By 1879 an anti-Gang reform group was building. These people wanted a safe, moral environment in which to live and raise families. The Reformers, as they were called, were tired of newspapers across the country printing such things as: ‘The town [Dodge City] is full of prostitutes and every house is a brothel’ (Hays Sentinel); or ‘Dodge City. A Den of Thieves and Cut Throats–The Whole Town in League to Rob the Unwary Stranger’ (Yates Center News). Prohibition laws were passed in Kansas in 1880, but in Dodge, as the New York Herald reported,’saloons, gambling rooms and dance halls run with perfect freedom and their proprietors are the leading men in town.’ The Reformers were determined to change the situation.

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In the fall of 1879, Bat Masterson, a member of the Dodge City Gang, was defeated in a hotly contested race for sheriff of Ford County. Bat left town, but he would be drawn back to Dodge before long. The new sheriff, George T. Hinkle, was also a saloonkeeper and bartender, but he owned property and was generally considered an anti-Gang merchant. Hinkle’s election was heralded by the Reformers. Mayor Kelley and the city council held on until the April 1881 election, when they were all defeated.

The new mayor, Alonzo B. Webster, a New Yorker who had served in the Union cavalry during the Civil War and as a dispatch scout at Fort Hays after the war, opened a dry-goods store in Dodge in 1872. By the time of his election nine years later, Webster also owned two saloons. Nevertheless, he was one of the Reformers, and he aimed to stymie the Gang’s so-called rackets. On April 17, 1881, Mayor Webster posted this warning to the Dodge City Gang about one of the ‘moral’ ordinances supported by the new anti-liquor city councilmen: ‘To all whom it may concern: All thieves, thugs, confidence men, and persons without visible means of support, will take notice that the ordinance enacted for their special benefit will be rigorously enforced on and after tomorrow.’ He then fired Jim Masterson as city marshal, giving the job to Fred Singer, a bartender in one of his saloons.

Several months before the election, Jim Masterson had become a partner of A.J. Peacock in the Lady Gay Dance Hall and Saloon. Peacock hired his brother-in-law Al Updegraff as bartender. Masterson and Updegraff never got along. Masterson wanted to fire Updegraff, but Peacock sided with his brother-in-law, who supposedly filed a complaint for Masterson’s arrest. At this point someone sent an unsigned telegram to Bat in Tombstone asking him to help Jim. Bat immediately set out for Dodge City. He had already lost one brother there and didn’t intend to lose another. City Marshal Ed Masterson had been killed in April 1878 while trying to disarm a drunken cowboy.

Bat arrived by train on April 16, 1881, and immediately confronted Peacock and Updegraff, who were both armed. No one knows who fired the first bullet, but soon all three were firing. Masterson was along the railroad tracks firing south. Peacock and Updegraff took cover around the corner of the city jail just south of the railroad tracks. They were firing north directly toward the businesses on Front Street. Others joined in the gunplay–probably including Jim Masterson from the saloon–and for a few minutes it sounded like war had broken out. When the firing ceased, Mayor Webster and Marshal Singer ran up with shotguns and arrested Bat Masterson. Updegraff was the only one wounded, having been shot through the lung, perhaps by Bat. Businesses along Front Street lost their windows, but they, as well as Updegraff, recovered. Bat paid an $8 fine plus $2 court costs. He then got out of Dodge again, this time taking Jim, after Jim and Peacock had reached a financial settlement concerning the Lady Gay establishment.

The Lady Gay was purchased by Assistant Marshal Tom Nixon and a former buffalo hunter, Brick Bond. It was the only dance hall left in town. With the marshal running one of the two saloons owned by the mayor, these Reformer officials were essentially doing the same thing the Gang had done. Money collected from other saloons, gamblers and prostitutes was used to pay for Mayor Webster’s lawmen. Webster wasn’t so much after reform as he was out to control the action and profits.

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