71. Las Vegas Daily Optic, August 4, 1886.
72. Territory v. James Pearson, et al., Case No. 989, Permitting Gaming, August 12, 1879; Territory v. James Pearson, et al., Case No. 991, Aggravated Assault and Battery, August 12, 1879, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA.
73. A. M. Johnson and W. A. Requa to J. H. Holliday, July 30, 1879, Deed Record Book 12, San Miguel County, 182–185; Territory of New Mexico v. H. G. Neill, Case No. 1014, Keeping a Gaming Table, August 1, 1879; Territory v. J. H. Holliday, Case No. 990, Keeping a Gaming Table, August 12, 1879, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA.
74. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, August 7, 8, 10, 1879; Bryan, Wildest of West, 111–112; Bartholomew, Man and Myth, 12–13; Affidavit of John McPherson, August 9, 1879, with Territory v. James Pearson, Case No. 994, Murder, August 13, 1879, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA.
75. Territory v. John Pearson, Case No. 992, Carrying Deadly Weapons, August 12, 1879; Territory v. Philip Pearson, Case No. 993, Carrying Deadly Weapons, August 12, 1879; Territory v. James Pearson, Case No. 994, August 13, 1879; Territory v. James Pearson, Case No. 995, Carrying Deadly Weapons, August 13, 1879; Territory v. J. H. Holliday, Case No. 996, Carrying Deadly Weapons, August 13, 1879, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA.
76. Thomas L. Preston to Samuel N. Lacy, August 18, 1879, Deed Record Book 11, San Miguel County, 340–342; Thomas L. Preston and Lee (?) to B. O. Bertholf, September 1, 1879, Deed Record Book 11, San Miguel County, 342–344. The saloon property was later sold by Preston (without Lacy or Lee) to John Dougher, another liquor dealer from Old Town, on October 24, 1879, Deed Record Book 13, San Miguel County, 8–10. Preston moved to Soccoro shortly thereafter. Dougher thereafter sold the property on March 8, 1880, to Charles A. Rathbun, who converted it into the Chicago Boot and Shoe Store. Dougher to Rathbun, Deed Record Book 15, San Miguel County, 8–10. The building burned down in a New Town fire on September 18, 1880. See Las Vegas Daily Optic, September 20, 1880. Also critical is Marcus Gottschalk to the author, October 2, 2004.
77. The Las Vegas Daily Optic, December 8, 1879, reported, “Jesse James was a guest at the Las Vegas Hot Springs from July 26th to 29th. Of course it was not generally known.” The Hot Springs Hotel was called the Adobe Hotel at the time and was owned by W. Scott Moore. H. T. Wilson, Historical Sketch of Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory (Chicago: Hotel World, 1880), ii. James was a friend of Moore, who was from the same part of Missouri as Jesse. Dr. Henry F. Hoyt and Miguel A. “Gillie” Otero also claimed to have seen Jesse at the hot springs in separate accounts. See Bryan, Wildest of West, 100–102.
78. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, August 24, 1879; Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican, August 23, August 30, 1879. Bartholomew, Man and Myth, 15–20, makes unfounded charges that Holliday was involved in the stage robberies based largely on the reference of one of the robbers to Governor William Arny as that “antediluvian gentleman.” Apparently, in Bartholomew’s view, Holliday was the only educated man in San Miguel County.
79. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, September 26, 1879; Ford County Globe, September 30, 1879.
80. Ford County Globe, September 9, 1879.
81. Ibid.; Flood notes of interview with Wyatt Earp, September 5, 1926, Gilchriese Collection Catalogue, part 1, 71; Ford County Globe, September 30, 1879.
82. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, September 12, 13, 1879. Webb was described as “one of the proprietors” of the former Holliday Saloon where he was arrested. Las Vegas Daily Optic, February 5, 1880. The Optic, February 17, 1881, announced that “Jordan Webb has returned to Las Vegas a free man, having been acquitted of complicity in the stage robbery. The conspiracy against him was somewhat annoying, but could not be made to stick.” On February 24, 1881, the paper also reported that “[a] petition is circulating asking that Jordan J. Webb be appointed a policeman in East Las Vegas.” Of the reunion of Doc and Wyatt and Jim and their wives, Kate wrote, “Doc ran across them at the Plaza, making the third time he had met Wyatt. He went to their camp with them just outside of town and they begged to join them on their trip to Arizona.” Cummings, Mazzanovich typescript, 3.
83. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, September 26, 1879.
84. Dodge City Times, October 18, 1879; Ford County Globe, October 21, 28, 1879.
85. Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 36; Flood notes of interview with Wyatt Earp, September 5, 1926, Gilchriese Collection Catalogue, part 1, 71; Cummings, Mazzanovich typescript, 3. Kate remembered: “When we left Las Vegas, New Mexico our party consisted of Wyatt Earp and his wife Mattie, my husband and myself, Jim Earp and his step-daughter. Doc and I rode in Wyatt Earp’s wagon. We had to be on our guard while in New Mexico, because the Warm Springs Apaches were on the war path, led by their famous war chief, Victorio. We camped for two days close to the Zuni village near the Arizona line…. It was during our trip from Las Vegas to Prescott that Doc and Wyatt became such good friends, which meant the end of the happiness we had enjoyed ever since our marriage.” Cummings, Mazzanovich typescript, 10.
86. W. G. Ward claim, October 7, 1879, Deed Record Book 11, San Miguel County, 449–450.
87. Johnson and Requa to Holliday, July 31, 1879, Deed Record Book 12, San Miguel County, 184. Kate claimed that while she and Doc were in Las Vegas, the police came to arrest him: “She said to him, ‘I wonder if they want to get you.’ She sat on the porch with a six gun and in her night gown and told them if they wanted anything to come and get it.” The occasion of this incident is unclear. Arthur W. Bork, notes of interview with Mary Katharine Cummings, Thanksgiving 1935, copy in author’s files, courtesy Arthur W. Bork.
88. Prescott (Arizona) Daily Miner, November 29, 1879.
89. Prescott Daily Miner, March 20, 1880.
90. Bork and Boyer, “O.K. Corral Fight,” 76–77.
91. Dodge City Times, March 13, 1880; Las Vegas Daily Optic, January 26, February 7, 9, 1880; Santa Fe New Mexican, February 14, 1880; see also Frank Whitelaw’s account in the Las Vegas Daily Optic, August 23, 1897, and Colin W. Rickards, Mysterious Dave Mather (Santa Fe, NM: Press of the Territorian, 1968), 7–8.
92. Las Vegas Daily Optic, January 26, 1880.
93. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, March 3, 1880.
94. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, March 3, 4, 1880; Las Vegas Daily Optic, February 28, 1880; Ford County Globe, March 9, 1880; Territory of New Mexico v. J. J. Webb, Case No. 1024, Murder, March 5, 1880, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA.
95. Las Vegas Daily Gazette March 2, 1880; Las Vegas Daily Optic, March 5, 1880; Santa Fe New Mexican, March 3, 1880; Territory of New Mexico v. J. J. Webb, Case No. 1026, Murder, March 8, 1880, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA.
96. Las Vegas Daily Optic, March 4, 1880; Las Vegas Daily Gazette, March 5, 1880; Territory of New Mexico v. Hyman G. Neill, Case No. 1027, Larceny, March 6, 1880, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA.
97. Territory v. J. J. Webb, Case No. 1029, Murder, March 12, 1880, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA; Las Vegas Daily Optic, March 11, 13, 1880; Dodge City Times, March 13, 1880; Ford County Globe, March 9, 16, 1880.
98. The Las Vegas Daily Optic, February 25, 1881, carried a detailed account of Webb’s life. Myers, “John Joshua Webb,” 25, provides a good summary of the outcome of the Webb case and of Webb’s last days.
99. Territory v. John H. Holliday, Case No. 990, Keeping Gaming Table, August 12, 1879; Territory v. John Holliday, Case No. 996, Carrying Deadly Weapon, August 13, 1879, SMCDCR, Las Vegas, New Mexico, NMSRCA; Criminal Docket Book, San Miguel County, 79–80; Criminal Record Book of the District Court, San Miguel County, 527–528, 539; Civil Record Book A, District Court, San Miguel County, 121.
100. Miguel Antonio Otero, My Life on the Frontier (New York: Press of the Pioneers, 1935), 218.
101. Ibid., 216.
102. Ibid., 217–218.
103. C. W. Wright of Dodge City, Kansas, was listed as a recent arrival at the Mackley House in Las Vegas about the time that Doc left Las Vegas with Wyatt Earp in 1879. Las Vegas Daily Gazette, September 13, 1
879. In the 1880 census, Wright was listed as a thirty-eight-year-old, single, white saloonkeeper, living in East Las Vegas, Precinct 29, p. 65. See the advertisement for his saloon in the Las Vegas Daily Optic, June 23, 1880. The Leavenworth Daily Commercial, July 26, 1874, lists Charles Wright as one of the defenders at Adobe Walls.
104. William R. Cox, Luke Short and His Era (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 179–182. At the time, the Dallas News, December 24, 1890, reported, “Wright has been regarded as a terrible man, while Short’s reputation is that of a man of iron nerve.”.
105. F. Stanley, The Duke City: The Story of Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1706–1956 (Pampa, TX: Pampa Print Shop, 1963), 36–37, 40–49. On June 2, 1880, the Las Vegas Daily Optic announced, “Holliday & Sanguinette, of Albuquerque, have leased the hotel de Kelly at Bernalillo and took charge today.”.
106. “J. H. Holladay” was listed as a dentist living with Richard Elliott and John J. Gosper in the same household. U.S. Census, Territory of Arizona, Yavapai County, Prescott, June 2, 3, 1880, 4; see also Tanner, Family Portrait, 141.
5. The Price of a Reputation
1. Tucson (Arizona) Daily Citizen, August 17, 1880; Tucson (Arizona) Daily Star, August 26, 27, September 2, 10, 12, 1880; Tombstone (Arizona) Daily Epitaph, August 24, September 15, 24, 1880. For a useful analysis of the sources, see Roger Jay, “The Gambler’s War in Tombstone: Fact or Artifact?” WOLA Journal 14 (Spring 2005): 11–12. Also useful are Bob Alexander, John H. Behan: Sacrificed Sheriff (Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome, 2002), 58–59, and Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life behind the Legend (New York: Wiley, 1997), 50–51.
2. Great Register of Pima County, District 17 (Tombstone), No. 1483, September 27, 1880. Oddly, Wyatt Earp, No. 3194, Morgan Earp, No. 3258, and James Earp, 3267, registered on the same day. Only Virgil had registered earlier, No. 2495, January 20, 1880.
3. Clara Spalding Brown to the editor, July 7, 1880, San Diego Union, July 14, 1880.
4. Clara Spalding Brown, “An Arizona Mining District,” The Californian 4 (July– December 1881): 53–56; Brown to the editor, August 3, 1880, San Diego Union, August 10, 1880; San Francisco Exchange, September 28, 1880.
5. Two works provide essential background for any study of Tombstone: William B. Shillingberg, Tombstone, A. T.: A History of Early Mining, Milling, and Mayhem (Spokane, WA: Clark, 1999), and Lynn R. Bailey, “Too Tough to Die”: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Silver Camp, 1878 to 1990 (Tucson, AZ: Westernlore, 2004).
6. Brown to the editor, July 7, August 3, 1880, San Diego Union, July 14, August 10, 1880.
7. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, October 20, 1880.
8. For a good summary of the early days of the Earps in Tombstone, see Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 34–50.
9. Dodge City Ford County Globe, March 30, 1880.
10. Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 43–45.
11. Bailey, “Too Tough to Die,” 73–80, 97, 124–125. Boundaries for the red-light district were set by Ordinance No. 10, enacted April 18, 1881.
12. See Roger Jay, “The Gamblers’ War in Tombstone,” Wild West (October 2004): 38–45, 73; Jay, “Fact or Artifact?” 9–35.
13. Jay, “Fact or Artifact?” 9–10; Lynn R. Bailey and Don Chaput, Cochise County Stalwarts: A Who’s Who of the Territorial Years (Tucson, AZ: Westernlore, 2000), 1:66, 206– 207, 2:81, 168; Brown to the editor, August 3, 1880, San Diego Union, August 10, 1880.
14. The ownership of the Alhambra is somewhat confusing. It was apparently opened by Thomas H. Corrigan in 1880, and Dick Clark appears to have come to Tombstone to help him start up the operation before obtaining an interest in the Oriental’s gambling concession. Mellgren took over as proprietor sometime in 1880, and Meagher joined him. See entries on Clark, Corrigan, Meagher, and Mellgren in Bailey and Chaput, Cochise County Stalwarts, 1:66, 75, 2:24–25.
15. Jay, “Fact or Artifact?” 12–13, reviews most of the sources about Tyler.
16. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, September 24, 1880.
17. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, October 12, 1880; Tombstone Daily Nugget, October 12, 1880.
18. Territory of Arizona v. J. H. Holliday, County Recorder’s Office, Cochise County, Bisbee, Arizona; Tombstone Daily Epitaph, October 12, 16, 17, 23, 24, 1880. On October 23, the Epitaph reported, “During the past day or two inflammation set in on M. E. Joyce’s wounded hand, and at one time it looked as though amputation would have to be resorted to in order to save [his] life. Yesterday, however, showed a change for the better, and the chances of saving the hand are much improved.” In the end, the only thing that did not heal was the relationship between Joyce and Doc.
19. The exact arrival time of both Harris and Short is somewhat unclear. See Jay, “Fact or Artifact?” 25–26. The Tucson Weekly Citizen, February 27, 1881, said that Short had been working for Rickabaugh as a security guard for “some months.” Harris left Dodge City in the fall of 1880, going first to San Francisco before moving to Tombstone. See Dodge City Times, October 9, 1880, January 1, 1881. Short has been usually depicted as one of the Dodge City crowd that included Harris, Masterson, and Earp, with Harris importing Short to Tombstone because of his personal knowledge of him. Curiously, no references to Short have been located in Dodge City until after he left Tombstone. That does not mean he could not have been there; many gamblers came and went with little notice, as Doc’s own experience demonstrates. William R. Cox, Luke Short and His Era (New York: Doubleday, 1961), 44–65, has Short in Dodge in 1878 and 1879, except for excursions between cattle seasons. Wayne Short, Luke Short: A Biography (Tombstone, AZ: Devil’s Thumb, 1996), 91, 139, says that Luke dealt for Harris and Beeson in the spring of 1878 and managed the gambling concession in the spring of 1879. By Luke’s own account, he was located in Ogallalah, Nebraska, in 1878, until he worked with the army as a scout during the Indian troubles in Nebraska that year, after which he returned to Ogallalah before moving west to Leadville, Colorado, in 1879. Short says, “In June 1880 left Leadville and after a short time in Kansas City Mo went to Arizona and located in Tombstone in November 1880, remained in Arizonia [sic] till April 1881, when he went to Dodge City remained there during the summer of 1881, 2 & 3.” Luke Short Dictation, Hubert Howe Bancroft Manuscript P-033, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California. Significantly, William Barclay Masterson, “Famous Gunfighters of the Western Frontier: Luke Short,” Human Life (April 1907): 9–10, also did not place him in Dodge City until after he left Tombstone. This raises the distinct possibility that Short and Harris arrived in Tombstone about the same time, but leaves unanswered the question of who actually hired Short and on whose advice.
20. The key sources are the Tombstone Daily Epitaph, October 28, 1880, the Tucson Daily Citizen, December 20, 1880, and the Tucson (Arizona) Weekly Star, November 4, December 22, 23, 25, 27, 1880. For analysis of the confrontation, see Steve Gatto, Curly Bill: Tombstone’s Most Famous Outlaw (Lansing, MI: Protar House, 2003), 34–40, and Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 51–52; see also, Timothy W. Fattig, “‘Let Him Beware Who Takes the Life of a Fellow Being’: A Sketch of Frederick G. White, Tombstone’s First Marshal,” NOLA Quarterly 24 (April–June 2000): 5–11. There are numerous other accounts. See the notes of the works cited.
21. Fred Dodge, Under Cover for Wells Fargo: The Unvarnished Recollections of Fred Dodge. Edited by Carolyn Lake (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 10. Also included in this work is Dodge’s letter to Stuart N. Lake, October 28, 1928, in which he covered the Fred White shooting, see pp. 235–236. Robert J. Chandler, “Undercover for Wells Fargo: A Review Essay,” Journal of Arizona History 41 (Spring 2000): 83–96, and Don Chaput, “Fred Dodge: Undercover Agent or Con Man,” NOLA Quarterly 25 (January–March 2000): 10–15, have raised questions about Dodge’s claims and suggested that he was a fraud, but the researchers Peter Brand and Robert F. Palmquist have uncovered primary sources that indicate that Fred Dodge was affiliated with Wells, Fargo as early as 1880. For example,
see Application for “Special Ranger,” February
1, 1900, with endorsement by G. A. Taft, Superintendent, Wells, Fargo & Co. Express, FB 401-130, Adjutant General’s Records, Texas State Library and Archives, Austin, Texas. In these documents, Dodge gives his occupation as “Special officer for Wells Fargo & Co.” with “20 years” experience. A careful reading of Dodge’s account suggests that the problem may lie in the unfortunate title of the book. His own account indicates that he initially operated as an informer rather than as an undercover agent. Later, he became an agent of Wells, Fargo. In 1882, Doc Holliday apparently claimed that he arrested Curly Bill. During an interview with the Denver Republican, May 22, 1882, Doc was quoted as saying, “Trouble first arose … by the killing of Marshal White by Curly Bill. Marshal White fell into my arms when he was shot and I arrested Curly Bill.” He was under arrest at the time and needing to establish his reputation as a law and order supporter and may have exaggerated his role because of that, or, given his temperament, he may simply have enjoyed “pulling the legs” of reporters. In either case, while Doc was involved that night, he certainly did not catch the mortally wounded White or arrest him.
22. Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 51; Shillingberg, Tombstone, A. T., 159–160; Tombstone Daily Epitaph, October 29, 31, 1880. Doc was part of the party that escorted Wyatt and Curly Bill as far as Benson, where Curly Bill was transferred to the train into Tucson.
23. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, October 29, November 1, 1880.
24. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, November 11, 1880; Tombstone Daily Nugget, November 2, 12, 1880; Silver City, New Mexico, Grant County Herald, November 13, 1880; see also Timothy W. Fattig, Wyatt Earp: The Biography (Honolulu, HI: Talei, 2002), 214– 217.
25. The trial testimony was presented in the Tucson Daily Citizen, December 28, 1880; the judge’s decision in the Tucson Weekly Star, December 28, 1880. Both are reprinted in Gatto, Curly Bill, 44–53.
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