The point most in doubt was King's motive. He was drunk, and when he was drunk, he was mean, as his whole history confirmed. He was angry with Bat Masterson. But was he angry over the card game at the Lady Gay or over Bat's attentions to Mollie Brennan? Of course, the practical consequences were the same whatever King's motive, but such questions provide the seedbed for the embroideries of legend. And the possibility of a romantic involvement was just too good an angle to pass up. Almost all third-party accounts by contemporaries imply an affair between Bat and Mollie, including those of Wyatt Earp (who heard the story secondhand), Kate Elder, Frank Warren and Miles O'Loughlin. Chroniclers from E.G. Little, writing for Everybody's in 1902, to Stuart Lake in 1931, to a bevy of latter-day 'authorities' could not resist having poor Mollie die for her man.

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But the root cause of the fight appears to have been the poker game at the Lady Gay. Lewis, in the The Sunset Trail, went so far as to have Masterson publicly humiliate King in an armed confrontation, from which King slunk away only to return for his revenge. Although Lewis certainly got much of his story from Bat himself, this appears to have been one of Lewis' embellishments. What is clear is that King was disgruntled and left the saloon after losing money to Bat. On that score, Lewis, Tom Masterson, Kate Elder and Frank Warren all agreed. Other variations, involving King's rage at seeing Mollie and Bat dancing together or, in a variation, King drawing when Bat walked in to find the corporal and the girl dancing, seem less credible.

Curiously, Bat Masterson was always very close-mouthed about the Sweetwater affair. When asked about it in 1881 by the Kansas City Journal, Bat replied simply, 'I had a little difficulty with some soldiers down there, but never mind, I dislike to talk about it.' In The Sunset Trail and again in 'The King of the Gunplayers,' an article about Bat he wrote for Human Life in 1907, Lewis played down the relationship between Bat and Mollie, suggesting that Mollie had a crush on Bat and that King was obsessed with Mollie. Lewis portrayed Mollie as a bystander whom King persuaded to knock on the door for him. Accounts that came from Tom Masterson, Bat's brother, also played down the romantic connection, but the strangest account of all was the one Bat Masterson gave under oath in May 1913. Bat filed a lawsuit against the Commercial Advertiser Association, a New York newspaper organization that had published an article critical of him. According to the unpublished trial record, when questioned about the King episode by his attorney, Bat said:

Well, there was a little bit of a camp, like, right off the Reservation [Cantonment Sweetwater], where they sold whiskey and general merchandise–a kind of one of those general merchandise stores. And this soldier had come down there, and I had taken down a load of grain and stuff to this store with my team; and he had had some trouble with some other soldiers, apparently that night, and he was pretty full–

The Court: You mean intoxicated?

The Witness: Intoxicated; and about twelve o'clock at night–I know I was just getting ready to go back, when I stepped out of the door he shot me right through the stomach; it went plumb through me, clear through me, with a big pistol.

By the Court:

Q. Colt's?

A. A Colt's

Q. A Colt's 45?

A. A Colt's 45 army pistol. It knocked me down; I fell about five or six feet from him.

By Mr. Patterson [Bat's attorney]:

Q. Then what did he do?

A. I got mine out and shot him. He tried to shoot me again before I shot him; he shot again and shot a woman, a clerk in the store, and killed her. The second shot he fired struck her, and then I shot him, while I was down with the bullet through my stomach. This was all without any preliminary warning to me whatever….

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