Young Cook did not adjust well to his return to farm life. On July 21, 1866, he enlisted in the 16th Infantry and soon headed south for Reconstruction duty in Georgia. He was apparently a good soldier, but he developed a penchant for getting into trouble. On August 30, 1867, near Macon, Ga., Corporal Cook fired his musket at a dog ‘without orders to do so’ and wounded another soldier in the foot. He was charged with ‘conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline.’ He was acquitted at his court-martial, which found him ‘guilty of the facts as stated’ but attached no criminality to his act.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Cook was promoted to sergeant, but over the next two years his rowdy behavior kept him in trouble. He was involved in a riot at Albany, Ga. Confined to the post, he walked away from arrest, and when reprimanded by his commanding officer, Cook attacked him. Cook was reduced in rank and sentenced to hard labor for one year with forfeiture of pay, but the sentence was reduced in view of ‘his previous gallant services.’ He was transferred to the 2nd Infantry, but he was soon in trouble again on charges related to drunkenness, brawling, gross insubordination and absence without leave. Apparently, he was a reliable soldier when sober, but he had developed a serious drinking problem. Eventually, on August 24, 1869, after assaulting a fellow jailed soldier during a dispute over some jailhouse game, he was dishonorably discharged at Mobile, Ala.

Cook headed straight for New Orleans, where, on October 28, 1869, he enlisted again, this time in the 4th Cavalry under the name ‘Melvin A. King.’ In 1871, the 4th Cavalry replaced the 6th Cavalry on the Texas frontier as the primary striking force against the Comanches and Kiowas. King apparently had cleaned up his act and limited his rowdy behavior to leaves because there were no further courts-martial. Far from the hulking brute the legend would later make of him, King was a blue-eyed, brown-haired man of only 5 feet, 5 1/2 inches in height. He was regarded as a good soldier by his officers and the enlisted men who served with him. He also acquired new skills. King’s company herded remounts for the regiment, and he became an accomplished wrangler.

When the Red River War broke out in 1874, King’s company was initially stuck with escort duty between Fort McKavett and San Antonio, but in August, Company H joined Colonel Ranald Mackenzie (who had been a Civil War general) in the field. That September, King was in the Palo Duro Canyon fight, which broke the power of the Comanches on the southern Plains.

At the end of October, Private King was discharged. The next six months remain a mystery. So far, those ‘authenticated’ raids on the cow towns have eluded researchers, but if they did occur, they most likely happened during this brief hiatus from service. On April 29, 1875, at Fort Richardson, he re-enlisted and rejoined his old company. He was promoted to corporal almost at once and assigned as ‘herder in charge of Indian ponies.’ In June 1875, he was relieved of that duty and assigned as Colonel Mackenzie’s orderly until October, when he went on detached service to Cantonment Sweetwater and his date with destiny.

Bat Masterson arrived in Sweetwater that December, hauling goods for the Army, as he would later testify. He found the place filled with buffalo hunters in from the range to warm their backsides and their insides in the hamlet’s saloons. More than 400 of them wintered there along with the storekeepers, government employees, teamsters, gamblers and dance hall girls. Frequently, soldiers from nearby Cantonment Sweetwater swelled the numbers in the saloons and dance hall even more. As Bat would point out later, ‘Everything was quiet…for two or three months and then [shortly after he arrived] things went lickety-bang.’

On the night of January 24, 1876, Bat joined the festivities at the Lady Gay Saloon. According to Kate Elder, he was soon absorbed in a poker game with Harry Fleming, Jim Duffy and Corporal King. Eyewitnesses said that King lost and left the Lady Gay disgruntled. After the game, Bat fell into conversation with a soiled dove named Mollie Brennan. Brennan was well known in her profession. At some point she had worked as a prostitute in Denison, Texas. In 1872 she showed up in Ellsworth, Kan., where she married Joe Brennan, a saloonkeeper. In 1873, Mollie became involved with Billy Thompson. When he left town on the run after the death of Sheriff Whitney, she apparently followed him to Texas, but she was back in Ellsworth in 1875 in time for the state census. After that, she rejoined Thompson in Texas and probably arrived in Sweetwater with him. She was now apparently a dance hall girl at Charlie Norton’s place, along with ‘the seven Jolly sisters,’ and probably Kate Elder, who had come down to Sweetwater from Tom Sherman’s dance hall in Dodge. Mollie was in the Lady Gay that night because Norton’s place was closed. The girls had decided to take a night off.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to