In 1877 J. H. Beadle published Western Wilds and The Men Who Redeem Them, a compilation of his travels in “the far west.”

When he visited Ellsworth, Kan., in the fall of 1867 he was pleased to meet Wild Bill Hickok and many border characters who may not have carried Hickok’s reputation but had achieved a certain amount of celebrity amongst their peers.

Beadle noted, “Those were the days of your ‘Wild Bills’ ... and ‘Long Steves,’ your ‘Dad Smith’, ‘Rake Jake’ and Tom Smith of Bear River ... A short life and a merry one,” was their motto.

The Rake Jake mentioned by Beadle was J. H. “Rake Jake” Runkle, the Ellsworth County prosecutor. Rake Jake declared that, “for 93 days there was a homicide every day in the town or the vicinity.”

Ellsworth easily lived up to its reputation for having “a man for break fast every morning.”

The Leavenworth Daily Conservative concurred with the observation that in Ellsworth no “fouler birds ever congregated around the putrid carcass of a departed ox than those which frequent and tenant the brimstone scented dens of this modern Sodom.”

The same editor noted that in two days, four men had been killed. The tent that the city council erected for a “guardhouse” did little to curb the violence. Ellsworth needed a secure jail but that wouldn’t come about for several more months.

Into this tragic frontier drama desperate men and women and even a few children were cast to play out their lives. Ellsworth’s dangerous streets became 7-year-old Miguel Antonio Otero’s playground and provided an education like no other imaginable.

Otero described the town as a “tough little hole … almost wholly a town of tents and small, rough, frame buildings, but as busy a place as can be imagined.”

To a young wide-eyed youth, the town must have fueled the wildest of imaginations.

“It seemed as if nearly every other house in the town was a drinking place, while gambling rooms and dance halls and other questionable resorts were most common. Shooting scrapes were every-day occurrences, and the nights were frequently made hideous by drunken men firing off pistols promiscuously and shouting like bands of wild Comanches.”

The names of most of those wild characters have been lost to time but some were made immortal with a mention in the newspapers. Everyone has heard of Bat Masterson, but before Bat’s family arrived in the great state of Kansas Brag Masterson debuted on the western stage.

According to the story published in the April 29, 1868, Lawrence Daily Kansas Union, a young fellow going by “Brag” Masterson had, on Monday April 13, been suffering from an unnamed sickness. That was unfortunate enough for Masterson, but Gasper F. Fish, a border brigand of the type that lurked on Ellsworth’s streets and in its dens of distraction, took unfair advantage. Masterson was beaten, “ill used,” and apparently left in a very bad way.

The next day Masterson, having apparently recovered from both his sickness and the thrashing that Fish had given him, sought out Fish. Masterson soon found him and asked him to recall the epithets used the day before. Fish immediately drew his knife, swearing as he “sprang” towards Masterson. This time Masterson, ready for a fight, drew his pistol and fired. Fish was dead before he hit the ground.

An earlier report from the Leavenworth Times stated that Masterson had escaped. However, a later report revealed that he was either captured or had surrendered to authorities. He was taken before Justice of the Peace Michael Newton and discharged due to a verdict of justifiable homicide, a verdict that was all too common on the free-wheeling Kansas frontier. Brag Masterson walked away from his deadly vengeful encounter a free man. You might say Masterson could “brag” that he had seen the worst of Ellsworth and lived to tell the story.

I was hoping to find more about Masterson, but he eluded every search that I could come up with. For now, I have had to accept that Brag Masterson has regrettably faded from the pages of history.

As for Rake Jake Runkle, J. H. Beadle followed his story to South Carolina, where Rake Jake was appointed the Fifth Circuit U. S. Attorney during reconstruction in the South. Runkle was not well-received by the locals and operated with a target on his back. Beadle told a story of how he and two companions barricaded themselves in a cabin in defense against “vigilantes”. When they discovered that the cabin had been set on fire the men charged from within “with a revolver in each hand, scattering leaden death on all sides, the three died ... brave men to the last.”

Yes, those were the days when your Wild Bills and Rake Jakes ventured forth to shape Kansas history on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.