The Big Fight at the Jenkins Saloon, also known as the Tascosa Gunfight or simply the Big Fight, was an incident that took place in the Old West town of Tascosa, Texas, on March 21, 1886, between members of two Texas Panhandle ranch factions: the LS Ranch's Home Rangers and a group of small ranchers and cattle rustlers known as "The System". Background In the spring of 1884, Pat Garrett came to the Texas Panhandle as newly appointed captain of the Texas Ranger Division. A range war had been brewing in the state as livestock theft was common. He was tasked by the Texas State government and by the big ranchers of the Canadian River with organizing a company of Texas Rangers to put a stop to the rampant rustling and re-branding of cattle. He set up his headquarters at the LS Ranch and petitioned the government for official papers so that he could go to work. In the following months, he and his men, known locally as the 'LS Rangers' were successful in policing the area and preventing the same kind of feud that resulted in New Mexico's Lincoln County War just eight years earlier. In the spring of 1885, the rangers were disbanded and Garrett returned to New Mexico. The rest of Garrett's men continued to work for the LS Ranch as rangers, but since they were no longer officially Texas Rangers, their hard-drinking and arrogant ways began to stir local resentment. Ex- Texas Ranger Ed King was particularly troublesome, as he was known to be especially arrogant, quarrelsome when drunk and quick to draw his gun at any excuse. In Tascosa, the rangers became known as 'barroom gladiators'. The final straw came when Sally Emory, who worked at the Jenkins Saloon, dumped her boyfriend, bartender Lamar Albert (Lem) Woodruff (who the rangers suspected to be a System man), and took up with Ed King. In the days preceding the fight, a drunken Ed King would taunt Woodruff, calling him 'Pretty Lem' and endeavoring to humiliate him by forcing him to call King "Daddy." The Big Fight On the evening of 20 March 1886, Ed King, his friend John Gottlieb Lang, and two other LS ranch hands, Frank Valley and Fred Chilton, rode into Tascosa to participate in a local dance. In the early hours of the 21st, the four men left the dance and headed into town,