Dance with the Devil

by Victoria Wilcox

  It was also in Fort Griffin that Doc took up with Hungarian born Mary Katherine Haroney, known in the West as Kate Elder—though according to Kate she had first met Doc a few years earlier in St. Louis when he was a newly graduated dental student practicing dentistry “on Fourth Street, near the Planter’s House Hotel.” Kate’s reminiscence was part of a series of letters she wrote to an Arizona newspaper reporter in the 1930’s, but as she was just a woman in a man’s Western world her story was pretty much ignored. I had ignored it myself, as everyone knew that Doc Holliday had never been in St. Louis and Kate’s memories were likely confused by old age. But when I went to Philadelphia to research Holliday’s time in dental school, I discovered that he had a classmate there who was from St. Louis and who had returned to that city after graduation, where he had a practice on Fourth Street near the Planter’s House Hotel—the very location Kate had mentioned in her letters. Of all the cities and all the addresses she could have imagined, she had picked a place actually linked to Holliday’s early life, which gave credence to her memoir.

  It was also from Kate that I took the story of Doc’s sudden illness in Trinidad and the harrowing covered wagon journey over the mountains to the healing hot springs at Las Vegas, New Mexico, but it was my own research that uncovered information about Doc’s Las Vegas saloon. I had written to the clerk of the San Miguel County Court three times asking for a copy of the original deed and three times been told that no such record existed. Although Holliday’s property ownership in Las Vegas was mentioned in the local paper, the usual legal proof of ownership seemed strangely missing. So I booked a flight to New Mexico and went to see for myself if the deed existed. And there it was carefully recorded in the County Deed Book: Dock Holliday’s deed to a saloon on Centre Street. The misspelled name had made the clerk miss the record.

  But I wasn’t alone in researching Doc’s lost years between Georgia and Tombstone. My friend and fellow author Dr. Gary Roberts (Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend) has spent years delving into old newspapers and trying to piece together the scattered facts that add up to a story. I thank him for his generous sharing of his research and his support of my own work. We never saw a conflict between his biography and my historical fiction, as we approach the history of Doc Holliday from our own areas of expertise, trying to breathe life into the legend. I also thank author Casey Tefertiller for his research and encouragement through the years—his Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend remains the best biography of the lawman who became Doc Holliday’s favorite friend. If Bat Masterson expressed dislike for Doc, it may have been because Doc so clearly favored Wyatt over all the other men he knew. Even Kate was jealous of Doc’s affection for Wyatt, a factual element that added to the fiction of Dance with the Devil.

  Many thanks to the archivists and historians who aided in my own work: the late Susan McKey Thomas ( In Search of the Hollidays ), Doc’s cousin whose family history work started my own research and who became my dear friend over the years; Joan Farmer of the Old Jail Art Center, Albany, Texas; Harold F. Thatcher, City of Las Vegas Museum and Rough Rider Memorial Collection, New Mexico; and Dr. Arthur W. Bork, Prescott, Arizona, who knew and interviewed Kate Elder and shared his recollections with me. Family & friends who were my first readers and stalwart supporters: Patricia Petersen, Samuel Shannon, Sterling Felsted, Jennifer Felsted, Heather Shannon, Ashley Wilcox, Ross Wilcox, Mack Peirson, Daniel Mikat, Michael Spain, Melinda Talley, VelDean Fincher, and Dr. Dorothy Mikat. Special thanks to Laura Pilcher, copyeditor extraordinaire, and to Dan and Sally Mikat for giving me long quiet weeks to write at their home on Mackinac Island, Michigan. And especially to Erin Turner, Editorial Director of TwoDot Books, for giving new life and a new look to Doc Holliday’s Wild West story.

  Finally, thanks to my late mother, Beth Wanlass Peirson, who was my best research assistant as we traveled the West in search of Doc Holliday, and to my husband and favorite dentist, Dr. Ronald Wilcox, who paid for all the trips and watched the kids while I was traveling, and whose understanding of the pride of profession helped me to understand John Henry Holliday, D.D.S. Without you, Doc’s story would have remained just a legend.

  —Victoria Wilcox

  Peachtree City, Georgia

  About the Author

  Victoria Wilcox is Founding Director of Georgia’s Holliday-Dorsey-Fife House Museum (the antebellum home of the family of Doc Holliday, now a site on the National Register of Historic Places), where she learned the family’s untold stories of their legendary cousin. Her work with the museum led to two decades of original research, making her a nationally recognized authority on the life of Doc Holliday. She is the author of the documentary film In Search of Doc Holliday and the award-winning historical novel trilogy The Saga of Doc Holliday, for which she twice received Georgia Author of the Year honors and in 2016 was named Best Historical Western Novelist by True West Magazine. She has lectured across the country, appeared in local and regional media, guested on NPR affiliates, and was featured in the Fox Network series Legends & Lies: The Real West. She is a member of the Western Writers of America, the Wild West History Association, Women Writing the West, and the Writer’s Guild of the Booth Museum of Western Art and has been a featured contributor to True West Magazine. In the summer of 2017, she joined actor Val Kilmer ( Tombstone ) as guest historian at the inaugural “Doc HolliDays” in Tomb-stone, Arizona, site of the legendary OK Corral gunfight.