Doc Holliday: Outlaw Gentleman, Shady Ladies, and Tombstone

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That's invite code GETDROP777. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show. Much of what America and the world knows about Doc Holliday comes from movies and TV, but historians agree no movie portrayal has done real justice to his story. Roger McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Hollywood, and Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier, a US Marine and former history professor at UCLA.

He's a regular contributor for us here at Our American Stories. Here's McGrath with the story of Doc Holliday. Doc Holliday was not only one of the most colorful characters in the old west, but also one of the most feared. He acquired the nickname of Doc honestly, earning a degree in dentistry and practicing in several towns. However, he eventually spent nearly all his time as a professional gambler and occasionally as a gunfighter.

He had a vicious temper and feared no man, perhaps because tuberculosis had already given him a death sentence. Doc Holliday is born John Henry Holliday in 1851 in Griffin, Georgia, about 40 miles south of Atlanta. His parents are of South Carolina pioneer stock of Scotch-Irish and English ancestry. Doc's father, Henry Holliday, is an attorney who fights the Indians in 1838, the Mexicans in 1846, and the Yankees in 1861, rising to the rank of major in the Civil War before being forced by illness to resign his commission. Doc has a comfortable middle-class childhood and receives a good education.

His mother, Alice, is a classic southern belle. She teaches him manners and etiquette, while his father regales him with the war stories and tales of survival. Doc is only nine years old when the Civil War erupts in 1861. Three years later, the family flees General Sherman's march to the sea and moves farther south to Valdosta, where Doc is enrolled in the Valdosta Institute and studies all the subjects common to classical education, including rhetoric, history, and Latin. He wishes that instead of studying, he was fighting the Yankees. Nonetheless, Doc is a good student and receives an excellent education considering the Civil War, which by the fall of 1864 is ravaging Georgia.

Here's Doc Holliday biographer, Gary Roberts. He was popular. He was good on the dance floor. He learned all the proper social graces. He was polite.

And he seems to have gotten along well with most people. But he also had an ornery side. They tell a story that a boy challenged him to a duel. Now, all of the friends, the people of these two boys, assumed it was going to be a fake duel. They were going to load pistols with powder and shoot powder at each other. And it was just going to be a make-believe duel. But John Henry, they said, showed up with a loaded revolver and said he would use his own gun for the duel.

Well, needless to say, the other boy backed down very quickly. So he had a streak in it. In September 1866, after two years of painful suffering, Doc's mother dies of tuberculosis, known then as consumption.

Here's Old West historian, Jeff Morey and Victoria Wilcox, author of Southern Sun, the Saga of Doc Holliday. They called it consumption because it sort of consumed you. It was very long, slow disease. And it would really eat you away from the inside out. And the classic way to die of consumption was really to suffocate.

From 1800 to 1870, one out of five deaths in America was attributed to consumption. He's always been close to his mother, and her death comes as a great blow. His bad temper, which he inherited from his father, worsens. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed, booyish-looking 15-year-old John Henry Holliday is not physically imposing.

But as other boys learn, he is no one to trifle with. In 1870, Doc is off to the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, considered one of the best dental schools in the nation. At just 20 years of age, Doc graduates in 1872 near the top of his class and begins practicing in Atlanta during the summer. Here's professor Arnett Gaston in Victoria Wilcox.

He graduates so early in age that it was difficult for him to set up practice because he wasn't old enough yet. A clear testimony to his achievement, his critical thinking skills, and he was good. Doc Holliday was the epitome of a Southern gentleman, which meant that he was mannerly and likely also hot-tempered, all those things that go along with living in the South during the Civil War and Reconstruction. There's a story that a gold crown he made for a girl's molar was still in place when she died at the age of 102 in 1967.

Here's Old West historian Stephen Shaw. He came home. He opened up his own practice with another gentleman.

Here's a young man, 21, 22 years of age, 6 foot tall or almost, a doctor, very good looking, according to the records, a good catch for any woman. Doc would have married a genteel woman and started a family. At night, he would sit by the parlor fire in his comfortable Georgia home and he would die in old age, surrounded by loved ones. Instead, Doc Holliday starts coughing. Doc begins to rapidly lose weight, has night fevers, weakness, and his coughing up of blood begins to interfere with his practice. He goes to a doctor and is found to have, like his mother, tuberculosis, at the time of fatal disease.

The cause isn't known and there is no cure. He's given six months to live. However, he's told that the drier climate of the American West might prolong his life by as much as two years. Rather than die bedridden, Doc begins packing. The family is upset. No one more than his cousin, Mattie Holliday, a beautiful blonde who has had a crush on Doc for years. She will correspond with Doc and pine for him.

The biggest problem, if this is the case, was that while first cousins marrying was very common, it was not common among Catholics, and she was Catholic. And when we come back, we'll continue with the story of Doc Holliday here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we're asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American stories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's our American stories.com. Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we?

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I'm at risk too. If you're 19 or older with chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, COPD or heart disease, or are 65 or older, you are at increased risk for pneumococcal pneumonia. Ask your doctor or pharmacist about Prevnar 20 pneumococcal 20 valent conjugate vaccine, a Pfizer vaccine that can help protect you against pneumococcal pneumonia in just one dose. Even if you've already been vaccinated with other pneumonia vaccines, Prevnar 20 may help provide added protection. Prevnar 20 is approved for adults to help prevent infections from 20 strains of the bacteria that cause pneumococcal pneumonia. Continued approval may depend on a supportive study. Don't get Prevnar 20 if you've had a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine or its ingredients. Adults with weakened immune systems may have a lower response to the vaccine.

Side effects include pain and swelling at the injection site, fatigue, headache, muscle, and joint pain. For full prescribing information, please call 1-855-213-2138 or visit Prevnar20.com. Before we continue here on Al American Stories and the story of Doc Holliday, let's return to Roger McGrath. Matty eventually enters the Sisters of Mary convent in Savannah. Doc Holliday boards a train for Dallas, Texas to, as they say, die with his boots on. But first, Doc opens a dental practice.

Although he does excellent dental work, his coughing fits again cause his practice to decline. More and more, Doc turns to gambling for income and has surprising success. He has a memory for cards dealt, can quickly calculate odds, and can handle a deck with extraordinary dexterity. He also possesses an excellent poker face.

The knowledge of his imminent death make it easy for him to hide his emotions and draw the next card or, when necessary, draw his gun. On New Year's Day, 1875, Doc gets into his first documented shootout. It's with the proprietor of a saloon, Charles Austin, who goes by the nickname Champagne Charlie for the popular song of the time. The song is lighthearted and so is the report in the Dallas newspaper. Dr. Holliday and Mr. Austin, a saloon keeper, relieve the monotony of the noise of firecrackers by taking a couple of shots at each other yesterday afternoon. A cheerful note of a peaceful six shooter is heard once more among us.

No one is hit and all is forgiven. Doc decides it's good time to leave the state and pursue the roving life of a gambler, chasing the next big pot from boom town to boom town across the west. He arrives in Denver during the summer of 1875 and goes to work as a farrow dealer at John Babb's Saloon. It's not long before he gets into a close quarters fight with Bud Ryan. Both men draw knives and slash away. Both are wounded, Ryan seriously. On the 4th of July 1877 in Breckenridge, Texas, Doc gets into a fight with another gambler, Henry Kahn.

Here again is Victoria Wilcox. And according to this story, Holliday pulled a cane and hit him and Can pulled a gun and shot Holliday. We don't know which man was in the right or the wrong. We don't even know what they were fighting about or whether they were both just drunk and disorderly. But the newspaper went on to say that Holliday had been killed and Can disappeared from town.

We know the report is at least a little bit inaccurate because of course Holliday was still alive and he actually returned back to Dallas. Doc slowly recovers and when healthy moves to Fort Griffin, Texas to deal cards at Pugilist John Shaughnessy's Saloon. While on Fort Griffin, he meets and falls for Mary Catherine Haroney, a curvaceous 26 year old better known as Big Nose Kate. Well Kate doesn't actually have a big nose, but her nickname comes from a nosy nature. Hungarian born, Kate works as a dance hall girl and occasionally as a prostitute.

She is described as highly intelligent, tough, stubborn and fearless. It's also at Fort Griffin where Doc meets a man who will change his life from Dennis and Gambler to legend. 30 year old Wyatt Earp is serving as a deputy US Marshal and has come down from Dodge City, Kansas looking for an outlaw. Doc and Wyatt hit it off immediately. It's the start of the Wild West's most famous friendship. One evening in 1878 while in Fort Griffin, Doc is arrested for killing a bully during a card game. Although it is done in self defense, Doc is jailed and a lynch mob begins to form outside.

But Doc has an ally. Kate intervenes, setting fire to a barn in the center of town. While everybody runs to put out the fire, she puts a gun on the jailer and tells him to open the door. Doc and Kate escape north to the biggest boom town in the mall, Dodge City, also known as Hell on the Plains and joins up with Wyatt who is working as the assistant city marshal. Here's Old West historian Andrew Nelson. Dodge City of the 1870s was one of the most notorious of frontier towns.

It was a town with no law where buffalo hunters, soldiers, vagrants made hay of the town every night. Doc establishes a dental practice but spends more of his time gambling than drilling and filling teeth. He's dealing cards with a long branch saloon. When into the saloon come a half dozen wild characters, a ragtag gang of cattle wrestlers, stagecoach bandits and thuggish outlaws led by Ed Morrison, a man who has been humiliated by Wyatt in Wichita several years earlier and has been itching to get even. They begin shooting their guns into the air and harassing customers. During the gunfire, Wyatt runs into the long branch only to find six deadly characters with their guns leveled at him. Morrison warns him, pray and jerk your gun, your time has come Earp. Wyatt reckons he's dead but Doc steps up behind Morrison, puts a gun to the outlaw's head and tells him and his boys to drop their guns.

They comply. Wyatt says Doc saved his life that day and Wyatt never forgets what Doc has done for him. When word comes of a silver strike of a tombstone in Arizona territory, several of Dodge City's gamblers and gunslingers head west. Doc travels with Kate. Along the way they spend some time in Las Vegas, New Mexico where Doc decides to open his own saloon.

Here's Victoria Wilcox. Of course, Doc was in trouble with the law again because Las Vegas had laws just like all western towns did against operating gambling games in houses of spiritus liquors. So he just did what other businessmen did and paid the fines and went right on operating his gambling games. He also had arrests for carrying a deadly weapon, which was also part of business in a saloon because a saloon owner was expected to police his own business and had to be armed to protect his patrons from violence. One of the patrons is former army scout Mike Gordon. After a dispute, Gordon steps out into the street and fires a couple of rounds into the saloon.

One in hand, Doc comes running outside and drills Gordon. He's mortally wounded and dies the next day. By September 1880, Doc arrives in the violent boom town of Tombstone, Arizona, joining the Earps in what is a factional fight to control the town. The heart of the Tombstone story has to do with the growing animosity between the Earp faction and what's called the cowboy faction.

The cowboys run a lucrative operation, rustling cattle and robbing stage coaches. They're all handy with guns, including William Brocious, better known as Curly Bill, who shoots to death Tombstone City Marshal Fred White. Johnny Ringo and Frank Stillwell are also members of the cowboy faction with reputations for fast and fancy shooting. Leading the rustling are Old Man Clanton and three of his sons, Ike, Finn, and Billy, and their close friends, the Mac Lowry brothers, Tom and Frank. The cowboy faction has Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, County Supervisor Mike Joyce, and the publisher of the daily nugget, Harry Woods, on his side. The Earp faction consists of the five Earp brothers, Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, James, and Warren, and Doc Holliday, Judge Wells Spicer, Tombstone mayor and publisher of the Tombstone epitaph, John Klum, and several prominent businessmen. Virgil Earp is both a deputy US Marshal and the city marshal of Tombstone. The Earp faction could be called the law and order faction, but the Earps and associates are as much concerned about their business interests and who controls the town has about law and order. And you've been listening to Roger McGrath telling the real story of Doc Holliday. And by the way, he's doing his best to synthesize many of the stories that are out there, but in a far greater depth and detail than we ever experienced while just watching a movie or watching a TV version of the story.

And when we continue the rest of the remarkable story of the life of Doc Holliday here on Our American Stories. Sick of paying a hundred dollars for groceries and getting nothing but eggs, orange juice and a paper bag? Then download the Drop app. Drop lets you earn points with your everyday shopping and redeem them for gift cards. Want a free dinner with those groceries? Drop it.

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Check out the full offer details at BoostMobile.com. Terms and conditions apply. And we continue with the story of Doc Holliday here on Our American Stories and we return to Roger McGrath. Various members of the cowboy faction are fond of drinking in tombstone saloons, firing their guns and generally raising hell. They've also been heard threatening to kill the Earps in Holliday. Virgil gets the city council to pass an ordinance stating that upon arrival in tombstone, cowboys must deposit their guns at various locations in the city. The countdown to the most famous gunfight in western history begins in a bar.

Several of the cowboys arrive in town on October 25th, 1881 and begin drinking and gambling. Doc Holliday, who is also drinking heavily, gets into an argument with Ike Clanton in the Alhambra Saloon. Four turns deadly, fires interfere and Wyatt Earp walks Doc to his quarters and tells him to sleep it off.

Here again is Gary Roberts. The next morning after a peculiar thing happened, and that is that Ike Clanton and Virgil Earp stayed up most of the night playing cards with each other in the same card game. But the next morning, a while before Virgil or anybody else had gotten up, Ike Clanton is already walking the streets looking for the Earp brothers. Ike stays in the saloons and around mid-morning retrieves his guns from the West End Corral where he had deposited them. Ike's still drinking and now he's threatening to kill Holliday when he sees him.

Upon hearing this, Doc crawls out of bed, sharpens his fatalistic wit and cracks, if God lets me live long enough to get my clothes on, he shall see me. Virgil Earp is alerted and taking Morgan Earp, his deputy, with him, they find Ike with a revolver on his hip and a Winchester in his hand. Morgan confronts Ike while Virgil approaches from behind. With the drunken Ike focusing on Morgan, Virgil knocks him senseless using a revolver as a club. Morgan and Virgil disarm Ike and drag him to the courthouse where he's fined $25 for violating the city ordinance. He's told he can retrieve his guns when he is leaving town.

Here's Jeff Moray. Virgil Earp would have been justified in killing Ike Clanton. And I think it's a mistake that the Earps make. They're too lenient with Ike. Basically what they do all morning long is allow Ike to build a head of steam. He gets angry and angry. What's bizarre about it is it seems the more you ignore this fellow, the angrier he gets. They keep thinking he's going to violently drink enough, go to sleep, and he'll be out of their hair.

And it never happens. All this is going on. Wyatt Earp pistol whips Tom McLaurin and leaves him bleeding in the street. Early afternoon finds Ike Clanton and Tom McLaurin in a doctor's office getting their head wounds stitched.

At the same time, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaurin ride into town and stop at the Grand Hotel. They learn of the beatings of their brothers and don't deposit their guns. Within minutes, they join up with their wounded and unarmed brothers on Fremont Street, not far from the okay crowd. The day is cold and windy.

There's a dusting of snow in places. Virgil Earp gathers his forces, Wyatt and Morgan Earp, but not Doc. Where are you going, says Doc. We're going to make a fight, replies Wyatt. Well, you're not going to leave me out of it, are you?

This is none of your affair. That is a hell of a thing for you to say to me. It's going to be a tough one.

Tough ones are the kind I like. Here's old West historian and gunfighter Drew Gomber. Accompanying the Earps down to the okay crowd was a big deal because, you know, he didn't have to go, which would indicate loyalty in the extreme to risk your life for your friend. All are armed with revolvers, but Virgil gives his ace in the hole, Doc Holliday, a Wells Fargo, 10 gauge, double barrel shotgun to hide under his overcoat. He also deputizes Doc.

Here's old West historian Tom Ross. Virgil had other deputies. He doesn't take those deputies. He takes his brothers, Wyatt and Morgan. And then he drags along Doc Holliday.

This is like bringing a match to a party full of gas cans. A foreign lawman walked shoulder to shoulder down the center of Fremont Street and find the Cowboys in a small 15 foot wide, dusty vacant lot next to Fly's photography studio. Here again is Drew Gomber. This is only a 15 foot wide alley that contained nine men and two horses. They were so close that when they initially entered the alley, Doc took his shotgun and pressed it right into Tom McLaurie's belly.

Then he took a few steps back. So these guys, it was up close and personal for everybody. Virgil calls for Billy Clanton and Frank McLaurie. The only two Cowboys armed just surrender their guns.

They refuse. What happens next is a matter of great debate. Wyatt probably fires first, hitting Frank McLaurie in the stomach. Billy Clanton fires at nearly the same time. Unarmed Tom McLaurie tries to take cover behind a horse and reach for a rifle in a scabbard on the horse. But Doc Holliday steps to the side and lets both barrels of the shotgun roar. Tom McLaurie staggers into the street and collapses.

Unarmed Ike Clanton takes off running. Meanwhile, Virgil Earp fires a round that hits Billy Clanton in his gun hand. Billy gamely switches his gun to his other hand and fires, drilling Virgil in the leg. Morgan Earp fires a round that hits Billy in the chest. Despite suffering several wounds, Billy Clanton and Frank McLaurie continue firing. Morgan Earp is hit in the shoulder and Doc Holliday in the hip.

Wyatt Earp is untouched. Doc finds himself looking down the barrel of Frank McLaurie's pistol. McLaurie says, I've got you now. Doc's calm response is characteristic.

Blaze away, you're a daisy if you do. McLaurie fires and a bullet rips through Doc's coop. Doc fires and a bullet rips through McLaurie's head, killing him instantly. Both Billy Clanton and Tom McLaurie are barely clinging to life.

They're carried into a nearby house and within minutes are dead. Analysis of Doc's movements at the OK Corral show him to be a master in tactical combat. Here again, it's Jeff Moray. His job is to protect the flank, not to let the cowboys out a lot so that they can flank the Earp brothers. What's peculiar about Doc's performance in the gunfight is how much walking he does.

He traverses more ground than any other participant. It takes just 30 shots and 30 seconds of gun fighting at the OK Corral to write another chapter in American history. When the gun smoke clears, three cowboys are dead. Here again is Victoria Wilcox. The story of the gunfight went out across the telegraph wires and hit all the newspapers in America and made instant celebrities of all the participants.

In a country that was enamored with all things Wild West, this was the most iconic Western battle of them all. The event is highly controversial in Tombstone and the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday are put through a month-long hearing before Judge Will Spicer. Testimony from witnesses is wildly contradictory. The Tombstone epitaph argues the Earps and Holliday were only doing their duty as lawmen. The Daily Nugget argues they'd be trying for murder. Judge Spicer finally rules there's not enough evidence to proceed with the murder trial. Therefore, this court is adjourned. And when we come back, we're going to continue with a remarkable story of Doc Holliday, the full story of Doc Holliday. And you're hearing from some of the best Western historians in the country.

More on the life of Doc Holliday here on Our American Stories. Sick of paying $100 for groceries and getting nothing but eggs, orange juice and a paper bag? Then download the Drop app. Drop lets you earn points with your everyday shopping and redeem them for gift cards. Want a free dinner with those groceries? Drop it.

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For full prescribing information, please call 1-855-213-2138 or visit Prevnar20.com. At Boost Mobile, passion and determination fuel what it means to get after it. That's why they built their offers keeping in mind those who go the extra mile. Boost Mobile is partnered with champions from across the nation to empower you with devices and service that won't break the bank. Join Boost Mobile and get after it. Boost Mobile is partnering with people you already know and love like the artist JC Rivera, rapper, singer-songwriter Toosie, and professional skateboarder and Olympic athlete Samaria Brevard to highlight their unique talents, inspiring journeys, and how Boost Mobile helped them continue to get after it. Boost Mobile knows the importance of shining a spotlight on the neighborhood kids and showing up for the communities they are in. It's time to join Boost Mobile and get after it. Switch to Boost Mobile today and get a free Samsung Galaxy A23 5G phone. Powered by America's largest 5G networks. New customers only. Taxes extra.

One device per line. 5G not available everywhere. Other restrictions apply.

Check out the full offer details at BoostMobile.com. Terms and conditions apply. And we continue here with our American stories and the story of Doc Holliday. We last heard from Judge Spicer who ruled that there was not enough evidence to proceed with a murder trial against the Earps or Doc Holliday.

Let's pick up from there with Roger McGrath. Therefore this court is adjourned. The Cowboys are incensed by the failure to proceed with the trial. They issue a public death threat to Judge Spicer in the Daily Nugget. The real problem is the town has been so polarized that there's no appeasing the losing side.

The Cowboys aren't interested in PR. They're interested in revenge. Ike Clanton wants to get the men who killed his brother and they feel the whole system has let them down. Word spreads through tombstone that the Earps and Doc Holliday are targeted for death. Late on a December night Virgil Earp steps out of the oriental saloon and into the blast of a shotgun. The butt shot from the unseen assassin shreds his left arm and rips into his left leg. Miraculously Virgil survives but his left arm is rendered useless for the rest of his life. Three months later in March 1882, Morgan Earp is shot while playing a game of billiards.

The shot comes through an open window of the bullier parlor and drills Morgan in the stomach. He lingers for an hour and dies in Wyatt's arms. For Wyatt Earp the killing of Morgan was a profoundly upsetting incident. From now on he will be a law unto himself.

The question over the years was was he a force for justice or was he an expression of the law gone wrong and that's a difficult question to answer but he will be the judge the jury and the executioner. Wyatt Earp is now a deputy U.S. marshal and with Doc Holliday's encouragement decides it's time to go on the offensive. The first order of business though is to get Virgil and his wife safely out of town. Wyatt deputizes Doc and Warren Earp and two others Sherman McMaster and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson to escort Virgil and his wife to the train station in Tucson. At the station they spot Frank Stillwell the man has been bragging that he fired the fatal shot into Morgan Earp's stomach.

Stillwell is hiding behind a railroad car as the men close in on him. Wyatt lets a shotgun roar and Doc opens up with a revolver. How many others fire is not known but Stillwell's body is later found riddled with buckshot and bullets. One of the witnesses says he'd never seen a man who'd been more badly shot up and from now on there's no turning back from Wyatt Earp.

This is a major change in his career. He still views himself I believe as bringing justice but he clearly realizes he's now outside the confines of the law. This was the beginning of real trouble for the Earps and it made it clear that Wyatt was interested in more than just arresting people.

This has become personal. A Tucson justice of the peace issues arrest warrants for Wyatt and Doc and the others but by the time he does they are long gone and armed to the teeth to hunt down the killers of Morgan and the attempted assassin of Virgil. Joined by Texas Jack Vermillion they head for the ranch of Pete Spence one of the leaders of the cowboy faction. Spence is not there but they find one of his hands Indian Charlie Cruz and dispense some western justice upon him. What becomes known as the vendetta ride is now at full gallop. Wyatt Earp's vendetta ride can be looked at as almost an old testament type story.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and if you really think about that what that type of approach fosters is the idea of a natural law. You have the natural law and you have the civil law and those who support Wyatt Earp would say he was following the natural law in the course of actions he took after the killing of Morgan. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday and the other vendetta riders next surprise Curly Bill and eight other cowboys at Iron Springs about 30 miles northwest of the tombstone. Earp lets loose with a shotgun nearly cutting Curly Bill in half. The other cowboys return fire and the vendetta riders are forced to retreat. Texas Jack Vermillion has his horse shot from under him but Doc Holliday dashes back through heavy fire to rescue his fallen comrade. Doc later says our escape was miraculous. The shots cut our clothes and saddles and killed one horse but did not hit us.

I think we would have been killed if God almighty wasn't on our side. After the Curly Bill episode the Earp posse decides it's time to leave Arizona because of the pressure of the posse that are chasing them. With the assistance probably of two governors, Wells Fargo and Company, maybe the Santa Fe Railroad, and the U.S. Marshal's Office, they go to Albuquerque and from there into Colorado.

At Pueblo, Colorado they park company. Wyatt going to Gunnison and Doc to Denver. Doc is arrested in Denver in May 1882 on the Arizona warrant for the murder of Frank Stillwell. All of a sudden Doc has support coming out of the woodwork. There is a Bat Masterson comes to town and begins to argue for him.

There's a newspaper man named E.D. Cowan who is working on his behalf. So all of these people are saying to the governor don't send him back. And so what happens is that the governor of Colorado looks over the papers and says there is already a charge against Doc Holliday in Pueblo and we can't extradite him to another state when there is an outstanding warrant against him here in Colorado.

By the way that's called now in Colorado and other places Hollidaying, filing charges of one crime to prevent applying warrants for another crime. Doc returns a gambling to support himself but tuberculosis is ravaging his body and his once vaunted skills are beginning to deteriorate. He bounces from town to town Denver, Pueblo, Leadville. In a Leadville saloon in March 1885 Doc is in his last shooting scrape. When Billy Allen tries to collect a debt Doc owes him and threatens the frail consumptive, Doc shoots Allen.

Doc is arrested and put on trial but a jury finds him not guilty on the grounds of self-defense. Doc's last days are spent in the health resort of Glenwood Springs. He moves there in May 1887 and begins soaking in the hot springs and inhaling the sulfurous vapors.

Here's entrepreneur and Old West collector Bill Koch. Why would Doc go to a springs that had a lot of sulfur in it? I mean that just hastens his death and he was medically trained but it shows how primitive medicine was in those days. Over the years he has never stopped corresponding with his cousin Maddie Holliday. Now his letter writing increases. She urges him to turn to God. He seeks out the local priest, Father Edward Downey and it's not long before the Irish Cleric baptizes Doc in the Catholic faith. By the fall of 1887 Doc Holliday is bedridden. After all his narrow escapes he finds it ironic that he won't die with his boots on. On the morning of November 8 he calls for a nurse to bring him a jig or a whiskey. Doc sits up in his bed and throws back the shot. He looks at his bare feet.

This is funny, he says, and then falls back onto the bed and dies. John Henry Holliday is but 36 years old. Here's Gary Roberts and Victoria Wilcox. If you think about it and you go to see movies about all of this, the character who wins in the movies every time, who puts Wyatt Earp in the shadows, although he's supposed to be the hero, you forget about Wyatt Earp and you concentrate on Doc Holliday. He'd done more in 36 years than most men ever dream of doing. He traveled across the country and seen history being made and he had become part of American history. He was the best in the country and seen history being made and he had become part of American history. Wyatt Earp later says of him, Doc was a dentist whom necessity had made a gambler, a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond, a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit, a long lean ash blonde fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most gambler and the nerviest, speediest, and deadliest man with a six gun I ever knew. And great work as always to Greg Hengler and thanks as always to Roger McGrath who's our regular contributor for all things American West.

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