Weird West 04 - The Doctor and the Dinosaurs
Page 22
“You look like you again,” he said weakly.
“My argument with the Comanche is finished.”
Holliday coughed, and blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. “Thank you for the extra year.”
Geronimo made no reply, but merely stared at him.
“So are you here to offer another bargain, or to say good-bye?” asked Holliday.
“Yes,” said Geronimo.
THERE HAS BEEN QUITE A LOT WRITTEN about Doc Holliday, Theodore Roosevelt, Geronimo, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Cole Younger, and the so-called Wild West, as well as the infamous “Bone Wars” between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Surprisingly, a large amount takes place in an alternate reality in which (hard as this is to believe) the United States was not stopped at the Mississippi River until Theodore Roosevelt signed a treaty with Geronimo in 1884.
For those of you who are interested in this “alternate history,” here is a bibliography of some of the more interesting books:
L. F. Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, Doubleday, Page (1919)
Alexander B. Adams, Geronimo: A Biography. Da Capo Press (1990)
C. E. Banks and R. A. Armstrong, Theodore Roosevelt: A Typical American, S. Stone (1901)
Stephen Melvil Barrett and Frederick W. Turner, Geronimo: His Own Story, Penguin (1996)
Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Doc Holliday, Tri Star-Boze (1995)
Glenn G. Boyer, Who Was Big Nose Kate? Glenn G. Boyer (1997)
H. W. Brands, T. R.—The Last Romantic, Basic Books (1997)
William M. Breakenridge, Helldorado: Bringing the Law to the Mesquite, Houghton Mifflin (1928)
Robert A. Carter, Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man behind the Legend, Wiley (2002)
E. Richard Churchill, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, & Wyatt Earp: Their Colorado Careers, Western Reflections (2001)
William F. Cody, An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill, Cosmopolitan Book (1924)
Edwin H. Colbert, The Great Dinosaur Hunters and Their Discoveries, Dover Press (1984)
Michael L. Collins, That Damned Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and the American West, 1883–1898, Peter Lang (1989)
Homer Croy, Cole Younger: Last of the Great Outlaws, Bison Books (1999)
O. Cushing, The Teddysey, Life Publishing (1907)
Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt—The Making of a Conservationist, University of Illinois Press (1985)
Jack DeMattos, Masterson and Roosevelt, Creative Publishing (1984)
Robert J. Desmond, The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs, Dial Press (1976)
Mike Donovan, The Roosevelt That I Know: Ten Years of Boxing with the President, B. W. Dodge (1909)
G. W. Douglas, The Many-Sided Roosevelt: An Anecdotal Biography, Dodd, Mead (1907)
E. S. Ellis, From the Ranch to the White House: Life of Theodore Roosevelt, Hurst (1906)
T. T. Handford, Theodore Roosevelt, the Pride of the Rough Riders, M. A. Donohue (1897)
Albert Bushnell Hart and Herbert Ronald Ferleger, eds., Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia, Theodore Roosevelt Association and Meckler Corporation (1989)
Mark Jaffe, The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh, Crown Publishers (2000)
Pat Jahns, The Frontier World of Doc Holliday, Hastings House (1957)
John Koblas, The Great Cole Younger and Frank James Wild West Show, North Star Press (2002)
John Koblas, When the Heavens Fell: The Youngers in Stillwater Prison, North Star Press (2002)
Uri Lanham, The Bone Hunters, Columbia University Press (1973)
Sylvia D. Lynch, Aristocracy's Outlaw—The Doc Holliday Story, Iris Press (1994)
Paula Mitchell Marks, And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight, William Morrow (1989)
Edmond Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan (1979)
Edmond Morris, Theodore Rex, Random House (2001)
John Myers Myers, Doc Holliday, Little, Brown (1955)
Frederick Nolan, The Lincoln County War, Revised Edition, Sunstone Press (2009)
Robert Plate, The Dinosaur Hunters, David McCay (1964)
Adam J. Pollack, John L. Sullivan: The Career of the First Gloved Heavyweight Champion, McFarland (2006)
Fred E. Pond, Life and Adventures of Ned Buntline, Camdus Book Shop (1919)
Gary Roberts, Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, John Wiley & Sons (2006)
Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, MacMillan (1913)
Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Putnam's (1885)
Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail, Century (1888)
Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders, Scribner's (1899)
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, Century (1900)
Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, 4 vols., Putnam's (1888–1894)
Elizabeth Noble Shor, The Fossil Feud, Exposition Press (1974)
David A. E. Spalding, Dinosaur Hunters, Prima Publishing (1993)
Karen Holliday Tanner, Doc Holliday—A Family Portrait, University of Oklahoma Press (1998)
Paul Trachman, The Old West: The Gunfighters, Time-Life Books (1974)
Ben T. Traywick, John Henry: The Doc Holliday Story, Red Marie's (1996)
Ben T. Traywick, Tombstone's Deadliest Gun: John Henry Holliday, Red Marie's (1984)
David Rains Wallace, The Bonehunters’ Revenge, Houghton Mifflin (1999)
Helen Cody Wetmore, Buffalo Bill: The Last Great Scout, Alexander Books (2013)
R. L. Wildon, Theodore Roosevelt—Outdoorsman, Trophy Room Books (1994)
Cole Younger, The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself, Borealis Books (2000)
IN THAT “ALTERNATE HISTORY” in which the United States extended all the way to the Pacific, there are also a number of films made about the principals in this book, and a number of very popular actors portrayed them. Here's a list of them:
SOME MOVIE DOC HOLLIDAYS:
Victor Mature
Kirk Douglas
Jason Robards Jr.
Cesar Romero
Stacey Keach
Dennis Quaid
Val Kilmer
Walter Huston
Arthur Kennedy
Randy Quaid (TV)
Douglas Fowley (TV)
Gerald Mohr (TV)
SOME STAGE AND MOVIE THEODORE ROOSEVELTS:
Brian Keith
Tom Berenger
Karl Swenson
Robin Williams
Frank Albertson (TV)
Peter Breck (TV)
James Whitmore (Broadway)
Len Cariou (Broadway musical)
SOME MOVIE THOMAS ALVA EDISONS:
Spencer Tracy
Mickey Rooney
SOME MOVIE NED BUNTLINES:
Lloyd Corrigan
Thomas Mitchell
SOME MOVIE GERONIMOS:
Chuck Conners
Wes Studi
Jay Silverheels (four times)
Monte Blue
SOME MOVIE COLE YOUNGERS:
Wayne Morris
Alan Hale Jr.
Frank Lovejoy
Cliff Robertson
David Carradine
Randy Travis
SOME STAGE AND MOVIE BUFFALO BILL CODYS:
William O'Neal (Broadway musical)
Art Lund (Broadway musical)
Ron Holgate (Broadway musical)
George Hearn (Broadway musical)
Louis Calhern
Joel McCrea
Paul Newman
A MOVIE EDWARD DRINKER COPE:
Steve Carell
A MOVIE OTHNIEL CHARLES MARSH:
The late James Gandolfini was to have portrayed Marsh; no replacement has been announced as of press time.
THIS IS A “WHO'S WHO” of the book's participants in that fictional alternate reality where the United States extended to the West Coast.
DOC HOLLIDAY
He was born John Henry Holl
iday in 1851, and grew up in Georgia. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was fourteen, and that is almost certainly where he contracted the disease. He was college educated, with a minor in the classics, and became a licensed dentist. Because of his disease, he went out West to drier climates. The disease cost him most of his clientele, so he supplemented his dental income by gambling, and he defended his winnings in the untamed cities of the West by becoming a gunslinger as well.
He saved Wyatt Earp when the latter was surrounded by gunmen in Dodge City, and the two became close friends. Somewhere along the way he met and had a stormy on-and-off relationship with Big Nose Kate Elder. He was involved in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and is generally considered to have delivered the fatal shots to both Tom and Frank McLaury. He rode with Wyatt Earp on the latter's vendetta against the Cowboys after the shootings of Virgil and Morgan Earp, then moved to Colorado. He died, in bed, of tuberculosis, in 1887. His last words were: “Well, I'll be damned—this is funny.” No accurate records were kept in the case of most shootists; depending on which historians you believe, Doc killed anywhere from two to twenty-seven men.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City in 1858. A sickly child, suffering from extreme asthma, he worked at strengthening his body through exercise and swimming, and by the time he attended Harvard he was fit enough to become the college's lightweight boxing champion. Even prior to that he was a devoted naturalist, and was acknowledged—even as a teen—as one of America's leading ornithologists and taxidermists.
His The Naval War of 1812 was (and is) considered the definitive book on that battle. Shortly thereafter he developed an interest in politics and became the youngest-ever minority leader of the New York State Assembly. His wife and mother died eight hours apart in the same house in 1884, and he quit politics, headed out to the Dakota Badlands, and bought two ranches. He signed a contract to write the four-volume The Winning of the West, became a lawman, and caught and captured three armed killers during “the Winter of the Blue Snow.”
Coming back East, he married again, served as police commissioner of New York City, later was secretary of the navy, assembled the Rough Riders and took San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War, became governor of New York, was elected vice president in 1900, and became president less than a year later with the assassination of President McKinley.
As president, Roosevelt fought the trusts, created the National Park System, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and turned the United States into a world power. When he left office in 1908 he embarked on a year-long African safari. He ran for President in 1912, was wounded by a would-be assassin, lost, and spent a year exploring and mapping the River of Doubt (later renamed the Rio Teodoro) for the Brazilian government. He was a strong advocate for our entry into World War I, and it was assumed the presidency was his for the asking in 1920, but he died a year before the election.
During his life, he wrote more than twenty books—many of them still in print—and over 150,000 letters.
THOMAS ALVA EDISON
Born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, Edison is considered the greatest inventor of his era. He is responsible for the electric light, the motion picture, the carbon telephone transmitter, the fluoroscope, and a host of other inventions. He died in 1931.
NED BUNTLINE
Buntline was born Edward Z. C. Judson in 1813, and gained fame as a publisher, editor, writer (especially of dime novels about the West), and for commissioning Colt's Manufacturing Company to create the Buntline Special. He tried to bring Wild Bill Hickok back East, failed, and then discovered Buffalo Bill Cody, who did come East and perform in a play that Buntline wrote.
GERONIMO
Born Goyathlay in 1829, he was a Chiricahua Apache medicine man who fought against both the Americans and the Mexicans who tried to grab Apache territory. He was never a chief, but he was a military leader, and a very successful one. He finally surrendered in 1886, and was incarcerated—but by 1904 he had become such a celebrity that he actually appeared at the World's Fair, and in 1905 he proudly rode in Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade in Washington, DC. He died in 1909 at the age of eighty.
EDWARD DRINKER COPE
Cope was a child prodigy who developed an interest in paleontology as a young man. Originally a friend of Othniel Charles Marsh, the two soon became bitter rivals, belittling each other in print, sabotaging each other's discoveries, racing to get their own finds into print first, even trying to get laws passed against one another. When the dust had cleared, Cope had produced more than 1,400 scientific papers—still a record—and discovered and named more than 1,000 vertebrate species. The “Bone Wars,” as his rivalry with Marsh came to be known, bankrupted him and he died in poverty in 1897 at the age of fifty-seven, living in a single room, his cot surrounded by fossils he had not yet sold or given away.
OTHNIEL CHARLES MARSH
A graduate of Yale, thanks to the generosity of his uncle, George Peabody, Marsh developed an interest in paleontology and soon became involved in a lifelong feud with Edward Drinker Cope, a feud that has become known as the “Bone Wars.” Marsh discovered eighty species of dinosaur, as well as early horses, flying reptiles, and ancient toothed birds. Much of his work was funded by Yale and its Peabody Museum, where many of his finds remain. He died in 1899 at the age of sixty-eight with $186 in the bank, the remains of a million-dollar fortune.
COLE YOUNGER
Originally one of the famed Quantrill's Raiders after the Civil War. By 1868 he and his brothers Jim, John, and Bob became notorious bandits. John was killed in a shootout with the Pinkertons, but Cole, Jim, and Bob thrived until September of 1876, when they led the notorious Northfield, Minnesota, raid; all three were badly wounded, captured, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Bob died of his wounds, Jim and Cole were released in 1901, Jim committed suicide, and Cole joined Frank James in the Cole Younger and Frank James Wild West Company in 1903. He died in 1916 at the age of seventy-two.
WILLIAM “BUFFALO BILL” CODY
Cody earned his name: he personally killed more than 4,200 buffalo. He also earned a Medal of Honor for “gallantry in action” during his military service. In between the hunting and the military, he was also a Pony Express rider. He began his Wild West show in 1872; toured the country and later Europe with it (including a command performance for Queen Victoria); and made stars out of Annie Oakley, Frank Butler, Calamity Jane, and others. He combined with Pawnee Bill's show, becoming the Two Bills Wild West Show in 1908. He died at the age of seventy.
JOHN L. SULLIVAN
When sports fans refer to “the Great John L.,” this is the man they're talking about. He was boxing's last bare-knuckle champion and its first gloved champion, winning his title in 1882 and holding until “Gentleman Jim” Corbett defeated him in 1892. He retired with a record of thirty-six wins, one loss, and two draws, and he died at the age of fifty-nine.
THIS IS WYATT EARP'S DESCRIPTION and recollection of Doc Holliday, in his own words:
By the time I met him at Fort Griffin, Doc Holliday had run up quite a record as a killer, even for Texas. In Dallas, his incessant coughing kept away whatever professional custom he might have enjoyed and, as he had to eat, he took to gambling. He was lucky, skillful, and fearless. There were no tricks to his new trade that he did not learn and in more than one boom-camp game I have seen him bet ten thousand dollars on the turn of a card.
Doc quickly saw that six-gun skill was essential to his new business, and set out to master the fine points of draw-and-shoot as cold-bloodedly as he did everything. He practiced with a Colt for hours at a time, until he knew that he could get one into action as effectively as any man he might meet. His right to this opinion was justified by Doc's achievements. The only man of his type whom I ever regarded as anywhere near his equal on the draw was Buckskin Frank Leslie of Tombstone. But Leslie lacked Doc's fatalistic courage, a courage induced, I suppose, by the nature of Holliday's disease and the realization that he hadn
't long to live, anyway. That fatalism, coupled with his marvelous speed and accuracy, gave Holliday the edge over any out-and-out killer I ever knew.
Doc's first fight in the West ended a row over a Dallas card-game. He shot and killed a topnotch gunman, and as Doc was comparatively a stranger where his victim had many friends, Doc had to emigrate. He went to Jacksborough, at the edge of the Fort Richardson military reservation, where he tangled with three or four more gunmen successfully, but eventually killed a soldier and again had to take it on the run. Next, he tried the Colorado camps, where he knocked off several pretty bad men in gun-fights. In Denver, Doc encountered an ordinance against gun-toting, so he carried a knife, slung on a cord around his neck. Bud Ryan, a gambler, tried to run one over on Doc in a card game, and when Doc objected, Ryan went for a gun he carried in a concealed holster. Doc beat him into action with his knife, and cut him horribly.
Doc gambled in the Colorado and Wyoming camps until the fall of ’77, and fought his way out of so many arguments that, by the time he hit Fort Griffin, he had built up a thoroughly deserved reputation as a man who would shoot to kill on the slightest provocation. That reputation may have had some bearing on the fact that when I first met him, he had not yet found anyone in Fort Griffin to provide him with a battle.
It was in Shanssey's saloon, I think, that Doc Holliday first met Kate Elder, a dancehall girl better known as “Big-Nosed Kate.” Doc lived with Kate, off and on, over a period of years. She saved his life on one occasion, and when memory of this was uppermost Doc would refer to Kate as Mrs. Holliday. Their relationship had its temperamental ups and downs, however, and when Kate was writhing under Doc's scorn she'd get drunk as well as furious and make Doc more trouble than any shooting-scrape.
Perhaps Doc's outstanding peculiarity was the enormous amount of whiskey he could punish. Two and three quarts of liquor a day was not unusual for him, yet I never saw him stagger with intoxication. At times, when his tuberculosis was worse than ordinary, or he was under a long-continued physical strain, it would take a pint of whiskey to get him going in the morning, and more than once at the end of a long ride I've seen him swallow a tumbler of neat liquor without batting an eye and fifteen minutes later take a second tumbler of straight whiskey which had no more outward effect on him than the first one. Liquor never seemed to fog him in the slightest, and he was more inclined to fight when getting along on a slim ration than when he was drinking plenty, and was more comfortable, physically.