The bullet took Morgan Earp in the back. He was playing pool at Campbell and Hatch’s saloon in Tombstone when a shot rang out from the darkness of the alley, striking him down. His body was dressed in one of Doc Holliday’s suits and shipped to his parents in Colton, California, for burial. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday did not wait long to answer.

In the year that followed, they eliminated many outlaws, including Frank Stillwell and Curly Bill Brocius, and then they left Tombstone for good, vowing to hunt down John Ringo, Ike Clanton, Pete Spence, and Hank Swilling. They left Silver City and took the train to Colorado from Deming. On July 14, 1882, Holliday’s longtime nemesis Johnny Ringo was found dead, slouched against a low branch of a large tree in the West Turkey Creek Valley near Chiricahua Peak, Arizona Territory. He had a bullet hole in his right temple, and a revolver hung from a finger of his hand.

A story popularized in the movie Tombstone holds that Holliday stepped in for Wyatt Earp in response to a gunfight challenge from Ringo and shot him. But the Pueblo Daily Chieftain reported that Holliday was seen in Salida, Colorado, on July 7, more than 550 miles from where Ringo’s body was found, and then in Leadville on July 18. Holliday biographer Karen Holliday Tanner noted that a murder warrant was still pending in Arizona for Holliday’s arrest, making it hard for him to risk returning there at that moment. Johnny Ringo’s death remains a mystery to this day.

But to understand how Doc Holliday reached that point — a dying man hunting killers across the Southwest — one has to go back to the beginning, to a dentist’s office in Georgia and a diagnosis that changed everything. John Henry Holliday was born on August 14, 1851, and baptized at Griffin’s First Presbyterian Church in 1852. His father, Henry B. Holliday, was a trained pharmacist who had served in several wars, including the Cherokee Indian War and the Mexican-American War, and had risen to the rank of major in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

After returning home from the Mexican-American War, Henry brought with him an orphaned Mexican boy named Francisco Hidalgo. In 1849, Henry married Alice Jane McKay, and the couple had a daughter, Martha Eleanora, who tragically died as a child. In 1857, Major Holliday inherited a piece of land in Valdosta, Georgia, and moved his family to Lowndes County, where John Henry attended grade school at the Valdosta Institute, studying Greek, Latin, and French. The major quickly became one of the town’s leading citizens, serving two terms as mayor, acting as secretary of the County Agricultural Society, belonging to the Masonic Lodge, serving as secretary of the Confederate Veterans camp, and overseeing local elections.

When John was just fifteen, his mother died of consumption — the disease later called tuberculosis — on September 16, 1866. The loss hit him especially hard, as he had been very close to her, and it was compounded when his father remarried only three months later. Given the family’s standing in the community and the fact that his cousin Robert Holliday had founded the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery, John’s choice of profession came naturally. In 1870, he enrolled in college in Philadelphia, and immediately after graduation he began working as a dentist at Dr.

Arthur C. Ford’s office in Atlanta, Georgia. Though educated and respected, John Henry was a hot-tempered Southerner, quick to reach for a gun. On one occasion, when African-American men were swimming in his favorite swimming hole, the outraged Holliday started shooting over their heads, and one of the men shot back.

No one was killed, but it was the first recorded instance of Doc Holliday’s affair with the six-shooter. Shortly after starting his dental practice, Holliday discovered he had contracted tuberculosis, most likely from his mother before she died. Several physicians told him he had only a short time to live and advised him to move to a drier climate to extend his life. In October 1873, Doc Holliday packed up and headed for Dallas, Texas, the end of the railroad line at the time.

Bat Masterson would later write in 1907 that Holliday actually moved because of the shooting incident back in Georgia. Initially, Doc worked with another dentist, Dr. John A. Seager, in Dallas, but as coughing spells racked his body during delicate dental procedures, his business declined, and Holliday was forced to find another way to earn a living.

He was a most unusual character out West — a highly educated and refined man in a place where such things were uncommon. He was fluent in Latin, played the piano very well, dressed nattily, and displayed the manners of a Southern gentleman. His intelligence made him a natural at gambling, which quickly became his means of support, both as a player and as a dealer of poker and faro. But Doc was miserable, knowing his death was coming.

He was moody, a heavy drinker, and perhaps more reckless because he had no fear of death. On January 2, 1875, the first recorded gunfight involving Doc Holliday occurred. He got into an argument with Austin, a local tavern owner, and it quickly escalated into a violent encounter. Despite multiple shots being fired, no one was injured, and both men were arrested.

The incident was reported in the Dallas Weekly Herald. At first, the local citizens found the gunfight amusing — until a few days later, when Doc again got into a disagreement and killed a prominent citizen with two carefully aimed bullets. Fearing for his safety, he fled Dallas with the authorities hot on his trail. Holliday headed to Jacksboro, Texas, a wild and lawless cow town near an army post.

He found a job dealing faro, carrying a gun in a shoulder holster, another on his hip, and a knife besides. Having become an expert shot, he was involved in three more gunfights in a short time, leaving one man dead. No legal action was taken against him because of the town’s lawless nature. But in the summer of 1876, a disagreement led to violence again, and Doc killed a soldier from Fort Richardson.

This brought the United States government into the investigation. A reward was issued for his capture, and he was aggressively pursued by the Army, the Texas Rangers, the U. S. Sheriff, local lawmen, and ordinary citizens hoping to collect the bounty.

Aware of the imminent hanging if captured, Doc fled for his life into Apache country, then to Kansas Territory, and into Colorado, making stops in Pueblo, Leadville, Georgetown, and Central City. He left three more dead bodies in his wake. He eventually settled in Denver under the alias Tom Mackey and found work as a faro dealer for John A. Babb’s theater, Kique, at 357 Blake Street.

There he got into an argument with Bud Ryan, a well-known and tough gambler. They drew knives and fought, and Holliday left Ryan seriously wounded. Public resentment forced Doc to run again — first to Wyoming, then to New Mexico, and finally back to Texas, where he would meet Wyatt Earp and Big Nose Kate at Fort Griffin. While dealing cards at John Shanssey’s saloon, Doc met Mary Katherine Elder Haroney, who went by many names but was most often known as Big Nose Kate.

She was a tough and independent woman who occasionally worked as a prostitute. Despite her good education, she chose that life because of the freedom it brought her. The two developed feelings for each other, and she became the only woman known to have held Holliday’s heart. Around that time, Wyatt Earp was traveling from Dodge City, Kansas, on the trail of a train robber named Dave Rudabaugh.

He had been issued an acting commission as a U. S. Deputy Marshal to pursue the outlaw out of state, and he followed Rudabaugh’s trail for four hundred miles. Wyatt visited the largest saloon in town, Shanssey’s, and asked about Rudabaugh.

The owner, John Shanssey, said Rudabaugh had been there earlier in the week but didn’t know where he was bound, and directed Wyatt to Doc Holliday, who had played cards with Rudabaugh. Wyatt was skeptical about talking to Holliday, as it was well known that Doc hated lawmen. But when Wyatt found him that evening at Shanssey’s, he was surprised at Holliday’s willingness to talk. Doc told Wyatt he thought Rudabaugh had backtrailed to Kansas.

Wyatt wired this information to Bat Masterson, the sheriff in Dodge City, and the news was instrumental in apprehending Rudabaugh. The unlikely pair formed a friendship that would last for years. Wyatt Earp later recounted an event during which Holliday killed a fellow gambler named Ed Bailey. Thanksgiving, in Fort Griffin, Texas, during the winter of 1878, Wyatt and his common-law wife, Mattie Blaylock, were looking for gambling opportunities.

Wyatt visited the saloon of his old friend from Cheyenne, John Shanssey, and met Holliday at the Cattle Exchange. The story of Holliday killing Bailey first appeared nine years after Holliday’s death, in an 1896 interview with Wyatt Earp published in the San Francisco Inquirer. According to Earp, Holliday was playing poker with a well-liked local man named Ed Bailey. Bailey was unimpressed with Doc’s reputation, and to irritate him, he kept picking up the discards and looking at them.

Looking at the discards was strictly prohibited by the rules of Western poker — a violation that could force a player to forfeit the pot. Though Holliday warned Bailey twice, the bully ignored him and picked up the discards again. This time, Doc raked in the pot without showing his hand or saying a word. Bailey immediately went for his pistol, but Holliday whipped out a knife from his breast pocket and caught Bailey just below the brisket, or upper chest.

Bailey died. Holliday, new in town, was detained in his room at the Planter’s Hotel. A vigilante group formed to seek revenge on Holliday. Knowing the mob would quickly overtake the local lawmen, Big Nose Kate devised a plan to free Doc.

She set fire to an old shed, and as the flames spread rapidly, threatening to engulf the entire town, she confronted the officer guarding Holliday with a pistol in each hand while everyone else fought the fire. She disarmed the guard, and the two escaped, hiding out at night and heading to Dodge City on stolen horses. In the morning they registered at Deacon Cox’s boarding house as Doctor and Mrs. J.

H. Holliday. Doc appreciated what Kate had done for him so much that he was determined to make her happy. He gave up gambling, hung up his doctor’s shingle again, and opened a practice.

In return, Kate promised to give up prostitution and stop hanging around saloons. But she couldn’t stand the quiet boredom of respectable living. She told Doc she was returning to the bright lights and excitement of the dance halls and gambling dens, and the two split up — as they were destined to do many times during the remainder of Doc’s life. Doc went back to gambling, frequenting the Alhambra and dealing cards at the Long Branch Saloon.

Though Dodge City citizens found the friendship between Wyatt and Doc strange, Wyatt ignored them, and Doc kept to the law while in Dodge City. In 1878, Wyatt Earp had previously banished two cowboys, Toby Driskill and Ed Morrison, from Wichita. During the summer, these two cowboys and two dozen others rode into Dodge City and wreaked havoc, bombarding the town as they galloped down Front Street. They then entered the Long Branch Saloon, vandalizing the room and harassing patrons.

Earp ran to the scene when he heard the noise and was immediately confronted by a large group of cowboys pointing guns at him. Stepping forward, Morrison sneered, “Pray and jerk your gun. Your time has come. ” Suddenly, a voice sounded from behind Morrison: “No, friend, you draw or throw your hands up.

” It was Doc, his revolver pressed to Morrison’s temple. Doc had been in the back room, his card game interrupted by the havoc out front. “Any of you bastards pulls a gun, and your leader here loses what’s left of his brains. ” The cowboys dropped their arms.

Wyatt wrapped Morrison over the head with his long-barreled Colt, then, relieving Driskill and Morrison of their arms, he ushered them to the Dodge City jail. Earp always credited Holliday with saving his life that day, and the two developed a close friendship. Later, in their ongoing love-hate relationship, Kate and Doc had another of their frequent violent quarrels. Furious, Doc saddled his horse and headed out, winding up in Trinidad, Colorado.

Shortly after he arrived, he was goaded into a fight by a young gambler known as Kid Colton. The kid, wishing to make a reputation for himself — or unaware of Doc’s gunmanship — wound up in the dusty street with two bullets in him. Not wanting to linger, Doc rode on to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where in the late summer of 1879 he hung out his shingle as a dentist for the last time. The idea was short-lived, and a few weeks later he bought a saloon.

In late August 1879, Doc argued with a local gunman named Mike Gordon. The two took the argument to the street, where Doc politely invited Gordon to start shooting whenever he felt like it. Gordon accepted the invitation and died with three shots in his belly. Again a lynch mob formed with plans to hang Holliday, and Doc returned to Dodge City.

He arrived only to find that Wyatt had gone to a new silver strike in Tombstone, Arizona. Holliday finally joined the Earps in Tombstone in September 1880. Some accounts report that Earp sent for Holliday for assistance in dealing with the outlaw cowboys. When Doc arrived, he found not only Wyatt but all the Earp brothers: Morgan, who had come from Montana; James, who had traveled with Wyatt from Dodge City; and Virgil, from Prescott, where he had just been made a deputy U.

S. Marshal. Wyatt and his brothers were mining silver, and James was dealing faro at Vogan’s Saloon. Virgil appointed Wyatt acting city marshal and swore in Morgan as an officer.

When the Earps arrived in Tombstone, the outlaw Clanton gang ran roughshod over the territory and immediately resented their presence. Old Man Clanton, his sons Ike, Finn, and Billy, the McLaury brothers Frank and Tom, Curly Bill Brocius, John Ringo, and their followers lost no time in expressing their displeasure. Holliday was a welcome addition to the Earps’ fight with the cowboy faction. On October 26, 1881, Virgil Earp received reports that cowboys with whom they had had repeated confrontations were armed, in violation of the city ordinance requiring them to deposit their weapons at a saloon or stable.

Soon after arriving in town, the cowboys had repeatedly threatened the Earps and Holliday. Fearing trouble, Virgil temporarily deputized Holliday and sought backup from his brothers Wyatt and Morgan. Virgil retrieved a short coach gun from the Wells Fargo office, and the four men went to find the cowboys on Fremont Street. They ran into Cochise County Sheriff Behan, who told them — or implied — that he had disarmed the cowboys to avoid alarming citizens, though he had no intention of disarming them.

Virgil gave the coach gun to Holliday so he could conceal it under his long coat, and Virgil took Holliday’s walking stick. The two forces finally met ninety yards down an alley from the O. K. Corral.

The gunfight occurred off Fremont Street, between Fly’s Photography Gallery and the C. S. Fly boarding house and the Harwood House. Holliday’s friend, photographer C.

S. Fly, and his wife, owned a photography studio. “You are under arrest for attempting to disturb the peace,” Virgil announced. As the senior officer, he displayed only a non-threatening walking stick, having given Doc his shotgun.

The cowboys tightened, and Morgan and Doc simultaneously braced for action. “Hold on, I don’t want that! ” cried Virgil. What happened next was a blur, occurring in about thirty seconds.

The shooting started when Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury cocked their pistols. It is unknown who fired the first shot, but Doc’s bullet was the first to hit home, tearing through Frank McLaury’s belly and sending McLaury’s shot wild through Wyatt’s coattail. Billy Clanton fired at Virgil, but his shot went astray when he was hit by Morgan’s shot through his rib cage. Billy Claiborne ran as soon as shots were fired and was already out of sight.

Ike Clanton panicked, threw his gun down, and pleaded for his life. “Fight or get out! ” Wyatt yelled, and watched Ike desert his brother Billy as he ran toward the door of the photography shop. But Ike withdrew a hidden gun, firing one more round toward Wyatt before disappearing.

The sound distracted Morgan enough that Tom McLaury sent a bullet into Morgan’s side. Doc instantly countered, blowing Tom away with blasts from both barrels of his shotgun. Desperately wounded and dying, Billy Clanton fired blindly into the gunsmoke encircling him, striking Virgil’s leg. Wyatt responded by sending several rounds into Billy.

Then it was silent. The townspeople ran from their homes and shops. Wagons were brought to convey the wounded Morgan and Virgil to their respective homes, and doctors followed. The thirty-second shootout left Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury dead.

Virgil Earp took a shot to the leg, and Morgan suffered a shoulder wound. Wyatt stood still, stunned, when Sheriff Behan appeared, advising him he was under arrest. The Earps and Doc Holliday were tried for murder, but it was determined that the Earps had acted within the law. The cowboy gang struck again on March 18, 1882, while Morgan Earp played pool at Campbell and Hatch’s saloon.

A shot was fired from the darkness of the alley, striking Morgan in the back. He died. Wyatt and Doc left Tombstone, never to return, but vowing revenge on John Ringo, Ike Clanton, Pete Spence, and Hank Swilling. They left Silver City and took the train to Colorado from Deming.

Holliday’s health continued to deteriorate. A realist, Doc did not believe in miraculous cures, but hoping the Yampa hot springs and sulfur vapors might improve his health, he headed for Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in May 1887, registering at the fashionable Hotel Glenwood. He grew steadily worse, spending his last fifty-seven days in bed at the hotel, delirious for fourteen of them. On November 8, 1887, he awoke clear-eyed and asked for a glass of whiskey.

It was given to him, and he drank it down with enjoyment. Then, looking down at his bare feet, he said, “This is funny. ” And died. He always figured he would be killed with his boots on.

Doc Holliday had come West years before knowing his days were numbered. He never believed he would die in bed. He often said his end would come from lead poisoning, at the end of a rope, from a knife in his ribs, or that he might drink himself to death. Instead, it was the consumption that had pursued him since Georgia that finally caught up with him in a hotel room in the Colorado mountains.

Holliday’s final resting place is at Glenwood Springs Cemetery, set on a steep hillside overlooking the valley below. Despite his reputation as a gunfighter, Holliday was not invincible. He narrowly escaped death on nine different occasions, including four attempts to hang him and five gunshot wounds. He is said to have killed a number of men, but the exact number remains unknown.

Doc Holliday’s legacy lives on not only as a legendary gunfighter of the Old West, but as a symbol of resilience, loyalty, and courage in the face of adversity — a dying man who gambled with his own life and played every hand to the end.