John Henry Holliday was born August 14, 1851, in Griffin, Georgia, into a family of standing. His father, Henry Holliday, a trained pharmacist, had served in the Cherokee Indian War, the Mexican-American War, and as a major in the Confederate Army. His mother, Alice Jane, was a gentle presence, and John was devoted to her. When he was fifteen, she died of consumption, the disease known today as tuberculosis.
His father remarried barely three months later, a blow that compounded the boy’s grief. Educated in Greek, Latin, and French at the Valdosta Institute, John pursued dentistry, enrolling at the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery. He graduated and opened a practice in Atlanta, but his temper could flare violently. On one occasion, enraged that African-American men were swimming in his favored swimming hole, he fired shots over the water.
One of the men fired back. No one was killed, but it was an early sign of a man quick to reach for a gun. Soon after establishing himself as a dentist, Holliday began to cough. He consulted physicians who gave him a crushing verdict: he had tuberculosis, most likely contracted from his mother.
They advised a drier climate to prolong his life. In October 1873, he left Georgia for Dallas, Texas, then the end of the railroad line. He initially worked with another dentist, but as coughing spells wracked his body during delicate procedures, his practice faltered. He found another profession where his mind gave him an edge: gambling.
A refined, educated man in a rough country, fluent in Latin, a skilled piano player, and a sharp dresser, Holliday became a professional gambler, dealing and playing poker and faro. But he knew he was dying, and the knowledge made him moody, often drunk, and reckless, a man who lived with no fear of death. On January 2, 1875, he was involved in his first recorded gunfight, an argument with a tavern owner that ended with both men arrested and no injuries. Days later, he killed a prominent citizen with two careful shots.
Fearing for his safety, he fled Dallas. He drifted to Jacksboro, Texas, a lawless cow town near an army post, where he dealt faro. An expert shot by then, he was involved in several more gunfights, leaving one man dead, but the town’s wild nature meant no legal action. In the summer of 1876, another quarrel ended with Holliday killing a soldier from Fort Richardson.
The federal government became involved. A reward was issued for his capture, and he was pursued by the army, the Texas Rangers, local lawmen, and bounty hunters. Aware he might be hanged, Holliday fled to Kansas, then Colorado, leaving three more dead bodies in his wake. In Denver, under the alias Tom Mackey, he worked as a faro dealer until a knife fight with a tough gambler left his opponent seriously wounded.
Forced to run again, he drifted through Wyoming and New Mexico before returning to Texas. At Fort Griffin, while dealing cards at John Shanssey’s saloon, Holliday met Mary Katherine Haroney, a woman known commonly as Big Nose Kate. She was educated but had chosen the life of a prostitute for the freedom it offered. The two developed feelings for each other; she was the only woman known to hold Holliday’s heart.
Around this time, Wyatt Earp was on the trail of a train robber named Dave Rudabaugh. Issued an acting commission as a U. S. deputy marshal to pursue the outlaw out of state, Earp followed the trail for four hundred miles to Fort Griffin.
At the largest saloon, Shanssey told him Rudabaugh had been there and directed him to Holliday, who had played cards with the man. Earp was skeptical of approaching Holliday, who was known to despise lawmen, but Holliday willingly told him that he believed Rudabaugh had turned back toward Kansas. Earp wired this information to Bat Masterson, the sheriff in Dodge City, and it proved instrumental in Rudabaugh’s capture. An unlikely friendship formed that would last for years.
Wyatt Earp later recounted an incident that illustrated both Holliday’s lethal skill and Kate’s fierce loyalty. In the winter of 1878, in Fort Griffin, Holliday was playing poker with a well-liked local man named Ed Bailey. Bailey, unimpressed with Holliday’s reputation, repeatedly picked up discards, a violation strictly prohibited in western poker that could force a player to forfeit the pot. Holliday warned him twice.
Bailey ignored him and did it again. Holliday raked in the pot without a word. Bailey went for his pistol, but Holliday drew a knife from his breast pocket and caught him in the upper chest. Bailey died.
Holliday was detained at the Planter’s Hotel, and a vigilante group formed to exact revenge. Knowing the mob would overwhelm the local authorities, Big Nose Kate set fire to an old shed. As the town scrambled to fight the spreading blaze, she confronted the guard with a pistol in each hand, disarmed him, and freed Holliday. The two escaped on stolen horses and headed for Dodge City, registering at a boarding house as Dr.
and Mrs. J. H. Holliday.
Touched by her devotion, Holliday gave up gambling and hung out his dentist’s shingle again. Kate promised to leave prostitution. But Kate could not endure the quiet boredom of respectable life. She returned to the dance halls and gambling dens, and the two split up, as they would many times in the years left to him.
Holliday returned to gambling, dealing cards at the Long Branch Saloon. In 1878, two cowboys Wyatt Earp had once banished from Wichita, Toby Driskill and Ed Morrison, rode into Dodge City with two dozen others, firing guns as they galloped down Front Street. They entered the Long Branch, vandalizing the room and harassing patrons. Earp ran to the scene and was confronted by the armed cowboys.
Morrison sneered at him to draw his gun, saying his time had come. Suddenly a voice sounded behind Morrison: no, friend, you draw or throw up your hands. It was Holliday, his revolver pressed to Morrison’s temple. He had been in the back room, his card game interrupted by the havoc.
Holliday warned that if any of the cowboys pulled a gun, their leader would lose what was left of his brains. The cowboys dropped their arms. Earp clubbed Morrison over the head with his long-barreled Colt, disarmed Driskill and Morrison, and jailed them. Earp always credited Holliday with saving his life that day.
Holliday and Kate continued their volatile relationship, and during one violent quarrel, Holliday rode out of Dodge City, winding up in Trinidad, Colorado, where he was goaded into a fight by a young gambler known as Kid Colton. The Kid, wishing to make a reputation, ended up in the dusty street with two bullets in him. Holliday rode on to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he briefly hung out his shingle again and then bought a saloon. In late August 1879, he argued with a local gunman named Mike Gordon.
Taken to the street, Holliday politely invited Gordon to start shooting whenever he felt like it. Gordon did, and died with three shots in his belly. A lynch mob formed, and Holliday returned to Dodge City, only to find that Wyatt had gone to a new silver strike in Tombstone, Arizona. Holliday joined the Earps there in September 1880.
In Tombstone, the Earps were mining silver, and Wyatt’s brothers Virgil and Morgan had been appointed lawmen. The outlaw Clanton gang, which ran roughshod over the territory, resented their arrival. Old Man Clanton, his sons Ike and Billy, the McLaury brothers Frank and Tom, Curly Bill Brocius, John Ringo, and their followers expressed their displeasure openly. Holliday became a welcome addition to the Earps’ fight with the cowboy faction.
On October 26, 1881, Virgil Earp received reports that the cowboys were armed in violation of a city ordinance requiring them to deposit their weapons. The cowboys had repeatedly threatened the Earps and Holliday. Fearing trouble, Virgil temporarily deputized Holliday and sought backup from his brothers. Virgil retrieved a short coach gun from the Wells Fargo office.
The four men went to find the cowboys on Fremont Street. They met County Sheriff Behan, who implied he had disarmed the cowboys. Virgil gave the coach gun to Holliday, who concealed it under his long coat, and took Holliday’s walking stick. The two forces met near an alley off Fremont Street, between Fly’s photo gallery and the Jersy Livery stable.
“You are under arrest for attempting to disturb the peace,” Virgil announced. The cowboys braced themselves. Morgan and Holliday braced for action. “Hold on, I don’t want that,” Virgil cried.
What happened next was a blur lasting about thirty seconds. The shooting started when Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury cocked their pistols. The first shot to hit home was Holliday’s, tearing through Frank McLaury’s belly. Billy Clanton fired at Virgil but missed when Morgan’s shot hit him in the rib cage.
Ike Clanton panicked, threw down his gun, and fled. Tom McLaury sent a bullet into Morgan’s side, and Holliday instantly countered, blowing Tom away with both barrels of his shotgun. Billy Clanton, dying, fired blindly, striking Virgil in the leg. Wyatt responded with several rounds into Billy.
Then it was silent. Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury were dead. Virgil was shot in the leg, and Morgan suffered a shoulder wound. The Earps and Holliday were tried for murder but found to have acted within the law.
On March 18, 1882, the cowboy gang struck again. Morgan Earp was playing pool at Campbell and Hatch’s saloon when a shot from the alley’s darkness struck him in the back. He died. His body was dressed in one of Holliday’s suits and shipped to his parents in Colton, California.
Wyatt and Holliday sought vengeance, and over the following year, they eliminated many outlaws, including Frank Stilwell and Curly Bill Brocius. Leaving Tombstone for good, they pursued a vendetta against John Ringo, Ike Clanton, Pete Spence, and Hank Swilling. On July 14, 1882, John Ringo was found dead, a bullet hole in his right temple, a revolver hanging from his finger. A popular story claims Holliday killed him, but newspapers reported Holliday in Colorado, more than five hundred miles away, at the time.
The mystery of Ringo’s death remains unsolved. An arrest warrant for Holliday still pending in Arizona made it unlikely he would have risked returning. Holliday’s health continued to deteriorate. In May 1887, hoping the hot springs and sulfur vapors might help, he checked into the fashionable Hotel Glenwood in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
He grew steadily worse, spending his last fifty-seven days in bed, delirious for fourteen of them. On November 8, 1887, he awoke clear-eyed and asked for a glass of whiskey. He drank it down with enjoyment. Then, looking down at his bare feet, he said, “This is funny,” and died.
He had always figured he would be killed with his boots on. Holliday came west years before knowing his days were numbered, convinced he would die from lead poisoning, at the end of a rope, from a knife in his ribs, or from drink. Instead, the gunfighter known across the frontier died in a hotel bed, his final resting place at Glenwood Springs Cemetery, high on a hillside overlooking the valley below.