Doc Holliday

by Gary L Roberts

  2. Tombstone (Arizona) Daily Epitaph, March 27, 1882. The Epitaph reported, “The latest report about the Earps is that on Sunday morning they came into the lower part of town and took a breakfast especially ordered for the occasion after which they quietly rode away smoking the choicest of Havana cigars and with a copy of the Nugget in their pockets, feeling much refreshed in every respect.” The same issue of the Epitaph reported that E. B. Gage, the Earps’ staunch supporter and the man who had provided the funds that Kraker and Wright were carrying on the day of the Curly Bill fight, had left for Lowell, Massachusetts, after receiving a telegram that his mother had died. He was expected to be away for at least six weeks. Charlie Smith rejoined the Earp posse when they left Tombstone. See also the entry for March 27, 1882, George Whitwell Parsons, The Private Journal of George W. Parsons (Tombstone, AZ: Tombstone Daily Epitaph, 1972), 222. Forrestine C. Hooker, “An Arizona Vendetta (the Truth about Wyatt Earp—and Some Others),” 70–70 1/2, unpublished manuscript, circa 1920, Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, California, says that Texas Jack Vermillion went to Tombstone alone to find Smith and recover the money, but the contemporary sources suggest the scenario presented here. George Hand reported at the time that Sheriff Behan’s posse “struck the trail of the Earp party a few miles below town [Contention], returning toward Tombstone and followed it [italics added].” George Hand, “Next Stop: Tombstone,” in George Hand’s Contention Diary, edited by Neal B. Carmony (Tucson, AZ: Trail to Yesterday Books, 1995), 13.

  3. Tucson (Arizona) Daily Star, March 28, 29, 1882; Sacramento Union, March 28, 1882. On March 27, Chief of Police David Neagle reported that the Earp party had been seen fifteen miles north of Willcox by Deputy Sheriff Frank Hereford. Neagle believed that the Earps were en route to Tucson to surrender to Sheriff Bob Paul.

  4. Dos Cabezas Gold Note, quoted in the Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 4, 5, 1882; Tombstone (Arizona) Weekly Epitaph, April 10, 1882; Hooker, “Arizona Vendetta,” 71; Timothy W. Fattig, Wyatt Earp: The Biography (Honolulu, HI: Talei, 2002), 549–551.

  5. Tombstone (Arizona) Daily Nugget and Tombstone Daily Epitaph, March 28, 1882; Tucson Daily Star, March 29, 1882.

  6. Hooker, “Arizona Vendetta,” 72; see also John H. Flood Jr., Wyatt Earp: A Peace-officer of Tombstone, 312 (unpublished manuscript, 1927), C. Lee Simmons Collection. For information on Henry Hooker, see Lynn R. Bailey, Henry Clay Hooker and the Sierra Bonita (Tucson, AZ: Westernlore, 1998).

  7. Hooker, “Arizona Vendetta,” 73–74; Earp, “Wyatt Earp,” 312–315.

  8. Harry Woods presented Behan’s view of the encounter in an article published in the Tombstone Daily Nugget, March 31, 1882, while Hooker’s version was published in the Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 14, 1882; see also Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life behind the Legend (New York: Wiley, 1997), 242–244.

  9. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 14, 1882.

  10. William M. Breakenridge, handwritten statement, circa 1910, p. 12, Special Collections, University of Arizona Library, Tucson, Arizona. William M. Breakenridge, Helldorado: Bringing the Law to the Mesquite (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 178–179, provides less detail. Breakenridge was correct that the Earp position was extremely well fortified. On March 29, 1882, the Tombstone Daily Nugget reported:

  A prominent citizen of Dos Cabezas, in town yesterday, informed a Nugget reporter that the Earp party are now encamped in a canyon in the Graham Mountains, not far from Hooker’s ranch. They have chosen a position from which it would be extremely difficult to dislodge them and have announced their intention to remaining there, for some time at least. Our informant states that in a conversation with Wyatt Earp a few days since, the latter said if the Sheriff of Cochise county wanted him he could always find him at his camp. They are represented as being well supplied with money and food, which is furnished by friends of the fugitives.

  Reprinted in the Tucson Weekly Star, April 1, 1882.

  11. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 14, 1882.

  12. Ibid. The San Francisco Exchange shared this view of Behan, noting, “The Sheriff has enlisted the cowboys under his banner, and he himself evidently has no stomach for the job.” Reprinted in the Tucson Daily Star, March 28, 1882.

  13. Hooker, “Arizona Vendetta,” 77; Tombstone Daily Epitaph, March 28, 1882.

  14. National Police Gazette, March 11, 1882.

  15. San Francisco Examiner, March 23, 1882.

  16. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 5, 1882; Tombstone Daily Nugget, April 6, 1882.

  17. Stuart N. Lake notes, Stuart N. Lake Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 354–355, is more explicit, but must be taken with a grain of salt. In this case, however, his account has a certain plausibility. The Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 12, 1882, reported the rumor “that members of the Earp party were in town last night spending several hours here. It is hardly probable that such was the case.” This followed a rumor that a man “riding a horse supposed to be the one rode by Wyatt Earp when he left town” was stopped by officers. The rider told them that he had met Earp outside of town and traded horses with him. A posse was organized but found nothing. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 11, 1882. One report claimed that on the night of March 30 two men out searching for stock encountered a party of men, six or seven in number, asleep in a gulch near Tombstone with one man acting as sentinel. They asked him if he had seen stray horses. He said he had not and suggested that “the best thing they could do was to leave that vicinity as quickly as possible.” The description provided of the sentinel fit “very well with that of Warren Earp.” Tombstone Daily Nugget, April 1, 1882. This does not fit well with the known movements of the Earps.

  18. Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 247; Tucson Daily Star, April 30, 1882.

  19. Tucson Daily Star, March 30, 1882.

  20. San Diego Union, March 28, 1882.

  21. Los Angeles Express, reprinted in the San Diego Union, March 30, 1882.

  22. Los Angeles Daily Herald, March 28, 1882.

  23. Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp, 246; Reminiscences of Henry Morgan as told to Mrs. Geo. F. Kitt, 1930, Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, Arizona.

  24. Tombstone Daily Epitaph, April 15, 1882; Tombstone (Arizona) Weekly Epitaph, April 17, 1882. Just when the establishment forces began to coalesce behind the Earps is unclear. Gosper and Dake were already working closely with business leaders in Tombstone even before Virgil was shot. After that incident, a growing sentiment existed in the business community for aggressive action, including vigilantism, if required. Dake’s meeting with J. J. Valentine, James Hume’s interview with the National Police Gazette, and John Thacker’s active presence in Tombstone after March 21, when combined with Valentine’s presence in Arizona early in April, not only made Wells, Fargo’s growing discontent about the situation obvious but also demonstrated the company’s active support of the Earps. In fact, the Wells, Fargo Cash Book for Tombstone, April 1882, shows that Thacker paid Wyatt Earp and his posse $150 in the matter of “Stilwell & Curly Bill,” along with extra expenses for the months between January and April. Wells, Fargo’s General Cash Books for January 1880 through September 1882 are housed in the Wells, Fargo & Company Bank, History Department, San Francisco, California, and I am grateful to Robert J. Chandler, curator and historian for the Wells Fargo Bank, who provided copies of the General Cash Book entries. Chandler’s own article, “A Smoking Gun? Did Wells Fargo Pay Wyatt Earp to Kill Curly Bill and Frank Stilwell,” True West 48 (July 2001): 42–43, first revealed this stunning evidence of Wells, Fargo’s involvement in the so-called vendetta. I have used Chandler’s explanation of symbols such as “a/c” based on his years of work with Wells, Fargo records.

  25. New Southwest and Grant County Herald, April 22, 1882.

  26. Chuck Hornung, “Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday: Their New Mexico Adventures,” 84–86, unpublished manuscript, 2004, copy in author’s files.

  27. Ibid., 88–90; Albuquer
que Evening Review and Albuquerque Daily Morning Journal, April 16, 17, 18, 1882.

  28. Lake notes; Earp, “Wyatt Earp,” 326–327. McLain is most familiar as one of the members of the “Dodge City Peace Commission” that went to the aid of Luke Short in 1883. At that time, the National Police Gazette, July 21, 1883, provided this brief description of him: “M. F. McLean [sic] has an Arizona and Rio Grande record for wiping out Mexican ruffians, and came from Lower California to see that his friend Luke Short could ‘stay in town’ to attend to his business. He is cool and clear-headed. The great ability which he displayed in managing a fight has obtained for him the sobriquet of ‘The General.’”

  29. Hornung, “New Mexico Adventures,” 106–107. Interestingly, Governor Lionel Sheldon, J. J. Valentine of Wells, Fargo, and C. C. Wheeler, the general manager of the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad, were all in Albuquerque between April 15 and April 17, 1882. After an unfortunate incident in Denver on April 12, 1882, in which Don Miguel Antonio Otero was conned by a character called Doc Baggs (see note 31 of this chapter), Otero returned to New Mexico and may have attended a meeting of the Santa Fe Railroad directors scheduled to meet in Santa Fe in mid-April before returning to Las Vegas on April 17 (see Las Vegas [New Mexico] Daily Optic, April 13, 1882). On April 20, 1882, the Optic reported that Don Miguel, his wife, and his son Page left Las Vegas for Denver to testify before the grand jury in the Baggs case. Sheldon’s operations against the Cow-Boys have not been researched well, but some details are found in the microfilm edition of the Territorial Archives of New Mexico, State Records Center and Archives, Santa Fe, New Mexico. For detail on A. J. Fountain’s campaign, see the attorney general’s report on the 1882 campaign of militia activity against outlaws, roll 99.

  30. In fact, in the undated draft of a letter apparently written by the younger Otero, he said, “Yes, I know Wyatt Earp. I knew him to be a gentleman and he held a reputation of being an excellent law officer. I knew the Earp brothers first in Kansas, but did not [see] much [of] them after that time. My father knew them best. I knew Doc Holliday at Las Vegas and told that adventure in My Life on the Frontier [Vol.] I.” Otero to “My Dear Friend,” undated, Chuck Hornung’s private collection, and published in Chuck Hornung and Gary L. Roberts, “The Split,” True West 48 (November– December 2001): 58–61. In 2001, Hornung purchased a deluxe edition of Miguel Antonio Otero’s My Nine Years as Governor of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1940) at a flea market in Albuquerque from a Hispanic man who told him that he was selling books originally owned by his grandmother. Hornung did not find the carbon until later that evening. The undated draft of the letter was identified as the work of Gillie Otero based on internal evidence in the letter itself as explained in the Hornung-Roberts article. The circumstances of the letter’s discovery and some historical mistakes in both the letter and the hasty analysis of Hornung and Roberts prompted several researchers, most notably Scott Anderson and Woody Campbell, to question the authenticity of the letter.

  Authenticity is only half the dilemma posed by the letter, however. Accuracy is the other. Authenticity revolves around the issue of whether the letter was written by Gillie Otero. After extensive dialogue with Anderson and Campbell, both highly capable researchers, Hornung and Roberts, while recognizing the possibility of a hoax, have concluded that the circumstances and internal evidence make a hoax unlikely and support the case for authenticity. The question of accuracy is another matter.

  The problems posed by the letter in this respect are in no way unique; it is the one problem inherent in any reminiscence. Otero was writing about events that occurred nearly sixty years earlier, and some of the details in the letter include errors of the sort commonly found in recollections. Otero made mistakes and left things out—as he did in his published recollections. See Ramon F. Adams, Burs under the Saddle: A Second Look at Books and Histories of the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 395–402, for one critique of Otero’s “memory.” It is not surprising, then, to find some problems with detail in the letter.

  Yet, even acknowledging some questionable statements, the letter does throw light on the Albuquerque sojourn of the Earps. What is most compelling is the extent to which the “Otero letter,” as it has come to be called, supports the hypothesis previously developed by Roberts concerning the extent of the cabal of political and corporate support for Wyatt Earp during his so-called vendetta ride against the Cow-Boys. Hornung discusses the possible connection to the Earps (or at least to those supporting the Earps) in “New Mexico Adventures,” 93–117. For sketches of both Oteros, father and son, see Howard R. Lamar, ed., The New Encyclopedia of the American West (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 836–837. More detail is found in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexican History, 5 vols. (Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch, 1911–1917). For context, see also Howard R. Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846–1912 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), and Robert W. Larson, New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 1846–1912 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1968). Especially valuable for the present study is the younger Otero’s My Life on the Frontier, 1864–1882 (New York: Press of the Pioneers, 1935), 216–218.

  31. Denver Republican, April 15, 16, 18, 19, 1882; Denver Daily News, April 15, 18, 19, 1882; Albuquerque Evening Review, April 18, 28, 1882; Las Vegas Daily Optic, May 1, 1882. I am especially indebted to Scott Anderson and Woody Campbell for information and commentary on the Baggs affair. The Las Vegas Daily Optic, April 8, 1882, noted, “Gillie Otero is becoming a professional tourist. He gets off for Denver this evening.” This report, combined with the research of Anderson and Campbell, demonstrates quite convincingly that Gillie Otero was in Denver on the weekend that the Earp party arrived in Albuquerque. This more than anything else has raised the concern of skeptics of the Otero letter, since Otero says that “I tired [tried] to help them in their quest to stay in New Mexico following the Tombstone trouble,” and “Father sent me to see to the comfort of the Earp posse because his railroad supported the boys.” In fact, the problem may be more apparent than real. On April 3, 1882, the Albuquerque Evening Review reported that “Gillie Otero is here. He managed to miss Page [his older brother],” at about the time that the Earps were planning their departure from Arizona; the Las Vegas Daily Optic, May 1, 1882, reported, “Gillie Otero is home from Denver, not with a man named Baggs.” Otero’s known movements support the hypothesis that Gillie made arrangements before leaving for Denver and had time to return to Albuquerque before the Earp party left for Colorado. In fact, in light of the Earps’ eventually finding sanctuary in Colorado and Doc’s comments to the Colorado press about prior arrangements being made, the presence of the Oteros in Denver during April means that the Oteros could have worked on the Earps’ behalf while there as well. Further research needs to be done, but a narrow construction of the Otero letter is most likely a mistake.

  32. Albuquerque Evening Review, April 18, 19, 1882. Albuquerque was an old city. The arrival of the railroad created (as it had in Las Vegas) a “New Town.” Sam Blonger was appointed marshal by Armijo, subject to the approval of the “board of trade,” the quasi government of New Town.

  33. Hornung and Roberts, “The Split,” 61, reported incorrectly that Henry Jaffa was the president of the board of trade when the Earp party arrived. In actuality, the chairman of the board of trade in 1882 was Colonel Molyneaux Bell. Jaffa had not yet become active in the New Town operations, and his Albuquerque branch store was located on the Old Town plaza and managed by Willie Prager, Jaffa’s longtime partner, in 1882. Later, Jaffa would relocate to Second Street in New Town, and in 1885 he would be elected as Albuquerque’s first mayor when New Town and Old Town consolidated into the single city. Mark Dworkin, “Henry Jaffa and Wyatt Earp: Wyatt Earp’s Jewish Connection, a Portrait of Henry Jaffa, Albuquerque’s First Mayor,” WOLA Journal 13 (Fall 2004): 25–37, is uncertain just when Jaffa moved to Albuquerque to live, but he appears to have had a residence
there in 1882, even if it was nothing more than an apartment at his Old Town store. Hornung, “New Mexico Adventures,” 110–112, offers further information on Jaffa’s activities and location in 1882. What makes the Jaffa connection even more interesting is his close friendship with Judge Columbus Moise, who had been Don Miguel Otero’s private secretary