By Rachel Kovaciny
Although he held Doc Holliday in great contempt, famed lawman Bat Masterson once spent considerable time, effort, and money to free Holliday from jail. Why? Because Wyatt Earp asked him to, of course. Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson were both devoted friends of Wyatt Earp and would do just about anything for him. Held on trumped-up charges in a Denver jail, Holliday was in danger of being extradited to Arizona and hung as revenge for helping the Earp brothers clean up Tombstone. So, Wyatt Earp asked Bat Masterson to see if he couldn’t get Doc Holliday out somehow.
Masterson knew Holliday “had a mean disposition and an ungovernable temper” and called him “a weakling” who was “hot-headed and impetuous and very much given to both drinking and quarreling, and, among men who did not fear him, was very much disliked” (Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier by Bat Masterson). And yet! Masterson concocted an elaborate plan to have a lawman friend of his serve a (hastily trumped up) warrant on Holliday and demand to take him to Pueblo to stand trial there.
When Denver authorities refused, Masterson took to the newspapers, engaging in a round of lively printed insults with Holliday’s enemies.
Eventually, Masterson gained an audience with Colorado’s governor, Frederick W. Pitkin, and convinced him the Arizona extradition papers were Holliday’s death warrant. Governor Pitkin listened to Masterson and refused to accept the extradition papers, stating that, first, they were written up incorrectly, and second, Masterson’s Pueblo warrant for Holliday took precedence because Holliday was in Colorado already.
When Bat Masterson and his lawman friend, Marshal Jamieson, took Doc Holliday to Pueblo, that was the last time Masterson and Holliday saw each other. Doc Holliday wiggled out of appearing in court and left town after posting bond.
Was Doc Holliday really as mean and ornery as Bat Masterson depicted him? Or did Masterson simply dislike him? Wyatt Earp said of Holliday, “With all of Doc’s shortcomings and his undeniably poor disposition, I found him a loyal friend and good company,” and “the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun that I ever knew” (Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal by Stuart N. Lake). I’d say if his best friend couldn’t deny his unpleasant nature, he was unpleasant. And if not for his great friendship with Wyatt Earp, we probably wouldn’t remember Doc Holliday.
“Doc” John Henry Holliday was born in 1851 in Georgia to a good family. His father served with distinction in the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War, and got elected mayor of Valdosta, Georgia. Young Holliday received a classical education at the Valdosta Institute, then went to Philadelphia and earned a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. Unlike so many people nicknamed “Doc,” Holliday really had a doctor’s degree!
Holliday practiced dentistry briefly in St. Louis and Atlanta. Around the same time, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which had killed his mother and adopted brother. H knew drier climates could help him live longer than a few months, and headed for Dallas, Texas, in the fall of 1873. There, he found success practicing dentistry, but discovered a talent for gambling. By 1874, he earned more money from gambling than dentistry, and was arrested in 1875 for trading shots with a saloonkeeper over a gambling dispute, the first definite record of his involvement in anything resembling a gunfight. Holliday left Texas and wandered through the west, gambling and getting into fights in places like Denver, Cheyenne, and Deadwood.
He got wounded on July 4, 1877, after a fight with a vindictive gambler who ambushed Holliday to get revenge for the thrashing Holliday had given him. Once recovered, Holliday returned to Texas, where he met the adventuress Mary Katherine “Big Nose Kate” Horony and began a tempestuous relationship with her. Shortly after that, Holliday met Wyatt Earp, who was working as a deputy US Marshal and pursuing a fugitive from justice. Holliday gave Earp information that led to the man’s eventual arrest… by Bat Masterson.
In 1878, Holliday crossed paths with Wyatt Earp again, this time in Dodge City, Kansas. Earp was serving as an assistant city marshal when Holliday decided to practice dentistry there. As usual, Holliday did more gambling than dentistry, and reportedly that habit saved Wyatt Earp’s life. Earp arrived at the Long Branch Saloon to quiet some unruly cowboys who were about to gun the lawman down until Holliday drew his own pistol and held it to their leader’s head, demanding they surrender to Earp.
Doc Holliday continued to roam the west, usually leaving one location when either his gambling luck ran out or he got into a fight with someone that resulted in his needing to leave town quickly. He gained a reputation for being quick and deadly with a gun, as well as extremely skilled at card playing. He ended up in Dodge City and joined a peacekeeping team led by Deputy US Marshal Bat Masterson that sought to keep the peace between two railroad companies both determined to be the first to reach boomtown Leadville, CO.
After that, Doc and Kate moved to Las Vegas, where they settled down until Wyatt Earp arrived and invited them to move to Tombstone, Arizona, with him and his brothers and their womenfolk.
Instead of going all the way to Tombstone, Doc Holliday stopped in Prescott, Arizona, because the gambling there was lucrative. He roamed around Arizona for a while, finally ending up in Tombstone less than a month before the famous showdown between himself and the Earp brothers and Ike Clanton’s outlaws at the OK Corral. Holliday accompanied Wyatt Earp for most of his ensuing crusade to round up Clanton’s outlaw gang. One altercation he and Earp got into while seeking Clanton’s men led to that arrest in Denver, under extradition charges to Arizona, which required Wyatt Earp to ask Bat Masterson to get Holliday out of jail.
Although Doc Holliday was involved in so many gunfights, knife fights, and physical altercations, he did not die the violent death you might expect. He died of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in 1887, at only 36 years old. Although his funeral was reportedly attended by many friends, including Big Nose Kate, his closest friend Wyatt Earp did not even learn of his death until several months later. The location of his grave has been lost, unlike his reputation as a gambler, gunfighter, and loyal friend. ♦
