The Coffee House Philosopher
Doc Holliday and the Powder Puff Poker Players – Part 7
March 3, 2019
After the American Civil War, John Shirley sold his war ravaged business in Carthage, Missouri, and purchased an 800-acre ranch southeast of Dallas, Texas. In Missouri before the war, he had been a true southern gentleman, refined and well educated.
But after moving his family to Texas, it wasn’t long before former southern friends and associates who had been soldiers and guerrillas for the South started showing up on the Shirley ranch seeking a place to stay. Several of the drifters stayed indefinitely at the Shirley ranch, and the added expense of furnishing additional food and sleeping quarters began to mount up.
The frequent guest list of the Shirley ranch included such former associates as Bob and Cole Younger, and Frank and Jesse James. Neighbors of the Shirleys and surrounding areas began missing some horses and cattle, and stagecoaches would occasionally be robbed.
John Shirley’s daughter, Belle, began supplementing the Shirley family’s income by dealing cards at saloons in Dallas. At the poker tables, Belle was apparently just a polite young woman with an angelic face – seemingly a pushover for threats of gamesmanship or bluff. But in fact she had been greatly hardened by her harrowing experiences in Missouri during the Civil War.
Any competing poker player that relied on Belle’s outward appearance of innocence did so at their own risk. Further they likely would have been shocked that in addition to the Carthage Academy’s feminine refinements acquired while she was growing up, she had progressively acquired the knowledge of how to chew and spit tobacco, and curse. And even more shocking was the fact that she could play poker, blackjack, or faro with the unfeeling conscience of a steely hearted assassin.
Belle was attracted to men who lived exciting lives and sometimes committed unlawful acts. Soon after reaching the age of eighteen, she married a horse thief named Jim Reed, and Belle began accompanying Jim on some of his escapades.
Shortly after that, Reed murdered a man, and was constantly on the run from the legal authorities. Eventually because of his numerous criminal activities, a reward of $4,000 (worth 20 times that amount today) was offered for Jim’s capture, and a member of his own gang shot and killed him for the reward money.
Belle gave birth to two children during her marriage to Reed. Next she became reacquainted with an old friend, Sam Starr, and married him. This resulted in Myra MayBelle Shirley Reed becoming far more famous as “Belle Starr,” and she later became the subject of many western romantic novels and movies. But in reality, the majority of her threat-filled violent life was anything but romantic.
Belle’s second husband, Sam, was the handsome son of Tom Starr, a native American Cherokee who was reputed to have killed between 20 and 100 men during and after the Civil War. Statisticians for the so-called “Indian Nations Territory” could at times be just a little bit (shall we in politeness say) “hazy” in making their computations. Keeping track of Belle’s husbands is also difficult, because she probably married more than the two aforementioned men, and at least one time may have had more than one husband.
In one of Belle’s more notorious escapades in a saloon in Fort Dodge, Kansas (located ten miles east of Dodge City), she sought to restore $2,000 that had been taken in a crooked card game from a Native American friend of hers named Blue Duck. Blue Duck, among his other violent known acts, was a convicted murderer. (This may have been the source of the villainous name “Blue Duck” used by novelist Larry McMurtry in his best-selling book “Lonesome Dove.”)
Later in another card game, Belle came up from behind the offending card sharp with her two pistols drawn, and took his current winnings of roughly $7,000. As she departed, she remarked, “I’m returning this money to its rightful owner. Some change may be due to you. If you want your change, just come down to where me and my men are camped and ask for it.”
Sam and Belle at this time were living their lives in “the fast lane” of crime in the Old West. Sometimes they rode in gangs of up to 50 men, engaging in stealing horses and cattle, as well as other criminal acts. They were often closely pursued by numerous posses, and at least twice were caught and tried for stealing horses.
One of these trials was held in the courtroom of none other than “Hanging” Judge Isaac Parker in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Showing some rare empathy for people under hardship (and perhaps affected by Belle’s considerable charm), at the trial’s end, Parker merely sentenced each of them to a year in prison.
But a more likely reason for the light sentence, was that Parker was not correctly informed as to the Starrs’ prior criminal records. Because in the court transcript, he (mistakenly) says that this was the Starrs’ first offense, and he hoped they would become model citizens after serving out their sentence.
After being released from prison, the Starrs were suspected of numerous additional crimes, and consequently Belle became known as “the bandit queen.” In one final episode, Sam was wounded by a pursuing posse, and later killed in a separate shootout with an old adversary, who also died as a result of the gunfight. In a separate episode, Belle was shot and killed by two blasts from a double barreled shotgun while riding a horse on her way home after Sam’s death.
The perpetrator of her murder was never apprehended, but two of the prime suspects were her own children. The infamous bandit queen had played her last card. On her tombstone by Eufair Lake, near Porum, Oklahoma, her epitaph reads:
Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret,
Tis but the casket that lies here,
The gem that filled it sparkles yet.
Next time, extreme measures taken by women poker players of the Old West.
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