting was held that had nominated Bat for sheriff the year before. On their rounds, Ed and Nat Haywood, an assistant marshal, come into the Lady Gay one night in April of ’78, where a half a dozen hands from the same outfit was swallowing a lot of drink and making normal noise, which for cowboys tended to be louder than that made by a convention of preachers, but nothing wrong with that, though it wore you out some having to hear it all night, and in fact I stepped outside the nearby Lone Star, to get a little relief as well as a breath of fresh air free of tobacco smoke, whiskey fumes, and sweat.

In a minute I saw Ed Masterson come out of the Lady Gay, and I stepped over to him.

“Say, Ed,” says I, “I been working on a business idea for a time, and saving my money towards it, too, but I ain’t got quite enough yet to go it on my own.”

Ed favored Bat in appearance, with the same dark hair and mustache, but his features was a little finer, and there was always a look in his eye that could be called somewhat sad.

“What I got in mind,” I went on, “is opening a place of my own, with the usual games of chance, drinks, eats, women naturally, but the main attraction will be the entertainment. I swear that’s the coming thing, but you got to get real talent to put it over, which means you got to bring it in from quite a ways, from back East or San Francisco.” Ed was listening carefully, as was his manner. “Now what I thought I’d mention to you is if you might want to go in with me on this here idea, for I require at least one partner.”

He smiled slowly. “It’s Bat you ought to talk to. He’s the one with the head for business.”

What I hadn’t said was I already talked to Bat, who didn’t care for the idea, maybe because he already had the Lone Star and regarded my place as competition, or he didn’t think I could handle it. I have to admit Bat still thought of me as a kind of character.

“Bat’s got plans of his own,” I says. “Look, just keep it in mind is all I’m asking. And I wouldn’t expect a big investment from you personally, but your good name and fine rep in this town would help out in getting a loan from the bank.”

At this point Nat Haywood walks briskly out of the Lady Gay and he tells Ed, “Walker didn’t check the gun. He give it back to Jack Wagner.”

Ed shook his head, but he wasn’t all that disturbed. “One of Alf Walker’s hands was wearing a loaded shoulder holster,” he told me. “I took the gun away from him and gave it to Alf to check. He ought to know better.” He and Nat headed back into the Lady, and I returned inside to my own job behind the bar.

A few minutes later somebody yelled something through the Lone Star door, but the noise near me was such I couldn’t hear what was shouted and didn’t take no alarm from it, for yells was routine in the saloons of Dodge and unless they employed the term “Fire” did not attract much attention. But next this person or another runs in with enough commotion that the crowd quietened a little, and I could hear, “—so close his clothes was burnin’!”

“Who?” I yells back.

“The marshal, goddammit. Ed Masterson! He’s dyin’.”

I dropped the bottle I had been lifting, and it broke when it hit the floor, drenching my boots with whiskey. I run out of the Lone Star, ramming my way through the drinkers, and reached the street, where there was another crowd, everybody talking about the fight inside the Lady Gay and giving different versions thereof.

“Where is he?” I yells. “Where is Ed?”

“He walked away,” somebody says. “He crossed the tracks!”

I felt some better. That a dying man could of walked two hundred yards across the plaza was unlikely. He was heading for the marshal’s office. “Why did they say he was a goner?” I asked nobody in particular.

A tall cowboy shifted the wad in his jaw and says, “If’n he ain’t, no man ever was. He’s got a hole in him big enough to put your fist through. Ed tried to take Jack Wagner’s gun, but Jack shoved it right against him and pulled the trigger. The blast set Ed’s coat on fire.”

“Yet he walked away?”

“Sure did,” said another man. “I don’t know how he stayed on his feet. First he gut-shot Wagner, and when Alf Walker tried to horn in, Ed put a round into his lung and two in the arm.”

Another voice says, “I seen Ed go into Hoover’s.”

Which was another of the well-known Dodge saloons not in the red-light district. I run over there, across the tracks, and entered the place.

Ed Masterson was laying on the floor. There was still some wisps of smoke coming from his coat. The bartender, George Hinkel, was crouching beside him.

I bent down. I says, “Ed...”

He looks at me with them sad dark eyes. “I’m done for, Jack” was all he said, and then he passed out, never to come to life again.

Jack Wagner soon died too. But Alf Walker, the trail boss, managed in time to survive his wounds. Nat Haywood’s excuse for being of no help to Ed Masterson was that Walker kept a gun on him. Some said Nat had just proved yellow and run out, but in things of that nature you don’t know the truth unless you was on the spot and maybe not even then. In any event Nat left town right away, which meant there was two openings in the police department. A well-known figure of the time, Charlie Bassett, replaced Ed Masterson as chief marshal of Dodge City. As for Nat Haywood’s assistant marshal job, it went to a fellow name of Wyatt Earp, and that was the highest rank Wyatt ever held as peace officer at Dodge, irregardless of all subsequent lies told by him, his arse-kissers, or both.

You might wonder about Bat Masterson’s reaction to his brother’s murder? Lots of lies has been told about that too. Bat sure grieved for Ed, but he didn’t go berserk with rage and gun down a lot of people. He didn’t shoot nobody over this matter. When Alf Walker got well enough to travel, he was allowed to go home to Texas in peace. Whether or not he held a gun on Nat Haywood couldn’t be proved, as Nat had run off and most of the witnesses worked for Alf, and so he weren’t charged with any crime. Jack Wagner had paid with his own life for what he had done, so the book was closed on the sorry event. Bat was the duly elected sheriff of Ford County and as such had to uphold the law. Still, it might be considered funny that one of the most feared gunfighters of his time would not of been vengeful, but as I have said, Bat Masterson was a man of reason. Besides, he always thought his brother run too many foolish risks. If Bat himself had took a gun off Jack Wagner, Wagner wouldn’t of dared to put it back on. Wyatt Earp would of coldcocked Wagner at the outset, and Wild Bill would of killed him right away and got it over with.

So obviously my thought of getting Ed to go in with me on my business idea was at an end, and anyway before long Bat’s old partner Ben Springer opened the Comique, which I swear was a lot like what I had had in mind, and not long thereafter Ham Bell’s similar enterprise, the Varieties, started up in competition, luring away the Comique’s Dora Hand, reputed to be the most beautiful woman west of the Mississippi, who supposedly come from a high-class Boston family and sung opera before the crowned heads of Europe, and it might well of been true a dozen men got killed for competing for her favors, for women like her was uncommon in the cattle camps.

Now maybe I was not being strictly literal when I might of given the idea a while back that I abstained from all traffic with the opposite sex at this phase of my life: what I meant was I didn’t do so any more than was necessary for my health. That warrior society amongst the Cheyenne called the Contraries was undoubtedly right in not losing any power to sexual activities when preparing to go to war, but though living in a fairly violent part of the world, I myself was notably a man of peace while living in Dodge City. I carried a hidden derringer, so as not to be totally helpless if I encountered someone too drunk or crazy to handle with talk, but went otherwise unarmed, relying on all them famous local gunfighters to do their job. Let me say this: a sense of ethics kept me from being a customer where I worked, so I never had any but a professional association with my female fellow workers at the Lone Star, except for what you might call a brotherly sort of affection for the two girls I mentioned whose troubles I listened to.

What I had never had in my adult life thus far was what you could call a real romance. I mean, I had white and Indian wives, and while I was real fond of them, being married was a kind of practical matter, making sense for a home and family, which I had had in both white and Cheyenne worlds, and it was events, and not me nor my wives, what brought them marriages to an end. I had loved but had not been
in love
in the way them men who got killed over Dora Hand had apparently been to have gone that far. I wasn’t itching to die similarly, but thought when I first heard her sing I might be missing something, and I commenced to get a big crush on her. Now this had happened before, when I was a boy, with my white foster-mother Mrs. Pendrake and then again, and ongoing, was what I had for Mrs. Libbie Custer, but in both cases unrealistic and in the latter, notably remote. Dora Hand was here and now, and I was grown up and well employed, being at this point head bartender of the Lone Star, which meant I could give myself time off so as to frequently attend her performances.

Now I sure wasn’t alone in my admiration for the lady. Not a wildflower remained on the prairie for miles around Dodge, all having been plucked out and sent backstage for Dora, and for a time the fancy boxed candies from back East was all sold out in the stores, along with yew-de-cologne or whatever it’s called, lace hankies and other fineries, though nothing naughty like satin garters, for what was maybe Dora’s greatest distinction was her regular Sunday presence at services in the little church on the respectable north side, where her sweet singing of hymns was admired by the other ladies of the congregation, the wives of the better element of merchants, who did not resent her, as they would of others for being young and beautiful, on account of she was showfolk, then and now a special category.