By the spring of 1874, the sight of Texas drovers milling about on Main Street, even a throng of them armed in defiance of local ordinance, was familiar to the residents of Wichita, Kansas. For the past two years, the town had fattened on the cattle trade, literally rising out of patches of sunflowers to build thoroughfares hopping with business, stockyards filled to overflowing and a branch line to freight this cash on the hoof to Kansas City and points east. To a town still struggling through a delicate infancy, the cowboys and their critters were a means of survival, and to almost every citizen, the more of them on the streets, the better.

One who had no cause to feel charitable toward the Texans, however, was Charles Sanders, a black man busy assisting the masons as they finished the facade of the Miller Building on the afternoon of May 27. Two or three nights before, apparently under the influence of liquor, he had quarreled with Charles Schultz, one of the drovers. Both had been arrested and fined. Their cases were dismissed, and they had parted ways, but if Sanders had glanced around the crowd suddenly pushing in on him and spied a face he recognized from that encounter, he must have felt uneasy.

He had no time to feel anything else but blinding pain. One of Schultz’s pards, a hothead named Shorty Ramsey, stepped up to Sanders, brought his sidearm to bear in deadly earnest and drilled the unfortunate workman twice — first in the ear and then three inches below the nipple of the left breast — inflicting wounds that would soon prove fatal. The Wichita Eagle of May 28, described the ensuing commotion: ‘Simultaneously with the shooting a dozen revolvers were pulled by bystanding Texans, and Ramsey mounted his horse and fled down Main Street out Douglas Avenue and across the bridge, followed by two or three hundred men, many of whom had revolvers in hand, but whether for protection of the fleeing fugitive or his capture seemed doubtful to us until we were told it was for the protection of the shooting party. The city marshal was standing close by, but seeing it was a preconcerted job, evidently, and being threatened with drawn weapons, Smith could do nothing.’

The marshal, William Smith, had been born in England, but was one of the pioneers who sank roots in the shifting soil along the banks of the Arkansas River when Wichita repeated the pattern of thousands of frontier towns, nourishing its growth as much on dream as on substance. Smith was sufficiently respected by his peers to be named the first marshal, in April 1871, though ‘existing emergencies,’ which necessitated his being out of town, brought about his resignation after a tenure of but two days. Still, he had served in one legal capacity or another since that time to the satisfaction of his constituents. His record of community service made it all the more disappointing, to some, that he chose to heed the advice of local merchants and compromise on this killing, allowing Ramsey to return to his camp on nearby Cowskin Creek, pack up his gear and make good his escape. The great cattle drives of the summer were on the horizon, and other shipping points such as Great Bend and Ellsworth could and would snatch prospective trade away if the drovers thought Wichita authorities were hostile to them. In sum, what was the life of a lowly laborer, and a black man at that, when weighed in the balance with civic prosperity?

Such is the story the records of this incident tell. But by chance there is another version of what happened that day, an insider’s account. It appears in Stuart N. Lake’s biography of the famed Wyatt Earp. Having arrived in Wichita two days before the shooting, Earp found himself that afternoon in the awkward position of being under arrest for having roughed up a hotel proprietor. Harvey W. ‘Doc’ Black had been beating a small chore boy when Earp and several men intervened, and Doc was soon flat on his back, the recipient of a left-right combination, one blow to each eye. Regaining his senses, he preferred charges, and Wyatt was placed in a temporary jail near the Douglas Avenue bridge. It was from this vantage point that he witnessed Ramsey fleeing on his horse and heard Marshal Smith telling the Texans who had covered the killer’s escape that he would not molest them if they would put up their guns.

Thus far, the Earp account tallies with that of Marsh Murdock, editor of the Eagle. Murdock voiced harsh criticism of Smith’s inaction, urging Mayor James G. Hope in print to reorganize his police department. A week later, the editor complained that some businessmen had berated him unjustly for his stance, despite his ‘devotion to the best welfare and interests of Wichita.’ Lake enlarged on this theme, adding a scene in which Mayor Hope makes an adjustment on the spot by offering Wyatt Earp the job of deputy marshal. Wyatt accepts only after hearing the mayor’s assurance that he can make the town ordinances stick ‘to the limit’ against the lawless Texans.

The City Council reports are clear on one point: Earp was not on the payroll as a ‘deputy marshal’ (read patrolman) in Wichita until April 1875. However, he may well have enlisted as a member of the secret police. Murdock explained why he thought this paralegal group was necessary: ‘We have a secret police force all sworn and armed…which was organized in view of an outrage committed this spring in broad daylight upon a principal street….’ What he alluded to, of course, was Sanders’ murder. The force numbered in excess of 100, among them, according to the Eagle of July 9, 1874, ‘our best and most substantial citizens, many of whom were men of rank in the late war and who know how and dare to use arms when it comes to sustaining the majesty of the law.’ Being underage, Wyatt did not serve in the Civil War, but as a new resident willing to shoulder arms, he would have been welcomed into the ranks.

The coldblooded killing proved that the drovers could present a mortal threat to Wichitans. But remarkably it is the single instance on record, either in the newspapers or municipal files, of the cattlemen being responsible for a citizen’s death.

Another inside story drawn from the recollections of old-timers illustrates that Texans were not all of one breed. As Wyatt Earp’s authorized biographer tells it, one Saturday afternoon in early summer 1874, Deputy Earp heard a call for aid from a fellow officer. Policeman Samuel Botts (mistakenly identified as Bill Potts) had attempted to disarm prominent cattleman Abel ‘Shanghai’ Pierce, who was carrying his .45-caliber hogleg in an open holster, contrary to the no-firearms law, and causing a disturbance to market-day traffic on Main Street. Botts lacked the nerve to put the drunken and obnoxious herdsman in his place. But Earp, coming on the scene, at once clamped down on Pierce’s gunhand, disarming him in a stroke, and then picked up the 6-foot-4 scofflaw by the seat of his britches and hurled him into a saloon jampacked with his fellow cowhands. This rough treatment of their boss, however well deserved, incensed them, and as a result Earp had to face 40 six-shooters trained on him by the aroused Texans. Thanks to some neat maneuvering, he was able to get the drop on the entire gang with a shotgun and march them into police court, where, according to the recollections of fellow officer James Cairns, they were fined a total of $1,000.

A contemporary newspaper account verifies that this incident took place but weaves a somewhat different tale. Botts did come up against a man carrying a gun within the city limits, and he disarmed him, but then some 12 or 14 others drew their weapons on the policeman and prevented him from making an arrest. The police alarm, an iron triangle hung outside the courthouse at First and Main, clanged urgently, and in short order there appeared, not Deputy Earp alone, but 40 or 50 citizens armed with shotguns and Henry rifles — the secret police.

The Texans, now outnumbered and outgunned, sought refuge in a hotel, where they were surrounded and taken into custody, their leader stripped of his hardware by attorney Seth Tucker. The police judge’s report for July 1874 identifies the men who were tried and sentenced, and the name of Abel Pierce is not among them. Pierce, who had worked on behalf of Wichita in securing cattle trade during 1873 and been paid $2,000 for his efforts, was not in town during the summer of 1874.

Rather, he had sold his services to Ellsworth, a rival shipping point, and was out on the Chisholm Trail steering herds toward his present employer. Those arrested were not cattlemen at all but members of an outlaw gang headed by ‘Hurricane Bill’ Martin. Seven of them paid $17 apiece for their transgressions. The figure of $1,000 referred not to fines — which would almost have exceeded the total for the month — but to the amount of the bond set for Hurricane Bill’s release.

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