I have to go with
Marshal. I grew up in the golden age of TV, when Westerns were king, and the king of them all was
Gunsmoke.
Gunsmoke was the longest-running prime-time dramatic series (1955 to 1975) ever to air on TV. It starred
James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, the most fearless and indestructible crime-fighter in the history of the West. Well, the way we like to remember the West, anyway. Those of us who grew up with boxy black-and-white TV sets and... I'm rambling, kinda like the show.
"If you're gonna to use that gun, you better start on me."
Arness wasn't a pretty-boy, unlike his more urbane brother Peter Graves. In fact, none of the characters in
Gunsmoke would win any beauty contests. The series' grittiness, together with consistently above-par screen writing helped to make it a sustained success long after the era of the TV Western was over with. The show is still in syndication, and you can catch episodes of it on the TV LAND cable network.
But to finish my answer - when I hear any homophone of the word you mention,
Marshal Matt Dillon, a true, though fictional, American hero, is the image that comes into my mind.
