by Mike Resnick
“Can I get you anything before you leave?” asked Buntline.
“I've already drunk my breakfast, but if you've got something wet before lunch…”
Buntline shook his head. “Neither of us drink whiskey.”
“If you're not careful, you just might live to be a hundred.” Holliday walked across the room and shook hands with each of them. “Thanks, again. You are the only two men I've ever been able to count on.”
Then he was gone, and a few minutes later he was riding north in one of the Bunt Line's horseless coaches. He leaned back, sighed, pulled a flask out of his lapel pocket, uncapped it, and took a drink—and was suddenly aware that he wasn't alone any longer.
“I know, I know,” he said. “This stuff'll kill me.”
“You are dying anyway, so drink what you want,” said Geronimo.
“You magicked yourself here just to tell me that?”
“And to tell you that no matter what others say, you are a good man.” He paused. “Roosevelt will get the credit.”
“He's welcome to it,” said Holliday. “It's not going to do me any good where I'm going.”
“You are dying,” repeated Geronimo. “But you are not dead yet.”
And with that he was gone.
Holliday stared out the window, shading his eyes and trying to imagine the Mississippi some two thousand miles distant. They'd start crossing it in the coming weeks and months—settlers, farmers, soldiers, everyone. There would be a mad rush to the West.
And, unknown to him, there would be two brilliant and half-crazed millionaires, one from Philadelphia and one from New Haven, who would rewrite the history of American science as their lives intertwined with his.
THERE HAS BEEN QUITE A LOT written about Doc Holliday, Theodore Roosevelt, Geronimo, John Wesley Hardin, and the so-called Wild West. Surprisingly, a large amount takes place in an alternate reality in which (hard as this is to believe) the United States did not stop at the Mississippi River, but crossed the continent from one ocean to the other.
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)
E. Richard Churchill, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, & Wyatt Earp: Their Colorado Careers, Western Reflections (2001)
Michael L. Collins, That Damned Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and the American West, 1883–1898, Peter Lang (1989)
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)
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)
John Wesley Hardin, The Life of John Wesley Hardin, as Written by Himself, Smith & Moore (1896)
Albert Bushnbell Hart and Herbert Ronald Ferleger, eds., Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia, Theodore Roosevelt Association and Meckler Corporation (1989)
Pat Jahns, The Frontier World of Doc Holliday, Hastings House (1957)
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)
Leon Metz, John Wesley Hardin: Dark Angel of Texas, Mangam Books (1996)
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)
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)
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)
R. L. Wildon, Theodore Roosevelt—Outdoorsman, Trophy Room Books (1994)
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 MOVIE THEODORE ROOSEVELTS:
Brian Keith
Tom Berenger
Karl Swenson
Robin Williams
Frank Albertson (TV)
Peter Breck (TV)
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 JOHN WESLEY HARDINS:
Rock Hudson
John Denher
Jack Elam
Max Perlich
Randy Quaid (TV)
SOME MOVIE BAT MASTERSONS:
Albert Dekker
Randolph Scott
George Montgomery
Joel McCrea
Tom Sizemore
Gene Barry (TV)
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 Holliday 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.
BAT MASTERSON
William “Bat” Masterson was born in 1853. In his late teens, he and brothers Ed and James left their family home to go out west as buffalo hunters. He spent some time as an army scout, seeing action against the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. He moved to Dodge City, Kansas, in 1877, and shortly afterward became Wyatt Earp's deputy, after which he was elected sheriff of Ford County.
Brother Ed was also a lawman. Masterson saw him murdered and instantly responded with deadly force, killing his killer. He then became a gambler, and was in Tombstone just before the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. After a few more gunfights, always on the side of the law (or as the law), he became a writer, wound up in New York, and became friends with Theodore Roosevelt, who appointed him marshal of New York from 1905 to 1909. He died at his typewriter in 1921.
JOHN WESLEY HARDIN
John Wesley Hardin, like Bat Masterson, was born in 1853. He was a killer from a very early age, had at least one encounter with Wild Bill Hickcock, and when he was finally apprehended and tried in 1878, he was convicted of killing forty-two men. He wrote his autobiography and obtained his law degree while in jail, was released in August of 1895, set up a law practice, and was killed shortly thereafter by John Selman Sr.
TEXAS JACK VERMILLION
A friend of both Holliday and Wyatt Earp, Texas Jack Vermillion (later known as Shoot-Your-Eye-Out Vermillion) participated in Wyatt Earp's Vendetta Ride, and was saved in at least one shoot-out by Holliday.
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.
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 ma
ke 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.
With all of Doc's shortcomings and his undeniably poor disposition, I found him a loyal friend and good company. At the time of his death, I tried to set down the qualities about him which had impressed me. The newspapers dressed up my ideas considerably and had me calling Doc Holliday “a mad, merry scamp with heart of gold and nerves of steel.” Those were not my words, nor did they convey my meaning. Doc was mad, well enough, but he was seldom merry. His humor ran in a sardonic vein, and as far as the world in general was concerned, there was nothing in his soul but iron. Under ordinary circumstances he might be irritable to the point of shakiness; only in a game or when a fight impended was there anything steely about his nerves.
To sum up Doc Holliday's character as I did at the time of his death: he was a dentist whom necessity had made into 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 skilled gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun I ever knew.
THIS IS AN ARTICLE THAT I ORIGINALLY WROTE FOR Oval Office Oddities, edited by Bill Fawcett.
THE UNSINKABLE TEDDY ROOSEVELT
His daughter, Alice, said it best: