Such, then, was the beginning of my acquaintance with Doc Holliday, the mad, merry scamp with heart of gold and nerves of steel; who, in the dark years that followed stood at my elbow in many a battle to the death.
—WYATT EARP
With Bat and his posse taking care of Rudabaugh and his gang after they had doubled back from Texas, Wyatt returned early to Dodge City in January 1878. Around this time, his new acquaintance, Doc Holliday, began the flight that would eventually bring him to Dodge City. It was Kate Elder who got him out of a serious jam. It wouldn’t be the last time.
Mary Katharine Haroney was born in Hungary in November 1850. The family then lived in Mexico because her father was the personal physician of that country’s emperor, Maximilian. But after only three years, in 1865, Maximilian was ousted and the Haroneys fled Mexico, winding up in Davenport, Iowa. Within months, Kate’s displaced parents were dead and she and her siblings were sent to live in foster homes. Kate tolerated this until she was sixteen, when she stowed away on a steamship that landed her in St. Louis. She enrolled in a school there, changing her last name to Fisher, after the ship’s captain.
The first dentist she fell in love with was Silas Melvin. The two married and had a child. But in less than a year, Kate had lost her child and become a widow. She headed west and wound up in Wichita, working as a prostitute in the brothel run by James and Bessie Earp. It would seem highly unlikely that she did not encounter Wyatt. (Some have speculated that she knew him all too well but both denied it out of respect for Holliday.) The following year, in 1875, she went by the name of Kate Elder and was performing in a Dodge City dance hall and was probably a part-time prostitute. Though an attractive woman, her nose was a tad prominent, and both men and women began referring to her as Big Nose Kate. Some of those same people were afraid of her because she had a terrible temper, especially when drinking, which was often.
Why she was in Fort Griffin, Texas, in January 1878 is not known. It may simply have been a place to find work at a time of year when saloon jobs were scarce in Dodge City. It was there that she met Doc Holliday. They had quick tempers, alcohol, independence, restlessness, and a low regard for life in common. All that and more would be enough to keep them together despite the knock-down, drag-out fights that would impress those who knew them.
Soon after Wyatt left Fort Griffin to head north, Doc was playing cards with Ed Bailey, a man whose reputation included being a bit of a bully. Doc was the one dealing, and Bailey picked up the discarded cards and looked at them. The former dentist must have been in a mellow mood because he let slide what was a clear violation of western poker. But when Bailey continued to do it, Doc warned him, and after a couple of unheeded warnings, he simply raked in the pot without revealing to Bailey if his hand was a winner or not.
For Bailey, this was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Immediately furious, he reached for his gun. Just as it was coming visible above the table, Doc slashed a knife across his stomach. Bailey lurched to his feet, then pitched forward, his blood drooling out across the poker table. There were witnesses to the incident, so when lawmen arrived, Doc surrendered the knife and cooperated with his arrest. It was clearly a case of self-defense, as the others in the saloon would testify. Because there was not a jail in Fort Griffin, Doc was kept in a hotel room until the judge could be found.
But Bailey had friends who didn’t take kindly to him being filleted like a fish. They gathered and began heading toward the hotel with a long length of rope. Fortunately for Doc, Big Nose Kate got wind of what was going on, and thinking fast, she set fire to an old shed filled with hay. The sudden conflagration and the hectic activity involved in trying to douse the fire slowed the lynch mob enough that Kate arrived at the hotel first, a pistol in each hand. This surely intimidated the guard, who ran off. Kate and Doc commandeered a couple of horses and left town while the fire continued to be fought.
Their destination was Dodge City. The reason may have been to seek the protection of Wyatt Earp in case some people in Fort Griffin went on being agitated about Bailey’s bloody demise. In any event, when the two fugitives arrived they checked into Deacon Cox’s Boarding House, with Doc signing the register as Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Holliday. They were so relieved by their escape from the mob that Doc vowed to give up gambling and return to dentistry, and Big Nose Kate reciprocated by vowing to give up the whoring saloon life. For a time, both were sincere.
Once Bat could get settled in as sheriff of Ford County, he added the recently exonerated Bill Tilghman to his staff. He was good with a gun, people trusted him, like Wyatt he shunned alcohol, and he kept a cool head. Bat had thought well of him since their buffalo-hunting adventures.
Tilghman and his new wife, Flora, had been trying to make a go of it as ranchers in Bluff Creek. They had 160 acres on the prairie west of Dodge City, and they worked from dawn to dusk despite having a baby, and during the winter of 1877–1878 another one was on the way. Flora was quite pleased with the ranching and domestic life. Her husband grew increasingly restless. So it was that on the day when Tilghman had seen a lone rider approaching from the east and it turned out to be Bat Masterson, the would-be rancher was more receptive to what was offered to him. Flora could have dug her heels in but recognized that holding her husband back would not do the marriage or the ranch any good.
During his first day on the job as deputy, Tilghman encountered Luke Short being shot in the head several times, which had to make him think that this job was going to be a lot tougher than he’d anticipated.
In the annals of Dodge City and the lives of Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, Short would be a familiar figure, popping up here and there. He did not save Bat’s life, like Ben Thompson had done in Sweetwater, nor was he a steady badge-wearing man like Tilghman, but Wyatt and especially Bat considered him a friend, and as such he deserved their loyalty.
Luke Short was only a couple of months older than Bat and hailed from Polk County, Arkansas, but when he was six the family relocated to Montague County in Texas. That would suit him just fine because Luke took to being a cowboy, and beginning when he was sixteen, in 1869, as the cattle-driving business began to boom, he regularly went on the trail north, steering cattle to the Kansas cow towns, especially Dodge City. His lifelong enjoyment of—many might say addiction to—gambling commenced early on, when he got to the end of the Chisholm Trail and the gaming tables of Abilene.
Wyatt later claimed that was where he set eyes on him: “First time I saw Luke he was selling red likker to the hide hunters. He’d quit working as a cowhand already, didn’t cotton to it. That little fella never did hanker for lifting and straining.”
He hadn’t quite quit being a cattle driver yet, but in the cow-town saloons, he watched and listened as the experienced gamblers plied their trade. He learned the tricks and how to cheat only enough to not get killed and how to read in the eyes of other men what they were holding. When he won, he improved the way he dressed. The ladies in the saloons took notice of that and of his easy grin behind the fashionable brown mustache.
When Lady Luck was against him, Luke found other ways to raise a stake. One example was during the Great Sioux War of 1876, when he was a scout for General George Crook. Another was heading out to the buffalo camps with a wagon full of whiskey. He had the reputation of being reliable and of offering fine-tasting whiskey. No one knew he stacked the bottom of his barrels with rattlesnake heads. Luke liked to partake himself, but never touched his own supply. When he’d made enough money, he exchanged his dusty duds for his successful frontier gambler outfits and returned to the tables.
Along the way at those gaming tables he had met Bat Masterson, and inevitably Luke gravitated toward Dodge City, where Bat and Wyatt were. There he won at faro and other games more than he lost, and when he asserted that he was good with a gun, no one tried to disprove him. Luke had done pretty well in either Texas or Deadwood over the winter, and in spring 1878 he was on Front Street in Dodge City, though seemingly in a bad way.
Bill Tilghman’s inaugural patrol through the streets of Dodge City had been a pleasant one. Most people greeted him with courtesy, welcoming him to the sheriff’s department. Gamblers and prostitutes mingled on Front Street with dust-covered cowboys and farmers and ranchers, some accompanied by wives who wore ankle-length calico dresses. When Tilghman arrived at the train station, he sat down to rest and chat with the freight agent, recalling how on any given day the area adjacent to the station was once piled high with buffalo hides and behind that were the piles of sun-bleached buffalo bones.
Suddenly, there were gunshots. Tilghman jumped up and ran for Front Street. Having not met Luke Short before, Tilghman did not recognize him; he simply saw a man walking down the middle of the street, his boots covered with mud, wearing a tall black plug hat. A man crossed over from the sidewalk, aimed a gun at the head of the man in the street, and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was still echoing when another man appeared and also shot the victim in the head.
Tilghman took out his gun and the two men fled. The deputy should have gone after at least one of them, but he was too amazed that the man who had been shot at least twice was still on his feet. Luke Short grinned, took off his hat, and showed the gaping Tilghman the holes in it. “I made a bet with the boys back at the Red Dog that I could walk down the street without my plug hat being shot off,” he explained, returning the hat to the top of his head. “Well, it ain’t shot off, so I win the bet.”
Tilghman noticed several men had gathered on the sidewalk, and they appeared to be trying not to laugh. Catching on, he made tracks to the sheriff’s office. Bat sat with his boots perched up on his desk. He asked his deputy if there had been any trouble.
“None worth mentioning,” Tilghman replied.
“No arrests for Luke’s hat being shot full of holes?”
That and the sheriff’s big grin told the story. For Tilghman, it was “welcome to lawing in Ford County,” Bat Masterson style.
In addition to having an irrepressible personality, Bat enjoyed practical jokes because he knew that having fun endeared him to many of the city’s citizens, yet his past accomplishments meant he wasn’t thought of any less as a lawman. And sometimes what Bat concocted could have a practical purpose.
Cowboys were not the only ones who got drunk in Dodge City. There were men in other occupations who could not resist whiskey, and lots of it. Sometimes they got into a bit of trouble, while other times for the local lawmen it was a routine task to find a fellow passed out in the street, haul him to the calaboose, and let him out when sobriety was regained.
Bat and a few of his like-minded acquaintances had an idea of how to cure these unfortunates, and they invented what came to be called the Dodge City Keeley Cure. With many “patients,” it worked. (This can be considered the first “intervention,” long before there was Alcoholics Anonymous or group therapy.) A chronic drunk was approached at the bar in a saloon and actually encouraged to have more whiskey. Rarely was there any resistance, with the rounds being bought for him. When he passed out, he was taken to the sheriff’s jail as usual. But instead of being locked up, his face was powdered white, he was dressed in black, and he was laid out in a coffin with a mirror above his head. It had been arranged ahead of time that his friends who had hoped the man would see the light would gather.
Finally, when the man awoke from his stupor, he opened his eyes to his reflection in the mirror, which showed him laid out in a coffin and his friends standing around him murmuring prayers. The man was terrified at first; then, discovering that he was alive again and had been given a Scrooge-like second chance, he tearfully vowed never to touch another drop of liquor.
This time when Wyatt had returned to Dodge City, it was the new Ford County Globe that made note of it, telling readers he had arrived from Fort Clarke, Texas. If he did any lawing, it was not until the middle of May, when The Wichita Eagle reported that Wyatt was to be paid two hundred dollars a month to be the new Dodge City marshal.
This was a handsome sum, and the report could well have been true. It was not true, though, that he would be the new marshal. Charlie Bassett had the job. (Ed Masterson had recovered and returned as marshal in April, but for a reason to be detailed, it was Bassett’s post once more.) Wyatt willingly signed on as his assistant, as he had been to Larry Deger two years earlier. The Eagle continued to pay attention to activities of its former peace officer, informing readers that Wyatt was “adding new laurels to his splendid record every day.” He was even credited with putting out a fire on the outskirts of town.
Unless one of them was out of town, Bat’s and Wyatt’s paths crossed on a daily basis. But they managed to get into plenty of scrapes while on separate paths.
Unlike the quiet and laconic Wyatt, the more gregarious Bat continued to enjoy a practical joke. Thus, some believed that he was really behind an incident that took place around this time at the Lady Gay Saloon. A man calling himself Dr. Meredith arrived in Dodge City offering to lecture on phrenology and its use in diagnosing diseases. The “doctor” approached the sheriff asking for his protection, explaining that some towns along the frontier, especially ones filled with cowboys, had not received his lectures with anything approaching courtesy. Intrigued, Bat agreed and went so far as to persuade the owners of the Lady Gay Saloon to suspend their usual entertainment long enough for the visitor to give his lecture.
On that evening the saloon was almost full, and the regular patrons were at least puzzled when, instead of singing and dancing girls taking to the stage, a stranger appeared. Even Bat’s introduction wasn’t placating enough. Dr. Meredith was only a few words into his lecture when a member of the audience shouted, “You lie!” Bat stood, turned to the audience, and declared, “I’ll shoot the first man that interrupts this gentleman again.”
Again, Dr. Meredith began his lecture, and again a man in the audience blurted out, “You lie!” Bat was back on his feet, saying, “I meant what I said. The next time this gentleman is interrupted, I’ll begin shooting.”
The third time was not a charm. Bat produced his pistol and shot out the lights. The crowd went crazy, fighting each other to get through the front door, and a few audience members jumped out the windows, one man not bothering to open it first. When Bat lit a lamp, the distressed “doctor” was found cowering behind the lecture podium. Dr. Meredith was done as far as Dodge City was concerned, and he was on the next train out. Town wags believed that Bat either planned the mischief from the moment he met Dr. Meredith, or after only a few words realized anything would be more fun than the lecture.
Of course, Bat could not lollygag around Ford County playing practical jokes. There were outlaws to be caught, and one adventure was a postscript to the arrest of the Rudabaugh gang. When word came to the sheriff that not all of the men who had ridden with Dirty Dave were behind bars and that in fact one of them, Mike Rorke, had put together a new gang to bedevil banks and trains, Bat gathered a posse and hit the trail.
Riding with him were Charlie Bassett, Miles Mix, John Joshua Webb (apparently, before he fell under Dirty Dave’s spell), and Red Clarke, a respected local rancher. With the Ford County Globe declaring, “No better posse ever undertook such a duty,” the pressure was on to deliver. Bat had a pretty good idea of the direction the bandits had taken, and he turned out to be right when ranch hands and settlers reported Rorke and several other men having passed by a few hours earlier.
For thirteen days the posse stayed close behind the outlaws. They continued south, past the Cimarron River, then southeast, finally getting to the Staked Plains in Texas. There the trail ended. There was no sign of Rorke and his men. After a pursuit of three hundred miles, Bat and the posse had to backtrack to Dodge City. Even with no one to toss in the calaboose, the lawmen were cheered for what had been a valiant effort when they returned.
Rorke did not remain a free man very long. Later in 1878, in October, he and a companion, Dan Dement, were spotted in Ellsworth. The attempted arrest turned into a gun battle. Dement would die from his wounds, and Rorke was tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Perhaps to gain some satisfaction, Bat paid him a visit.