Doc Holliday
Page 9
John Henry Holliday headed west in 1873 accompanied by many ghosts and embittered by the destruction of his dreams. Everything and everyone he loved lay behind him, and what he found in Texas hardly gave him hope. Some doctors claimed that whiskey helped consumption, and perhaps it was then that he began to drink more heavily to find relief, with the added excuse of needing to forget. Or perhaps he headed west determined to follow “the path of rectitude” that his mother had taught him, as he himself later claimed.
Galveston was a city with a history back to the days of Jean Lafitte. As the major port of entry on the Gulf of Mexico, it was the gateway to Texas. It was also a city on the move with a large business community and real claims to progress. It boasted an opera house, just a couple of years old when John Henry arrived, and a cotton exchange had been established the year before. But John Henry was just passing through. He caught the Houston & Texas Central one jump ahead of a yellow fever epidemic that closed Galveston.40 He passed through piney woods, post oaks, and cotton country that must have reminded him of the Georgia he left behind him. He traveled through Houston toward Dallas but almost certainly stopped off at Brenham to see his uncle, Jonathan Level McKey, who had left Georgia in 1858 before the war. Uncle Jonathan had prospered in the area, but the war and Reconstruction had taken their toll, and most of his wealth was gone by the time John Henry arrived. Apparently, he did not stay long once he realized his uncle’s plight, and after an appropriate time for catching his uncle up on news of his brothers and sisters back in Georgia and Florida, he moved on to Dallas.41
Dallas was scarcely the answer to prayers. It was the end of the line for the railroad and a rude and rough settlement only then transforming into a town of substance, but it had a look and feel that John Henry Holliday would come to know well. Dallas was a boomtown with muddy streets and fresh construction everywhere. The railroad had arrived on July 16, 1872, and in the year that followed, the town grew from a quiet Trinity River farm town of twelve hundred to a burgeoning trade center of more than seven thousand. It was a major source of supply for points west. It was still struggling to find its niche, but the railroad itself held promise enough that the business community grew.42
Dallas had problems, however. That spring, before John Henry arrived, it had been closed for four weeks because of a quarantine brought on by yellow fever. Construction added to the noise and confusion, and hogs were allowed to roam free on the streets as a unique measure for cleaning the streets of cattle waste. Beyond the business district, on Main Street past the train depot more than forty saloons and gambling halls stretched out to the Trinity and played host to a substantial floating population including gamblers, saloonkeepers, prostitutes, and various frontier parasites. Cattle and buffalo hides would eventually boost the local economy, but first, in September, the Panic of 1873 further dampened the prosperity of Dallas and left the future in doubt. Instead of a temporary end-of-track town, Dallas became the end of the line for the Texas and Pacific Railroad for the foreseeable future. Population growth stalled, and the town settled in.43
It was not mere chance that took young Holliday to Dallas. He knew people there. H. P. Morris, whose daughter, Miriam, had attended the Valdosta Institute with John Henry, had moved to Dallas in 1872 with his family.44 More important, John Henry knew a prominent dentist in Dallas named John A. Seegar, also a recent emigrant from Georgia. John A. Seegar was the son of John Seegar, who had operated a “respectable house of entertainment for travellers” on the post road that extended from Greenville, South Carolina, through Atlanta to Mobile, not far from the hotel owned by John Henry’s grandfather in the two decades before the war.45
John A. Seegar had lived in Fayetteville for a time, served in the Confederate army, and after the war attended the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. In 1867, he migrated to Texas and settled in Dallas with his family. He became prominent in local affairs and established a successful practice. In 1869, Seegar advertised for a partner in the Philadelphia Dental Office and Laboratory. He wrote, “Will take a young man who has just graduated.”46 Of course, that was three years before John Henry’s graduation, but in the same issue of the Den-tal Times that carried Holliday’s commencement program, Seegar published a paper titled “Galvanic Action from Amalgam Fillings.”47 Because of family and school connections, then, Seegar was John Henry’s best chance. They struck a deal, and, by the summer of 1873, they were partners in a dental practice.
For a time, the partnership seemed to prosper. John Henry’s talents were considerable. In October, Holliday and Seegar swept the prizes at the state fair for the best set of teeth in gold, the best set of teeth in vulcanized rubber, and the best display of artificial teeth and dental ware.48 Holliday later claimed that he also joined the Methodist Church in Dallas and even became a member of a temperance society as part of his effort to achieve respectability.49 Both would have pleased Seegar—who was a strait-laced man of firm Baptist persuasion—and his family back home.
But on March 2, 1874, the Dallas paper announced that “upon mutual consent” the firm of Seegar and Holliday had dissolved. The item also indicated that Holliday’s office was now located above the Dallas County Bank at the corner of Main and Lamar. Further indication that the partnership had ended on less than a happy basis was the announcement that John Henry would be responsible for bills against the firm of Seegar and Holliday. The cause of the breach was never explained, but the likely cause was soon a matter of public record. Young Dr. Holliday, in the parlance of the times, had “slipped from the path of rectitude.”50
John Henry was drawn more and more into the city’s nightlife. He may well have found release from his problems in Fort Worth, a few miles west, where a Dallas professional could drink and gamble with less notice. But over time his drinking increased, and he was soon a regular at Dallas’s saloons and gambling halls. Faro, monte, five-card draw, and all the games he had learned growing up in the Deep South now had an allure they had not had before. If he was consumptive, which seems probable, the drinking was easily explained. The liquor helped him to cope with his pain (mental as well as physical), and the gambling not only contributed to his prosperity but also provided a diversion from the ghosts of his past.
He was apparently an apt student. In April 1874, he was arrested for operating a keno game, and on May 12 he was indicted for gambling. On May 22, he appeared in court for the charge.51 He apparently made an effort to keep his day business, though. On June 1, he paid his property and poll taxes.52 Curiously, Dr. Seegar’s office was destroyed by fire on June 21, but by then Holliday had left Dallas for Denison.
John Henry Holliday, Dallas, 1873. This photograph was discovered by the late Vincent Mercaldo. The original was in an oval frame, and on the back of the photo, in pencil, was inscribed “John Henry Holliday—Dallas—1873.”
Denison, another end-of-track town just south of the Red River, was a wide-open town suited to John Henry’s newfound avocation. This town had a rougher edge than Dallas, though, because it was on the fringe of the Indian Territory in a spot that had been the home of desperadoes and ne’er-do-wells for years. Denison was organized on September 20, 1872, and the Kansas & Texas Railroad ran its first train through on Christmas Day. The town anticipated becoming a major shipping point for cattle, and before long it even had a refrigerated slaughterhouse capable of processing three hundred cattle a day. The Katy Railroad anticipated shipping beef back east in refrigerator cars. The first year of operation was a good one, which meant jobs in Denison and a substantial floating population of cowboys during the cattle season, one of the attractions for Doc.53
Jesse Leigh Hall, who was known as “Red,” but who preferred to be called “Lee,” was the deputy sheriff in charge of law enforcement. A former schoolteacher at Sherman and the county seat of Grayson County until he became Sherman’s town marshal, he was tough and courageous. In 1873, he had been after an outlaw who challenged him to a duel. Hall accepted and shot his man dead out of the saddl
e, although he was wounded himself. Hall was determined to keep the lid on Denison. Aside from demanding regular cleanups on the part of businessmen, he kept the saloons, gambling houses, and bordellos a block off Main on Skiddy for easier control and better appearances. At the same time, Hall was congenial to the sporting class. He generally ignored the state law forbidding gambling and the sale of spiritous liquors in the same establishments and let gaming flourish so long as there was no trouble.54
Holliday kept a low profile in Denison. Dr. R. H. Lampkin, “a very agreeable gentleman,” had opened an office in June 1873, and the Denison Daily News announced that “[h]e is the only practicing Dentist in the city.”55 By August 1873, Dr. J. Crane had added his services as an option for the citizenry. When John Henry arrived, dental services seemed well met, and he apparently spent more time on Skiddy than on Main. With Red Hall on hand, the gambling halls ran smoothly. John Henry remained there through the fall, learning the culture as well as the games, although he apparently made trips back to Dallas from time to time on the Houston & Texas Central. But when the American and Texas Refrigerator Car Company became another victim of the Panic of 1873, and its packing plant in Denison closed, the negative impact on the economy was felt on both Skiddy and Main.56
In the meantime, things had improved a bit in Dallas. Oddly enough, the peculiar combination of the panic and the new technology that made it easier to process buffalo hides spawned a new industry overnight, and Dallas was positioned to take advantage of it. Before long, Dallas was a center for shipping and processing hides from the slaughter of the great southern herd on the plains of western Texas.
On New Year’s Eve, John Henry took another significant step in his transformation from Southern professional to Western sport. The Dallas Weekly Herald provided the details: “Dr. Holliday and Mr. Austin, a saloon keeper, relieved the monotony of the noise of firecrackers by taking a couple of shots at each other yesterday afternoon. The cheerful note of the peaceful six shooter is heard once more among us. Both shooters were arrested.”57
Charles W. Austin, called “Champagne Charlie” by the patrons of the St. Charles Saloon, was a Texan and former cowhand who earlier had been a clerk at J. W. Thomas’s Butcher Shop in the City Market. The transformation to successful saloonman was noteworthy, for he was soon classified as a “rollicking fellow” with exceptional skills as a bartender. His “rollicking” sometimes got him into trouble, however. The previous year he had been arrested on a charge of assault with intent to commit murder after an attack on the ex-marshal of Dallas, Major G. W. Campbell. He had been acquitted in that matter, and by August 1874 a local paper declared of him, “It is admitted by all that Charlie beats the world mixing drinks, and from our own experience, unqualifiedly assert that Charlie ‘understands his gait.’”58
The details of the New Year’s Eve shooting were not recorded, but while both shooters were arrested, Austin was not held. He clearly had a bigger reputation and more friends in Dallas. On January 18, John Henry was charged with assault with intent to murder, but a week later, on January 25, he was tried and acquitted.59 It had not been much of an affair, but he was building a reputation as a man who would not back down. John Henry was back and forth between Dallas and Denison that spring. On April 13, he was responsible enough to show up in court for the old keno charge in Dallas. He was fined $10.60 The books in Dallas were now clear, and he began to think of his future. The inhospitable clime of Dallas and poor prospects in Denison and Fort Worth moved him west in May 1875; he left behind unclaimed mail at Denison.61
So far, Doc, as he was now called, had known only the fringe of the frontier. He had met frontier types, and he had heard stories aplenty of life beyond the reach of the railroad, where cowboys, desperadoes, the army, and occasional flare-ups of Indian resistance gave life a hard edge, rough and unfinished. But he had also been told that in the little towns that had grown up near military posts, men who were willing to take chances had the opportunity to make money on the gambling circuit. That winter, one of the more promising spots seemed to be Fort Griffin Flat, a sprawling little village that stood just below Fort Griffin, one of the army’s outposts in a cluster of forts on the central plains of Texas.
The buffalo slaughter made the Flat a rendezvous for hunters and a shipping point for hides, and the Dodge City Trail ran past Fort Griffin, bringing great cattle herds and cowboys with them into town for one last party before the dry and monotonous drive toward Doan’s Station and on into Dodge City, Kansas. It was a promising combination—soldiers, hunters, and cowboys—bound to attract gamblers, saloonmen, and whores. Doc Holliday, with his respectable reputation wasted in Dallas saloons and gambling houses, took the stage west along the military roads. He may have paused briefly at Jacksboro, near Fort Richardson, but if he did, he did not tarry long, pushing on past Fort Belknap, and then southwest to Fort Griffin and the Flat.62
Fort Griffin had done its part in the defense of central Texas from 1867 to 1874, when the Red River War finally broke the back of Comanche and Kiowa resistance. The fort stood on a plateau overlooking the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, kept mostly for mop-up operations and as a force for order in the area. The post was crude but neat and, when Doc reached it, was home to troops from the Tenth Cavalry and the Eleventh Infantry. The Flat curled around the base of the pla- teau, with a single street, Griffin Avenue, stretching toward the river. One old-timer described the town this way: “Fort Griffin, when I arrived there, was the toughest place I’d ever seen. I believe there were eight or ten saloons there then, and, in addition, there were several dance halls. The Bee Hive Saloon and Dance Hall was the main one. Lewd women infested these places, and all of them had their little huts or shanties, which sprawled along the bank of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River.”63
In 1874, the Flat had been so lawless that the military had seized control and driven out most of the undesirables, and Rufus Choate, the assistant surgeon at Fort Griffin, reported that “the low whiskey shops and gambling-halls of the flat were weeded out.”64 That same year Shackleford County was created, and, before the year ended, the “Town of Fort Griffin” had gained legal status. On October 12, 1874, Fort Griffin had even become the temporary county seat. That favored position lasted for less than a month, though, because on November 8, Albany (ironically named after the southwestern Georgia town of Albany less than a hundred miles from Valdosta by another postwar Georgia migrant to Texas, William R. Cruger) became the county seat.65
By the time Doc arrived, the town was coming back to life. He found a room, most likely at the Planter’s Hotel, advertised as the “best” and “only” hotel in town. Outside, Griffin Avenue was alive with sounds and smells. By day, as one old-timer declared, “Fort Griffin was more disgusting, after first glance, than alluringly picturesque.”66 Another added, “Old Griffin had its night life; everything went but murder, arson, and burglary.”67 Don H. Biggers later described his first impression of the town:
At that time the town and the post were in the full bloom of military glory and commercial prosperity, unrestrained recklessness and military discipline. The cosmopolitan population of the place was within itself a theme of no mean consequence. There were buffalo-hunters, bullwhackers, soldiers, cowpunchers, Indians, gamblers, toughs, refined business men and fallen women mingling in one common herd on the streets and in the business houses. The picture of the town that day was one never to be forgotten. There must have been 300 or 400 cowboys in town, many of them belonging with trail herds. In front of every store or place of business there was a long hitching rack, and these hitching racks were lined with horses. Several big hide and meat trains had come in from the range, and dozens of big ox teams were standing about the streets and camped along the creek. Thousands of buffalo hides were stacked here and there and thousands more were loaded on wagons ready to depart for Fort Worth. Everybody had plenty of money, and half a dozen big stores, eight or ten saloons and two or three dance halls and varieties were doing business a
t full capacity. From more than a dozen places music was being ground out on pianos, fiddles, banjos and guitary, and the whole town was a Babel of boisterous talk, whoops, curses, laughter, songs and miserable music.68
Doc slipped into the town’s rhythms easily enough, although he doubtlessly watched with some amazement a town “where men drank, gambled, quarreled and fought, indifferently dumped hundreds of dollars over the bar and killed each other over a quarter suspiciously taken in a poker game or because of some trivial, perhaps wholly imaginary insult, [and] daily supplied mule and ox train loads of merchandise to the wants of man.”69 Holliday had met sports, peace officers, and a few toughs in Dallas and Denison, but at Fort Griffin he encountered a rougher and more desperate class at the bars and gambling tables. At the Bee Hive Saloon and John Shaughnessy’s place, John Henry found all the action he needed.
One of the characters he met at the Bee Hive was the notorious Hurricane Bill Martin. The amazing thing was that he was free so close to a military post. Martin had gained notoriety in Kansas as a horse thief and was considered by many to be one of the primary causes of the Red River War of 1874 because of his horse-stealing raids on the herds of the Southern Cheyennes. He was, as a contemporary put it, “as slick a rascal as ever escaped justice,” which was demonstrated when he took a job as a scout for the army in 1875 while still a fugitive. He more or less had his way in Fort Griffin, except for the time that the vigilance committee forced him to marry his paramour and full-time whore, Hurricane Minnie. The arrangement did not seem to hamper the activities of either of the partners.70
Doc was on hand when Hurricane Bill and a buffalo hunter named Mike O’Brien got into a quarrel. When both men realized they were unarmed, each ran to get their guns. O’Brien, armed with a buffalo gun, moved into the middle of Griffin Avenue and opened fire on Bill’s shack, blasting holes into the walls while Bill crouched inside attempting to return the fire. O’Brien fired until he ran out of ammunition, then returned to the Bee Hive for another drink. Bill was left to contemplate his newly ventilated shanty. When they sobered up, both men forgot the quarrel and turned their attention to other matters. Hurricane Bill was a regular at the poker and faro tables, and it was there that he and Doc got to know each other.71