Dodge City

I enjoy reading about the American West, so I was eager to read Dodge City, subtitled Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town In The American West, by Tom Clavin. This author has also written a biography of Wild Bill Hickok and just came out with a book called Tombstone, so he would seem to be an expert on the more vivid side of the history of the West.

Unfortunately, this book is something of a mess. It is written in a folksy style that seems to want to approximate the kind of prose written in newspapers of the day, but contains cliches, such as: "That spring of 1883, their pal had been receiving the short end of the stick, and that had to stop." There are attempts at poetic prose that fall flat, such as: "It was on the night of June 26 that the gleaming white full moon hung in the seemingly endless North Texas sky." He also puts thoughts into historical figures' heads that he can't possibly know, such as: "Wyatt rode north, most likely with a troubled mind. Perhaps if he had been assistant to Ed, Ed might not have died. And he had to be thinking about Bat and his loss."

Beyond these crimes and misdemeanors, Dodge City isn't really about Dodge City as much as it is a dual biography of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, both of whom were lawmen in that city and so much more. The novel goes off on several tangents that have to do with them, and not with Dodge City. We get a brief summation of the Gunfight in the OK Corral, which of course was in Tombstone, and even farther afield, the deaths of Billy the Kid and Jesse James, who only passed through Dodge City.

After reading the book, though, I did have a basic understanding of what Dodge City meant to the history of the West. There were three elements that gave it importance: the buffalo, cattle, and the railroad. Masterson was a buffalo hunter, and Dodge City was in middle of the great buffalo herds. More importantly, it was where cowboys brought cattle to be shipped by the railroad off to other places. It was only human nature that the town became notorious. It seems that every celebrated gunfighter and lawman spent some time there. In addition to Earp and his brothers, and Masterson and his brothers, were Doc Holliday, Luke Short, Clay Allison, "Mysterious" Dave Mather, and the aforementioned Billy the Kid and Jesse James. There were a lot of other colorfully named men who came through town: "At one point in 1877, Robert Wright recorded the names of those he had recently encountered. They included Dirty Face Charlie, The Off Wheeler, The Near Wheeler, Eat ’Em Up Jake, Shoot ’Em Up Mike, Stink Finger Jim, Frosty, The Whitey Kid, Light Fingered Jack, Black Kelley, Bull Whack Joe, Conch Jones, Black Warrior, Hurricane Bill, Shoot His Eye Out Jack, Rowdy Joe, and The Stuttering Kid."

There is a lot of good information in Dodge City, despite it's clumsy prose. I was interested to read that Earp, while he was a lawman, also ran gambling dens and whorehouses, and of the four wives he had he may not have been legally married to any of them (and they may have all been whores at one time or another). But it's hard to keep everything straight. Part of this is not Clavin's fault--these guys moved around so much that it's hard to keep track of where they were at any given time. But there is a good description of Battle of Adobe Wells, although the battle actually took place in Texas.

I've read a lot about Earp, so I was most interested in Masterson, who comes across as a great historical character. He ended up a boxing promoter and spent his last day living in New York City. Ironically, one of the great names of the Old West is buried in the Bronx.