Bat Masterson, former sheriff of Dodge City, joined Wyatt Earp in Tombstone but remained only a few months. Bat returned to Dodge City when he learned that his brother, Jim, was having trouble with George Peacock and Al Updegraft. Peacock and Jim Masterson were partners in the Lady Gay saloon and dance hall in Dodge, and Updegraft was their bartender. Bat went by stage to Deming, where he struck the railroad. As he dropped off the train in Dodge, he saw Peacock and Updegraft coming toward the depot and opened fire. Updegraft got a bullet through the lungs and staggered back into the dance hall. Peacock dodged behind a calaboose across the railroad tracks, and Bat behind a box car, and they shot it out until their ammunition was exhausted. Neither Bat nor Peacock was injured. Updegraft was in bed for two months, and when pneumonia set in, he died.
“Bat Masterson was a brave man,” said Wyatt Earp, whose estimate of the famous sheriff is of interest. “As a peace officer he deserved all the celebrity he ever had, but as a killer his reputation has been greatly exaggerated. Old stories credit Bat with having killed twenty-seven men. The truth is, he never killed but four in his life.
“I knew Bat when he was a kid in Wichita and he and I were bosom friends in Dodge. I hunted buffalo with him when he was hardly big enough to handle a rifle and I’ve been with him on many a roundup after outlaws. I shared the same home with him in Denver after my Tombstone days were over and kept up a correspondence with him until his death a few years ago in New York. I know his career from beginning to end.
“Bat killed his first man at Sweetwater, Texas, when he was eighteen years old. While he was serving as a civilian scout with the army, a dance hall girl in Sweetwater took a shine to him. A cavalry sergeant named King grew jealous. When King went into the dance hall one night and saw Bat and the girl dancing together, he drew his gun. The girl saw him first and threw her arms around Bat to protect him. King’s bullet killed her and, passing through her body, wounded Bat in the thigh. As the girl fell, Bat put a bullet through King’s heart.
“When I was marshal of Dodge in , I went out with a posse to hunt some train robbers who had held up a Santa Fe express at Kinsley, and in my absence, Ed Masterson, Bat’s brother, acted as marshal. Some Texas cowboys were raising cain in a dance hall, and Bat and Ed went to quiet the disturbance. At the door, Jack Wagner, one of the cowboys, shot and killed Ed Masterson. As Ed reeled out into the street, Bat killed Wagner. When Alf Walker, the ringleader of the cowboys, came rushing out of the hall with a six-shooter Bat shot him twice. Walker ran up the street and through a saloon and dropped dead in an alley. Bat went into the dance hall and opened up on the other cowboys, but they piled out through the windows and got away.
“The next man on Bat’s list was Updegraft. Bat showed me the message he received in Tombstone and it was not from his brother. It didn’t say what kind of trouble Jim Masterson was mixed up in. It only said that Peacock and Updegraft were threatening to kill him. Bat had had a quarrel with Jim and was hardly on speaking terms with him at the time but he took the first stage out of Tombstone to go back to Dodge and help his brother. That was the old frontier’s brand of loyalty. These four—King, Wagner, Walker, and Updegraft—are the only men Bat ever killed, and there has always been a doubt whether Updegraft died of pneumonia or the wound from Bat’s bullet.”
The Tombstone stage was set and the drama getting under way when John H. Behan, his entrance slightly delayed, as befitted that of so important an actor, made his bow as the first sheriff of Cochise County. He was appointed to the position by the governor when Cochise County was organized out of Pima County in the winter of –, and Tombstone was made the county seat. Behan had lived in Arizona since , having come across the plains from Missouri, had had varied frontier experience, and had served as recorder and sheriff of Yavapai county.
Already in middle life, he was a bustling, self-important man, never too busy to stop and shake hands or clap somebody on the shoulder with a great show of friendliness. Everybody in Tombstone was soon calling him Johnny Behan.
Johnny Behan was a good man misplaced in a tough mining camp, his life and character twisted by circumstances into which he had been hurled by one of destiny’s unfortunate accidents. In a happier environment, he would have been considered a splendid character. He was sunny, companionable, kindly, honest, generous, loyal. But in Tombstone he was a twenty-two calibre man in a forty-five calibre town. Tombstone thirsted for strong waters; John Behan had only sarsaparilla and lemon pop on tap.
He was not devoid of courage or initiative. But his indecision left an impression of timidity, and he lacked the force to finish what he started. He was vacillating, flustered, impulsive. He darted at a problem instead of calmly thinking it out. He had energy but clouded vision. He was a man of words rather than action. He blustered and failed to live up to his bluster. He talked like a big man and acted like a little one. He was perhaps not wholly inoffensive and free from guile but, judged by his Tombstone career, he seems to have been rather futile. However, Johnny Behan was nobody’s
