Doc Holliday: A Gunfight Waiting to Happen, Part II
Thursday, 23 May 2013
By Johnny Hughes.
Several of Wyatt's Earp’s brothers had worked in law enforcement. Wyatt was the clear leader of his family and a political faction in Dodge City, and later Tombstone. He had met fellow gamblers Bat Masterson and Luke Short as buffalo hunters and his group became a strong coalition behind Wyatt's latest plans, and Doc was part of it. In Dodge, Kate and Doc pretended to be man and wife at first and Doc hung out another dental shingle. Kate and Doc fought often and loudly and after a few months Kate said she liked the whore's life and was going back. Meanwhile, Doc dealt faro at the Long Branch Saloon for Luke Short. At times, Ben Thompson did also.
In Dodge, Wyatt was attempting to disarm a Texas cowboy, with 25 of his armed friends watching. Doc was playing poker. One of the cowboys behind Wyatt started to pull a pistol when Doc came yelling fiercely with his gun on the cowboys. So scary was Doc's reputation that the whole group backed down. Wyatt would say or write many times that Doc saved his life that night. Their bond and mutual loyalty was a legend after that. The National Police Gazette wrote of this incident. Doc was still more famous than Wyatt and that drew attention to Wyatt.
Doc Holliday had ridden into a new town and was getting a drink at the bar when a group of cowboys began to hurrah him over his fancy clothes. Being frail and weak-looking, and walking with a cane, Doc attracted bullies. He turned to face the whole group and caught them with the famous “piercing blue eyes”. He told them it would be wise to leave him alone. When asked why, he said, “I’m Doc Holliday.” They emptied the room.
That same scene came up over and over in history.
I'm Wyatt Earp.
I'm Bat Masterson.
I'm Ben Thompson.
The gambler/gunfighters in the Old West were celebrities and they knew it.
Wyatt Earp was a tough-guy fist-fighter. He'd started out as a bouncer in his brother's brothels in Illinois and Wichita, Kansas. As a lawman he was quiet and calm but he would often hit people over the head with long the barrel of his pistol. If Wyatt had a dispute, Doc might escalate it, threatening to kill any enemy of Wyatt’s. The two friends were opposites. Wyatt was soft spoken, unexcitable, always sober, charismatic, and admired. Doc was a volatile hot-head with a mercurial temper fuelled by alcohol. One minute Doc was charming and funny, quoting Latin, and in an instant he became the scariest man in the Old West. Doc played no limit at poker, life and death.
All of these gamblers dealt and banked faro, whether they were lawmen or not. Faro and poker were the most popular gambling games, played in nearly all saloons. They were lawmen for brief periods but professional gamblers for life. As lawmen, Wyatt, Bat and Ben Thompson operated from a poker or faro table in fancy gambling houses.
In faro, the house has a three per cent edge, which goes up on sucker bets. Did they cheat? I do not know. There was a professionally prepared crooked faro dealing box available by mail order at the time, however, all these name players went up against the house at faro, called “bucking the tiger”. I certainly doubt there was much sleight of hand involved in cheating at poker or faro, since folks knew that Doc and guys like him would kill them for cheating. In most writing of poker history, cheating is wrongly considered more common than it was in the high-stakes, professional-gambler card games. Too much about cheating was known.
In Dodge, Doc developed a friendship with Eddie Foy, the actor and comedian who would become very famous. While Doc and Bat Masterson were playing Spanish monte and Foy was reciting a poem, a group of cowboys rode by shooting into the bar. This ritual was common for the Texas cowboys. They called getting drunk and shooting out the lights a “jollification” and “hurrahing the town”. Foy thought it was a joke until the crowd hit the floor. Wyatt was outside, and he shot a cowboy who later died. It was George Hoy shooting at Eddie Foy. Somebody should have written a song. Doc and Kate left Dodge for Las Vegas, New Mexico, a drier climate and a gambling boomtown. Las Vegas had hot springs, thought good for Doc’s health – he was suffering from tuberculosis. Doc did well there, ending up with his own saloon. One day a drunken cowboy came into the saloon and harassed one of the women. Then he went into the street and shot back into the saloon. Doc went outside and killed him. This was probably needless, although he was tried and acquitted.
Shortly after that, Wyatt Earp, and his current woman, Mattie, came to Las Vegas to persuade Doc to join them in the next dream town, boomtown, Tombstone, Arizona. Doc loaded up and went with them by wagon. Kate didn't like them, but she went along. They stopped in Prescott, Arizona, another boomtown with a silver strike where Wyatt's brother Virgil Earp lived. Doc found a most wonderful poker game. Wyatt went on to Tombstone, but Doc stayed several months, winning, by some versions, $40,000. Wyatt wrote letters urging him to come on to Tombstone. With this bankroll, Kate was happy to go on to Tombstone and they finally rode into town in style.
Johnny Hughes is the author of Famous Gamblers, Poker History, and Texas Stories which is available from Amazon.