In 1881, Bat Masterson left the gambling halls of Kansas City for a frontier boiling with danger. A summons from Wyatt Earp pulled him toward Tombstone—where silver fever, outlaw politics, and the first sparks of the O.K. Corral were already in the air. Bat stepped into a world of faro tables, hired gunmen, and a town teetering on the edge of war.

But before the storm in Arizona could break, another crisis called him home.

A single telegram—unsigned, urgent—warned that Bat’s brother Jim was marked for death in Dodge City. What followed was one of the wildest gunfights ever to erupt on Front Street, a battle that shattered Bat’s standing in the town he once ruled and sent his legend spinning into newspapers across the country.

From the deserts of Arizona to the saloons of Kansas, from stagecoach ambushes to courtroom maneuvers, t ...