Chalky and Charlie
That was Charlie Bassett - a no nonsense lawman who meted out the law like a Faro dealer with 59 cards - he always had something extra. In order to 'Buck the Tiger' you often need to possess five or six aces. It's not that Mr. Bassett was dishonest, it was simply that in barbarous times, a lawman sometimes has to make his own rules; and Bassett’s law was pretty good most of the time.
I got my first taste of Mr. Bassett’s justice my second day in town. I had wandered in from Lone Pine, walking all the way on the white alkali trail. After many weeks of struggling along, I staggered down Front Street, more dead than alive and collapsed in front of the General Store.
The alkali trail had coated me with a half inch of white dust and folks immediately started calling me Chalky and that’s the name I’ve gone by ever since. Mr. Rath gave me some grub and Mr. Grimmick said I could sleep in one of the empty stalls in his stable.
But that wasn’t good enough for Mr. Bassett. He heard about me and before nine the next morning he was at the stable questioning me.
“Where are you from kid?”
“I came in from Lone Pine Sheriff.”
“Where’s your horse?”
“I don’t have a horse. I walked.”
“You walked all the way from Lone Pine, California to Dodge City?”
“Yes sir I did. Before he died, my pa always said that when the railroad comes to Dodge, the city’s going to be smothered in gold and be the biggest town in the West. First Ma got the pox and died. Then a month later Pa got it and he died”
“So you decided to come to Dodge?”
“No sheriff. Not right away. I tried to run Pa’s spread by myself and I was doing pretty good till the men from the bank came.”
“What did the bank men want?”
“They threw me off the land. They held a mortgage. They kicked me out with nothing but the 40 dollars that Ma and Pa had been saving in a jar in the kitchen. I used that money for food that I ate along the trail but the money ran out a week ago. Just before I left, I found out there were only six more payments due on the property.”
“Well son that’s a sad story, but we have a problem. Dodge has vagrancy laws. If you don’t have a job and you have no money, I have to lock you up.
So that’s how my second night in Dodge City came to being spent in Mr. Bassett’s jail. I didn’t stay there long though. After being served a pretty decent breakfast that was brought in from the Front Street Café, Mr. Bassett told me the only way I could get out of jail was if I had a job. Then he offered me 35 dollars a month to work for him.
I accepted and was immediately put to work swamping out the cells and the outbuildings of the jail house and the town hall. Later my duties were expanded to include running errands, fetching the mail, and some clerical work like sifting through the wanted posters, and tacking some of them up in various places around Dodge.
Within three months Mr. Bassett started training me for law work. A new Colt, and a horse and saddle were provided for me. Mr. Bassett even started letting me accompany him on his daily rounds. I got room and board at Mrs. Spinney’s house for the ‘lawman price’ of $3.50 a week.