On October 25, 1921, 67 year old William Barclay "Bat" Masterson, the former frontier lawman, limped to his desk at the New York Morning Telegraph. He'd had to use a cane since the 1876 gunfight in Sweetwater, Texas when he was shot in the pelvis by a man he had mortally wounded. Allegedly, the fight was about a woman. This morning, Bat sat his aging bones down on his chair and balanced the cane against his desk so it would be readily available, but not slide to the floor. The gunfighter turned sports journalist started to work on his next article. He wrote into his typewriter the following:
"There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way."
Bat leaned over the machine and reread what he had written. Before he could relax back into his chair, he realized he needed to use the toilet. As he reached for his cane, suddenly all the air seemed to evacuate his lungs. His chest felt like he had received a double shotgun blast at point blank range. He couldn't gain his balance, even with the help of his cane. Then he collapsed.
Bat Masterson died at his desk of a heart attack. He'd beaten the odds. He didn't die trying to take some drunken cowboy's six gun away. He hadn't been scalped by Indians. He wasn't shot by a jealous husband. He died doing what he loved. He died writing.
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