How Did They Get Bullet Holes on Cow in Brother Where Art Thou
— Painting "The Last Days of Kate & Doc" past Bob Boze Bell, Photo of Kate Elder and All Other Fine art past Bob Boze Bell, Photos/Maps Courtesy True Westward Archives Unless Otherwise Noted —
Kate Elder was a working daughter. Throughout most of her young life, she was employed equally a soiled dove—a woman of sick fame, a sporting gal, a prostitute. Information technology was Kate's relationship with John Henry (Doc) Holliday that brought her notoriety and lifted her out of the function of a mere courtesan to that of common-police wife to the well-known gambler, gunfighter and dentist.
Kate'due south story of her life on the frontier every bit a soiled dove, and her time with one of the Westward'southward most recognizable characters, has value. She was in her eighties when she dared to call back all that had transpired since she'd left Republic of hungary, where she was born, upwardly to the events preceding the historic gunfight near the O.Thou. Corral. Kate claims to have witnessed the famous gun battle in October 1881. What she said happened between she and Doc leading upward to the incident, and what transpired afterwards with outlaw John Ringo, adds another controversial layer to the celebrated event.
It was a chilly evening in mid-March 1881. Kate had traveled from Globe, Arizona, where she had a business concern, to Tombstone to meet Doc. Co-ordinate to her, she made the trip at his asking. Doctor had taken up residence on Sixth Street in a small boardinghouse positioned between a funeral parlor and a winery.
Kate said that a holdup, in which driver Bud Philpot and a passenger were killed, occurred during her visit to Tombstone. I of the 4 suspects in the stage robbery and the double killing was William Leonard, one of Doc's friends he had met in Las Vegas, New Mexico. When Leonard relocated to southern Arizona he fell in with a bad oversupply and began robbing stages. It wasn't long before Doctor was implicated in the criminal offence. His friendship with Leonard, and a visit he had made to his habitation near Tombstone, made him wait suspicious.
A group of outlaw cow-boys, including well-known Cochise County, Arizona, residents Ike Clanton, Pete Spencer, Frank Stillwell and Curly Bill Brocius, encouraged the rumor of Doc Holliday'southward interest in the robbery. An article in the March 24, 1881, edition of the Arizona Weekly Citizen implicated Doc in the offense too. Three of the robbers were headed to United mexican states. "The quaternary is at Tombstone and is well-known and has been adumbral e'er since his return." Doc was furious. Many suspected him of taking part in the robbery, and that included Kate.
"I idea that subsequently the holdup things looked very suspicious near the Earps and Medico," Kate recalled later. "Something tells me Physician was in with Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan in that affair. One night after nosotros retired, Warren Earp came after Doctor and said that Wyatt wanted to run across him at his home. Md was gone for almost two hours, and when he returned I could see that he was very much put out about something. He kept maxim, 'the damned fool! I didn't remember that of him.' And later he said, 'I have to get up early on in the morning, but I will think virtually information technology.' This was afterwards the holdup.
"In the morning time, subsequently nosotros had our breakfast, Doc said. 'Well, I don't know what I am going to stack up against today. I am getting tired of it all.'"
Kate knew he was referring to the fact that several people believed he was i of the men who robbed the stage. She tried to convince Medico to leave town with her, but he refused. "Wyatt Earp had a powerful influence over Doc," Kate noted years later, "which I came to realize when I could not overcome that influence and induce Doc to return to Globe with me."
B y the get-go of Apr 1881, Kate had left Tombstone and traveled dorsum to her business concern in Globe. According to Kate, Medico sent for her a second fourth dimension in June 1881. Doc invited Kate to spend Independence Day with him, and she happily accustomed. Kate and Medico were reunited but before the holiday, but their time together was less than civil. His tuberculosis, which had been somewhat in remission when they lived in New United mexican states, was now causing coughing fits that brought up blood. To deal with the bedevilment, Doc drank to excess. Kate drank right along with him. The pair was non shy about arguing in public. The fight the couple had on July 4 concluded in name-calling and blasphemous. Angry and crying, Kate staggered to the room she shared with Physician. The program she had to sleep until she was no longer intoxicated was interrupted when John Behan stopped her before she reached the hotel.
When Doc arrives in Tombstone, there is no record of him practicing dentistry at all. Instead, he gambles full-time, ofttimes with Kate standing over his shoulder. The two of them are inseparable for periods of time. Other times they need to be separated.
According to Kate, "Sheriff Johnny Behan took me to Judge Spicer's Justice of the Peace role, and the judge put me through the tertiary degree. He asked me about the Earps and Doc Holliday. How did Doc act the evening of the holdup? He was referring to the phase holdup where Bud Philpot and a passenger were killed. Did the youngest or which one of the Earps came to me for Md's burglarize? Did Doc modify his apparel that afternoon and what did Warren Earp say, if anything? How long had I known the Earps?
"Then suddenly he asked me, 'Are yous certain that Doctor Holliday was with the Earps at the holdup?'
"Then I told the judge I was positive of cypher and would non swear to annihilation Spicer said. He felt sure that the Earps and Holliday were in that holdup. I asked him why he did not question Mattie [Blaylock] and Alice Earp, that he knew Morgan Earp was the Wells Fargo messenger on that stage. The judge then got out of patients [sic] with me and threatened me. I said, 'I can't tell you whatsoever more.'"
Once Kate sobered upwards she wasted no time walking back whatsoever statements she might have fabricated nearly Doc that implicated him in the phase robbery and death of two people. She insisted she was coerced into reporting anything negative about Doc. All murder charges confronting Doc were dismissed on July ix. The judge reviewing the example adamant there was no evidence to show Md had a function in the criminal offense.
Kate planned to leave town as soon equally she knew Doc was out of harm's way. She was aware she wasn't wanted in Tombstone. "It was after that," Kate noted later, referring to her arrest by Virgil Earp, "Wyatt Earp became anxious to get rid of me. Several days after [in one case she was released] a gambler named J. M. Nichols, also known as Napa Nick, invited me to go for a buggy ride with him, simply I declined. Mattie Earp, Wyatt's wife, later told me in Globe that I was lucky in refusing the buggy ride, equally Napa Nick had instructions to get rid of me in some lone canyon."
Erstwhile betwixt tardily August and September 9, 1881, Kate and Md reunited and traveled to Tucson to enjoy some time together. It wasn't until late October that i of the Earps tracked downwards the couple at a popular saloon on Meyer Avenue in Tucson. According to Kate, on October 25, 1881, she was continuing behind Doc watching him deal cards when Morgan Earp arrived on the scene. "The twenty-four hour period before the fight took place in Tombstone, Wyatt sent Morgan to Tucson to tell Medico that he was wanted in Tombstone the following day," Kate said later on. "Morgan establish us at Congress Hall where Md was trying his luck at [the] faro banking concern. He took Doc aside and delivered the message from Wyatt.
"Then Doc came to me and told me that he would have me to our hotel, as he had to go back to Tombstone, but that he would come for me after on. I would non have it that way, though, and told him that if he was going to Tombstone I was going with him. We left on a freight for Benson and from there collection to Tombstone in a buckboard. Md and I had a room in the building owned past Mr. and Mrs. Wing, who also had a photo gallery there. Information technology was on Fremont Street side by side to the back entrance of the O.K. Corral. We got to the room after midnight. Doc left me there, he and Morgan going away together."
Doc and Morgan ready off for the Alhambra Saloon, where Wyatt was waiting for them. Wyatt informed Doc of the difficulties he had with Ike Clanton. He told Doc most those difficulties and warned him to be on his baby-sit.
Doc turned his attention to playing cards and drinking whiskey. He didn't give the affair much thought until he ran into Ike at the eating place next to the saloon. It was after 1 in the forenoon, and Doc was less than sober. He cursed at Ike, which started a verbal sparring between the two. Co-ordinate to Ike Clanton, Medico chosen him a "damn son-of-a-bitch" and told him to "get his gun out." Ike indicated in his eyewitness account of the matters leading upward to the street fight that he left the eating place subsequently his come across with Dr.. He noted that Morgan was watching the pair verbally abuse one another and that Morgan had his hand on his pistol. Seeing he was outnumbered, he left the building knowing that state of war between the Earps, Holliday and the moo-cow-boys was on the horizon.
"Physician and Ike Clanton had some words in a restaurant," Kate recalled well-nigh the events of the first night she returned to Tombstone in late October 1881. "In the morning time Ike Clanton came to Wing's photograph gallery with a Winchester rifle. Mrs. Fly told him that Md was not at that place. Doc was not up all the same. I went to our room and told Physician that Ike Clanton was outside looking for him and that he was armed. Doc said, 'If God lets me live long enough to become my clothes on, he shall see me.'
"With that he got upward and dressed. Going out he said, 'I won't be hither to have you to breakfast, so you lot had amend go lonely.' I didn't go to breakfast. I don't remember whether I ate anything or not that day.
"In a little more than than a half an 60 minutes the shooting began. This lady-friend and I went to the side window, which faced the vacant lot. There was Ike Clanton, young Bill Clanton, Frank McLowry [sic], and his brother Tom on one side, Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Physician Holliday on the other. Before the first shot was fired, Ike Clanton ran and lost his lid and left his young brother and the McLowry boys to fight it out.
"I was at the side window looking on and saw the fight. Doc had a sawed-
off shotgun. He fired one barrel, merely after the first shot something went wrong. He threw the gun on the ground and finished the fight with his revolver. I saw him fall once. His hip had been grazed by a bullet. But he was on his feet again in an instant and continued to burn.
"Bill Clanton and the McLowry boys were killed. Morgan and Wyatt [She meant Virgil Earp.] were wounded. It'southward foolish to think a cow 'rustler' gunman can come to a city gunman in a gunfight. Later the fight was over, Md came to our room and saturday on the side of the bed and cried and said, 'Oh, this is
merely atrocious—awful.' I asked, 'Are you hurt?' He said, 'No, I am not.' He pulled upward his shirt. In that location was merely a stake red streak about 2 inches long across his hip where the bullet had grazed him. After attention to the wound, he went out to come across how Virgil and Wyatt [She meant Morgan this fourth dimension.] were getting along."
On October 29, 1881, a coroner's inquest was held, and a summary of the evidence was compiled. Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers were charged with killing the McLaurys and Billy Clanton. Medico and Wyatt were confined to the county jail.
While the inquest was being conducted, Kate befriended Johnny Ringo. Ringo was a hard drinker who had been indicted for one murder and had been involved in several others. Kate remained in the room she and Doctor had shared at Fly's boardinghouse, and it was at that place that Ringo establish her. Doc was residing at the Cosmopolitan Hotel while out on bond. Morgan and Virgil were staying at the Cosmopolitan recuperating, and their families were with them. Doc and Wyatt had decided to stay to protect them from whatsoever moo-cow-boys who might sneak in and try to impale the brothers.
"I kept close to my room at Mrs. Fly'due south during the Earp-Holliday trial hearing earlier [the] justice of the peace," Kate recalled years later. "John Ringo visited me there twice. I gave him a tumble both times. The second time he visited me he brash me to leave the camp, simply I told him I did not have enough coin to get back to Earth, equally Doc had lost all my money playing against faro while we were in Tucson." Kate also noted in 1935 that she had $100 at the time of the gunfight at the O.Grand. Corral and gave $75 of it to assistance with Doc's bail.
"Ringo said that some of the Clanton gang were watching for Doc to come to our room and intended to go him there," Kate added in her memoirs. "Ringo told me 'if I haven't enough money, hither is fifty dollars.' So I left that evening.
"Subsequently the O.K. Corral fight, the Clanton and McLowry gang gave find that they would get revenge on the Earps and Holliday. John P. Clum, who was mayor of Tombstone, was notified that he was on the list, and he left the camp. Virgil was the beginning they got. He was shot from
ambush; the bullet failed to reach a vital spot, simply he was laid up for a while with a shattered arm.
"Morgan was the next victim. At the fourth dimension he was playing pool in the Palace Saloon. The back door of the place was half-glass, painted white. Someone scratched off enough of the pain [sic] to encounter through and fired through the door, killing Morgan. I understand that the killer was 1 of the Clanton gang by [the] name of Stilwell."
Kate left town in November 1881 before Physician's fate had been determined. She tended to her business in Globe and never again returned to Tombstone.
"The Last Days of Kate & Doctor" is excerpted from Chris Enss's before longhoped-for-released book, According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Honey of Doc Holliday (TwoDot, 2019).
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Source: https://truewestmagazine.com/article/the-last-days-of-kate-doc/
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