The Lowes’ combination saloon-dancehall-brothel did
good business, until a man named Edward “Red” Beard
set up a competing den of debauchery just 50 feet away.
Tension mounted and finally erupted into gunplay on
Oct. 27, 1873.
On this Friday night, an exceedingly drunk Beard
argued with one of the “sportin’ ladies” grinding out a
living in his establishment. He accused her of theft and
she flung a bottle at his head and ran out into the street
and into the Lowes’ place, with Beard in hot pursuit, guns
blazing. He missed his intended target, but one of his
bullets smashed into one of Rowdy Joe’s “soiled doves.”
According to one account, “Retaliating, an equal-
ly drunken ‘Rowdy Joe’ grabbed up a shotgun and
exchanged shots with Beard, Lowe’s shot missed but
Beard’s bullet grazed Lowe’s neck. A stray bullet struck
bystander Bill Anderson, who was standing at the bar, in
his eye. Beard fled into the night with Lowe, right behind
him. Both men mounted their horses and raced out of
town in a running gunfight. Lowe caught up with Beard
near the river bridge and emptied his shotgun into him,
then rode back to town where he turned himself in to the
sheriff. Beard was found critically wounded with a load
of buckshot in the arm and thigh. He clung to life for two
weeks, but through loss of blood died
According to some accounts, Joe escaped custody and
with Kate fled to Osage Mission, KS. In January 1874, he
was arrested in St. Louis. Through threats and bribery,
he gained release and he and Kate hightailed it to Texas.
Another account said the Lowes’ Wichita saloon soon
became notorious for gunplay and rigged games, so noto-
rious that customers stopped coming. Yet another version
of the story said the Lowes’ place burned to the ground
after the Beard incident. Whatever the circumstances,
Rowdy Joe and Rowdy Kate left for Texas, stopping in
Denison, Lulling, San Antonio and Fort Worth.
Gone to Texas
In Denison, Joe and Kate ran the Sazerac Saloon, a noto-
rious dive where Joe’s reputation as a gunfighter and
brawler continued. “He loved a brawl, liked more than
anything else to beat a disgruntled patron to the draw by
a sledge-hammer blow to the jaw, followed by a scien-
88
tific disabling kick,” one writer recorded. Rowdy Kate,
too, was hauled up before a judge for fighting. In their
element again, they made an impression on Denison’s
denizens. “Joe was described as an immaculately dressed
man with a big diamond blazing on his shirtfront and
smoking a cigar. Kate, in full evening dress wore blazing
diamonds and sat in a corner presiding over a faro game.”
They turned up in Fort Worth in 1876, nearing the
end of their run together; Joe soon dumped Kate for
another woman, marrying Mollie Field Aug. 2, 1876.
Rowdy Joe became a cornerstone of Cowtown’s infamous
Hell’s Half Acre district. Kate continued to manage a
dancehall there, but soon left the big town for small-town
Weatherford, some 30 miles west. Setting up shop on
the square, Madam Kate continued to pander to men’s
baser desires. In September, the Weatherford Democrat
reported that “an infernal ‘cuss’ who does not deserve the
name of man, but who, we hear, bears the human form,
cut up a nymph du pave at Rowdy Kate’s dance house
night before last. He was pursued by the officers of the
law, but his legs which proved longer than the sidetrack
of the Texas & Pacific landed him in Dallas at one p.m.
He’s home now.”
The Breakup and Westward Ho!
It’s hard to say exactly when Rowdy Kate quit
Weatherford, but, according to at least one source, “In
the early 1880’s ‘Rowdy Kate’ appeared in Tombstone,
where she and ‘Big Nose Kate,’ Doc Holliday’s mistress,
opened the town’s first brothel.” Whether or not Rowdy
Kate teamed up with the more famous Kate in Arizona,
it is clear she plied her trade in Tombstone, where,
according to the Tombstone News, she was well within
her rights: “Like many frontier towns, prostitution was
legal and it was taxed. Little effort was made to segregate
it from the rest of the community. In fact in March of
1882, the Tombstone city council voted to remove exist-
ing restrictions on the locations of the brothels, despite
objections from a few of the respectable persons of the
community. For person or persons engaged in keeping a
house of ill fame where wines and spirituous liquors were
dispensed, were places like Blonde Marie’s, Madame
Moustache, Rowdy Kate Lowe’s and the Bird Cage, a