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BILL KELLY a BIOGRAPHY
In his forty years as a freelance writer and newspaper reporter, Bill Kelly had interviewed and written about hundreds of names familiar to us: Mickey Rooney, Rory Calhoun, Sylvester Stallone, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Broderick Crawford, Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Ginger Rogers, Ida Lupino, John Wayne, Aldo Ray, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Leonard, Muhammad Ali, and Henry Armstrong are among many. 
Bill has authored an astounding 15,000 magazine articles -- a phenomenal feat for any writer. He had appeared in Poker Digest, Card Player, Real West, True West, Treasure Search, Treasure Cache, Lost Treasure, South Bay, Country Review, True Detective, Inside Detective, California Highway Patrolman, Oklahoma State Trooper, Texas Highway Patrol, Inland Empire, Reader’s Digest, Poker World, Ring Magazine, Boxing Illustrated, K.O., and Variety. His freelance work has appeared in too many California newspapers to list here, but they include, Herald Examiner, Orange County Register and Press-Enterprise. His critically-acclaimed Collector’s Edition of Bill Kelly’s Encyclopedia of Gunmen is a reference book treasured by historians and Western buffs alike. Bill’s second book, Treasure Trails and Buried Bandit Booty, is a collection of true accounts of buried outlaw swag, and contains clues to reportedly hidden loot throughout the United States. Bill recently appeared on the History channel as an old west historian in High Rollers: The History of Gambling. His latest book is Gamblers of the Old West ($24.95). An autograph copy can be purchased by contacting Bill by e-mail: wildbill@cosmoaccess.net or by snail mail: 29759 Longhorn Dr. Canyon Lake, Ca. 92804. Bill Was born in Tom’s River, New Jersey, on May 5, 1927. He now resides in Canyon Lake, California, where he spends most of his waking hours writing tons of articles to be enjoyed by thousands of readers. His book, EMPTY SADDLES, is a nostalgic tribute to the sagebrush sagas of the 1940s and 50s, and contains Bill’s interviews with fifty Cowboy stars that made cinema history. No release date has been set for this book at this writing   Original article ©copyright, 2000 Bill Kelly Layout and design ©copyright, 2000 The GameMaster Online, Inc.
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GAMBLERS OF THE WILD WEST
by Bill Kelly
BAT MASTERSON’S BIGGEST GAMBLE The legend of William Barclay "Bat" Masterson as a two-gun marshal who slew hordes of badmen and Indians in the early West is one of the those bizarre and peculiar myths that have come snowballing down though history, flourishing in balderdash with each retelling. Actually, he killed two men, and the closest he ever came to being a marshal was a fleeting and less than resplendent hitch as a policeman in Dodge City. 
Bat spent most of his life as a buffalo hunter and gambler. The last days of his life were spent as an ace sports editor for the New York Morning Telegraph. He was born on a farm in Iroquois County, Illinois on November 24, 1853, the second of Thomas and Catherine Masterson's six children. A boy growing up on the frontier considered himself practically naked without a firearm of some kind, and Bat became a crack shot, practicing behind the barn with an old musket, instead of listening to the scant education supplied by a prairie schoolmarm. On occasional spring wagon trips into Wichita, Kansas, with his father, young Bat became enamored by the evil splendor provided by the dusty trail town. The streets were lined with saloons, gambling houses, variety theaters, dancehalls, hotels, brothels, horse traders' corrals, and ramshackle stores. He was fascinated with the people who swaggered along the plankwalks, most of them with a great pride of occupation. He could tell at a glance what a man did for a living; the high-hatted Texas cowpunchers, the merchants with their boiled shirts and string ties, the scrofulous and blood-drenched buffalo hunters. But Bat was mostly fascinated by the gambling men, impeccable in broadcloth and silk, top hats. They exuded such a worldly air with their pomade hair, carefully tended mustaches, diamond stick pins and heavy gold watches and chains. Not to mention their ascertained geniality. There were the bedizened women of the town, the girls who worked the dance halls and brothels, the actresses who played in the variety theatres, and there were women like his mother and sisters. But all these people represented the adventure he knew he would never find on his father's farm. He was seventeen when he managed to talk his older brother Ed, into running away to western Kansas, which was enjoying a boom in the buffalo hide market. But there were war parties all over the wilderness and Bat barely escaped with his scalp during one skirmish with the Cheyennes. "To hell with this," he told Ed. "Lets head for Dodge." A few days later, Bat and Ed arrived in Dodge, Bat still nursing a lacerated scalp. He tried his luck at gambling, but when he busted out he returned to his old trade as a buffalo hunter. Although Bat was a permanent resident of Denver for 21-years, (1881-1902) from 1881 to 1887 he made repeated trips to Dodge City, taking an active interest in politics there. In 1887 he plied his trade as a gambler in Dodge and trekked to Cheyenne, where he enjoyed a marvelous run of luck at the poker tables. In Deadwood he won a gold mine from a man named Tucker and lost it the next day when a cardshark laid three kings and two queens in front of him. 
Bat had just won several hundred dollars at faro in Cheyenne and was headed back to Dodge City when he ran into Wyatt Earp, who was playing poker in a Nebraska gambling house. Earp remarked that he had just been offered the marshal's job in Dodge, and suggested that Bat run for sheriff of Ford County. But Bat knew that two hundred thousand head of cattle were coming up the trail from Texas, and with them two thousand rumbustious cowboys. The prospect of fleecing the Texans' hard-earned money over gambling tables was much more enchanting than protecting the Dodge City saloons and residents on a measly sheriff's pay. On one of his visits to Dodge, Bat bought a piece of the Lone Star Dance Hall with his winnings at Cheyenne. There were street fights and shootings, and finally Bat submitted to the merchants pleas that he run for the office of peacemaker. He was elected by a margin of 3 votes in November 1877. In April, 1878, brother Ed had a run-in with a group of drunken rowdies after an all-night poker game in the Lady Gay Dance Hall. He was shot down in cold blood. Nothing ever hit Bat as hard as his brother's death, and nothing ever would. In 1881, Tombstone's mines were booming. General John C. Fremont, the territorial governor, did nothing to protect the silver coming out of Tombstone. In desperation, Wells Fargo hired Wyatt Earp to protect their bullion shipments. Earp had himself appointed deputy sheriff and brothers Morgan and Virgil arrived to back him up. Doc Holliday would always leave his favorite spot at the poker table to assist Wyatt. At the same time, Wyatt was urged to become a partner in Tombstone's most elegant gambling casino, the Oriental. One of the owners was William H. Harris. The Oriental was being terrorized by gunmen hired by jealous business competitors. To protect their interests, the Oriental hired Bat Masterson and Luke Short, the gunfighting gambler who stood firmly by Earp and Masterson when Clay Allison tried to bully Dodge. Outwardly Masterson and Short were card dealers but their reputations as gunslingers were part of the consideration under which they were chartered. Rival gambling enterprises in Tomstone hired a dozen ruffians led by a tobacco-squirting loafer named John Tyler, to interfere with the players at the Oriental. At the Roulette wheel, faro tables, and especially at the poker tables there were threats of violence. Doc Holliday and Earp booted them out one night as Short and Masterson (who hated Holliday) kept associates of the gang from interfering by covering them with their pistols. The Oriental had no more trouble after that...except for Charlie Storms. Charlie was a bad-tempered gunman-gambler who decided one night to pester Luke Short, who was a small, unimpressive squirt. Masterson, who was dealing at a adjacent table, excused himself and escorted Storms to the door before the hot-tempered card player could start shooting. "He was drunk," Bat told Short. "He won't give you any more trouble." "Oh, No?" Short grumbled. "Look who's coming in the door." It was drunken Charlie Storms again, waving a single-action .45 Colt revolver and calling Short's name. But before Charlie could do anything about it, Short put a bullet square through his heart. An editor with a sense of humor wrote Storms' epitaph: He had sand in his craw Bat always said that had not an untoward incident recalled him to Dodge City when the celebrated Gunfight at O.K. Corral took place, he would have been involved. But history robbed us of that treat. By 1889 Bat Masterson had settled down as a professional gambler in Denver and was doing quite well for himself. Denver at the time, was the gambling capital of the world, and attracted big-money bettors from all over the country. He got a job managing Ed Chaise's Palace Saloon and Gambling House. The Palace Saloon also had a variety theater and on November 21, 1891, Bat married Miss Emma Walters, one of the actresses at the theater. The marriage of Bat and Emma lasted until Bat's death, Emma outlasting Bat by 11 years. In 1892 Bat got a job with the Denver gambling firm of Watrous, Banninger and Company. He was transferred to the mining town of Creede, where he managed the company's gambling operations from 1892 to 1893. Although a list of Colorado marshals 1859-1964 does not list Bat Masterson as city marshal at Creede, the Denver Republican wrote: All the toughs and thugs fear him as they do no other dozen men in camp. Let an incipient riot start and all that is necessary to quell it is the whisper, There come Masterson...." Judging from this report, Bat Masterson took time out from his job at the Denver gambling firm to do a competent job as city marshal at Creede, which was overrun with con men, prostitutes, and cardsharps. A heavy bettor, Masterson traveled to Carson City, Nevada in 1897, where he lost a fortune betting on "Gentleman Jim" Corbett against Bob Fitzsimmons. Fitzsimmons knocked Corbett out in the 14th round with his famous "solar-plexus punch." 
Masterson was past fifty and almost broke when he made the transition from professional gambler to sports editor of the Morning Telegraph. His column was almost always devoted entirely to the pugilistic world, and he was recogonized as one of the world's leading boxing authorities. He was one of the few journalists with direct erudition from fighters like John L. Sullivan and Jack Dempsey. Bat was a prictical joker, right up to the end. When an antique dealer continually pestered him to sell him a gun with thirty notches, Bat bought a Colt .45 for $5.50. It worked so well that thereafter whenever he needed money he sold someone one of these guns for a hefty profit. There are probably scads of these guns to be found among gun collectors. The end came for Bat Masterson on October 25, 1921. He lit a cigarette and fell face forward across his typewriter. He had barely finished his last article concerning the Lew Tendler-Rocky Kansas fight, which Rocky had won on points. The obituaries written by many writers across the nation conveyed a definite sense of loss. One was a poetic wreath written by William Jerome and published in the Morning Telegraph: Goodbye, Bat |
