by Matt Braun
She looked concerned. “What kind of crazy talk is that?”
“Shakespeare. King Henry the Fourth. A maxim for the ages.”
“C’mon, Doc, you’re not dying. You’re just plain killing yourself.”
“I pride myself on being incorrigible. Perhaps I will find redemption in the next life.”
“Always got a snappy comeback, don’t you? Honestly, sugar, you haven’t changed an iota.”
“I sincerely hope not.”
Holliday stood, testing his balance. The morning dose of bourbon seemed to have restored his equilibrium, and he walked to the washstand. After sloshing water into the basin, he briskly scrubbed his face. Then, shaving mug in hand, he lathered up with a foamy brush. He began stropping his razor.
In the mirror, he saw Kate stretch like a languid cat. With the razor at his jawline, he idly pondered the question of why he’d taken her back. A week ago, alternately begging and cajoling, she had pleaded with him to let bygones be bygones. She swore she was a changed woman, reformed from her old ways and anxious to make a new start. All the whoring and drunkenness and fits of temper were behind her. She would be his alone, faithful and obedient. Just him.
Holliday placed little faith in reformed whores. He thought himself a brute for punishment to even consider rekindling their liaison. But he missed having a woman in his bed, and dreaded the dreams of Mattie that came so often in his darkest sleep. He told himself that Kate provided a distraction, and for however long it lasted, a pleasant companion. She was sincere today, concerned for his health, anxious to make amends. Tomorrow would take care of itself.
After they finished dressing, they went downstairs for breakfast. Kate wore a simple gown, modest if not demure, all in keeping with her newfound air of respectability. Holliday, playing his role in their arrangement, held her chair as they seated themselves by a streetside window. She ordered a breakfast fit for a lumberjack, while he stuck with the usual eggs and toast. He spiked his coffee with an extra-strong dollop of bourbon.
“Feeling any better?” she asked, touching his hand. “You still look a little peaked.”
“Have no fear.” Holliday sipped coffee, gave her a wry look. “Like a phoenix risen from the ashes, I live to crow another day. I am indestructible, Kate.”
“You’re as full of gas as a pig’s bladder. I never know when you’re kidding or not.”
“You see me at the top of my form. Fit as a fiddle, or perhaps the fiddler. Never better.”
She laughed happily. “God, I’m glad we’re back together, Doc. I missed the way you tickle my funny bone.”
“And I admire a woman who enjoys a jest. Life’s sour notes are not my style.”
Holliday thought her remarkable in many ways. Not the least of which was her gift for deduction, the nose of a bloodhound. His long-running lucky streak was a matter of interest throughout the West, and his name alone was still news in Dodge City. She had tracked him to Prescott through widely circulated newspaper articles which were reprinted in the Dodge City Globe. Upon hearing that Wyatt Earp had departed for Arizona, she correctly deduced that Holliday was still in Prescott. She caught the first train west.
When he finished his eggs, Holliday lit a cigarillo. His lungs rebelled at the first puff and he coughed a spurt of smoke. Kate looked up from her plate as he hastily took a swig of laced coffee. She assessed him with a concerned frown.
“You really shouldn’t play tonight. You’re not up to snuff, even if you do say so.”
“How could I disappoint my public?” Holliday said with a sly smile. “I have a certain reputation to uphold.”
“Who do you think you’re fooling?” She paused with a bite of flapjacks speared on her fork. “You’d play if you had to be carried there on a stretcher. Don’t tell me I’m wrong, either.”
“On the contrary, the very image of it has an unusual flair. Poker from the supine position. I like it.”
Kate was genuinely worried. Some six months had passed since their parting in Dodge City, and in that time his condition had deteriorated markedly. His cough was worse than she remembered, and his bloody sputum looked as though it contained raw flecks of lung tissue. There was a jaundiced cast to his features that concerned her as well. She thought he was operating on grit, hardheaded nerve.
“Why not call it quits, sugar? I mean, you’re ahead of the game and then some. What is it now, thirty thousand?”
“Forty thousand,” Holliday corrected her. “I was in rare form last night.”
“All the more reason to walk away before you keel over.”
“A gambler never quits when the cards are running strong. Or when he’s so far ahead. That would be considered bad form.”
“Those chumps!” she said derisively. “You don’t owe them anything.”
“Perhaps not,” Holliday allowed. “But I do owe it to myself. Who knows, I might press it to fifty thousand.”
“You might press yourself into an early grave, too.”
“Oh, I think not. I have a ways to go yet.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“A sinner has an ear for the knell. I hear no tolls in the night.”
Kate gave it up as a lost cause. To push him further would only incur his anger, and she was wary of pressing her own luck. Besides, she told herself, he lived to gamble, to defy the odds. And so far, he was ahead in the one game that counted.
He was still alive.
The game started at seven. By nine o’clock Holliday was down almost eleven thousand dollars. When he held a decent hand, the other players held better cards. When he bluffed, someone always called with cards too good to fold. His hot streak abruptly turned cold.
Holliday was not a superstitious man. He subscribed to none of the hoary rituals practiced by many gamblers to reverse bad fortune. Walking around his chair three times, or changing seats, or any of the other mumbo-jumbo, was to him an exercise in the absurd. He had learned long ago that when the deck went cold a wise man went home. Under similar circumstances, he had seen even seasoned gamblers lose all they had won and dig into their pockets for more. To him, after a string of second-best hands, the sign was clear to read. Tonight was not his night.
Still, he found it difficult to quit when he was so far ahead. His forty thousand in winnings had dwindled to about thirty thousand, but it remained a sizable score. The high rollers seated at his table, politicians and mine owners and wealthy ranchers, expected fair treatment when the worm finally turned. For a gambler of his stature to walk away when the cards went sour would be considered bad form, poor sportsmanship. There was a certain etiquette to gambling, and a man’s standing within the sporting crowd hinged upon such things. He would not sully his reputation.
Then, unexpectedly, the worm turned again. Holliday folded on a bad hand and was in the process of lighting a cigarillo. Over the flare of the match, he saw a man push through the door and walk to the bar. The man’s name was Charley White, one of many gamblers who had drifted through Dodge City last spring. But he was a four-flusher, a seemingly respectable member of the sporting fraternity who placed little value on honor. He had left Holliday holding a marker for three thousand dollars.
Excusing himself, Holliday rose and walked to the bar. He halted beside White, who was about to down a shot of whiskey. White glanced around, then paused, his glass in midair. His face blanched.
“Well, Doc,” he said weakly. “Long time no see. What’re you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Just got in a couple of hours ago. Heard there was easy pickings in Prescott.”
“Obviously, you failed to hear I was in town. Or you wouldn’t be here, would you, Charley?”
White swallowed hard. “C’mon, Doc, that was a long time ago.”
“Not long enough,” Holliday informed him. “I could never abide a welcher. You stiffed me for three thousand.”
“And I’ll pay you, swear to Christ! You got my word on it.”
“Your word has little currency, Charley. You’ll pay me now.”
“Wish I could,” White mumbled dolefully. “But I’ve been down on my luck lately. Hard times are doggin’ my heels.”
“You are a poor liar,” Holliday said coldly. “Hand over the money or I will put out the word. You won’t find a game in all of Arizona Territory.”
“Goddammit, I told you I haven’t got it. Don’t try puttin’ the squeeze on me, Doc.”
“I want you out of my sight, right now. Be careful we don’t meet again until you can settle the debt.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Take it any way you please.”
White was lithe and muscular, with ice-blue eyes. He was reported to have killed several men on the Gamblers’ Circuit, quick to anger and quick with a gun. But now, his nerves deserting him, he was unable to hold Holliday’s gaze. His drink untouched, his expression sullen, he pushed away from the bar. He walked out the door.
Holliday turned back toward the poker game. He thought he would never see Charley White again, or the money, and he dismissed it from mind. As he approached the table, the door slammed open and he heard one of the bartenders shout a warning. A slug fried the air past his ear.
The gunshot sent men scurrying for cover. Holliday spun around, drawing the Colt Lightning, as another bullet plucked at the sleeve of his coat. He saw White framed in the doorway, and he quickly caught the sights, tripped the trigger. White staggered, a starburst of blood on his chest, his features frozen in a look of dull amazement. He tried to bring his pistol level.
Arm extended, Holliday took deliberate aim. The distance was some twenty paces, and he feathered the trigger, squeezing off a shot. When he fired, a puff of dust kicked off the breast pocket of White’s suit jacket, directly over the heart. White took a step sideways, the gun clattering from his hand to the floor, then he buckled at the knees. He went down with his eyes fixed on infinity.
Holliday strode forward. The crowd got to their feet, watching in morbid silence, as he cautiously approached the body. He kicked the gun aside, then looked closer, and saw the fallen man’s eyes locked in a death stare. A buzz of conversation swept through the room as he holstered the Lightning and walked to the bar. The bartender poured a shot glass to the brim, and he downed it neat. He told himself that Charley White was a damn fool. No man should die for the sake of bruised pride.
Ben Crowder, the new town marshal, hurried into the Gem moments later. He inspected the body, then questioned Holliday at some length. After several witnesses gave their account of the shooting, he rejoined Holliday at the bar. “Glad you’re in the clear,” he announced. “I wouldn’t want to arrest you.”
“No, Marshal,” Holliday said stiffly. “You would never want to arrest me.”
Crowder blinked, unnerved by the harsh tone. “Well, fair fight or not, there’s got to be a hearing. I’ll expect you to appear.”
“You may depend on it, Marshal. I am nothing if not timely.”
Holliday signaled the barkeep for another drink. All in a matter of hours his streak had gone cold and he’d killed a man. Some inner voice told him it was ended in Prescott.
Time to move on.
The hearing was held early the next morning. After all the evidence was heard, the judge ruled the shooting a justifiable homicide. A reporter tried to interview Holliday on his way out of the courtroom, but he kept walking. He had nothing to say to the press.
By late morning, Holliday had purchased a buckboard and a quick-stepping bay mare. When he arrived at the hotel, hopping down from the buckboard, he was in a chipper mood. The court hearing behind him, he’d decided that he had much to say grace over. His bankroll was fattened by some thirty thousand, and while the undertaker was busy today, he was still kicking. All in all, Prescott had treated him well.
Shortly after the noon hour, the hotel handyman loaded Holliday’s steamer trunk and Kate’s luggage in the back of the buckboard. Holliday assisted Kate into the front seat and climbed aboard on the driver’s side. She unsnapped her parasol as he gathered the reins, clucked to the mare, and pulled away from the hotel. They were silent as they drove through the sporting district, each of them lost in their own thoughts. On the outskirts of town, they took the road leading south.
Holliday stared at the range of mountains ahead. Thunderclouds ringed the lofty spires, and he was somehow reminded that life was the ultimate jester. Every man got rained on, he thought, some more so than others. Consumption had robbed him of Mattie, and turned him into a rogue, and would one day claim his last breath. But in the course of things, he had prospered as a gambler and found a measure of peace in the mountains and plains of the West.
Perhaps the greatest joke was that he had survived. Not just his consumption, but a roll call of men who had tried to kill him. A roll call of such distant memory that he had long ago lost count. So in the end, for all life’s jests, he’d had the last laugh. The best laugh.
Kate finally broke the silence. “What are you thinking, sugar?”
“Nothing profound,” Holliday said with an offhand gesture. “I was wondering if Wyatt thinks we’ve lost our way. He expected us before now.”
“That Wyatt Earp!” she said in a huffy voice. “I still don’t understand why you tag along after him. What’s in Tombstone, anyway?”
“You have no sense of adventure, Kate. Wyatt wants the sun and the moon, and perhaps the stars, too. I suspect Tombstone will be one of our finer days.”
“What if it’s a bust? What if we travel to the end of nowhere and find out it’s some harebrained scheme? What then?”
“Why then, we’re no worse off than we were. We’ll move on.”
“Sometimes I think you’re part gypsy.”
Holliday chuckled. “That’s the beauty of it, Kate. There’s always another town.”
“Honest to God, Doc, you’re impossible!”
“Yes, I cannot deny it. I am a true-blue rascal.”
Holliday drove on toward Tombstone.
EPILOGUE
Doc Holliday joined forces with the Earps in Tombstone. A staunch and loyal friend, he backed Wyatt’s play to become sheriff of Cochise County. The campaign proved to be one of disappointment and frustration, for Wyatt twice failed to attain the office of sheriff. The Earps nonetheless became heavily entrenched in the political machinations of the county.
Virgil was appointed town marshal of Tombstone in October 1880. He retained his commission as Deputy U.S. Marshal, as well as his status as the top law-enforcement officer in Cochise County. Virgil’s position as a lawman, and Wyatt’s constant political maneuvering, led to friction with the Clanton and McLaury brothers, a gang of cattle rustlers and general troublemakers. The hostility between the factions slowly simmered into an open feud.
Holliday, who feared no man, willingly incurred the enmity of the gang. He provoked their anger, occasionally goading them to fight, but none of the gang members were so foolhardy as to accept the challenge. His reputation as a gambler was enhanced during his stay in Tombstone, while at the same time his relationship with Kate Elder gradually fell apart. In June 1881, after a bitter quarrel, Kate falsely accused him of attempted robbery and murder of a stagecoach guard. Holliday was quickly exonerated, and Kate wisely departed Tombstone. They never saw each other again.
The feud between the Earps and the rustlers ultimately erupted into violence on a blustery day in October 1881. The Earps, with Holliday backing their play, went to arrest the gang at the rear of the O.K. Corral. The confrontation exploded into gunfire, and within thirty seconds, Virgil and Morgan were wounded and three gang members lay dead. Holliday made the difference at what became fabled in Western lore as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. His cool nerve and deadly accuracy were largely responsible for saving the lives of Virgil and Morgan Earp. Of the men involved, only Holliday and Wyatt were still standing when the gunfire ceased.
The aftermath of the O.K. Corral was a bloodbath. Virgi
l was ambushed at night, shotgunned by the remaining gang members, his left arm crippled for life. A short time later, Morgan was killed by assassins while playing pool in a local billiard parlor. Wyatt, now wearing the badge of a Deputy U.S. Marshal, rode out with Holliday and other supporters on a bloody vendetta. They killed three men in gunfights, and effectively put the rest of the gang to rout. But the political intrigue and rivalry of Cochise County resulted in their being charged with murder. With no hope of justice, or a fair trial, they fled Arizona Territory.
Holliday and Wyatt went their separate ways after crossing the border into Colorado. History records no reason, but they never again saw each other after March 1882. For the next five years, Holliday roamed the West, a celebrated gambler and shootist, adding to the list of those he killed. By 1887 his tuberculosis was in the final stages, his health ravaged to the point he was unable to continue on. He admitted himself to a sanatorium in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and reportedly played poker each day with his attendant. No one from the old days came to visit, and he received only one letter during his confinement. The return address on the letter was the Sisters of Charity Convent, in Atlanta.
On crisp winter day in November 1887, Holliday lay wasted and worn, too weak for the morning poker session with his attendant. He was still lucid, his mind clear, and his wry sense of humor was never sharper. He was quiet for a time, perhaps reflecting on his years as a vagabond gambler, and then his gaze went to the foot of the bed. He wiggled his toes beneath the covers, amused that a man who had survived so many gunfights would succumb at last to diseased lungs. He glanced at his attendant, again wiggling his toes, and remarked with droll good humor, “This is funny.” A short time later he closed his eyes and died in peaceful sleep. He was thirty-five years old.
Wyatt Earp, in later years, was quoted by the San Francisco Examiner in words that serve as a lasting eulogy. “Doc Holliday 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-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.”