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brought railroad
     construction gangs. The railroaders mapped a town on the north side of the Arkansas River, five miles west of the fort. Very
     quickly, the ruts of the old Santa Fe Trail saw a general store and ware house, three dancehalls and a half dozen saloons
     come into being. Dodge City was substituted for the really more descriptive “Buffalo City.” Here at the end of steel— where
     the Santa Fe was pushing south to the Rio Grande—swiftly boomed a roaring, hell-raising,gun-smoking frontier town, the equal of which the nation was never to see again.
    Smack up against the buffalo range, all Dodge City needed was railroad facilities to become the focal point of the hide business.
     And in those days buffalo hides were “Big Business.” Thousands of hunters proceeded to collect millions of dollars for hides
     and meat and to spend the dinero in unequalled hell raisin’. Other throngs of wild and salty railroad builders added their
     payrolls to the flood of gold. Fully a thousand freight teams consisting of from eight to sixteen horses to a single great
     wagon hauled supplies south, west and north. The bull-whackers, mule-skinners and others attached to this industry were not
     of the modest violet type. Their chief ambition in life seemed to be to blow the wages of months in a single night of wild
     carousal in Dodge City. Several hundred soldiers and Indian scouts from Fort Dodge had similar notions. Dodge City was going
     strong, but hadn’t really seen nothin’ yet!
    For the longhorns were on the march. The great herds began rolling up the Jones and Plummer Trail, and with them came their
     cowboy guardians with ideas of whoopin’ it up that surpassed anything Dodge City had yet seen. Because of the element of competition
     involved, bull-whackers and mule skinners sort of didn’t like railroaders and buffalo hunters. The sentiment was returned.
     Soldiers considered themselves better men than the gentlemen who drove mules, hunted buffalo or graded railroad, and were
     willing and ready to prove it at any time. Differences of opinion naturally arose, for the gentlemen who did not wearthe blue couldn’t see it that way. The result was gunsmoke in more than considerable quantities. The Texas cowboys had their
     own notions of who really belonged on top of the heap and backed it up with cartridges.
    A proper seasoning for this kettle of “hell-broth” was provided by the gamblers, gunmen, owlhoots, “ladies” and others of
     similar ilk gathered from the four corners of the earth and run out of at least three and usually four.
    All of which made Dodge City not exactly the place for a rest cure.
    Of course, the Texans didn’t like Northern men and were not slow in making the fact known. As they swaggered from saloon to
     gambling-hall to honky-tonk, jingling their spurs on high-heeled boots, their broad-brimmed “rainsheds” cocked jauntily over
     one eye, their six-guns much in evidence, they express their opinion in no uncertain tones. All of which somewhat irritated
     the older citizens. And not altogether without reason. The cowboys rode their horses on the sidewalks and into saloons. They
     took over the most attractive of the dance-hall girls. By way of variety they held up gambling games, and added insult to
     injury by throwing the dinero thus acquired across the bars, onto the green tables and into the ready hands of the “ladies.”
     They shot the windows out of stores, proved their marksmanship by dusting the lights in various places with lead and by “dusting
     off” individuals who registered protest. It was all good fun, of course, but the humor was not always appreciated.
    The most striking proof that all was not peaceful in Dodge was the fact that in Dodge’s firstseason as a cow camp, twenty-five gentlemen were planted in Boot Hill, so called because the deceased were almost always buried
     with their boots, and other clothing, on. Lumber was too scarce and dear to waste