WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.620 So think about the sound. Right. That is usually 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:05.379 where the legend of this guy starts. Not the 00:00:05.379 --> 00:00:08.019 gunshot and not the jingle of spurs. Yeah. But 00:00:08.019 --> 00:00:11.259 the cough. Yeah, that wet, hacking, persistent 00:00:11.259 --> 00:00:14.140 cough. Exactly. The cough that signals a man 00:00:14.140 --> 00:00:16.739 who is basically already a dead man walking. 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:18.399 I mean, you can picture the scene right now. 00:00:18.940 --> 00:00:22.120 A smoky saloon somewhere in Arizona. Smells like 00:00:22.120 --> 00:00:25.940 sawdust. Sawdust. Stale beer. And sitting there 00:00:25.940 --> 00:00:28.579 right at the pharaoh table is this gaunt figure. 00:00:29.480 --> 00:00:32.640 Pale skin, hollow cheeks, wearing a perfectly 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:35.280 tailored gray suit. He pulls out a fine linen 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:38.020 handkerchief. Coughs into it. And when he pulls 00:00:38.020 --> 00:00:40.700 it away, it isn't just damp. It's spotted with 00:00:40.700 --> 00:00:44.060 bright red arterial blood. It is the absolute 00:00:44.060 --> 00:00:46.479 defining image of the American West's most tragic 00:00:46.479 --> 00:00:48.799 antihero. Yeah. It's the image that literally 00:00:48.799 --> 00:00:51.799 stops the piano music in the saloon. And immediately, 00:00:52.020 --> 00:00:54.020 right now, I know exactly who you are picturing. 00:00:54.020 --> 00:00:55.600 If you're listening to this, you are seeing Val 00:00:55.600 --> 00:00:58.479 Kilmer. Oh, totally. You are hearing the I'm 00:00:58.479 --> 00:01:00.759 your Huckleberry line. The tin cup spinning on 00:01:00.759 --> 00:01:04.239 the finger. Yes, you are seeing the cool detached 00:01:04.239 --> 00:01:08.019 killer. But today. On this deep dive, we are 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:10.659 doing something a little different. We are holstering 00:01:10.659 --> 00:01:13.200 all those preconceived notions. Yeah. We are 00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:15.439 taking that Hollywood caricature, which is brilliant, 00:01:15.500 --> 00:01:18.200 by the way. It's incredible cinema. It is. But 00:01:18.200 --> 00:01:20.099 we are putting it aside. Because the truth is 00:01:20.099 --> 00:01:23.700 just stranger and, frankly, a lot darker. Exactly. 00:01:24.019 --> 00:01:27.120 We are looking at a massive stack of source material 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:29.959 today. We have the definitive biographies by 00:01:29.959 --> 00:01:32.200 Karen Holiday Tanner and Gary L. Roberts. Yep. 00:01:32.239 --> 00:01:34.659 We have contemporary newspaper clippings from 00:01:34.659 --> 00:01:36.939 the Dallas Weekly Hair. of the tombstone epitaph. 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:40.260 We even have court transcripts. And our mission 00:01:40.260 --> 00:01:43.900 here, to find the actual human being buried under, 00:01:44.120 --> 00:01:47.180 well, a century of myth. And the human being 00:01:47.180 --> 00:01:49.819 we find in these sources is infinitely more complex 00:01:49.819 --> 00:01:51.719 than the movie character. I mean, we aren't just 00:01:51.719 --> 00:01:53.939 talking about a gunfighter here. We are talking 00:01:53.939 --> 00:01:56.799 about a classically educated southern aristocrat, 00:01:56.819 --> 00:02:00.019 a doctor of dental surgery, a man who spoke Latin 00:02:00.019 --> 00:02:02.140 and French. And a man who was living on borrowed 00:02:02.140 --> 00:02:04.480 time from the age of 22. Which is the most important 00:02:04.480 --> 00:02:07.319 part. That is the core theme that kept jumping 00:02:07.319 --> 00:02:09.360 out at me during the research for this deep dive. 00:02:10.379 --> 00:02:13.520 Fatalism. Yeah. The psychology of a man who has 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:16.520 quite literally been given a death sentence. 00:02:16.599 --> 00:02:18.840 That is the key to the whole lock right there. 00:02:19.360 --> 00:02:21.740 So understand Doc Holliday, you have to understand 00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:24.939 tuberculosis. It wasn't just a disease for him. 00:02:24.979 --> 00:02:27.939 It was the engine that drove his entire personality. 00:02:28.039 --> 00:02:31.159 It stripped him of fear because the worst thing 00:02:31.159 --> 00:02:33.719 that could possibly happen to him, death. It 00:02:33.719 --> 00:02:35.539 was already guaranteed. He was just waiting for 00:02:35.539 --> 00:02:37.979 the date. So let's unpack this properly. Let's 00:02:37.979 --> 00:02:39.639 go back to the very beginning, because usually 00:02:39.639 --> 00:02:41.719 when we do these deep dives on Western figures, 00:02:41.879 --> 00:02:46.159 we are talking about. Poverty. Broken home. Illiteracy. 00:02:46.159 --> 00:02:48.280 We're talking about like Billy the Kid stealing 00:02:48.280 --> 00:02:51.080 butter to survive. Right. But that is not John 00:02:51.080 --> 00:02:53.379 Henry Holliday. Far from it. This is really a 00:02:53.379 --> 00:02:55.879 story of lost potential. John Henry Holliday 00:02:55.879 --> 00:02:59.460 was born on August 14th, 1851. In Griffin, Georgia. 00:02:59.580 --> 00:03:02.000 Griffin, Georgia. This is the deep south pre 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:04.860 -Civil War. And the source material emphasizes 00:03:04.860 --> 00:03:07.560 this heavily. He was born into the upper crust. 00:03:08.060 --> 00:03:10.659 His father wasn't some frontier drifter. No, 00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:12.919 Henry Burroughs Holliday was a man of significant 00:03:12.919 --> 00:03:15.680 standing. He was a major in the Army, a veteran 00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:18.159 of the Mexican -American War. And later an officer 00:03:18.159 --> 00:03:20.460 in the Civil War. Exactly. He was a major landowner. 00:03:20.620 --> 00:03:23.199 We're talking about a boy who was baptized in 00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:25.879 the Presbyterian Church. He was raised in a home 00:03:25.879 --> 00:03:28.580 with servants, and he was expected to carry on 00:03:28.580 --> 00:03:31.560 a very proud family legacy. Which means young 00:03:31.560 --> 00:03:34.919 John Henry was raised with a very specific... 00:03:35.310 --> 00:03:38.370 Code of conduct. The Southern Honor Code. Right. 00:03:38.490 --> 00:03:41.610 And this is crucial context for literally everything 00:03:41.610 --> 00:03:44.569 that happens later in Tombstone. In that time 00:03:44.569 --> 00:03:47.469 and place, your reputation, your family name, 00:03:47.610 --> 00:03:50.270 it was worth more than your life. You didn't 00:03:50.270 --> 00:03:53.110 back down from an insult? Never. You defended 00:03:53.110 --> 00:03:55.610 your honor with violence if necessary. That was 00:03:55.610 --> 00:03:57.669 the air he breathed growing up. He was a gentleman 00:03:57.669 --> 00:04:00.909 first. And he was incredibly well educated. The 00:04:00.909 --> 00:04:02.889 notes mentioned something called the Valdosta 00:04:02.889 --> 00:04:06.039 Institute. Yeah. This wasn't a one room schoolhouse 00:04:06.039 --> 00:04:08.400 situation where you just learn to sign your name 00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:11.319 and maybe count cattle. Not at all. It was a 00:04:11.319 --> 00:04:14.500 classical education that rivals what you'd get 00:04:14.500 --> 00:04:16.920 at a high end prep school today. We're talking 00:04:16.920 --> 00:04:20.639 rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, history. The 00:04:20.639 --> 00:04:22.639 languages, though, they really stood out to me. 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:25.939 He was proficient in Latin. He knew French fluently 00:04:25.939 --> 00:04:29.550 and he had even studied ancient Greek. It changes 00:04:29.550 --> 00:04:32.069 the image completely, doesn't it? It really does. 00:04:32.350 --> 00:04:35.230 When you picture him later in those dusty cow 00:04:35.230 --> 00:04:38.610 towns arguing with illiterate cattle rustlers, 00:04:38.689 --> 00:04:41.529 he's operating on a completely different intellectual 00:04:41.529 --> 00:04:43.889 plane than everyone else in the room. He's probably 00:04:43.889 --> 00:04:45.529 insulting them in Latin and they don't even know 00:04:45.529 --> 00:04:48.430 it. Exactly. He was an intellectual elitist in 00:04:48.430 --> 00:04:51.029 a world of roughnecks. And he followed that path 00:04:51.029 --> 00:04:53.750 into a professional career. This is the part 00:04:53.750 --> 00:04:55.610 of his life that usually gets glossed over in 00:04:55.610 --> 00:04:59.569 the movies. In 1870, at just 19 years old, he 00:04:59.569 --> 00:05:02.490 leaves Georgia. Heads north. Heads north to Philadelphia 00:05:02.490 --> 00:05:04.970 to attend the Pennsylvania College of Dental 00:05:04.970 --> 00:05:07.230 Surgery. Now, I think modern listeners might 00:05:07.230 --> 00:05:10.269 hear a phrase like dentist in the 1870s. Think 00:05:10.269 --> 00:05:12.490 of, I don't know, a guy with a pair of rusty 00:05:12.490 --> 00:05:14.370 pliers and a bottle of whiskey in the back of 00:05:14.370 --> 00:05:16.730 a barbershop. A lot of people do think that. 00:05:16.870 --> 00:05:19.649 But this source material says otherwise. This 00:05:19.649 --> 00:05:22.399 was a serious, legitimate medical degree. It 00:05:22.399 --> 00:05:24.240 was the cutting edge of science at the time. 00:05:24.319 --> 00:05:26.899 The Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery was 00:05:26.899 --> 00:05:29.259 one of the premier institutions in the entire 00:05:29.259 --> 00:05:32.240 country. Wow. This was a rigorous curriculum. 00:05:32.339 --> 00:05:35.079 He had to write a thesis. He studied anatomy, 00:05:35.360 --> 00:05:38.720 chemistry, physiology surgery. He graduated on 00:05:38.720 --> 00:05:41.879 March 1st, 1872 as a doctor of dental surgery. 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:45.019 And here is a detail I absolutely love from the 00:05:45.019 --> 00:05:47.439 Karen Holiday Tanner biography. He was actually 00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:49.740 too young to graduate. Yeah, he was a prodigy. 00:05:49.819 --> 00:05:52.269 He finished the coursework. Five months before 00:05:52.269 --> 00:05:55.250 his 21st birthday. The college literally had 00:05:55.250 --> 00:05:57.569 to hold his diploma in a vault until he turned 00:05:57.569 --> 00:06:00.050 of legal age. That's amazing. So picture this. 00:06:00.129 --> 00:06:03.990 It's 1872. You have a 21 -year -old Dr. Holliday 00:06:03.990 --> 00:06:06.949 back in Atlanta. He's brilliant. He's respectable. 00:06:07.189 --> 00:06:09.589 He's handsome. And he's setting up his dental 00:06:09.589 --> 00:06:11.930 practice. The world is completely at his feet. 00:06:12.050 --> 00:06:14.939 And then the floor drops out. The tragedy. And 00:06:14.939 --> 00:06:17.160 to understand the weight of this, to really get 00:06:17.160 --> 00:06:19.860 why it broke him, we have to look at his family 00:06:19.860 --> 00:06:22.819 history, specifically his mother, Alice Jane 00:06:22.819 --> 00:06:25.759 Holliday. The sources say he was incredibly close 00:06:25.759 --> 00:06:28.819 to her. A mama's boy in the best possible sense 00:06:28.819 --> 00:06:32.120 of the word. She was his absolute anchor. But 00:06:32.120 --> 00:06:35.439 when he was 15, she died of tuberculosis. Consumption. 00:06:35.519 --> 00:06:37.399 Consumption, exactly, as they called it then. 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:40.279 And it wasn't a quick death. It is a wasting 00:06:40.279 --> 00:06:42.819 disease. It literally eats you from the inside 00:06:42.819 --> 00:06:45.689 out. He watched her wither away. He tended to 00:06:45.689 --> 00:06:48.290 her. He was at her bedside. And then he watched 00:06:48.290 --> 00:06:50.810 his adopted brother, Francisco, die the exact 00:06:50.810 --> 00:06:53.810 same way. So when Doc starts coughing in 1873, 00:06:53.949 --> 00:06:56.529 shortly after starting his shiny new practice, 00:06:56.769 --> 00:06:59.389 he isn't wondering what it is. No. He knows. 00:06:59.610 --> 00:07:01.870 He coughs, he looks down, he sees the blood, 00:07:01.949 --> 00:07:04.269 and he knows the script. He goes to the doctor 00:07:04.269 --> 00:07:06.930 and the verdict is handed down. Pulmonary tuberculosis. 00:07:07.209 --> 00:07:09.970 In 1873. Right. There are no antibiotics. There 00:07:09.970 --> 00:07:12.329 is no streptomycin. It is almost 100 % fatal. 00:07:13.019 --> 00:07:15.699 The doctor gives him months to live. Months. 00:07:15.699 --> 00:07:19.199 He's 22 years old. 22. Imagine that. You are 00:07:19.199 --> 00:07:21.300 listening to this right now. Put yourself in 00:07:21.300 --> 00:07:23.680 his shoes. You've done everything right. You've 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:26.399 studied. You've graduated. You've started your 00:07:26.399 --> 00:07:29.100 career. And the universe just tells you. It's 00:07:29.100 --> 00:07:31.720 over. It's over. The medical advice at the time 00:07:31.720 --> 00:07:34.569 was, well, it's questionable, right? Go west. 00:07:34.810 --> 00:07:37.029 It was the standard palliative care of the Victorian 00:07:37.029 --> 00:07:40.790 era. The doctor said, go to a drier climate. 00:07:41.269 --> 00:07:44.189 The air in Georgia is too humid. It fills the 00:07:44.189 --> 00:07:47.269 lungs with water. Go to the high desert of Texas 00:07:47.269 --> 00:07:50.069 or Colorado. Maybe it will extend your life. 00:07:50.449 --> 00:07:52.769 But let's be clear about the psychology here. 00:07:52.930 --> 00:07:55.569 He isn't moving to Texas to start a fresh new 00:07:55.569 --> 00:07:58.410 life full of hope. No. He isn't going west to 00:07:58.410 --> 00:08:01.089 be a cowboy or an adventurer. He is going west 00:08:01.089 --> 00:08:03.790 to die. That distinction is everything. He's 00:08:03.790 --> 00:08:05.750 entering a hospice phase, essentially. Exactly. 00:08:05.750 --> 00:08:08.550 He packs up his life and heads to Dallas, Texas. 00:08:08.810 --> 00:08:11.420 And initially he tries to fight it. He tries 00:08:11.420 --> 00:08:13.620 to keep the respectable dream alive. He partners 00:08:13.620 --> 00:08:16.579 with a Dr. John A. Segar. He opens a dental practice. 00:08:16.939 --> 00:08:19.379 And he was really good at it. I saw the note 00:08:19.379 --> 00:08:21.079 about the Dallas County Fair. This actually made 00:08:21.079 --> 00:08:22.600 me laugh out loud when I read it in the source 00:08:22.600 --> 00:08:24.439 material. It's a fantastic detail. They enter 00:08:24.439 --> 00:08:26.620 the dental competition at the fair. The dental 00:08:26.620 --> 00:08:30.279 competition? Yeah. And Doc Holliday sweeps the 00:08:30.279 --> 00:08:34.139 awards. They won Best Set of Teeth in Gold. Wow. 00:08:34.299 --> 00:08:37.379 They won Best in Vulcanized Rubber. They won 00:08:37.379 --> 00:08:40.059 Best Set of Artificial Teeth in Dental Wear. 00:08:40.549 --> 00:08:42.789 So he was a real craftsman. He was a skilled 00:08:42.789 --> 00:08:46.389 artisan. He could construct complex dental appliances. 00:08:46.889 --> 00:08:49.649 But you can't be a dentist with active TB. No. 00:08:49.789 --> 00:08:52.490 It's a completely visceral problem. Imagine you 00:08:52.490 --> 00:08:54.909 are a patient in the chair. Right. You have your 00:08:54.909 --> 00:08:57.330 mouth wide open and your dentist leans over and 00:08:57.330 --> 00:08:59.830 has a violent, bloody coughing fit right in your 00:08:59.830 --> 00:09:01.389 face. Yeah, I'm never going back to that dentist. 00:09:01.490 --> 00:09:04.169 I don't care how good his gold teeth are. Exactly. 00:09:04.230 --> 00:09:08.210 It's terrifying and it's unhygienic even by 1870s 00:09:08.210 --> 00:09:11.149 standards. His patients stop coming. His practice 00:09:11.149 --> 00:09:14.649 just collapses. So the income dries up. He needs 00:09:14.649 --> 00:09:17.029 money to live, even if he's dying. He has to 00:09:17.029 --> 00:09:19.889 eat. He has to pay for his hotel room. And he 00:09:19.889 --> 00:09:22.559 discovers he has another talent. He has a highly 00:09:22.559 --> 00:09:24.779 mathematical mind. Remember, he was a student 00:09:24.779 --> 00:09:27.980 of logic and math back in Georgia. He turns to 00:09:27.980 --> 00:09:31.220 cards, specifically Pharaoh. We should pause 00:09:31.220 --> 00:09:33.279 on Pharaoh for a second because it's not really 00:09:33.279 --> 00:09:35.259 a game played anymore. It's not like poker where 00:09:35.259 --> 00:09:37.379 you're bluffing against other players. No, Pharaoh 00:09:37.379 --> 00:09:40.279 was the absolute dominant game of the Old West. 00:09:40.539 --> 00:09:43.460 It was basically betting on the order that cards 00:09:43.460 --> 00:09:46.080 would be drawn from a dealing box by the dealer, 00:09:46.220 --> 00:09:49.620 who is called the bank. Okay. It had better odds 00:09:49.620 --> 00:09:52.559 for the player than most casino games, but to 00:09:52.559 --> 00:09:55.279 be really good at it, it required intense concentration 00:09:55.279 --> 00:09:58.860 and a perfect, most photographic memory for what 00:09:58.860 --> 00:10:00.720 cards had already been played. And Doc was a 00:10:00.720 --> 00:10:03.259 natural. He was brilliant at it. And in the West... 00:10:03.470 --> 00:10:05.690 Professional gambler was a recognized trade. 00:10:05.950 --> 00:10:08.690 It wasn't just a hobby. Right. It wasn't necessarily 00:10:08.690 --> 00:10:11.149 respectable like being a banker or a lawyer, 00:10:11.230 --> 00:10:13.129 but it was a real profession. You paid taxes 00:10:13.129 --> 00:10:15.710 on it. You listed it on the census. So he trades 00:10:15.710 --> 00:10:17.549 the fine dental drill for the deck of cards. 00:10:17.990 --> 00:10:20.070 And this is where the violence starts to creep 00:10:20.070 --> 00:10:22.850 into his life. But we need to do some myth busting 00:10:22.850 --> 00:10:26.350 here. There is a persistent story about why he 00:10:26.350 --> 00:10:28.850 left George in the first place. The swimming 00:10:28.850 --> 00:10:31.690 hole incident. Right. If you read the old dime 00:10:31.690 --> 00:10:33.889 novels or even some of the early biographies 00:10:33.889 --> 00:10:36.610 from the mid 20th century, they say he grabbed 00:10:36.610 --> 00:10:39.389 a shotgun and killed two or three black soldiers 00:10:39.389 --> 00:10:41.649 who were swimming in his favorite spot in Georgia. 00:10:41.789 --> 00:10:44.389 It's painted as this massive act of racial violence 00:10:44.389 --> 00:10:46.889 that forced him to flee the state ahead of the 00:10:46.889 --> 00:10:48.830 law. But the modern historians aren't buying 00:10:48.830 --> 00:10:51.559 it at all. Gary Roberts and Alan Barr did the 00:10:51.559 --> 00:10:53.759 legwork on this, right? They did. They scoured 00:10:53.759 --> 00:10:56.000 the historical records. There are no police reports. 00:10:56.220 --> 00:10:58.720 There are no army records of missing soldiers 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:01.379 in that area. No newspaper accounts. And in a 00:11:01.379 --> 00:11:04.299 small southern town during Reconstruction, killing 00:11:04.299 --> 00:11:06.419 federal soldiers would have been massive front 00:11:06.419 --> 00:11:08.779 page news. It would have brought the entire Union 00:11:08.779 --> 00:11:11.600 Army down on the town. It simply didn't happen. 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:13.860 So where does this story come from? Did he invent 00:11:13.860 --> 00:11:16.830 it? Likely, Bat Masterson invented it. Later 00:11:16.830 --> 00:11:18.830 in life, Masterson wrote a series of articles 00:11:18.830 --> 00:11:21.289 about famous gunfighters for a magazine, and 00:11:21.289 --> 00:11:24.389 he loved to embellish. He probably invented it 00:11:24.389 --> 00:11:28.049 to give Doc a dark badman origin story. So we 00:11:28.049 --> 00:11:29.870 can scratch that off the list. The swimming hole 00:11:29.870 --> 00:11:33.750 incident is a miss. But the trouble in Dallas, 00:11:33.850 --> 00:11:36.769 that was real. That was highly documented. In 00:11:36.769 --> 00:11:40.409 January 1875, he gets indicted for illegal gambling. 00:11:40.629 --> 00:11:43.009 But then he gets into a serious disagreement 00:11:43.009 --> 00:11:45.690 with a saloon keeper named Charles Austin. They 00:11:45.690 --> 00:11:49.210 trade gunfire in the street. Nobody is hit. And 00:11:49.210 --> 00:11:51.669 Doc is eventually acquitted. But it's the start 00:11:51.669 --> 00:11:54.110 of a pattern. He gets fined. He gets arrested. 00:11:54.309 --> 00:11:57.909 And he moves on. He becomes a wanderer. The typical 00:11:57.909 --> 00:12:00.730 frontier drifter. He goes to Denver, Cheyenne, 00:12:00.870 --> 00:12:03.149 Deadwood. He's hitting all the legendary boomtown 00:12:03.149 --> 00:12:05.809 spots. And he's getting meaner. Well, the disease 00:12:05.809 --> 00:12:08.110 is progressing. He's in chronic pain every day. 00:12:08.289 --> 00:12:10.389 He's drinking heavily to manage the symptoms. 00:12:10.629 --> 00:12:13.330 He's medicating. Exactly. And his temper is shortening. 00:12:13.370 --> 00:12:15.789 In Denver, he's dealing Pharaoh. He gets into 00:12:15.789 --> 00:12:18.610 an argument with a guy named Bud Ryan. Doc doesn't 00:12:18.610 --> 00:12:20.570 just punch him. He pulls a knife and nearly cuts 00:12:20.570 --> 00:12:23.090 Ryan's head off. He leaves him seriously wounded. 00:12:23.350 --> 00:12:25.769 Right. And then there's the incident in Breckenridge, 00:12:25.909 --> 00:12:28.850 Texas. This one sounds brutal because Doc actually 00:12:28.850 --> 00:12:31.690 loses this fight. The Henry Kahn incident. Doc 00:12:31.690 --> 00:12:35.029 beats this gambler, Kahn, with his walking stick 00:12:35.029 --> 00:12:37.730 during an argument. He just humiliates him in 00:12:37.730 --> 00:12:40.490 front of everyone. But the feud doesn't end there. 00:12:41.029 --> 00:12:44.870 Later that day, Kahn finds Doc, who happens to 00:12:44.870 --> 00:12:47.149 be completely unarmed at the time, and shoots 00:12:47.149 --> 00:12:49.669 him. Just shoots him in the street. Yeah. It 00:12:49.669 --> 00:12:52.250 was a very serious wound. How serious? Serious 00:12:52.250 --> 00:12:54.450 enough that the Dallas Weekly Herald actually 00:12:54.450 --> 00:12:57.169 printed his obituary. What way? They reported 00:12:57.169 --> 00:12:59.669 Doc Holliday dead. He really was the cat with 00:12:59.669 --> 00:13:02.669 nine lives. Or just incredibly hard to kill. 00:13:02.789 --> 00:13:04.870 His cousin actually had to come out west to help 00:13:04.870 --> 00:13:08.169 him recover. But recover he did. And eventually 00:13:08.169 --> 00:13:10.789 he drifts down into Fort Griffin, Texas. And 00:13:10.789 --> 00:13:12.929 this is where the cast of characters really assembles 00:13:12.929 --> 00:13:15.149 for the main event of his life. Enter Big Nose 00:13:15.149 --> 00:13:18.330 Kate. Mary Catherine Horney. A fascinating figure 00:13:18.330 --> 00:13:20.720 in her own right. She really is. I feel like 00:13:20.720 --> 00:13:23.240 she often gets reduced in pop culture to just 00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:26.259 Doc's girlfriend or the prostitute. But the source 00:13:26.259 --> 00:13:29.559 material paints a much more vivid, complex picture. 00:13:30.120 --> 00:13:32.700 And first, can we clarify the nickname Big Nose? 00:13:33.100 --> 00:13:36.600 Yes. Contrary to the playground insults, the 00:13:36.600 --> 00:13:39.019 sources suggest it wasn't about the physical 00:13:39.019 --> 00:13:41.740 size of her nose at all. Oh, really? It was because 00:13:41.740 --> 00:13:44.779 she was nosy. She was intensely curious. She 00:13:44.779 --> 00:13:46.639 got into other people's business. She wanted 00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:49.059 to know everything going on in the saloon. Kate 00:13:49.059 --> 00:13:51.940 was Hungarian by birth, highly educated and spoke 00:13:51.940 --> 00:13:54.559 multiple languages. So she was smart. Very smart. 00:13:55.019 --> 00:13:57.100 She ran away from home to avoid being put into 00:13:57.100 --> 00:13:59.940 the foster system after her parents died. She 00:13:59.940 --> 00:14:01.879 worked the dance halls and the brothels because 00:14:01.879 --> 00:14:03.700 she wanted independence. She didn't want to be 00:14:03.700 --> 00:14:05.740 owned by a husband or controlled by a father. 00:14:05.940 --> 00:14:09.960 And she and Doc, it was exactly a standard romance 00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:13.919 novel. It was volatile, incredibly toxic at times. 00:14:13.980 --> 00:14:15.820 They fought bitterly. They broke up. They got 00:14:15.820 --> 00:14:18.320 back together. But they were intellectual equals. 00:14:18.899 --> 00:14:21.799 That makes sense. They were both outsiders. You 00:14:21.799 --> 00:14:24.779 have the educated European woman. and the dying 00:14:24.779 --> 00:14:28.519 Southern aristocrat, both stuck in this gritty, 00:14:28.559 --> 00:14:31.519 unwashed frontier world. They understood each 00:14:31.519 --> 00:14:33.720 other in a way no one else did. And Fort Griffin 00:14:33.720 --> 00:14:35.720 is also where the most important friendship of 00:14:35.720 --> 00:14:38.840 his life begins, the fateful meeting with Wyatt 00:14:38.840 --> 00:14:41.500 Earp. It's a legendary moment in Western history. 00:14:42.200 --> 00:14:45.139 Wyatt Earp is a deputy U .S. marshal at the time, 00:14:45.139 --> 00:14:47.340 and he's tracking an outlaw named Dave Rudabaugh. 00:14:47.700 --> 00:14:50.240 He ends up at Shancie Saloon in Fort Griffin. 00:14:51.050 --> 00:14:53.950 The owner, John Shanzey, tells Wyatt, if you 00:14:53.950 --> 00:14:55.389 want to know where Rudabaugh went, you should 00:14:55.389 --> 00:14:57.450 talk to the gambler over there. He played cards 00:14:57.450 --> 00:14:59.370 with him last night. And that gambler was Doc 00:14:59.370 --> 00:15:02.389 Holliday. It's an odd pairing from the very start. 00:15:02.690 --> 00:15:05.129 Wyatt is a teetotaler. He doesn't drink. He's 00:15:05.129 --> 00:15:08.370 stoic. He's a dedicated lawman. Doc is a drunk, 00:15:08.450 --> 00:15:11.409 a dying man, a highly volatile gambler. But Doc 00:15:11.409 --> 00:15:14.169 helps him. He does. He tells Wyatt that Rudabaugh 00:15:14.169 --> 00:15:16.389 headed back to Kansas. And that favor sparks 00:15:16.389 --> 00:15:20.149 something between them. But the bond really solidifies 00:15:20.149 --> 00:15:22.549 a bit later in Dodge City, right? The life -saving 00:15:22.549 --> 00:15:26.529 incident. Dodge City, 1878. Doc and Kate are 00:15:26.529 --> 00:15:28.990 there. They're posing as Dr. and Mrs. Holliday. 00:15:29.570 --> 00:15:31.889 He's actually trying to practice dentistry again. 00:15:32.090 --> 00:15:34.070 He really wanted that respectable life back. 00:15:34.309 --> 00:15:36.850 He did, but the coughing stops it again, so he's 00:15:36.850 --> 00:15:40.029 back to dealing cards. The story, and I have 00:15:40.029 --> 00:15:42.330 to put a caveat here, this comes largely from 00:15:42.330 --> 00:15:44.389 Josephine Earp's memoirs written much later, 00:15:44.490 --> 00:15:46.600 so we have to take it with a grain of salt. Right. 00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:49.139 Memoirs are notoriously generous to their authors. 00:15:49.440 --> 00:15:52.200 Exactly. The story is that Wyatt was surrounded 00:15:52.200 --> 00:15:54.779 by a bunch of cowboys, led by a guy named Ed 00:15:54.779 --> 00:15:57.539 Morrison. They had their guns drawn on Wyatt. 00:15:57.679 --> 00:16:00.379 They had him dead to rights. And Doc steps in. 00:16:00.539 --> 00:16:02.860 The story goes that Doc was playing cards in 00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:04.960 the back room, saw the trouble, kicked over the 00:16:04.960 --> 00:16:07.259 table, and put his pistol right to Morrison's 00:16:07.259 --> 00:16:09.980 head, forcing the whole gang to drop their guns. 00:16:10.159 --> 00:16:12.659 I'll be your Huckleberry. Wait, did he actually 00:16:12.659 --> 00:16:17.110 say that then? Probably not. And honestly, Historians 00:16:17.110 --> 00:16:19.129 heavily debate if the event happened exactly 00:16:19.129 --> 00:16:21.990 that way at all. Contemporary newspapers in Dodge 00:16:21.990 --> 00:16:24.350 City didn't report a big dramatic showdown like 00:16:24.350 --> 00:16:27.049 that. But, and this is the key to the whole relationship, 00:16:27.409 --> 00:16:30.440 Wyatt Earp believed it happened. Or at least 00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:32.720 he publicly credited Doc with saving his life 00:16:32.720 --> 00:16:35.279 that night. Exactly. Even if the details were 00:16:35.279 --> 00:16:38.399 embellished by Wyatt over time, that moment cemented 00:16:38.399 --> 00:16:40.879 a loyalty that baffled literally everyone else 00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:43.539 in their circle. Virgil Earp, Wyatt's brother, 00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:45.960 later said that aside from the Earps, he didn't 00:16:45.960 --> 00:16:48.500 think Doc had a single real friend in the entire 00:16:48.500 --> 00:16:52.000 territory. Wow. But for Wyatt, that loyalty to 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:55.500 Doc was absolute and unbraidable. So the stage 00:16:55.500 --> 00:16:57.840 is set. We have the friendship. We have the dangerous 00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:01.080 reputation. And now they all move to the place 00:17:01.080 --> 00:17:04.039 that will define them forever in history. Tombstone, 00:17:04.099 --> 00:17:07.400 Arizona. September 1880. Doc follows the Earps 00:17:07.400 --> 00:17:10.180 to Tombstone. The silver boom is on. Money is 00:17:10.180 --> 00:17:12.660 flowing. But the trouble starts almost immediately. 00:17:13.180 --> 00:17:15.500 And we really need to explain the politics here 00:17:15.500 --> 00:17:17.420 because it's so often missed in the movies. This 00:17:17.420 --> 00:17:19.900 wasn't just lawmen versus outlaws. This was highly 00:17:19.900 --> 00:17:21.859 political. Right. It was basically Republicans 00:17:21.859 --> 00:17:24.000 versus Democrats, wasn't it? Right. It was basically 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.819 Republicans versus Democrats, wasn't it? Exactly. 00:17:26.960 --> 00:17:29.339 The Earps were Northerners. They were Republicans, 00:17:29.660 --> 00:17:31.900 representing federal control, town building, 00:17:32.059 --> 00:17:35.319 and business interests from the North. The Cowboys, 00:17:35.440 --> 00:17:37.920 the Clantons, the McClories, they were Southerners. 00:17:37.980 --> 00:17:40.519 They were Democrats, representing the rural, 00:17:40.660 --> 00:17:43.200 agrarian resentment against the townsfolk. Many 00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:45.299 of them were former Confederate sympathizers. 00:17:45.559 --> 00:17:48.900 So Doc, a refined Southern aristocrat, is actually 00:17:48.900 --> 00:17:51.220 siding with the Northern faction here. Which 00:17:51.220 --> 00:17:53.519 made him a massive traitor in the eyes of the 00:17:53.519 --> 00:17:55.779 cowboys. He was a southerner who had turned his 00:17:55.779 --> 00:17:58.140 back on his people to run with these northern 00:17:58.140 --> 00:18:01.579 badge wearers. That added a deeply personal layer 00:18:01.579 --> 00:18:03.960 of hatred to the conflict. And the cowboys try 00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:06.660 to use his weak spot against him. They go after 00:18:06.660 --> 00:18:09.900 Kate. The stagecoach robbery accusation. This 00:18:09.900 --> 00:18:14.200 is a crazy, messy story. In March 1881, the Kinnear 00:18:14.200 --> 00:18:16.759 and Company stagecoach is attacked. The driver, 00:18:16.880 --> 00:18:18.759 a guy named Bud Philpott, and a passenger are 00:18:18.759 --> 00:18:21.599 killed. It's a botched robbery. Rumors immediately 00:18:21.599 --> 00:18:23.819 start flying around town that Doc Holliday was 00:18:23.819 --> 00:18:26.480 one of the masked robbers. Which begs the question, 00:18:26.660 --> 00:18:29.079 why would a dentist -turned -gambler who makes 00:18:29.079 --> 00:18:31.940 good money at Faro need to rob a stagecoach? 00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:35.220 Well, he liked money, potentially. But mostly, 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:38.519 the Earps had powerful enemies in town. Sheriff 00:18:38.519 --> 00:18:41.720 Behan and a saloon owner named Milt Joyce. They 00:18:41.720 --> 00:18:43.900 desperately wanted to get at the Earps to ruin 00:18:43.900 --> 00:18:46.880 their reputation, and Doc was the obvious weak 00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:49.740 link. So what do they do? They find Big Nose 00:18:49.740 --> 00:18:53.640 Kate, they get her incredibly drunk, I mean dangerously 00:18:53.640 --> 00:18:56.880 blackout drunk, and they have her sign an affidavit 00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:59.740 implicating Doc in the murders. That is incredibly 00:18:59.740 --> 00:19:02.720 low. weaponizing his own partner against him. 00:19:02.759 --> 00:19:05.779 It's rough politics, tombstone style. Doc is 00:19:05.779 --> 00:19:08.619 arrested for murder, but the Earps scramble. 00:19:08.960 --> 00:19:11.160 They do the legwork and find witnesses who completely 00:19:11.160 --> 00:19:14.160 prove Doc was elsewhere during the robbery. And 00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:16.720 once Kate sobers up, she realizes what she's 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:18.799 done. She recants everything. She says she was 00:19:18.799 --> 00:19:20.960 manipulated and intimidated by the sheriff. The 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:22.819 charges against Doc are dropped, but the damage 00:19:22.819 --> 00:19:25.279 is done. The tension with the Cowboys, the Clantons, 00:19:25.319 --> 00:19:28.079 and McClory's just boils over. It pushes everything 00:19:28.079 --> 00:19:30.019 toward the breaking point. You have the Earps 00:19:30.019 --> 00:19:31.900 and Doc on one side, the Cowboys on the other. 00:19:32.119 --> 00:19:34.240 Which brings us to the most famous date in Western 00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:37.660 history, October 26, 1881. The gunfight at the 00:19:37.660 --> 00:19:40.440 O .K. Corral. Or, more accurately, the gunfight 00:19:40.440 --> 00:19:43.000 in the vacant lot on Fremont Street near the 00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:46.019 OK Corral. Right. It's not as catchy for a movie 00:19:46.019 --> 00:19:48.799 title, though. True. Now, I want to focus specifically 00:19:48.799 --> 00:19:51.700 on Doc's role here. Because Virgil Earp, who 00:19:51.700 --> 00:19:54.819 is the town marshal, makes a very specific tactical 00:19:54.819 --> 00:19:57.920 decision regarding Doc right before they walk 00:19:57.920 --> 00:20:00.960 down that street. Virgil deputizes Doc. Think 00:20:00.960 --> 00:20:03.680 about the gravity of that. He takes this volatile, 00:20:03.839 --> 00:20:07.460 sick, unpredictable gambler and pins a badge 00:20:07.460 --> 00:20:09.920 on his chest, but he also does something strategic 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:12.500 with their weapons. He trades weapons with Doc. 00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:14.880 The cane for the shotgun. Right. Doc usually 00:20:14.880 --> 00:20:17.660 carried a walking stick. Virgil takes the stick 00:20:17.660 --> 00:20:19.579 to appear less threatening as he approaches the 00:20:19.579 --> 00:20:22.039 cowboys as a lawman, and he gives Doc a short 00:20:22.039 --> 00:20:25.119 coach gun, a sawed -off shotgun. Doc hides it 00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:27.869 under his long overcoat. So Doc is walking into 00:20:27.869 --> 00:20:30.609 this confrontation with a literal handheld cannon 00:20:30.609 --> 00:20:33.349 concealed under his jacket. They meet the cowboys, 00:20:33.549 --> 00:20:36.269 Ike and Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury. 00:20:36.369 --> 00:20:39.589 It's a very small, narrow space between two buildings, 00:20:39.849 --> 00:20:43.529 15, maybe 20 feet wide. It's cold. The wind is 00:20:43.529 --> 00:20:45.710 blowing dust everywhere. Words are exchanged. 00:20:46.170 --> 00:20:49.890 And then complete chaos. The witnesses disagree 00:20:49.890 --> 00:20:52.450 on who fired the very first shot, but we know 00:20:52.450 --> 00:20:55.420 exactly what Doc did. Doc immediately closes 00:20:55.420 --> 00:20:57.940 in on Tom McClory. Tom is trying to get a gun, 00:20:58.039 --> 00:21:00.200 maybe from his horse's scabbard, maybe from his 00:21:00.200 --> 00:21:03.220 belt. Doc pulls that short shotgun from under 00:21:03.220 --> 00:21:06.380 his coat and fires point blank. The blast hits 00:21:06.380 --> 00:21:09.539 Tom dead in the chest. It was devastating. He 00:21:09.539 --> 00:21:11.839 was killed almost instantly. And then the pistol 00:21:11.839 --> 00:21:15.160 fight ensues in this tiny, smoky space. Frank 00:21:15.160 --> 00:21:17.099 McClory, who is already wounded but still fighting 00:21:17.099 --> 00:21:20.279 hard, challenges Doc. He reportedly yells at 00:21:20.279 --> 00:21:22.579 him, I've got you now. And this is the line. 00:21:22.880 --> 00:21:25.359 The famous line. Doc's reputed reply as he stands 00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:27.480 there, blaze away, you're a daisy if you have. 00:21:27.619 --> 00:21:29.579 You're a daisy if you have. What does that even 00:21:29.579 --> 00:21:32.519 mean in 1881? We really need to unpack this Victorian 00:21:32.519 --> 00:21:35.720 slang because it sounds weird to us now. A daisy 00:21:35.720 --> 00:21:38.640 meant the best of something. A humdinger. A real 00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:40.839 pro. He is basically saying to Frank McClory, 00:21:40.960 --> 00:21:43.259 you're a champion if you can actually kill me. 00:21:43.380 --> 00:21:45.700 It is the ultimate expression of that fatalism 00:21:45.700 --> 00:21:48.079 we talked about at the start. He is standing 00:21:48.079 --> 00:21:50.680 in a narrow alley in a hail of lead bullets, 00:21:50.819 --> 00:21:54.099 staring death right in the face, and he is taunting 00:21:54.099 --> 00:21:56.400 it. He is basically saying, take your best shot. 00:21:56.500 --> 00:21:58.779 I've been dying for years anyway. He does get 00:21:58.779 --> 00:22:01.680 hit, right? A bullet grazes his hip, cuts right 00:22:01.680 --> 00:22:04.119 through his holster. He yells out, I'm shot right 00:22:04.119 --> 00:22:07.690 through. But he survives. When the smoke clears, 00:22:07.990 --> 00:22:10.549 the cowboys, Billy Clanton and both McClory's 00:22:10.549 --> 00:22:12.410 are dead. And you'd think that would be the end 00:22:12.410 --> 00:22:14.190 of it. The bad guys are dead. The lawman won 00:22:14.190 --> 00:22:16.650 the day. But it actually just starts a massive 00:22:16.650 --> 00:22:19.569 bloody war. The vendetta. This is where the story 00:22:19.569 --> 00:22:21.890 shifts from a standard law and order frontier 00:22:21.890 --> 00:22:25.630 tale to a full blown revenge tragedy. The remaining 00:22:25.630 --> 00:22:28.710 cowboys retaliate. Virgil Earp is ambushed at 00:22:28.710 --> 00:22:30.910 night and maimed for life. His arm is shattered. 00:22:31.390 --> 00:22:34.150 Then Morgan Earp is assassinated, shot through 00:22:34.150 --> 00:22:36.390 the back while playing billiards. The legal system 00:22:36.390 --> 00:22:38.990 completely fails the Earps. So Wyatt takes the 00:22:38.990 --> 00:22:41.150 law into his own hands and launches the vendetta 00:22:41.150 --> 00:22:44.349 ride. And Doc is right there. He is deputized 00:22:44.349 --> 00:22:47.190 federally this time. He is right there beside 00:22:47.190 --> 00:22:50.609 Wyatt, sick, coughing up blood, barely able to 00:22:50.609 --> 00:22:52.470 sit on a horse some days because of the pain. 00:22:52.509 --> 00:22:54.990 But he rides. And this leads to the killing of 00:22:54.990 --> 00:22:57.809 Frank Stilwell at the Tucson train station. The 00:22:57.809 --> 00:23:01.160 sources say Stilwell was found. Full of buckshot 00:23:01.160 --> 00:23:04.039 and bullets. It was an execution, pure and simple. 00:23:04.220 --> 00:23:06.339 They found him lying in wait for Virgil, who 00:23:06.339 --> 00:23:08.099 was trying to leave town on a train, and they 00:23:08.099 --> 00:23:10.799 finished him. But this entirely turns the tables 00:23:10.799 --> 00:23:13.700 on them. Now, a warrant is issued for Doc and 00:23:13.700 --> 00:23:16.559 the Earps for murder. They are technically fugitives 00:23:16.559 --> 00:23:18.819 from justice. They are hunting cowboys while 00:23:18.819 --> 00:23:21.039 simultaneously being hunted by the local sheriff's 00:23:21.039 --> 00:23:24.079 posse. And this leads to the Iron Springs shootout. 00:23:24.410 --> 00:23:26.230 This is a scene right out of a modern action 00:23:26.230 --> 00:23:29.069 movie. The Earp posse is ambushed by Curly Bill 00:23:29.069 --> 00:23:31.250 Brocious and a group of cowboys near a watering 00:23:31.250 --> 00:23:34.109 hole. Wyatt Earp performs a miracle, essentially. 00:23:34.329 --> 00:23:36.849 He walks directly through a storm of gunfire 00:23:36.849 --> 00:23:39.589 to kill Curly Bill with a shotgun. But Doc is 00:23:39.589 --> 00:23:42.750 there, too. Doc is under heavy fire. Doc, along 00:23:42.750 --> 00:23:44.970 with the others, has to retreat rapidly because 00:23:44.970 --> 00:23:47.869 they have absolutely no cover. But notice what 00:23:47.869 --> 00:23:50.349 he does. Another member of their posse, a guy 00:23:50.349 --> 00:23:53.309 named Texas Jack Vermillion, has his horse shot 00:23:53.309 --> 00:23:55.509 out from under him. He's pinned to the ground. 00:23:55.829 --> 00:23:58.490 Doc Holliday turns his horse around, riding back 00:23:58.490 --> 00:24:01.289 under intense fire to help rescue him. Again, 00:24:01.410 --> 00:24:04.470 that fierce loyalty. Always the loyalty. He wouldn't 00:24:04.470 --> 00:24:07.089 leave a man behind, even if it cost him his life. 00:24:07.490 --> 00:24:11.099 But... And here is where it gets really interesting 00:24:11.099 --> 00:24:14.480 and, frankly, a little uncomfortable. That loyalty 00:24:14.480 --> 00:24:17.599 has a limit, or at least the famous friendship 00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:20.180 has a breaking point. The split. This happens 00:24:20.180 --> 00:24:23.680 in Albuquerque, 1882. The group has finally fled 00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:26.680 Arizona. They're safely in New Mexico. And something 00:24:26.680 --> 00:24:29.140 happens between Wyatt and Doc at a place called 00:24:29.140 --> 00:24:31.980 Fat Charlie's The Retreat Restaurant. This detail 00:24:31.980 --> 00:24:34.059 really surprised me. I had never heard this part 00:24:34.059 --> 00:24:36.339 of the story in any of the movies. It's often 00:24:36.339 --> 00:24:38.440 left out of the pop culture retellings because 00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:41.000 it makes our heroes look, well, deeply flawed. 00:24:41.180 --> 00:24:44.039 They have a massive falling out. The cause, according 00:24:44.039 --> 00:24:45.720 to a letter written much later by the future 00:24:45.720 --> 00:24:47.819 governor Otero, who witnessed it, was a slur 00:24:47.819 --> 00:24:50.420 that Doc made. Unpack that for us. What happened? 00:24:50.619 --> 00:24:53.119 Wyatt was staying with a prominent local businessman 00:24:53.119 --> 00:24:57.200 named Henry N. Jaffa. Jaffa was Jewish. Wyatt 00:24:57.200 --> 00:24:59.420 was honoring his host's religious traditions. 00:24:59.579 --> 00:25:02.440 He was reportedly touching the mezuzah on the 00:25:02.440 --> 00:25:05.519 doorpost when he entered. Doc. who was drunk, 00:25:05.720 --> 00:25:08.460 saw this and made a nasty comment about Wyatt 00:25:08.460 --> 00:25:11.500 becoming a damn Jew boy. Oof, that is rough. 00:25:11.720 --> 00:25:14.019 Wyatt was absolutely furious. He walked out, 00:25:14.140 --> 00:25:16.799 and that was effectively the end of their close 00:25:16.799 --> 00:25:19.579 daily association. It's a stark reminder that 00:25:19.579 --> 00:25:22.240 Doc was a man of his time, a Southern aristocrat 00:25:22.240 --> 00:25:25.160 from the 1850s with all the prejudices and bigotry 00:25:25.160 --> 00:25:27.259 that came with that upbringing. Exactly. We can 00:25:27.259 --> 00:25:29.599 admire his bravery and his loyalty in a gunfight, 00:25:29.720 --> 00:25:31.720 but we absolutely cannot ignore the ugliness 00:25:31.720 --> 00:25:34.650 of his character. He was a complex high... flawed 00:25:34.650 --> 00:25:36.690 human being. They remain friends from a distance 00:25:36.690 --> 00:25:39.549 after that, but the legendary dynamic duo is 00:25:39.549 --> 00:25:42.349 broken for good. So Doc is now on his own. He 00:25:42.349 --> 00:25:44.710 drifts up into Colorado, and this is where his 00:25:44.710 --> 00:25:46.829 luck, or maybe just his terrifying reputation, 00:25:47.190 --> 00:25:49.210 starts to catch up with him in some really weird 00:25:49.210 --> 00:25:52.569 ways. He's arrested in Denver. The Arizona warrant 00:25:52.569 --> 00:25:54.509 for the Frank Stilwell murder is still active. 00:25:55.180 --> 00:25:58.059 Arizona wants him extradited immediately. And 00:25:58.059 --> 00:26:00.519 Doc knows if he goes back to Arizona, he will 00:26:00.519 --> 00:26:02.819 be murdered by the cowboy faction in his jail 00:26:02.819 --> 00:26:05.420 cell before he ever stands trial. But then an 00:26:05.420 --> 00:26:08.900 old friend shows up. Bat Masterson. This is one 00:26:08.900 --> 00:26:12.059 of my favorite Old West legal maneuvers. Bat 00:26:12.059 --> 00:26:14.500 Masterson is now the police chief in Trinidad, 00:26:14.559 --> 00:26:17.660 Colorado. He hears about Doc's trouble in Denver. 00:26:18.079 --> 00:26:20.140 He wants to help him, but he can't just break 00:26:20.140 --> 00:26:22.740 him out of jail with guns blazing, so he fabricates 00:26:22.740 --> 00:26:24.759 charges. He makes up a fake crime. Entirely. 00:26:24.819 --> 00:26:28.000 He claims Doc ran a bunco game, which is a gambling 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:31.240 fraud, in Trinidad, Colorado. He argues to the 00:26:31.240 --> 00:26:33.940 governor that Colorado has a prior claim to prosecute 00:26:33.940 --> 00:26:36.579 Doc before Arizona can take him across state 00:26:36.579 --> 00:26:39.940 lines. The governor agrees, refuses the extradition 00:26:39.940 --> 00:26:42.880 to Arizona, and keeps Doc in Colorado to face 00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:45.079 these fake charges. Which eventually just magically 00:26:45.079 --> 00:26:47.579 disappear. Precisely. They evaporate. It was 00:26:47.579 --> 00:26:49.900 a brilliant legal sleight of hand to save his 00:26:49.900 --> 00:26:52.779 friend's life. Amazing. But Doc is deteriorating 00:26:52.779 --> 00:26:55.579 rapidly now. The TB is destroying his lungs. 00:26:55.740 --> 00:26:58.259 He's drinking incredibly heavily and using laudanum 00:26:58.259 --> 00:27:01.730 to manage the daily pain. But he's not done with 00:27:01.730 --> 00:27:03.890 shooting people quite yet. The Billy Allen shooting 00:27:03.890 --> 00:27:07.390 in Leadville, Colorado in 1884. This one is tragic 00:27:07.390 --> 00:27:10.829 in its sheer pettiness. Doc is completely destitute. 00:27:11.049 --> 00:27:14.430 His health is gone. His money is gone. He borrows 00:27:14.430 --> 00:27:17.849 $5 from a bartender named Billy Allen. $5. Which 00:27:17.849 --> 00:27:22.009 is equivalent to maybe $180 today. Doc can't 00:27:22.009 --> 00:27:24.950 pay it back. Allen, who is a big, tough guy, 00:27:25.069 --> 00:27:27.250 he outweighs Doc by 50 pounds at this point, 00:27:27.289 --> 00:27:30.859 threatens him. He says, pay me. Or else, he is 00:27:30.859 --> 00:27:33.220 actively hunting Doc through town. So what does 00:27:33.220 --> 00:27:35.359 Doc do? He can't fight him physically. He goes 00:27:35.359 --> 00:27:37.779 to Hyman's saloon, sits down, waits for Alan, 00:27:37.940 --> 00:27:39.880 and when Alan walks through the door, Doc just 00:27:39.880 --> 00:27:42.460 shoots him. Over $5. He hits him in the arm, 00:27:42.519 --> 00:27:44.859 severs an artery. Alan survives, but he never 00:27:44.859 --> 00:27:47.920 uses that arm properly right again. Doc is arrested, 00:27:48.119 --> 00:27:50.559 goes to trial. And to everyone's shock, he is 00:27:50.559 --> 00:27:52.880 acquitted. On what grounds? How do you shoot 00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:55.640 a guy over a $5 debt and walk away? the no -duty 00:27:55.640 --> 00:27:57.640 -to -retreat law, and the fact that Allen was 00:27:57.640 --> 00:28:00.740 undeniably hunting him, making threats, the jury 00:28:00.740 --> 00:28:04.380 looked at this dying, 116 -pound, frail dentist 00:28:04.380 --> 00:28:07.299 coughing up blood and this big bully who was 00:28:07.299 --> 00:28:09.500 threatening him, and they sided with the dentist. 00:28:09.900 --> 00:28:12.200 Now, we have to address one big mystery before 00:28:12.200 --> 00:28:14.940 we get to the very end of his life. Johnny Ringo. 00:28:15.309 --> 00:28:18.869 Ah, yes, the great movie myth. The climax of 00:28:18.869 --> 00:28:21.009 the film Tombstone, where Doc shows up in the 00:28:21.009 --> 00:28:23.950 forest, surprises Ringo, says, I'm your huckleberry, 00:28:24.150 --> 00:28:26.410 and shoots him dead. It's such a good scene. 00:28:26.490 --> 00:28:29.150 My hypocrisy knows no bounds. I mean, it's iconic. 00:28:29.450 --> 00:28:32.309 It is excellent top -tier cinema. It is absolutely 00:28:32.309 --> 00:28:34.670 terrible history. Break our hearts. Let's hear 00:28:34.670 --> 00:28:36.809 the truth. Johnny Ringo was indeed found dead 00:28:36.809 --> 00:28:40.089 in Arizona in July 1882, shot through the temple. 00:28:40.269 --> 00:28:43.539 It was officially ruled a suicide. However, theories 00:28:43.539 --> 00:28:45.779 have persisted for decades that Doc went back 00:28:45.779 --> 00:28:47.579 across state lines and killed him for Wyatt. 00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:50.599 But the court records are explicitly clear. At 00:28:50.599 --> 00:28:53.299 the exact time Ringo died in Arizona, Doc Holliday 00:28:53.299 --> 00:28:55.660 was standing in a courtroom in Colorado answering 00:28:55.660 --> 00:28:58.799 for larceny charges. So he literally has a rock 00:28:58.799 --> 00:29:01.700 -solid alibi in the state court records. He does. 00:29:01.859 --> 00:29:03.980 The geography and the timeline just don't work 00:29:03.980 --> 00:29:06.039 at all. It's almost certainly a complete myth. 00:29:06.380 --> 00:29:09.000 Okay, so we're in the final act of Doc's life. 00:29:09.160 --> 00:29:12.660 He moves to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Why there? 00:29:12.819 --> 00:29:15.660 The natural hot springs. He desperately hoped 00:29:15.660 --> 00:29:17.779 the sulfur vapors rising from the springs would 00:29:17.779 --> 00:29:20.380 heal his lungs. Did they? Probably the exact 00:29:20.380 --> 00:29:23.660 opposite. The harsh sulfur fumes likely irritated 00:29:23.660 --> 00:29:27.440 his damaged lungs even more. He is only 36 years 00:29:27.440 --> 00:29:30.519 old, but his hair is prematurely white, and he 00:29:30.519 --> 00:29:33.319 is entirely bedridden. He works as a pharaoh 00:29:33.319 --> 00:29:36.380 pit boss for a tiny bit, but his body just completely 00:29:36.380 --> 00:29:41.259 gives out. November 8, 1887. The deathbed scene. 00:29:41.740 --> 00:29:44.559 It's a very quiet end for such a loud, violent 00:29:44.559 --> 00:29:47.220 life. He wakes up in his bed at the Hotel Glenwood. 00:29:47.359 --> 00:29:49.619 He asks the attending nurse for a glass of whiskey. 00:29:49.799 --> 00:29:52.299 She refuses because he is actively dying. He 00:29:52.299 --> 00:29:54.000 looks down at his feet. His boots are off. He 00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:56.220 says his last words. This is funny. This is funny. 00:29:56.259 --> 00:29:58.200 What did he mean by that? Think about his entire 00:29:58.200 --> 00:30:01.420 adult life. The gunfights, the ambushes, the 00:30:01.420 --> 00:30:04.700 knife fights, the fatalism. He always assumed, 00:30:04.720 --> 00:30:07.160 he knew deep down, that he would die violently. 00:30:07.319 --> 00:30:09.819 He would die with his boots on in the dirt of 00:30:09.819 --> 00:30:12.900 some street. probably shot to death. To die in 00:30:12.900 --> 00:30:15.920 a clean bed, bootless, just looking at his bare 00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:18.920 toes, that was the ultimate irony. The universe 00:30:18.920 --> 00:30:21.619 played a massive joke on him at the very end. 00:30:21.799 --> 00:30:23.920 And even his burial is a bit of a mystery, isn't 00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:26.420 it? It is. He was buried in Linwood Cemetery 00:30:26.420 --> 00:30:29.240 up on the hill in Glenwood Springs. But because 00:30:29.240 --> 00:30:32.079 the ground was deeply frozen that November, it 00:30:32.079 --> 00:30:35.400 was a very difficult burial. Some say they had 00:30:35.400 --> 00:30:38.460 to bury him elsewhere temporarily. Records were 00:30:38.460 --> 00:30:41.279 lost over the years. Today, no one knows exactly 00:30:41.279 --> 00:30:43.299 where his physical body lies in that cemetery. 00:30:43.380 --> 00:30:46.160 He just faded into the landscape. So let's zoom 00:30:46.160 --> 00:30:48.480 out here at the end. We have unpacked the real 00:30:48.480 --> 00:30:50.819 life. Now let's look at the tally. The myth says 00:30:50.819 --> 00:30:53.700 he killed dozens of men. The body count. If you 00:30:53.700 --> 00:30:55.460 believe the dime novels and the whispers, he 00:30:55.460 --> 00:30:58.220 killed over a dozen, maybe 20 men. But when you 00:30:58.220 --> 00:31:00.700 look at the verified historical record. What's 00:31:00.700 --> 00:31:03.160 the real number? Between one and three. That's 00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:05.680 it. One to three people. Mike Gordon, maybe. 00:31:06.039 --> 00:31:09.140 Tom McClory, definitely. And possibly Frank Stilwell, 00:31:09.200 --> 00:31:10.700 though he wasn't alone in that shooting. That's 00:31:10.700 --> 00:31:12.700 it. That is shockingly low for a guy with his 00:31:12.700 --> 00:31:14.880 terrifying reputation. But that was the sheer 00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:17.900 genius of Doc Holliday. His reputation was his 00:31:17.900 --> 00:31:20.180 actual shield. He didn't need to kill people 00:31:20.180 --> 00:31:22.119 if everyone firmly thought he was crazy enough 00:31:22.119 --> 00:31:24.799 to do it. He was erratic. He was dying. He was 00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:27.079 completely fearless. Most people just backed 00:31:27.079 --> 00:31:29.299 down before a gun was even drawn. Wyatt Earp 00:31:29.299 --> 00:31:31.559 summed him up best in his eulogy years later. 00:31:31.619 --> 00:31:34.279 He did. It's a beautiful quote. He said, A dentist 00:31:34.279 --> 00:31:37.119 whom necessity had made a gambler. A gentleman 00:31:37.119 --> 00:31:40.579 whom disease had made a vagabond. The most skillful 00:31:40.579 --> 00:31:43.180 gambler and nerviest, speediest, deadliest man 00:31:43.180 --> 00:31:45.559 with the sixth gun I ever knew. That loyalty 00:31:45.559 --> 00:31:48.910 again. It survived everything. It never wavered. 00:31:48.910 --> 00:31:52.150 Wyatt defended Doc to the day he died. It's really 00:31:52.150 --> 00:31:54.289 interesting how pop culture has evolved on him. 00:31:54.369 --> 00:31:56.509 He used to be portrayed strictly as the villain 00:31:56.509 --> 00:31:59.650 in early movies. Now, especially after Val Kilmer, 00:31:59.769 --> 00:32:02.849 he's the intensely loyal sidekick, the tragic 00:32:02.849 --> 00:32:05.930 romantic hero. We like him today because he represents 00:32:05.930 --> 00:32:09.309 a very specific kind of freedom. He was liberated 00:32:09.309 --> 00:32:11.589 from the consequences of life because he had 00:32:11.589 --> 00:32:13.970 the ultimate consequence, his own death, hanging 00:32:13.970 --> 00:32:16.690 right over him every single day. Which brings 00:32:16.690 --> 00:32:19.369 us to our final thought for the listener. We 00:32:19.369 --> 00:32:22.210 so often view Doc Holliday as a tragic figure, 00:32:22.410 --> 00:32:25.609 a life cut short, a brilliant medical talent 00:32:25.609 --> 00:32:28.269 wasted at the card table. But I want to flip 00:32:28.269 --> 00:32:30.549 that narrative for a second. Was he actually 00:32:30.549 --> 00:32:33.569 the most free man in the entire West? Because 00:32:33.569 --> 00:32:36.890 he had absolutely nothing to lose. Exactly. Most 00:32:36.890 --> 00:32:39.390 of us live our lives in fear, fear of failure, 00:32:39.529 --> 00:32:41.849 fear of injury, fear of what people think, fear 00:32:41.849 --> 00:32:45.420 of death. Doc Holliday had faced his absolute 00:32:45.420 --> 00:32:48.200 worst fear at age 22 in that doctor's office. 00:32:48.660 --> 00:32:52.059 The diagnosis. Once he accepted that death was 00:32:52.059 --> 00:32:55.000 coming soon, he was untouchable by fear. So here's 00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:57.259 the question for you listening right now. If 00:32:57.259 --> 00:32:59.259 you knew the clock was ticking, really knew it, 00:32:59.299 --> 00:33:02.180 would you play it safe? Or would you be a daisy? 00:33:02.319 --> 00:33:04.259 Would you stand in the street and say, blaze 00:33:04.259 --> 00:33:06.599 away? Something to think about. Thanks for diving 00:33:06.599 --> 00:33:08.559 deep into the sources with us today. We'll see 00:33:08.559 --> 00:33:08.980 you next time.