Bat Masterson: Two Worlds of Bat Masterson

William Bartholomew “Bat” Masterson (1853- or 1856-1921) was a lawman, soldier, gambler and writer, a man belonging solidly in both the Old West and the modern East Coast. At a young age Masterson, like so many others of his time, left home to hunt buffalo on the grassy plains of the West. On June 27, 1874, he took place in what would become the Second Battle of Adobe Walls at Adobe Walls, Texas. The Southern Plains tribes of the area surrounded the three adobe buildings at the center of town and, at dawn, they attacked. Masterson and 28 other settlers barricaded themselves in and fought through windows and cracks in the walls. Miraculously, when the dust settled the next day, the Indians had given up the fight and the settlers had won. In his later years, Masterson became interested in boxing and athletics and began to write a sports column for the Denver paper "George’s Weekly." When President Roosevelt appointed him U.S. Marshal for the southern district of New York, Masterson took his writing with him and began a column for the "New York Morning Telegraph." He died in his office at the "Telegraph" of a heart attack in 1921, his last column still unfinished in the typewriter.