— THE OTHER MASTERSON —
Early morning gunfire disrupted a calm summer day in Dodge City in 1878. Several drunken Texas cowboys started the commotion when they decided to celebrate outside the Comique Variety Hall, recklessly firing their pistols.
Bullets riddled the inside walls of the saloon and narrowly missed lawmen Wyatt Earp and Jim Masterson.
Earp and Masterson scrambled to their feet, ran outside, and exchanged shots with the cowhands, most of whom were drunk and disorderly.
One of Earp’s rounds struck George Hoy, who tumbled off his horse with a bullet in the arm. He died less than a month later after the wound became infected.
Earp claimed he was the one who fired the fatal shot. However, during the several years Earp spent in Dodge City, Hoy was supposedly the only man he ever killed.
Masterson didn’t dispute Earp’s claim, but several onlookers believed Masterson was the one who fired the shot that brought down Hoy.
In his book Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends, author Allen Barra wrote that Earp created an “elaborate” conspiracy theory about the incident.
“Fifty years later Wyatt told (author/biographer) Stuart Lake that Hoy was part of a plot to assassinate him, that a $1,000 bounty had been put on his head by cattle bosses…”
According to Barra, Earp told Lake that the Globe newspaper “verified and later published Hoy’s story.”
However, Barra wrote, “No such story was ever printed, and if such a conspiracy existed, it has never been uncovered.”
James Masterson, the lesser-known brother of Bat Masterson and Ed Masterson, was not known for his gun skills and never achieved the fame Bat enjoyed. But it’s believed he participated in more shootouts than his famous sibling.
The other brother, Ed, was killed in the line of duty a year earlier.
At the time of the Hoy shooting, Masterson served as Assistant Deputy Marshal. Earp wore the badge of Deputy Marshal. During the two years Jim Masterson spent in Dodge, he made several hundred arrests.
He lost his job in 1881 because of a change of government, packed up, and left for Trinidad, Colorado. While working as a deputy sheriff, Masterson investigated the Trinidad Gunfight.
James, the third of seven children, was born September 18, 1855, in Iberville County, Quebec, Canada. Six years later, the family moved to the United States and spent time in New York and Illinois before settling near Wichita, Kansas, in 1871.
He and his brothers left for the American frontier a few years later and worked as buffalo hunters before relocating to Dodge.
After the Trinidad gunfight, Masterson moved on to Colfax County, New Mexico Territory, in 1885 and served as under-sheriff.
Masterson got involved in various high-profile cases as a lawman, including the Gray County (Kansas) County Seat War.
The younger Masterson ended up in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where he served as a deputy sheriff for Logan County.
In 1893, he was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal and participated in the Ingalls, Oklahoma, shootout with the Doolin Gang.
Jim Masterson died from tuberculosis on March 31, 1895, at the age of 39, and was interred in Wichita’s Highland Cemetery.
According to his obituary, “Jim Masterson was a man who never went back on a friend and never forgot an obligation.”
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