He had always kidded her, in the days when she was a sporting girl in Dodge, that she would end up respectable, though even he couldn’t have guessed that she’d marry a sheriff.
—LARRY MCMURTRY, Lonesome Dove
Wyatt didn’t go to Wichita directly. He still had some wandering and grieving and sorting out to do. In his book Inventing Wyatt Earp, Allen Barra notes, “For a couple of years after the death of his wife, Wyatt Earp was a loner; he would retain some of the qualities of a loner the rest of his life.”
It is indeed likely that he tried his hand at buffalo hunting and met Bat Masterson, Billy Dixon, and some of their colorful colleagues along the way. It was still a way for a man with few skills to make pretty good money, and Wyatt was one who had skills with horses and, inevitably, guns from the years of hauling freight. It was also an occupation for someone who had no other pressing business to attend to.
“I’ll admit that no other buffalo hunter of my acquaintance—myself, least of all—planned his work as a crusade for civilization,” Wyatt told a biographer many years later. “I went into the business to make money while enjoying life that appealed to me.”
It couldn’t have appealed to him that much, because at some point in late 1871 or early 1872 he was back in Illinois, in Peoria, where he lived in a brothel operated by Jane Haspel. Reportedly, Virgil was also living in Peoria, and in February 1872 Wyatt and Morgan were arrested “on a charge of being found in a house of ill fame.” Wyatt would be arrested twice more on the same charge but in different brothels. He may have been a steady customer at these houses of prostitution in Peoria, but it is more likely that he and probably Virgil and Morgan worked as bouncers at such places.
However, at some point in 1873, when he was twenty-five, Wyatt realized he had to quit Peoria and its court system for good. He could go back to buffalo hunting, but soon after he did, he put his nose to the Panhandle breeze and whiffed the scent of a dying industry. He may have also detected the pungent odor of a new one emerging, that of shipping cattle north and east. In their camps, hunters had to notice the trail drives coming up from the south and passing through Texas and Oklahoma to Kansas towns like Wichita and Abilene and others connected by railroad tracks. A young man with a talent for gambling and who could keep a cool head unfettered by whiskey could leave the bloody work behind and strive to make a good living in one of those towns.
The cow town that Wyatt went to first was Ellsworth. It was smack in the middle of Kansas, north and west of Wichita, connected by the railroad to Abilene. It lay on the treeless banks of the Smoky Hill River, surrounded by tall-grass prairie. In 1871, with the Kansas Pacific Railroad having come through on its gradual way west, Ellsworth had rivaled Abilene as a cattle-shipping town. The railroad had helped to fund the survey of a new cattle trail southeast to the Chisholm Trail, laying out a long welcome mat to Texas ranchers. They took full advantage of it, and in 1873 tens of thousands of cattle were filling the holding pens and railroad cars.
Why Wyatt would travel that far north from the Panhandle is not known, other than that Ellsworth may have appeared a more promising town to try before Wichita and Dodge City became more active cow towns. Until the financial panic back east that year curbed its activities, Ellsworth was a gambler’s paradise and an oasis for cowboys looking for other forms of recreation. The dance-hall girls were kept busy, and a few were pretty formidable gamblers, too. One, known as Prairie Rose, bet a cowboy fifty dollars that she would shed her clothes and stroll down the main street. Never figuring a woman would do that, the cowboy accepted the wager and reported it back to his comrades. At five the next morning a naked Prairie Rose did walk down the street, but she held two cocked six-shooters and shouted out that she would put a bullet in the first cowboy face that appeared in a window.
An incident that places Wyatt in Ellsworth in 1873 involved two of the frontier’s more dramatic characters. In June, after a bunch of cowboys had shot up the town, the police department was expanded to five officers. These included the brothers Ben and Billy Thompson, gunmen and gamblers who believed that the police force, headed by Marshal Brocky Jack and his chief deputy, Happy Jack Morco—who had wound up in Ellsworth after leaving behind in Oregon a wife and charges of killing four men—was corrupt and populated by men who were more degenerate than the men they tossed in jail. However, Chauncey Whitney, the sheriff of Ellsworth County, was a respected lawman and a Civil War veteran. The problem for citizens was that Whitney had only limited jurisdiction within Brocky Jack’s territory.
Ben Thompson, in particular, was not a man to aggravate. He had been born in West Yorkshire, England, on November 2, 1843. While he was a child, the Thompson family emigrated to America, settling in Austin, Texas. As a teenager, Ben learned how to set type, and he was bent on becoming a printer. The Civil War changed those plans: two months after the attack on Fort Sumter, he enlisted in the 2nd Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, H Company, and somehow his brother, Billy, barely sixteen, managed to join the Confederate Army, too. Ben was wounded during the Battle of Galveston in 1863, but he returned to his regiment, and he and Billy saw further action.
When the war ended, Ben became a mercenary, finding work fighting for Emperor Maximilian in the Mexican Revolution. Along the way Ben acquired a wife. When word reached him in Mexico that his wife had been attacked by her own brother, Ben returned to Texas and beat up the abuser so badly that Ben was tried and convicted of attempted murder and sent to Huntsville Prison. His stay was a short one, though, as he received a full pardon. Ben hit the road as a gambler, working his way up into Kansas, and could be recognized for his fine clothes, mustache, and top hat.
Thompson would soon play a crucial role in Bat Masterson’s life. Years later, Bat reminisced that the debonair gunman “was a remarkable man in many ways and it is very doubtful if in his time there was another man living who equaled him with the pistol in a life and death struggle. The very name of Ben Thompson was enough to cause the general run of ‘man killers,’ even those who had never seen him, to seek safety in instant flight.”
Ben had tussled with lawmen before, including the most feared one: James Butler Hickok. As with Wyatt Earp, Illinois could not contain a restless man, especially one who would earn the name Wild Bill. As a spy and scout in the Civil War, Hickok had fought against the Confederates in Arkansas and Missouri, with many of the rebs being from Texas. Having an understanding of such men was an advantage when he began wearing a badge in the Kansas cow towns and most of the cowboys were from Texas. What helped more, of course, was his tall, lean stature, long auburn locks and mustache, and that he could outdraw any man in a gunfight.
Hickok wore two Colt Model 1851s. Each was a .36-caliber percussion pistol weighing less than three pounds and which had been engraved at the Colt factory by the master engraver there, Gustav Young. The guns were nicknamed “Navy” across the West because of the naval warfare scene depicting a battle between Texas ships and the Mexican navy that was inscribed on the cylinders of the first run produced in 1850. General Robert E. Lee had carried an 1851 Colt pistol during the Civil War, and another owner was Richard Burton, the English explorer. It is not known for certain how Hickok acquired his guns in 1869. One story has them being a gift from Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts when Hickok guided him and friends through the Arkansas River territory. Another has them being presented to the quick-handed lawman by the Union Pacific Railroad as a reward for getting Hays, Kansas, under control. Wild Bill rarely used his left hand to shoot; the second gun was more of a backup in case the right-hand gun misfired or ran out of bullets. One photo shows him wearing the Navy Colts with the butts pointing forward, known as a “crossdraw” style.
The ivory-hilted and silver-mounted pistols impressed the men, and his looks as well as his shirts of the finest linen and boots of the thinnest kid leather impressed the ladies. But what impressed frontier people the most was his shooting. Tales of his legendary accuracy made the rounds, going back to July 21, 1865. On that day in Springfield, Missouri, Hickok was challenged to a duel by Davis Tutt. Standing sideways and seventy-five yards away, Tutt must have assumed he was safe from serious injury and that his honor would be restored. He died honorably, at least, when Hickok shot him through the heart.
Hickok became marshal of Abilene in 1871, just as all hell was beginning to bust loose there. He already had enough of a reputation as a gunslinger that he could allow the cowboys enjoying the saloons and prostitutes between trail drives to wear their guns and know that would not instigate trouble. Indeed, using a frontier form of reverse psychology, the intimidating marshal knew the cowboys would figure out that either they would never want to cause trouble while wearing a gun and have to go up against Wild Bill, or the smartest play was to leave their gun belts in their saddlebags.
That same year, Ben Thompson and a partner, Phil Coe, arrived in Abilene and established the Bull’s Head Tavern & Gambling Saloon. Ben’s first brush with the law there was when he painted a huge and lewd bull on the outside wall. Citizens complained, Hickok ordered it removed, and Thompson refused. Instead of going for his gun, Hickok went for a can of paint and a brush and covered the bull. As tough as Thompson was, he was not about to go up against the marshal himself.
A different strategy presented itself when John Wesley Hardin hit town. The precocious gunslinger, then eighteen years old, was on the run from an arrest warrant in Texas. After a few visits to the Bull’s Head, Thompson pointed out to him that Hickok hated rebels and was a damn Yankee who needed killing. Hardin looked Hickok up. However, the young man immediately saw Wild Bill as an idol, and the marshal took a liking to the fugitive kid. He made Hardin a deal: he would pretend he had no knowledge of the Texas warrant if the teenager refrained from killing anyone while in Abilene.
The deal did not last long. One night while Hardin was asleep in the American Hotel, an intruder entered. Not waiting to learn of the man’s intentions, Hardin grabbed his gun and fired, killing him. Also not waiting long enough to even pull on pants, Hardin jumped out a back window as Hickok hurried into the front lobby. Hardin landed in a small wagon, which he drove south, possibly preferring Texas to Wild Bill’s six-shooters. Along the way, he found a cowboy and took his pants and horse. Hardin told the cowboy to return the wagon and “give Wild Bill my love.” He never set foot in Abilene again.
Ben Thompson would soon have another reason to dislike Hickok. Phil Coe became infatuated by a saloon girl named Jessie Hazel. As it happened, Wild Bill was drawing her under his spell, embittering Ben’s partner. One night during a card game that included Hickok and Coe, there was an accusation of cheating. Coe went for his gun, but his fate was sealed as soon as the marshal’s cleared leather. Unfortunately, Hickok fired more than once, and a stray bullet killed one of his deputies. The marshal was furious. He kicked all the cowboys out of Abilene and patrolled the streets with a shotgun, daring anyone to show himself wearing a weapon.
With his partner in the ground, Thompson decided to relocate, and that is how, with his brother Billy, Ben wound up in Ellsworth. One day in August 1873, the brothers and Happy Jack and another policeman, John Sterling, were gambling in a saloon owned by a man named Brennan. The combination of alcohol and charges of cheating proved combustible. Arguing led to Sterling punching Ben Thompson in the face, which led to guns being drawn. The combatants spilled out into the street and shots were fired. What prevented bloodshed was the appearance of Sheriff Whitney, whom the Thompsons trusted. They agreed to join the sheriff for a drink back in the saloon.
Unfortunately, Billy still held a shotgun with the hammers up. When Happy Jack, unhappy with Whitney’s interference in the dispute, confronted Ben with a brandished pistol, Billy’s immediate (and drunken) reaction was to pull the triggers. He shot the sheriff. According to witnesses, Ben said, “My God, Billy, you have shot our best friend.” Worse than that, the shot would prove to be a fatal one.
Ben told his brother to get on a horse and ride like hell out of town. Billy did just that. The mayor of Ellsworth, James Miller, appeared and told the remaining brother to give up his guns. Ben refused. Brocky Jack, Happy Jack, and another policeman stood with their hands on their guns. Flooding out of the nearby saloons were cowboys eager to fight alongside another Texan. When the standoff continued long enough, the frustrated mayor fired the entire police department. Now what?
Stuart Lake’s biography claimed that Wyatt Earp arrived on the scene to see what all the commotion was about, and the mayor immediately made him the new marshal of Ellsworth. However unlikely this is, it does seem that Wyatt intervened to help defuse the situation. He may have encountered Thompson before, perhaps only just weeks earlier as fellow gamblers in the saloons, or maybe he simply didn’t want to see his new hometown shot up. A mortally wounded sheriff may have tipped the scales. In any case, this was Wyatt’s first confrontation that began to build his reputation as a lawman.
Wyatt told his third wife a few years later that he squared off against Ben Thompson: “I thought he would shoot me. I really expected to be killed unless I could see his wrist move in time to draw and fire before he could pull the trigger. I just kept looking him in the eye as I walked toward him. And when he started talking to me I was pretty sure I had him. I tried to talk in as pleasant a voice as I could manage and I told him to throw his gun in the road. He did and that’s all there was to it.”
Thompson was arrested by a county deputy sheriff named Edward O. Hougue. As soon as Ben was securely behind bars, a posse was formed to go find Billy. They went on their way, and shortly afterward a gambler friend of Ben’s, Cad Pierce, offered a thousand dollars for the formation of a new posse that would chase down and stop the first posse. There were no takers, but the first posse lost Billy’s trail, anyway.
The next day, Ben Thompson was brought before a judge. He was fined twenty-five dollars, he paid it, and then he rode off to track down his brother. A new police force was installed in Ellsworth, and one of its members killed Cad Pierce in a gunfight. Billy eventually returned to Ellsworth and was acquitted of murder. Before Whitney died, the sheriff stated that his shooting had been an accident.
When Wyatt finally arrived in Wichita, in 1874, the town was at its peak in transporting cattle, with one reasonable estimate being eighty thousand of them packed into railroad cars and sent off to the slaughterhouses. Some years before, the site had been little more than tall, waving prairie grass on the bank of the Arkansas River, and now it was a bustling, noisy, dusty Eden for ranchers selling their animals. Wyatt’s older brother James, now married to a woman named Bessie, had already settled in Wichita, working at a saloon. Bessie operated a brothel. (In a census taken the following year, Bessie’s occupation was listed as “Sporting.”)
With a steady flow of cowboys into town, saloons were springing up on every corner. Officials went so far as to post signs on the trails leading in that read EVERYTHING GOES IN WICHITA. At night, wafting through the dry air and vying with the stench of the penned-up cattle, were the scents of beer and whiskey, horses, cheap perfume, and men who had gone too long between baths.
The tinkling of pianos came from the saloons, background to the laughter and the occasional crashing sounds when a fight broke out. It took a lot of rambunctiousness to put a cowboy in jail, where he could not spend money. Besides going to alcohol, that money was taken readily enough by the card players who stayed glued to chairs at saloon gaming tables. Young women in fluffy dresses offered songs and other favors. In Wichita, prostitution was legal as long as the ladies were licensed.
The city was gaining the sort of reputation that would soon be replicated and exceeded by Dodge City’s. “Wichita resembles a brevet hell after sundown,” intoned The St. Louis Republican. “Brass bands whooping it up; harlots and hack drivers yelling and cursing; dogs yelping, pistols going off; bullwhackers cracking their whips; saloons open wide their doors, and gayly attired females thump and drum up pianos, and in dulcet tones and mocking smiles invite the boys in and night is commenced in earnest.”
One of those fights led to Wyatt becoming a Wichita lawman. In May 1874, a brawl broke out in one of the saloons that spilled out into the streets, inviting more participants to join in. Somehow, Wyatt got mixed up in it and was arrested. He was being escorted to the jail by the deputy marshal when a new group of rowdy cowboys entered town. With the deputy marshal looking for a way out, Wyatt talked the newcomers out of causing further damage. When Marshal Bill Smith heard about this, he offered Wyatt the deputy marshal’s job. Wyatt took it, though it was not a full-time position, more of an as-needed job.
Wyatt joined not a moment too soon. That same month, Charley Sanders returned home to find two Texas cowboys attempting to have their way with his wife. He was a strapping, black hod carrier, and the cowboys were no match for him. Sanders beat them both badly and tossed them out in the street. This humiliation had to be avenged. The next day the two bruised men and several other cowboys rode into town, found Sanders working at the construction of a building, and shot him twice. Rather than wait for the marshal, the men went and found Smith, who wouldn’t dare challenge so many guns. He stepped aside and the cowboys sauntered off. Clearly, a more aggressive form of policing was needed in Wichita.
The town got it, Wyatt’s way. Ida May was the owner of a brothel who provided a piano from Kansas City purchased for $1000 as additional entertainment. Actually, she had paid a quarter of that price and didn’t bother forking over the remaining $750. The piano store owner wired the marshal’s office in Wichita, requesting that the piano be repossessed and held until he could come get it. Wyatt showed up at the brothel with several men to do just that. When he found the parlor filled with drunken cowboys, he shamed them into passing the hat for money to make a payment on the piano. It stayed in the parlor, but the Texans were angry with Wyatt’s manner.
The next day, about fifty of them banded together on the southwest side of the Arkansas River, led by a man named Mannen “Gip” Clements, who was a cousin of John Wesley Hardin. It was time to remind the law who really ruled Wichita. Expecting trouble, Wyatt had recruited a force of gun-toting citizens to support the police force, and they waited on the Wichita side of the river. When the cowboys rode across the bridge, they were surprised to be confronted. Wyatt, with a shotgun crooked in his arm, ordered Clements and his men to holster their pistols. There was a tense standoff for a few moments; then the cowboys returned to their camp.
By now, a host of Hollywood screenwriters would have concocted plots based on a chance meeting in Wichita between the man who would become the most famous lawman of the West and a thirteen-year-old who would become one of its most notorious outlaws. There are accounts of Henry Antrim and his mother living in an apartment near the courthouse where Wyatt worked. He had been born William Henry McCarty Jr. in New York City, and after his mother married William Antrim, the boy was called by his middle name. He and his mother were stopping for a while in the bustling Wichita on their way to New Mexico, where he would achieve infamy as Billy the Kid. Alas, here is a case of the legend being more enticing than the fact: his mother had married Antrim and they had settled in New Mexico the year before, and in 1874 she died of tuberculosis.
In late October, Wyatt was called upon to chase down a group of men identified in the local press as the “Higgenbotham outfit.” These “scalawags,” as The Wichita City Eagle called them, had toted up over twenty thousand dollars in debts and run out on them by stealing a man’s new wagon. The theft victim filed a complaint, and officers John Behrens and Wyatt set off. They tracked the wagon for seventy-five miles. One has to think there was a more effective way for the fugitives to make good their escape, or they never expected the lawmen to be so persistent. In any case, Behrens and Wyatt confronted the Higgenbotham outfit with shotguns and six-shooters, and restitution was arranged.
In Wichita, Wyatt was putting his life back together, but he was no choirboy. In between his deputy responsibilities he was a gambler and, evidence indicates, working again as a bordello bouncer or manager. This would not necessarily be redemption in the modern sense, but in Wichita at that time that was a legitimate occupation. Someone had to protect the “soiled doves,” as prostitutes were often condescendingly called, from the cowboys, miners, mule skinners, and other ruffians who could be violent. Moonlighting lawmen often made for good guardians, much the same as policemen today moonlight as security guards—though not, presumably, where prostitution is being practiced.
That Wyatt was wearing a badge regularly and was gaining the trust of the citizenry in Wichita was a form of redemption. And it would seem his grieving over Aurilla had faded, because there was a new woman in his life, one who would be considered his second wife, even if they never wound up standing in front of a preacher.
Sarah Haspel was sixteen at the time that Wyatt worked for her mother at the brothel in Peoria. Their “wedding,” such as it was, had occurred in September 1872, when Sarah and Wyatt were arrested and a Peoria newspaper identified her as Sarah Earp. (Wyatt was identified as “the Peoria bummer.”) Sarah’s father, Frederick Haspel, a German immigrant, had lost a leg while fighting in the Union Army and did not return to Illinois afterward. By then, Jane Haspel had three youngsters to feed and house, and she did so by opening a brothel. During Sarah’s teenage years, she became one of her mother’s employees.
Whatever detours Wyatt took in 1872–1873, when he arrived in Wichita he had Sarah with him. Carrying on the family tradition—both families, it seems—she joined forces with Bessie Earp in operating a brothel. This was not anything like the domestic life that Wyatt had envisioned and had begun to live in Lamar, but now he was older and wiser about life and how much to expect from it. Wichita was home now, he had a “wife,” at least one of his brothers was a neighbor, and once again—at least, most of the time—Wyatt was working on the right side of the law. For now—maybe for good—this was enough.