This Gun For Hire
THE OVERLOOK
By Tom Clavin
“The Overlook” appears every Thursday at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is usually a place from which one can see in many if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). Likes, comments, and shares help with author discoverability on Substack.com, and all support is appreciated.And don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!
“Every dog, we are told, has his day, unless there are more dogs than days.”
Bat Masterson
In early March I was contacted about a statue of Bat Masterson being created that is to be put on display in Dodge City later this year, possibly coinciding with the celebrated gunfighter’s 168th birthday in November. I was not being asked for money but was queried about attending the unveiling. (We’ll see.) Some of you American West history buffs may already know that Bat was the sheriff of Ford County in the 1870s, and even when not in office, Dodge City, the county seat, was his base of operations.
Then last month I was contacted about raising money to purchase a pistol to be auctioned that reportedly belonged to Bat. The fine folks at the Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City did not know how much it would wind up costing them but they believed that if they could swing it, the famous weapon would ultimately be worth it. I agreed to help . . . but I was tempted to suggest a less-expensive way to add such a desirable Masterson artifact to the Boot Hill collection. To understand my thinking, we have to look back at the remarkable final act of the famous lawman’s career.
In June 1902, acting upon a suggestion from a longtime friend, President Theodore Roosevelt, Bat and his wife, Emma, traveled to New York City. For many people coming from the frontier, even a reputed gunslinger, the tall buildings and rushing people and cacophonous clashing of sounds would have been too intimidating. Bat could simply have turned around and gotten back on the train, returning to the wide-open West where he was a big fish in a large but comparatively shallow pond. But he liked what he saw. Always a man who sought action, Bat believed there was more action in New York than anywhere else. Maybe it was not too late, at age 48, to start over in the big city. There was little left for him but a penny-pinching retirement back in the West, and too many of his friends and acquaintances there, as well as two brothers, were by now six feet under.
Bat and Emma rented an apartment at 300 West 49th Street. This offered easy access to the expanding theater district and its restaurants and saloons which provided free sandwiches to those who purchased whiskey or beer at lunchtime. His traveling days were not completely over because from time to time he took the train down to Washington to accept Roosevelt’s invitation to visit. The former frontier buddies recalled mutual acquaintances, favorite boxing matches they had attended, and inevitably some of Bat’s adventures chasing down bad guys and tossing them in the calaboose.
Roosevelt would make two offers. The first was for Bat to become the U.S. marshal for the Oklahoma Territory. This Bat rejected, claiming his gunslinging days were over but “some drunken boy” would not believe that and would try to make a reputation for himself by shooting him. The second offer Bat accepted: U.S. marshal for the Southern District of New York, which included a steady paycheck and the freedom to carry a weapon.
But only two years later, Bat changed careers. He had renewed a friendship from days past with two brothers, William E. Lewis and Alfred Henry Lewis. The former was editor and general manager of the New York Morning Telegraph; the latter, a book and magazine writer, became a frequent carousing partner. Until Richard O’Connor’s book was published in 1957, Alfred Lewis’s book, The Sunset Trail, issued in 1905, would be the only biography of Bat, though it is more novel than nonfiction. When William Lewis offered Bat a job, he became the sports editor of the Morning Telegraph. At age 50, another phase of his life began.
Bat fully embraced the position and the events and social life that went with it. He did very little actual editing; instead, his duties were to write a column several times a week about sports, with many of them being about boxing. “By W.B. ‘Bat’ Masterson” was his byline. He came to know and swap stories with many of the major sports figures of the day passing through New York. The baseball great Ty Cobb wrote about Bat that with his physique, despite the smart clothes and bowler hat, he “more nearly approximated the conception of a steamfitter’s helper on a holiday than the authentic person who’d helped to clean up Dodge City with a Colt forty-five for his broom.” His eyes, however, were “smoothed ovals of gray schist with flecks of mica glittering in them if he were aroused. And some of them men who faced him through the smoke fogs of cow-town melees hadn’t lived long enough to get a good look.”
Before long, Bat’s column was a must-read for sports aficionados and rival columnists. He became known as the “Wise Man of Longacre Square,” referring to the Morning Telegraph’s headquarters at Eighth Avenue and 50th Street. He had a routine that suited him well: Breakfast at home with Emma at noon, a meander to the office to write and file his column, off to Belmont Racetrack if the horses were running or to the Polo Grounds to watch a New York Giants game, then back to Manhattan to take in a boxing match or a play, concluding with a late supper, often at Shanley’s Grill at Broadway and 43rd Street. This was followed by drinks with friends in the sports and Broadway worlds after the theaters had shut for the night, with a favorite haunt being the Metropole on 42nd Street and Broadway. There and at adjacent watering holes Bat stood leaning at the bar and rubbing shoulders with George M. Cohan, Sanford White, John McGraw, Jimmy Walker, Arnold Rothstein, boxer and future actor Victor McLaglen, and when his Wild West Show was in town, his old friend Buffalo Bill Cody. Bat may have had to duck and cover like the other patrons on the night of July 16, 1912, when the gangster Herman Rosenthal was shot to death in the Metropole’s doorway; a police lieutenant friend of Bat’s and four other men went to the electric chair for the murder.
Whatever useful material he gathered would go into the next column, which could sometimes be as much about the theater and its stars as sports. Bat was a respected and a bit feared elder presence who was quick to champion causes, especially the fleeting examples of honesty in boxing. According to Bat’s newspaper protege Damon Runyon, “He gained a wide reputation for his fearless writing. Four square to all the winds that blew, he despised hypocrisy and dishonesty, and he had a forceful way of expressing his feelings.” When he wrote the short stories that would be adapted into the huge stage success Guys and Dolls, Runyon saluted Bat by naming his main character Sky Masterson.
By the eve of World War I, Bat’s reputation as a Wild West gunslinger had ballooned to legendary proportions and it was believed that even at 60 he could slap leather as quick as any murderous outlaw. Bat did not encourage this outlook, but he didn’t go out of his way to discourage it either. It intrigued people, and more potential sources eased into his orbit. And there was a profitable part of it too. It was generally reported that Bat’s trusty Colt .45 had at least 20 notches in it, each representing a man who deserved killing. An article that appeared in the New York Sun years earlier had been headlined, “A Mild Eyed Man Who Killed Twenty-six Persons.”
Every so often an awestruck visitor to New York would beg Bat to sell his gun and it would be honored and protected as a collectible. After careful consideration and with some reluctance, Bat would give in, negotiate a price, and turn over the coveted pistol. The next day, he would stop at a pawn shop, buy a Colt .45, cut over 20 notches in it, and be ready for the next rube from out of town.
As it turned out, I should have advised the Boot Hill Museum supporters to obtain an old Colt .45, clean it up a bit, cut some notches, and put it on display. Bat Masterson certainly would not object. When the auction was held a couple of weeks ago, Bat’s gun sold for over $400,000, to a private purchaser. The old tried and true way would have been a far less expensive option for the museum.
For more on Bat Masterson and his lawman pal, please pick up a copy of my book Dodge City. And if you don’t mind another selfish plug, this Saturday, May 29, I will be at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor from 2 to 3.30 to sign copies of the brand-new Blood and Treasure. It’s sure not too soon to think about Father’s Day gifts!
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including his latest collaboration with Bob Drury, Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier, published last month by St. Martin’s Press and residing on national bestseller lists. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, or BN.com to purchase a copy.