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Credible Encounters
Many of the shootings and legal entanglements
attributed to Doc Holliday by popular historians and Wild West enthusiasts
simply do not appear in any credible record. Some are clearly fabrications;
others are legend that may or may not have an element of truth. Doc himself
may have been partly responsible for some of the legends. He had an
investment in his own formidable reputation, which caused disgruntled
gamblers to think twice before confronting the pale, haggard gentleman.
There is some chance, of course, that not all
of Doc’s violent confrontations (and probably least of all the smooth ones)
would have made it into the published and/or legal record. Here is a list
of the credible ones that did:
1) 1875--Shooting incident in Dallas,
Texas over gambling with man named Charlie Austin. No one is injured. Doc
is brought up on a charge of "assault to murder" but is found
"not guilty" by a jury.
2) July 4, 1877--In Breckenridge,
Texas, Doc is shot by a man named Henry Kahn, whom he had caned earlier in
the day with a walking stick.
3) 1877—According to Wyatt Earp, Doc
fatally stabs a poker player named Ed Bailey with a knife in Fort Griffin,
Texas (after warning him politely at least once, and only after Bailey went
for his gun). Doc is put under house arrest but escapes with the help
of his companion Kate. Kate later
denied the veracity of the story (especially as regarded her own
involvement). Nevertheless, Wyatt’s
source of information was undoubtedly Doc himself, and there is probably at
least some truth to the tale, although events may have become exaggerated
over time. The fact that there is
no official record of this event lends some support to Kate’s denial, but
it does not definitively disprove that some version of the event occurred.
4) 1878--Doc runs Charlie White out of
Dodge City, Kansas probably by drawing his pistol. He had accused
White of theft.
5) September 24, 1878--Doc draws his pistol
in defense of his surrounded friend, Wyatt Earp, in Dodge City, Kansas (he
may or may not have shot someone in the encounter. Wyatt Earp later claimed
he did, but no record shows it).
6) 1880--Doc shoots and injures Charlie
White, who had gone for his gun first, in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
7) October 11, 1880--Doc draws his gun
on trouble-maker Johnny Tyler in the Oriental saloon in Tombstone,
Arizona. He and Tyler are disarmed by bystanders. Doc later
shoots at and injures the bartenders who helped to disarm him, who refused
to return his gun, and who attempted to pistol-whip him when he returned to
the saloon re-armed in spite of them.
8) 1881--According to some sources, Doc
is part of the first Earp posse, which is organized to go after a band of
stage robbers in the Tombstone, Arizona area. According to these
sources, this posse is responsible for the death of Old Man Clanton, one of
the Kinnear stage robbers (Jim Crane), and others (members of the “cowboy”
faction).
9) October 26, 1881--Doc takes part in
the OK Corral shootout with the Earp brothers in Tombstone, Arizona.
He kills Tom McLaury with a shotgun and shoots Frank McLaury with a
nickel-plated pistol.
10) January 17, 1882--Street standoff
with Johnny Ringo. Doc issues a challenge, but there is no gunplay.
Both Doc and Ringo are arrested for carrying weapons on the street in
Tombstone.
11) 1882--Doc is part of the (second)
Earp posse that goes after and kills "cowboy" Curly Bill Brocius
and others, and later, possibly, Johnny Ringo.
12) August 1884--Shoots a man named
Billy Allen in the arm in self-defense in Leadville, Colorado (at this
point, Doc was weak, emaciated and feared for his life).
–Most factual information in
both of the timelines is derived from Karen Holliday Tanner’s biography, Doc
Holliday: A Family Portrait (Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
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