Doc Holliday

by Gary L Roberts

  An EPITAPH reporter met Mr. Reppy after reading the interview and inquired if he had seen it. An affirmative answer, accompanied by a laugh, was given, supplemented by the statement that Holliday was the most thoroughly equipped liar, and smoothest scoundrel in the United States. The reporter then inquired if Mr. Reppy was not a friend of the Earps and Holliday, and was immediately answered in the negative. He said that he was never on intimate terms with any member of the gang, and believed that the greatest blessing ever bestowed on Arizona was their departure from beyond its borders. Reppy said his attention was called to the interview while in Colorado, but it was too absurd, and too thoroughly pregnant with glaring falsehoods, about the people of Arizona, to take serious notice of.3

  And so the legend took shape, with point and counterpoint built loosely on what had happened in Arizona and the notoriety Doc gained as a result of his arrest in Denver. For the moment, he enjoyed more attention than Wyatt Earp or anyone else in the Tombstone story. Almost instantaneously, he went from a relative unknown in the communities where he lived to a hero or an archvillain, with both views written in purple prose devoted to melodrama rather than to what actually happened. The tales that he had a frontierwide reputation before Tombstone that writers and chroniclers produced about him in 1882 and afterward were actually after-the-fact representations designed to build his celebrity status in Denver. They implied pre-Tombstone notoriety, but the stories exaggerated his earlier adventures to make him bigger than life. What they really demonstrated was the impact of those tense days in May 1882 on the reputation of Doc Holliday. And, at a personal level, he found it hard to decide whether the hullabaloo was a blessing or a curse.

  On June 14, 1882, the Rocky Mountain News, which had opposed Doc throughout the Denver episode and became Governor Frederick W. Pitkin’s chief critic in the aftermath, noted:

  A gentleman recently from Pueblo stated to a NEWS reporter yesterday that the notorious “Doc” Holliday is still in that city, awaiting the action of the grand jury, on the charge of larceny which has been preferred against him. Holliday is enjoying a splendid time, his numerous friends in Pueblo giving him all that he could desire. He feels perfectly safe against any and all proceedings that may be begun against him in the neighboring territory of Arizona, being protected by Colorado state authorities.4

  The News carried the hint of sarcasm in that report, but it did demonstrate that Doc’s life was no longer his own. The Tombstone legend was already swallowing him up, or perhaps his troubles were feeding it. However defined, Doc had become the symbol of the Cow-Boy war, which had captivated readers in the Southwest and Pacific Slope for months and which had made its way into the eastern press and even into the Congressional Record. That would change, of course, but the peculiar circumstances of his incarceration made him the focus of the debate for the moment. Oddly, with Wyatt Earp safe in Gunnison, Doc Holliday became the leader of the “Earp gang” in the public mind.5

  On July 14, 1882, two days after Doc’s court appearance in Pueblo, John Ringo’s body was found in Morse’s Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains east of Tombstone with a single gunshot wound to the head. Apparently brought down by his own melancholy despondence, he was one of the few real victims of his .45 Colt revolver. The coroner’s jury proclaimed that the cause of death was “unknown,” and more than a decade would pass before anyone would claim that his death was anything other than a suicide. With time, however, Ringo also became a mythical figure in the Tombstone saga, not unlike Doc in the portrayal of him as an educated loner, honorable, morose, a veritable Don Quixote, lost in mysterious self-absorbed tortures of the mind. Arguably, in Arizona at least, where he had already been proclaimed “the King of the Cowboys,” in life, Ringo was more notorious than Doc Holliday. Over time, the mystery of his death would tantalize old-timers and future generations of writers tempted by what-if’s and might-have-been’s, but in 1882, his was an Arizona story.6

  Perhaps inevitably, Ringo and Holliday would become each other’s bête noire in the evolving legend of Tombstone, the mavericks on each side of the Earp-Clanton feud, different, yet much alike in their brooding, dark ways. This theme had no firm basis in the reality of what happened. It was based largely on the January 1882 confrontation on the streets of Tombstone that was cut short by prompt police work by a man whose name is all but forgotten, and perhaps later on the reported rivalry between the two of them over Kate Elder. The claim would eventually be made that Doc was part of a band of men who slipped back into Arizona and killed Ringo to fulfill Wyatt’s promise to Morgan. Some even suggested that he was perhaps the man who fired the fatal shot.7 But it was a fantasy, born of a need to make Ringo’s death more dramatic, more meaningful, and more satisfying in the Tombstone saga. As two lost souls, each reminding the other of his own failed life, Doc and Ringo presented a temptation too great for latter-day mythmakers to resist.

  That would be a twentieth-century addition of the ought-to-have-happened variety. The simple fact was that in July 1882 Doc Holliday could not have been a party to Ringo’s death, because his presence in Pueblo was clearly documented and because the risks were sim- ply too great for him—or Wyatt Earp for that matter—to undertake such an unlikely expedition. At the time, Doc was concentrating on more mundane and practical matters as he prepared to head north to Leadville or perhaps on to the Wood River country as he had originally planned. It would be hard to say when he learned of Ringo’s passing, if he ever did. That summer Holliday was the man dealing with the attention, although it is doubtful that he either realized it or wanted it.8

  What Doc needed most was money, not fame.

  Leadville was quite literally “a field of dreams.” From the time placer miners found gold in California Gulch in 1860, hope flooded the area as high as the ten-thousand-foot peaks. The real boom began in 1877 when the silver carbonate beds were discovered, and by 1880 Leadville was the “queen of the silver camps,” boasting a population of forty thousand people and a monthly mining payroll of $800,000. More than a few millionaires walked the town’s busy streets as fair game for the sporting crowd, who soon found the hunting good. At its heyday, Leadville boasted 120 saloons, 118 gambling halls, 110 beer gardens, and 35 brothels, besides churches, schools, department stores, a plethora of other businesses, and 3 newspapers.9

  Doc certainly knew of Leadville long before he arrived, because its riches had generated the Royal Gorge War between the Santa Fe and the Denver & Rio Grande railroads, in which he had played a part, and because he had known more than a few men who had sought their fortunes there. The town’s boom had already peaked when Doc first arrived. Growth had stalled. The silver mining operations were experiencing trouble, but there were still plenty of opportunities to be had. Along Harrison Avenue at upscale establishments like the Texas House, the Board of Trade, the Monarch Saloon, Hyman’s Saloon, and more, Doc saw opportunity aplenty. Besides, he knew people there. He knew the superintendent of the Big Pittsburg mine, John N. Vimont, the acquaintance from Tombstone he had been going to meet when he was arrested in Denver.10 There were also acquaintances from the gamblers’ circuit. And horse races were scheduled to start the week after he arrived, which surely provided opportunities to make a little money. For all those reasons Leadville made perfect sense to John Henry.

  However, Leadville, Colorado, was the last place Doc Holliday needed to be that summer of 1882. Its climate was deadly for a man suffering from consumption; even the promotional literature for the region said so. “Persons troubled with weak lungs or heart disease should give the new camp a wide berth,” advised the Tourist’s Guide to Leadville and the Carbonate Fields. “The rare atmosphere accelerates the action of both these organs and unless they are in perfect condition, serious results may follow.”11 He probably gave the subject little thought. He was in the best shape he had been in years. He had ridden the vendetta trail without complaint, and he was in good enough condition when he arrived in Colorado that not a single Denver paper mentioned that he
had a lung condition during his incarceration. All of that would change in Leadville.

  He would not have known that Robert Koch, a German doctor and a pioneer of research into infectious diseases, had identified the tubercle bacillus and had announced in a presentation to the Physiological Society of Berlin just weeks earlier, on March 24, 1882, that all forms of consumption were the product of the bacillus. Other work, particularly a study of cholera in Egypt, prevented him from pursuing his findings for a time, and, as a consequence, the importance of his discovery was not immediately realized or spread.12 For victims of the disease like John Henry, the delay in the spread of knowledge oddly had benefits.

  Some researchers, in both Europe and the United States, explored the implications of the new understanding, which transformed consumption into tuberculosis. The knowledge that tuberculosis was a contagious disease would create a “phthisio-phobia” in the late 1890s and early 1900s. For the time being, people like Doc Holliday were spared the discrimination that the next generation of victims would face, while missing some of the changes in understanding the disease and how best to treat it that might have given them greater hope.13

  In the beginning, things went well for Doc. His reputation helped, although he did not make a point of it. He settled in with a lifestyle that was anything but flamboyant. He checked into a hotel and arranged to receive mail at the local Western Union office located at 106 East Second Street. He quickly found work as a faro dealer at Cyrus Allen’s Monarch Saloon at 320 Harrison Street, and with a little luck playing poker at the Board of Trade and the Texas House, Doc eventually took better quarters at 210 West Third. At first, Cy Allen was pleased with the attention his new dealer attracted; Doc Holliday was good for business.14

  During that time, John Henry became acquainted with some of the high rollers, such as John G. Morgan, who owned the Board of Trade, Elmon G. Hall, who ran Marble Hall, Ben Loeb, the owner of a variety theater, Mannie Hyman, the owner of Hyman’s Saloon, Colonel Sam Houston, and more.15 Doc made a favorable impression as a fair dealer and a model citizen. He stayed out of trouble and did well. His good behavior doubtless was influenced by his ongoing legal problems in Colorado and the possibility that the Territory of Arizona would make yet another attempt to bring him back to Tucson or Tombstone for trial. He simply could not afford to risk trouble that would wear out his welcome in Colorado. His good behavior pleased men like Cy Allen, who could boast the services of the famous Doc Holliday without having to worry about trouble.

  However, trouble was lurking nearby. The one thing that might have given Holliday pause as he settled in was the discovery that old enemies were already well entrenched at Leadville. The most notable of them was John E. Tyler, the same John Tyler who had crossed John Henry in Tombstone. Tyler had moved to Leadville after his humiliating exit from Tombstone and had ridden the Leadville boom with relative success. The old Sloper had not changed his ways, however. He had bounced around for a while and was suffering from a streak of bad luck when Elmon G. Hall, a well-known saloonman formerly associated with the Texas House, hired him to run his gambling operation when he opened Marble Hall at 210 Harrison Avenue about the first of May 1882. Hall said later that he was looking “for some honest man to manipulate his cards and to handle his cash” when Tyler applied for a job. According to press accounts, Hall had known Tyler for twenty years and hired him. Hall even advanced Tyler money to pay off his debts at the time.

  Hall soon became suspicious when his faro table, perhaps the most patronized operation in his place, consistently lost money. Eventually, one of Hall’s friends confided to him that he believed Tyler was dishonest and stealing from him. On Sunday night, May 28, Tyler was in the lookout chair beside the faro table, and, when he took a break, Hall counted the money in the drawer—$50. When Tyler returned, Hall stood nearby, ostensibly in conversation but actually watching Tyler. He saw Tyler take a $10 bill from the cash drawer. At that point, Hall approached Tyler and asked him how much money was in the drawer. The suddenly uncomfortable Tyler uneasily answered $50. Hall then demanded that Tyler count the drawer. After stammering and stalling, Tyler could produce only $40, at which point Hall accused him of stealing and fired him on the spot. Hall publicly said that he had no idea how much money Tyler had stolen from him but expressed the opinion that “he has been stealing ever since he first went to work.”16

  Given Hall’s prominence in the sporting community and the very public exposure of Tyler’s larceny, that Tyler was not prosecuted or run out of town was surprising. However, Tyler soon found work in another house before Doc arrived a couple of weeks later and even had established something of a following among the gamblers. One of them was Thomas J. Duncan, who had been an associate of Tyler’s in Tombstone. He arrived in Leadville sometime in 1881 and soon proved himself to be an unsavory character. He also managed to ingratiate himself with some of the high rollers on Harrison Avenue, which afforded him opportunities for improving his lot. In the beginning, Tyler and Duncan made no public display of their dislike of Holliday, and it seemed for a time that they would let the old troubles stay quiet if not forgotten.17

  Doc also had friends and acquaintances in Leadville, perhaps one of more recent association than anyone in Leadville imagined. At the time, the press had generally reported that Wyatt Earp’s posse scattered after arriving in Colorado, with only Dan G. Tipton lingering in Colorado, but Turkey Creek Jack Johnson was likely in Leadville during the summer and fall of 1882. Johnson had turned against his Cow-Boy friends originally in exchange for Earp’s promise to help secure a pardon for his brother, Allen Blount, who was imprisoned at Yuma. Blount was pardoned, and Wyatt Earp would later testify that Johnson’s name was actually John Blount, who was himself a fugitive in Arizona when he was known as Jack Johnson.

  Allen Blount was in Leadville while Doc was there along with J.W. Ritchie. Ritchie was another alias used by Creek Johnson. In fact, in 1885 Wyatt Earp and a man named Ritchie were arrested in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Wyatt would also later say that Blount did in fact go by the name Ritchie. Furthermore, later on, Lee Smith would specifically identify one of the men with the Earps and Doc in Tombstone as J. W. Ritchie. In view of these circumstances, Doc may well have continued his acquaintance with Creek Johnson in Leadville.18

  Of course, Leadville had more than its share of low lifes. One of them was a character named Harry C. Neil, a hard case described as “a cadaverous looking fellow, with a stringy lock of hair hanging over his forehead in a masher-like way. His face is covered with pots like a cranberry marsh and he looks like a regular dance-hall steerer.” Neil bore a striking resemblance to Hyman G. Neill, the old “Hoodoo Brown,” although not riding quite so high. They could have been the same person, although reports after Neill left Las Vegas claimed that he was arrested in Nebraska in April 1880 and later killed in Buena Vista, Colorado, in June of the same year. Other reports suggest that he lived in Kansas, Texas, and Colorado before dying in Torreon, Mexico, several years later. If by some chance he did beat the odds, as he had been in the habit of doing throughout his misspent life, he had fallen on hard times by the time he reached Leadville.19

  Leadville’s Neil ran with a “short stumpy fellow” by the name of Edward B. Dempsey, who looked “like a professional leisure man” and “carried the evidence of hard times on him.”20 Neil and Dempsey were sometimes seen in the company of another rounder called Curly Mack. His name was actually Harvey Rustin, a gambler with a mixed reputation.

  On April 30, 1882, these three watched as a miner called “General” Ward partied at a joint called the Red Light. He made the mistake of flashing a roll of $1,700 in cash, and when he left the place, Neil, Dempsey, and Curly Mack followed and mugged him. Neil and Dempsey were arrested a short time later, and Curly Mack left town on the run.21 He would be arrested later in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while working in a dance hall under the alias “Frank Miller.” Reportedly, he was planning to move on to the Wood River country as soon as he had a stake, which
would indicate that he had not carried off much of General Ward’s poke.

  The officer who arrested Curly Mack was Marshal T. J. “Jeff” Carr, Cheyenne’s justifiably well-known peace officer. Carr notified Leadville authorities and discovered that the Lake County grand jury had returned a true bill against the unsavory trio. He then loaded Curly Mack on the train without further legal amenities and delivered him to Sheriff Pete Becker of Lake County at the Denver railroad station on June 2, 1882, just after Doc Holliday had been released. Curly Mack waived the legal requirements for proper requisition forms and agreed to go with Becker. The Denver Tribune reported that Curly Mack “denies all knowledge of the crime with which he is charged, and refuses to give any particulars concerning the affair.”22 Back in Leadville, the charges against Neil, Dempsey, and Curly Mack were eventually dropped, and Doc would have dealings with all three men after he arrived.

  By contrast, Doc Holliday stayed clear of trouble. He had a chance to change some things in his life, and he apparently made a good faith effort to do so. Despite his Southern roots, his experiences in Arizona and Colorado had converted him to the Republican Party, and he was an avid student of politics.23 In 1882, Doc became involved in the political process in a way that also gave him a chance to repay some of those who had helped him. Colorado’s Republican Party was divided at the time as the result of a controversy over one of its U.S. Senate seats.

  In 1878, Jerome B. Chaffee, one of Colorado’s U.S. senators, announced that he would retire from politics for health reasons, and Nathaniel P. Hill declared that he was interested in the vacant seat. Later, Chaffee decided to continue in office. Hill got the appointment, but bad feelings were created within the party. When Governor Frederick W. Pitkin announced that he would not seek reelection to the governorship in 1882, Chaffee backed Norman H. Meldrum (hoping eventually through him to return to the senate), and Hill supported Henry R. Wolcott. At the Republican convention in September, however, Lake County Republicans pushed Ernest L. Campbell, a Leadville attorney, and Chaffee switched horses to support him when it was obvious he had the votes to win. Shortly thereafter, the Democrats nominated J. B. Grant by acclamation.24