Dora Hand was in a deep sleep. Her bare legs were exposed despite her thick blankets, and a mass of long, auburn hair stretched over her pillow and flowed off the side of her flimsy mattress. A framed, charcoal portrait of an elderly couple hung above her bed on the faded wallpaper and kept company with her slumber.The air outside the window next to the picture was still and cold. The distant sound of voices, back-slapping laughter, profanity, and a piano’s tinny, repetitious melody wafted down the main thoroughfare in Dodge City, Kansas, and into the small room.Dodge was an all-night town, the wickedest little city in America.The streets and saloons were always busy. Residents learned to sleep through the giggling, growling, and gunplay of the cowboys and their paramours for hire.Dora’s dreams were seldom disturbed by the commotion, but the smack of a pair of bullets cutting through the walls of the tiny room cut through the routine nightly noises. The first bullet stuck in thedense plaster partition. The second struck Dora on the right side, just under her arm. There was no time for her to object to the injury; no moment for her to cry out or recoil in pain.In the near distance, a horse squealed and its galloping hooves echoed off the street and faded away.Future legends of the Old West, Charlie Bassett, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Bill Tilghman were the lawmen who patrolled the unruly streets. When a cattle baron’s son fled town after the shooting of the popular saloon singer named Dora Hand, the four men–all experts with a gun who knew the harsh, desertlike surrounding terrain–hunted him down like Thunder Over the Prairie. The posse’s ride across the desolate landscape to seek justice influenced the men’s friendship, their careers, and their feelings about the justice system. This account of that event is a fast-paced, cinematic glimpse into the Old West that was.
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