Watching, learning, and taking his winnings at the tables, Holliday created no disturbances at Fort Griffin. Unfortunately, in June, not long after he arrived, the legal authorities decided to flex their muscles. The first session of the Shackleford County District Court convened with Judge J. P. Osterhout presiding. Thirty-seven cases were heard in five days, during which a dozen men were found guilty of gambling and illegally selling liquor. Most of the fines were $10 to $15, but several of the men had more than one fine to pay. Among the defendants was “Dock Holliday,” who was arrested for playing “at a game of cards at a house used for retailing spiritous liquor,” along with Hurricane Bill, Mike Lynch, and Curly, a protégé of Hurricane Bill’s. Doc would later claim that some of the outlaws in Tombstone were “part of the old Fort Griffin gang,” which raises the possibility that the Fort Griffin Curly was Curly Bill Brocius.72
Of the defendants, though, Doc and Mike Lynch decided to leave Fort Griffin rather than pay the fine. On June 30, 1875, an alias capias was issued for Doc’s arrest and forwarded to the sheriff of Tom Green County at San Angelo.73 Doc probably took the stage west along the military road to Fort Concho, but he does not appear to have lingered long there. His movements over the rest of 1875 escaped documentation. He recalled later that he spent part of 1875 in Denver, and this has been the most commonly accepted view, placing him on the military roads west to El Paso, then turning north through New Mexico into Colorado. According to this scenario, Doc dealt cards for John A. Babb in Denver through the rest of 1875, then joined “a fresh invoice of Denver gamblers” who arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on February 5, 1876.74
John Charles Thompson claimed that Doc was there as well, writing in his history of Cheyenne:
Run out of Texas because of his lethal propensities, this platinum blond desperado tried Colorado, extinguished several gunmen there, came to Cheyenne and did right well at gambling. The reputation of this dour misanthrope with death gnawing on his lungs caused him to be unchallenged here. Jeff Carr, the town marshal, regarded him dourly, but courageous though the big officer was, he didn’t choose to take on a killer of Holliday’s ruthless character.75
Previous biographers have differed on whether Doc joined the Black Hills gold rush and moved to Deadwood. One view claimed that he remained in Deadwood until the spring of 1877, when he returned to Cheyenne and Denver en route back to Texas, while another returned Doc to Denver with Colorado statehood in August 1876, where he remained until early 1877 gambling under the name “Tom McKey.”76 These are not the only possibilities.
Kate Elder claimed that she and Doc were together at Cantonment Sweetwater, later Mobeetie, Texas, during the winter of 1875–1876, and said that they were both on hand when Bat Masterson killed Corporal Melvin King on the night of January 24, 1876. Kate doubtlessly was there, but Doc’s presence seems likely an artifice of Kate’s to cover up her real reason for being in Sweetwater. She was one of the girls in Tom Sherman’s dance hall, having moved from Dodge along the wagon road when the Sweetwater camp was established. Bat Masterson never mentioned Doc’s presence at Sweetwater and always claimed that he met Doc in Dodge City, more than two years after King’s death.77
Kate did leave a partial trail. After John Henry returned to Atlanta in 1872, Kate apparently fell in with Silas Melvin. She claimed he was a dentist, that they later moved to Atlanta, and that her husband and child both died there of yellow fever. She also claimed that she renewed her acquaintance with Doc and married him in Valdosta on March 25, 1876, before moving west in 1877. Of course, the dates do not fit. Melvin was, in fact, an attendant at the County Insane Asylum in St. Louis and had married Mary Virginia Bust on October 10, 1871. Most likely, Kate had an affair with Melvin, but other relationships escaped notice.78 At some point, she gave up the name “Kate Fisher” and started using “Kate Elder.” She was fined for prostitution using that name in the summer of 1874 in Wichita, Kansas. Bessie Earp, the wife of James Earp, and Sallie Earp, who may well have been Sarah Haspel, the consort of Wyatt Earp from Peoria, Illinois, were also arrested at that time.79
Curiously, Wyatt Earp always called Kate “Kate Fisher,” which suggests that he may have met her before she changed her name. Perhaps she became Kate Elder in Wichita. The first marshal of Wichita was Ike S. Elder, and he was still around in 1874. Bessie and Sallie established their house in January 1874, and Kate may have worked for them. In that case, Kate would have met not only her employers but James and Wyatt as well. That would explain Kate’s bitter distaste for the Earps, especially for Wyatt later on. In 1875, however, Kate left Wichita for Dodge City, where she went to work for Tom Sherman at his dance hall. Sherman then took some of his girls to Sweetwater when that camp sprang up in the fall of 1875.80
John Henry almost certainly headed southwest to Fort Concho in June 1875, which generated the alias capias to Tom Green County, but he could have trailed south rather than west from there, toward more civilized environs like San Antonio or Austin, perhaps moving on to Laredo or even looping back north to Fort Worth or Dallas. He could have easily wintered in familiar haunts in Dallas or Denison, or on new grounds like San Antonio or Austin, without notice. He was not well known and, after all, had little to worry about over a gambling fine. He was far from a seasoned frontiersman, and his health was fragile, both of which mitigated against him getting too far away from established roads. Early in 1876, however, he was on the move again, and he may well have gained enough confidence to return to Fort Griffin. Shackleford County authorities did issue a second capias for Doc on the old charge at the May term of court, which provides circumstantial evidence that he had returned to the area. But by then something had happened that already had caused Doc to run.
Bat Masterson, whose account of Doc’s life, while flawed, is reliable in broad form, claimed that Doc killed a black soldier at Jacksboro.81 No such event was reported in either the papers or the records of the time, but an incident did occur at Fort Griffin that might well have been the shooting Masterson recalled. On the night of March 3, 1876, Private Jacob Smith, who was “absent without authority” from Fort Griffin in the Flat, was shot and killed by an unknown party.82 Perhaps it was a coincidence, but John Henry Holliday was soon on the run, using the alias Tom McKey, not something likely precipitated by a $10 fine for gambling.
Masterson said that after the soldier was killed, Doc “lost no time in getting out of town, and seated on the hurricane deck of a Texas cayuse, was well on his way to safety by the time the news of the homicide reached the fort.”83 Masterson claimed that Doc struck out for Denver across the Texas Panhandle, no-man’s-land, and New Mexico. But again, Doc was not an experienced plainsman, and even taking the stage roads west was a grueling journey. More likely, he would have headed east, caught the train at Dallas, and traveled north through Denison and on into the Indian Territory. At Vinita, in the Cherokee Nation, he would have changed trains and traveled into Missouri, perhaps going as far as St. Louis, where he hoped to find his old friend, Dr. A. Jameson Fuches Jr. If that was his intent, he was dis appointed, because Fuches had moved across the river into Illi-nois, where he pursued a very successful career as a dentist and a physician.84
Doc may well have encountered his old friend Kate Elder there. St. Louis was a big gambling town in those days, which attracted a lot of the sporting circle that spring. After returning to Dodge from Sweetwater, she may have found her way east to a “warmer nest” in her old stomping grounds at St. Louis. At least, she was not further associated with Dodge. As previously noted, she would later claim that she married Doc on May 25, 1876. No proof of such a union survived in the rather complete St. Louis marriage records, and Kate’s recollections were far from trustworthy, but the timing was appropriate for a reunion of some sort.85
The big news that spring was the Black Hills gold rush, and Doc soon would have left Kate and St. Louis, catching the train to Kansas City and taking the spur from there to the Union Pacific. He may well have headed west to Cheyenne, t
hough later than generally supposed, and, before the spring was over, arrived in Deadwood. After a brief stay, he caught the stage back to Cheyenne. On June 26, 1876, the day after General George Armstrong Custer’s fall at Little Big Horn, a man named J. H. Holliday was one of the victims of a stage robbery, losing his cash and a fine, engraved gold watch. Apparently, this Holliday was a St. Louis businessman, but the timing would have fit Doc’s movements.86
Americans were celebrating the nation’s centennial, and Doc almost certainly arrived in Denver just after the grand July 4 celebration and just in time to hear the news of Custer’s disaster. Denver was a booming city, with broad streets and prosperous neighborhoods, but it still had a frontier edge. There was a large sporting district that was populated with some of the West’s most successful gamblers. Apparently, Doc took a job dealing cards for Charley Foster at Babb’s Variety House and found a room over Long John’s Saloon on Blake Street nearby. He settled in, using the alias T. S. McKey, after his favorite uncle, indicating that he was still on the run.87
Members of the Holliday family later claimed that that summer Pinkerton agents called on the John Stiles Holliday household asking for photographs of John Henry and that one of the girls quickly removed his picture from the family album and hid it under her dress before handing the album to the agents.88 If this incident did occur, the reason was never revealed. Jacob Smith’s murder was not likely the reason. Apparently, the army did not have a clue as to who had killed Smith, nor did it usually put up much of a fuss over a black trooper killed while absent from duty without leave.
Denver had its share of fights and crime, and at the time of Doc Holliday’s death in 1887, one of the newspaper obituaries mentioned an 1876 fight between Doc and another gambler named Bud Ryan in which Doc slashed Ryan with a knife. According to the report, Doc “was a quiet, modest man, with a smile that was child-like and bland.” The reporter added, “[B]ut one night he electrified the town by nearly cutting off the head of Budd Ryan, a well-known Denver gambler.”89 Bat Masterson would also repeat the story in 1907, noting that Ryan was still living in Denver, though scarred by the encounter. A Bud Ryan was in fact living at 1653 Arapahoe in Denver in 1890.90
If Doc did carve up Ryan with the “Hell Bitch”—and it is noteworthy that the Denver reporter knew that he went by the alias Tom Mackey—the incident escaped direct notice in the surviving papers. On November 28, 1876, however, the Rocky Mountain News did report an incident at 19 Holladay Street, referred to simply as “Saturday night’s affair,” as if everyone was familiar with the details. Two days later, the News reported that Judge O. A. Whittemore had “settled the Holladay street affair by charging the accused $30 and costs.” Interestingly, the very next day the News reported letters for “T. S. McKey” in its list of undelivered letters at the post office.91
Doc headed east. He could not know that the gambling charges against him in Fort Griffin had been dismissed in November, but he apparently felt confident that he was not being pursued on more serious charges. He may have stopped in Laclede, Kansas, long enough to visit his aunt Rebecca Annaliza Holliday McCoin, who was living there with her family, but by January 1877 he was back in Dallas using his own name. There were two gunfights in Dallas within a matter of days after he returned, including one at a saloon on Jefferson Street, which indicated that the town was still lively. He settled into the bars and gambling halls, and on January 8 he was arrested on three counts of gambling.92
Holliday’s movements after his arrest are unclear. What is clear is that he was a different man than the one who had arrived in Dallas a few years earlier. The aspiring dentist had given way to the seasoned and hardened professional gambler. John C. Jacobs, who met him later that year at Fort Griffin, remembered him as follows:
This fellow Holliday was a consumptive and a hard drinker, but neither liquor nor the bugs seemed to faze him. He could at times be the most genteel, affable chap you ever saw, and at other times he was sour and surly, and would just as soon cut your throat with a villainous looking knife he always carried, or shoot you with a .41-calibre double-barreled derringer he always kept in his vest pocket.93
Doc may have wintered in Dallas despite its inhospitable treatment of gamblers. He may have returned to Denison or traveled to Eagle Pass, especially since the Dallas papers were praising Maverick County and claiming that “there is no more healthy country.”94 He may have visited Fort Worth, San Antonio, or other points south and west of Dallas. Newspapers of the time frequently reported (or complained) of the sports in town, but they rarely named them, unless they were famous, which Doc decidedly was not. On May 8, 1877, the January cases were transferred to the court of the justice of the peace.95 By June, the papers were reporting the growth of the new town of Breck enridge in Stephens County, Texas, and Doc joined other sporting men in a migration there.
On July 4, Holliday had an altercation with another gambler named Henry Kahn, a relative of Dallas’s prominent clothiers. Reviving a Southern tradition, Doc severely caned Kahn. The police intervened and hauled both men into court, where they were fined. Later that same day, the two met again, and Kahn shot Holliday, seriously wounding him.96 The cause of the dispute escaped documentation, but Kahn was himself probably on the run. He was indicted in Shackleford County in August for forgery, and thereafter slid through the fingers of Texas justice. On July 7, the Dallas Daily Herald reported, “Our reporter was told in Fort Worth yesterday that a young man named Doc Holliday, well known in this city, was shot and killed at Breckenridge last Wednesday by a young man named Kahn.”97 Of course, reports of Doc’s demise were premature.
Apparently, Doc’s family was notified, and George Henry Holliday was sent by them to tend Doc during his recovery and perhaps to persuade him to return home. George arrived on July 21 and looked after his cousin briefly before being convinced that John Henry was able to take care of himself and had no intention of returning home.98 Doc’s recovery was marked by another arrest for gambling in Dallas in September, and this time he decided to move on.99
His destination was Fort Griffin. Fort Griffin had become a different place since his last visit. The town was booming. It was a major stop for Texas cattle headed north, with as many as 150,000 head covering the plains around the town the previous spring. In July, John Golden had been killed by officers of the law, and Hurricane Bill, once a cock-of-the-walk in Fort Griffin, escaped jail and departed for parts unknown. John Larn was the new law in Griffin as the Shackleford County sheriff. He was a man of questionable character himself, and he would eventually run afoul of the still active vigilance committee.100
Perhaps the most notable addition to Fort Griffin society in Doc Holliday’s absence was “Lottie Deno.” Actually named Charlotte Tompkins, Lottie arrived in the spring of 1877 and immediately became a local celebrity. She was a mysterious, well-mannered, and attractive woman who was both a whore and immune to the rough and rowdy climate of the saloons and gambling halls. She quickly obtained an interest in the Gus, a saloon and boarding house. Despite her business success and her reputation as “the poker queen”—she was successful in poker games and at the faro table—Griffin’s respectable element denied her the social acceptance of other saloon owners. This was, after all, the Victorian era, and not even her beauty and manners could overcome the public perception of her as a fallen woman.
Lottie may have followed a former Georgian named Frank Thurmond, who was also a San Antonio gambler on the run, to Griffin. Using the alias Mike Fogarty, he was employed periodically as a bartender at the Bee Hive, although he also ran cattle at times or worked as a shotgun guard on stagecoaches. Lottie was also involved with a gambler named Johnny Golden, but Golden had been killed by Marshal Bill Gilson and Deputy Sheriff Jim Draper in July before Doc returned to town in September. After Golden’s death, Lottie became increasingly reclusive, but she did emerge to support herself at the gambling tables.101
Doc checked into the Occidental Hotel, owned by Hank Smith and run by
his wife, Elizabeth, known locally as “Aunt Hank.” Doc opened an account at Smith’s bar on September 14. Within a week he amassed a liquor bill of $120, while spending just over $20 for room and meals.102 Whether he relocated after that week or moved on to other towns is not clear, but he did have notable experiences while there. For one thing, he appears to have met his former acquaintance Kate Elder and struck up a relationship with her that would last for a time. One of the apocryphal stories about Doc in Griffin was provided by John Jacobs:
In your recent letter you asked if faro was a popular game at old Fort Griffin. It certainly was popular; every gambling house there had a faro bank. I remember well one instance where a lot of money changed hands, and Lottie Deno coming about three thousand dollars ahead, winning it all from Doc Holliday at the Bee Hive. It seems that Holliday had won over three thousand dollars and the layout from Mike Forgarty [sic], who operated the gambling resort, when Lottie Deno, who was lookout for Fogarty, proposed to Holliday that she be given a chance to recoup Fogarty’s losses. Holliday agreed to this, and the game was resumed with a fifty dollar limit. The game did not last very long, for Lottie Deno copped every bet, and left Doc Holliday completely strapped for the time being at least, for he was not one who let poor luck get him down and keep him there. He got into a poker game the next night and won $500 and a diamond ring from an army officer stationed at the fort.103
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