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“Marshal of the Dodge City Gang” is an original ballad about John Joshua Webb, the Dodge City deputy who became marshal of Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1880. It follows his tangled road with Dirty Dave Rudabaugh and Doc Holliday through the railroad boom, a saloon shooting, a death sentence, and a jailbreak that ended in Winslow, Arizona.
Don’t sing him clean. Don’t paint him a hero. Just two men’s roads, crossed once, crossed twice.
Lyrics
Born in Keokuk, buried in Winslow’s sand,
Twelve children deep in a farmhouse hand.
He left for the plains when the buffalo ran,
Made himself a surveyor, made himself a man.
Rode as a deputy under Masterson’s name,
Wyatt Earp at the table, playing the same old game.
Dodge City trusted him, called him true —
‘Til the men he was chasing looked too much like him too.
They sent him after six who robbed the westbound train,
Rode out with the posse through the Kinsley plain.
Caught Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, brought him back in chains,
Never dreamed he’d shake the hand he’d once restrained.
Rudabaugh talked his way to a lighter load,
Swore he’d go straight — then took the New Mexico road.
Two men, same trail, just walking it reversed —
The lawman and the outlaw, already rehearsed.
Oh, Las Vegas, New Mexico, you took him whole,
Split him down the river like the old town’s soul —
West side prayers and the New Town’s greed,
And a lawman’s badge turned a killer’s creed.
(Webb, Webb, ride on, Webb —
the star on your chest was a debt.)
1879, and the tracks rolled in,
Brought the gamblers, brought the guns, brought Doc and his kin.
And there stood Rudabaugh, not chained, not tried —
Old enemies now standing on the same side.
Webb and Holliday, partners in a card-room haze,
Watched a drunk man’s fury end in a July blaze —
Gordon drew and missed, Doc didn’t miss twice,
And Webb stood up in court and swore away the price.
Eighteen-eighty, they pinned him the marshal’s badge,
Handed him a town gone rotten to the edge —
Hoodoo Brown’s court and the Dodge City Gang,
Rudabaugh beside him, closer than kin.
March the second, the Goodlet-Roberts floor,
Kelliher’s pistol clearing leather once more —
Webb was faster. Three shots, and it’s done.
Another man’s widow, another man’s gun.
Oh, Las Vegas, New Mexico, you took him whole,
Split him down the river like the old town’s soul —
West side prayers and the New Town’s greed,
And a lawman’s badge turned a killer’s creed.
(Webb, Webb, ride on, Webb —
the star on your chest was a debt.)
Some men’s fates get written twice —
Once with a badge, once with the dice.
He cuffed a killer, then became his friend,
Chased a fate that circled back around the bend.
They tried him, they hung the sentence like a stone,
Life for a killing dressed up as his own.
But a cell can’t hold what the frontier made,
November came dark and the bars gave way.
He ran for the border, he ran for the line,
No town left to marshal, no badge left to shine —
Just smallpox waiting in an Arizona bed,
Winslow took the outlaw where the lawman fled.
So sing him plain, don’t sing him clean,
Don’t paint him a hero, don’t paint him a fiend.
Just two men’s roads, crossed once, crossed twice,
Bound like a debt that was never paid in full.
Oh, Las Vegas, New Mexico, you took him whole…
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